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Daniel Dennett, reductionism, mind-stuff, history of philosophy

In Consciousness Explained (1 hour 22 minutes into the audio), Daniel Dennett give four objections to his materialism.  He describes these as four reasons against the reduction of the mind to the brain or as reasons for believing in "mind-stuff."

The four reasons are the claims that nothing in the brain could...
1. ...be the medium in which the (imaginary) purple cow is rendered;
2. ...be the "I" in "I think therefore I am";
3. ...appreciate wine, hate racism, love someone, be a source mattering;
4. ...act with moral responsibility

More on this later.  Meanwhile, it's worth noting that his description of the objection to materialism as belief in "mind stuff" is the sort of straw man that a reductionist would find quite natural: he finds it so natural to think materialistically, that he thinks anti-reductionists must be positing a different kind of matter.  It may be true that dualism does posit something like "mind stuff" and that inasmuch as it does so it is a kind of second-hand materialism.  But it seems like rather careless thinking to assume that Cartesian dualism and reductive materialism are the only two alternatives.

Regarding dualism's being second-hand materialism:  well, Descartes himself provokes this sort of suspicion by referring to himself as a "thinking thing":  if the mind is a thing and things are made   of stuff and stuff is matter, then yes, Descartes does seem to be sneaking in a materialistic conception of matter under the guise of dualism.

Then again, in talking as if the only two options were reductionism and dualism, Dennett shows that he's ignorant of the philosophical options and of the history of philosophy prior to Descartes.

Did someone say "chronological snobbery?"

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