http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB_RtFV-l-AThis is an interesting debate/exploration taking place between several major representatives of theories of consciousness. I found it quite relevant to this site, since it outlines many of the discussions taking place on the astralpulse, and the viewpoints they corespond with. It was exciting to me, since it deals with the area of mind-body philosophy I specialized in, but I think it should be meaningful to most others here too, since it gives a basic overview of what the major issues being thought about in area are today..
The speakers:
Robert Kuhn- The mediator. I think he has a balanced approach, while not letting any of the panelists get away with unsubstantiated nonsense.
Barry Beyerstein- Was not familiar with this one. "Straight arrow" reductive materialist... doesn't really have much to say, and doesn't really engage the ideas being thrown around by the others.
John Searle- Big name mind-body philosopher; we read his books in school. He is an important figure, since his views are well-defined and thus easy to engage, and he makes up the majority opinion. I think that although he claims distance from reductive materialism, since he accepts that consciousness is a first-person, non-material phenomenon, he is best thought of as a reductive materialist by another name, since he still feels that neuroscience will reveal how matter can cause awareness. I tend to disagree with his main views, since he entirely ignores (and pig-headedly in my opinion) an idea called the Hard Problem of consciousness, which in a nutshell is the idea that it remains to be seen how a material substance like the brain can be causally responsible for the existence of our non-material first-person awareness; there is no logical explanation materialists have given so far as to how this should be possible, and until this is addressed, materialism must be an incomplete picture (most of us here would say incomplete because it does not address the full nature of reality).
David Chalmers- Another big name mind-body philosopher. The philosophical creator of the "Hard problem of consciousness
mentioned above, and other ideas regarding the specturm of awareness, and it's scientific consequences. I tend to like Chalmer's ideas alot, since while he acknowledges anecdotal and research evidence suggesting properties of consciousness not possible under materialism, he attempts to refute reductive materialism at the most fundamental level, trying to show that, as his hard problem states, no causal link has been demonstrated between material states and first-person experiences, merely correlations between brain states and experiences. Chalmers feels this trend in knowledge of consciousness only as a correlation will continue, and he believes that in order to avoid this problem, your worldview must on some level incorportate conscioussness as a primary feature of reality, be it a fundamental feautre of matter (panpsychism), or as a fundamental substance of the universe (dualism or immaterialist monism). This is necessary since he believes he has demonstrated that it cannot directly be reduced to material states, and I tend to agree.
Marilyn Schlitz - She is an anthropologist, and probably the one on the panel who best approximates most visitors of this site. She integrates the anecdotal evidence of altered and new states of conscioussness, and reasons about what the consequences for accepting this data as factual must be for the scientific community. She get's into a little discussion with Searle about this, and in conjunction with the mediator, flatly shows him somewhat thick in my opinion, as well as exposing the fundamental lack of will of most modern materialists to engage all relevant data today.
Alan Wolf - Theoretical physicist. His ideas about metaphysics are somewhat airy-fairy, since he does not go about giving explanations for what he thinks, but I think he still have important things to say about the possible construction of the universe.
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