Daniel_Greco comments on Your Rationality is My Business - Less Wrong

50 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 April 2007 07:31AM

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Comment author: Daniel_Greco 15 April 2007 11:32:28PM 1 point [-]

Bob,

Daniel Dennett, an analytic philosopher, makes a very similar point to one that you do in defending physicalist approaches to the philosophy of mind. He thinks that the idea that there's a special, hard problem associated with explaining consciousness is similar to the pre-20th century idea that there's a special, hard problem with explaining life, and that philosophers who posit irreducible mental substances or properties are no better than vitalists, who believed that appeal to irreducible vital forces was necessary to explain life.

Dennett is far from unusual among analytic philosophers in his physicalism. Some form of physicalism about the mental is almost certainly a plurality position among analytic philosophers, if not a majority one. While I'm sure there are other biases that analytic philosophers suffer from, I think the one you've suggested isn't a plausible candidate for a general problem with the profession.