Review of David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind

In The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers systematically examines the philosophical puzzle of consciousness. Chalmers comes through as an exceptionally well-read theorist in the philosophy of mind; he's also gifted at explaining complex concepts in a reasonably transparent way. His overall thesis in the work is that consciousness is best explained through a variety of property dualism: specifically, he argues for a position very similar (if not identical) to the philosophical position called epiphenomenalism. Briefly, this position holds that consciousness is a property or feature of the world over and above all the physical facts, but also that consciousness is causally irrelevant to the physical world.

Here, in Chalmers' words, we can see his claim to a form of dualism--that consciousness is in some sense "beyond" the physical:

"Consciousness is a feature of the world over and above the physical features of the world. This is not to say it is a separate 'substance'; the issue of what it would take to constitute a dualism of substances seems quite unclear to me. All we know is that there are properties of individuals in this world--the phenomenal properties--that are ontologically independent of physical properties" (p.125, Chalmers' italics).

Review of Alex Tsakiris' Why Science is Wrong...About Almost Everything

I am familiar with Alex Tsakiris through his very interesting Internet podcast show Skeptiko.  I have been a listener for about five or six years now, and I have always been impressed with both the quality of the guests and Tsakiris's forthright interviewing style.  The show is essentially an investigation into the nature of consciousness with experts from differing points of view.  Given the show's penchant for controversy, many of the interviews are thickly laced with debate, which in my opinion is one of the greatest methods of weighing competing positions.

Tsakiris's new book, Why Science is Wrong...About Almost Everything, is largely a collection of excerpts from interviews from Skeptiko.  Although the title of the book targets "science" as what's wrong about almost everything, I think Tsakiris really ends up targeting "materialism" or "scientific materialism" as what's really wrong.  Science is essentially a method of systematic empirical study, and that method--properly understood--has no vested interest in what turns out to be true (or possibly true).  By contrast, materialism is a global philosophical position or paradigm.  As such, materialism definitely has a vested interest in what is (or can be) true.  That is, materialism is a universal claim about all of reality: specifically, materialism claims that all of reality is completely reducible, without remainder, to "matter in motion."  One candid advocate of this view is Alex Rosenberg who wrote in The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011) the following:

"All the processes in the universe, from atomic to bodily to mental, are purely physical processes involving fermions and bosons interacting with one another" (p.21).

Review of The Rediscovery of the Mind by John Searle

John Searle--presently at Berkeley--wrote The Rediscovery of the Mind back in 1992. The book attempts to explain how the philosophy of mind has gone wrong in the last century or so and how Searle thinks it can be corrected. In this review, I'll argue that Searle's criticisms of popular forms of materialism are persuasive, that his criticisms of dualism are thinly developed, and that his own proposal--biological naturalism--is conceptually flawed.

I will begin with contemporary materialism. Searle levels a pretty serious offensive against materialist theories of mind in the first half of the book or so. Versions of materialism have been dominating the philosophy of mind (and much of academic philosophy generally) for the bulk of the 20th century and into the 21st, so Searle's going against the grain here was no way to guarantee popularity with his contemporaries. Searle is confident in his position though, and says with characteristic candor, "How is it that so many philosophers and cognitive scientists can say so many things that, to me at least, seem obviously false?" (p.3).