More Thomas Nagel (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Monday, February 11, 2013, 11:57 (4301 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Another sympathetic review:-http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/10/12/162725315/are-the-mind-and-life-natural-The 'head in the sand' approach:-"Let us remember, then, that there is another strategy for responding to the explanatory gaps. This has been one of philosophy's orthodox strategies at least since Kant and it is an approach championed by many of the 20th century's greatest thinkers, from Carnap and the logical positivists down through Wittgenstein and Ryle, to Dennett. According to this strategy, the seeming gaps are, really, a cognitive illusion. We think we can't explain life, but only because we insist on adhering to a conception of life as vaguely spooky, some sort of vital spirit. And likewise, we think we can't explain consciousness, but again this is because we cling to a conception of consciousness as, well, somehow spiritual, and precisely because we insist on thinking of it as something that floats free of its physical substrates ("a ghost in the machine"), as something essentially interior and private. Once we clear away these confusions, so this alternative would have it, we realize that we don't need to solve any special problems about life and mind. There never were any problems."-So life and consciousness are not spiritual, and therefore life and consciousness don't need an explanation (although scientists are still struggling in vain to explain them). What a wonderful philosophy! If there's a problem, close your eyes and it will go away. Anyway, I thought logical positivism had long since been widely regarded as a philosophical dodo.