As for the “ugly” sentence – it is clunky, but surely the problem is with the final part? Sloppy editing, I guess. Looks like the punctuation wasn’t adapted when ‘i.e.’ was “englished” to ‘that is’ – the same kind of thing they do on Wikipedia. Uuuugh.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you were earlier in this thread defending the proposition that ” wish the philosophers would just leave “mind” alone and let the neuroscientists get on with it without annoying them with their kibbitzing.”

I interpreted this to mean that you reject the notion that philosophers—or other humanities or social science scholars, perhaps—can contribute anything useful to the problem of consciousness, and that whatever there is to know on the subject will be exhausted by neuroscience.

In response to this, I cited Searle—who almost certainly believes that philosophers, among others, have a very great deal to contribute to the problem of consciousness—for the notion that insofar as consciousness necessarily implicated subjective phenomena that are not reducible to neurobiology, it is unlikely that neuroscience in and of itself is likely to provide all knowledge we seek regarding consciousness.

You say you agree with Searle’s take. I admit that if this is so, I have a hard time seeing how you can defend the notion that the problem of consciousness is best left to the neuroscientists. I do not think Searle would agree with that perspective.

As for scientism, I meant no insult, but I also disagree that it is “meaningless.” It has a very clear meaning, IMO, which is principally the notion that whatever the desideratum, it is best assessed through the methods of the natural sciences. The belief that the problem of consciousness, which involves analysis of subjective, ambiguous phenomena, will be explained by neuroscience rather than in addition to varieties of humanists, many of whom are trained to operate amidst significant subjectivity and ambiguity, strikes me as scientistic.

Searle’s emergentism is fantastic, in the literal sense of that word.

In RoM, he essentially (and persuasively, IMO) argues that the dichotomy between materialism and mentalism or idealism is not necessary.

consciousness is an emergent property, one that arises out of the amazingly complex neural system

“It is a fact of neurobiology that certain brain processes cause conscious states and processes. I am urging that we should grant the facts without accepting the metaphysical baggage that traditionally goes along with the facts.” Searle, Mind, Language and Society, p. 52

“We have thus ‘naturalized’ consciousness, and indeed, my label for this view is ‘biological naturalism’: ‘naturalism’ because, on this view, the mind is part of nature,snd ‘biological’ because the mode of explanation of the existence of mental phenomena is biological- as opposed to, for example, computational, behavioral, social, or linguistic.” Searle, op. cit., p.54

“Much of philosophy is concerned with questions that we do not know how to answer in the systematic way that is characteristic of science, and many of the results of philosophy are efforts to revise questions to the point that they can become scientific questions. In this book, for example, I have been trying to do that with the problem of consciousness.” Searle, op. cit., p. 158

I agree with the positions expressed by Searle in these passages, including his description in the third quoted passage of the way in which philosophy can be useful in the enterprise of understanding the mind.

I don’t think that is what Searle says at all, and it almost certainly is not what he articulates in the Rediscovery of Mind (my dissertation involves this book as well as Consciousness & Language). In RoM, he essentially (and persuasively, IMO) argues that the dichotomy between materialism and mentalism or idealism is not necessary. That is, it is not the case that we can understand consciousness solely either in terms of neurobiology or in terms of some ethereal substance.

Clearly, physiology is a sine qua non for consciousness. Searle agrees with this, but he argues against the invalid inference from this premise to the conclusion that consciousness is nothing but neurophysiology. So, he argues, consciousness is not equivalent to brain states. This is supported by the notion that many individuals in long-term PVS have brain waves as measured by EEG. Yet they do not seem conscious in any identifiable respect.

Accordingly, Searle argues, there is an ineluctably subjective element to consciousness. Something that, by definition, is not quantifiable and is not reducible merely to a neurobiological substrate. It is of course possible that Searle is mistaken, and that consciousness is nothing but brain states, but (1) this is not persuasive to me at all; (2) there is good evidence against it; and (3) pace Descartes, it is difficult to imagine a rationalistic criterion that could definitively establish that consciousness is nothing but material structure.

As neuroscientists well know, there is no Pineal Gland of consciousness—consciousness is an emergent property, one that arises out of the amazingly complex neural system but, with little evidence hitherto that it is reducible to its material components. As such, it seems extremely unlikely to me—as it does to many of the leading scholars in the field, like Sacks, Koch, Gillett, etc., that all of what we would like to know about consciousness will be established via neuroscience.

There is obviously room to debate these propositions, but it is difficult IMO to deny that to do so is to commit to either a strong or a weak form of scientism.

It is of course possible to be a sore winner in the style of the modern American conservative movement, but that stands out partly because it is (I think) unusual – to have the ability to deal with a problem and still wish to just sit and whine about whose fault it is, that’s not the norm.

To say otherwise is to commit to either of two premises: (1) many neuroscientists are interested in exploring subjective phenomena without seeking to objectify them; or (2) consciousness is reducible to brain states, which is typically what neuroscientists focus on. (1) is speculative, but my own impression from working with neuroscientists and reading the relevant literatures is that I have not found any eagerness to explore subjective phenomena qua subjective phenomena. (2) is fallacious.

Searle’s position on it in The Rediscovery of Mind is, IMO, convincing: there is need for both conceptual contributions from philosophers, historians, and interdisciplinary scholars, and for the work of neuroscientists in unpacking brain function and organization. Advances in consciousness would be impoverished without either, IMO.

Anyway, I don’t want to drag this thread further off-topic…

As I say, though, I don’t think it’s unreasonable of you to disagree with me. What is unreasonable is claiming that “the philosophers” means “those philosophers without a good grounding in science”. It’s not as though familiarity with science is unusual among philosophers interested in these topics.