[ExI] Is the brain a digital computer?

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Mon, 3/1/10, Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:

> To me, physicalism just means, in terms of mind, that
> mental processes _supervene_ on physical ones.
> 
> I'm not sure this supports dualism or what you mean by a
> dualism that would be supported by it. I know there are
> non-reductive physicalists, such as Louise Antony and
> Josephy Levine (or they were a few years ago when they
> published an essay defending this position against the likes
> of Kim:). Is that dualist? They don't seem to think so --
> save that they seem to mean mind has a domain of autonomy,
> but what does that mean in ontological terms?

In general I support non-reductive physicalism.

I believe dualists make a mistake when they conclude that because mental phenomena seem irreducible to physics, those phenomena must represent either non-physical properties of matter or a substance completely foreign to matter. 

We can quite easily reduce mental phenomena epistemically without reducing the same phenomena ontologically. I mean here that we can understand mental phenomena in scientific terms of neurological causes and effects without abandoning the common sense notion that mental phenomena have an irreducibly subjective ontology. 

Confusion arises about this subject only because when we consider anything aside from consciousness, we do *both* an epistemic and an ontological reduction. 

-gts