Baby You Can Drive My Car, Part 4: Theories and Theorists

Now let’s go back to the text of “The Conscious Mind”, this time bearing in mind that the book was written by a nonconscious epistemological agent, David Chalmers’ nonconscious physical brain.  Chalmers’ brain writes: “To take the line that explaining our judgments about consciousness is enough...is most naturally understood as an eliminativist position about consciousness...As such it suffers from all the problems eliminativism naturally faces.  In particular, it denies the evidence of our own experience.  This is the sort of thing that can only be done by a philosopher -- or by someone else tying themselves in intellectual knots.”  (Page 185)

Who is the “we” of “our own experience”?  Who or what is “denying the evidence”?  Grammatically, the sentence would seem to be attributing the “denial” to the eliminativist theory itself; surely, that’s not what Chalmers means.  Theories don’t deny evidence; theorists deny evidence.  Theorists such as Armstrong, Dennett, Lewis and Ryle (see Chalmers’ list on page 163).  That is, epistemological agents deny evidence.

But you can’t deny evidence you don’t have.  It is not Armstrong’s conscious mind that is denying experience.  The conscious properties of Armstrong’s mind, whatever they may be, do not add any “denying” competence that is not already present in Armstrong’s nonconscious physical brain.  It is not Armstrong’s conscious mind that is “taking the line that explaining our judgments about consciousness is enough” -- it is Armstrong’s physical nonconscious brain.  And Armstrong’s physical nonconscious brain has no access to the facts, whatever they may be, about Armstrong’s own experiences.  So it’s simply not possible that Armstrong is denying evidence -- there is no such evidence to be denied.

Evidence is only evidence in the hands of an epistemological agent, who has the degrees of freedom to weigh or deny it.

The processes that determine what “line to take” on the question of consciousness are confined to the physical nonconscious brain; and the phenomenal facts, whatever they may be, are simply not inputs to those processes.

Given that the only parties to Armstrong’s mind that have access to the information about consciousness are barred from speaking, not to mention voting, it is no wonder that the Parliament of Armstrong’s Mind votes to deny.  Notwithstanding the fact (that is, the assumption) that they are right, it is the realists (that is, the nonconscious brains of the realists) who are tying themselves in intellectual knots, isn’t it?