Analytical argument against physicalism

[Laird]

Well, reductionism is one of the basic types of materialism, whereas epiphenomenalism is a physicalist type of (property) dualism.

Reductionism denies that there are real (rather than just apparent) qualia. You might say that reductionists (or reductive materialists) reduce the whole mind to brain processing, except for consciousness, which they consider non-existent.

Epiphenomenalism does recognize the existence of consciousness, so that is a very big difference. 

I think the refutation of reductionism is very straightforward and does not need to be discussed in a separate thread. How on earth would anyone want to deny the existence of his or her own subjective experiences? And if there is no consciousness, how is it that we have the "illusion" that we have subjective experiences, when that illusion can't be a subjective experience itself? 

Reductionism, for me, is the philosophical equivalent of insanity (just like eliminative materialism, which even claims we don't need "outdated" concepts like thoughts or feelings).

Interesting. Thanks. One of the reasons I asked is because I recently had a discussion about consciousness with a friend of mine - a very intelligent guy, was dux of our high school, but chose the path of a medical specialist (in intensive care), and thus has had a heavy academic and professional life without devoting much time to philosophical matters. Anyway, I've since then been trying to pin down which theory of mind matches his views best, and settled on reductionism... but given now that you say that reductionism denies real qualia, then even this doesn't fit, since he's not an idiot and doesn't deny the reality of consciousness.

Perhaps if I share his views with you, you will be able to label him neatly and tidily and put him in a little box.

Basically, he is reductionist to the extent that he believes that reality consists in layers of abstraction determined by the base layer of physics. i.e. physics fully determines the next abstract layer of chemistry, which fully determines the next abstract layer of biology, which fully determines the next abstract layer of consciousness (which as I said he recognises as real). So, he's not an emergentist, because he doesn't think there's anything truly novel or irreducible about consciousness - consciousness and its contents are all implicit in and reducible to the base layer of physics - but, and here's the kicker, nor does he appear to be an epiphenomenalist, because he believes that consciousness can causally affect itself.

He justifies this with an analogy to weather. Here's how I put it to him in a recent email trying to mirror his views back to him to check whether I understood him correctly (he hasn't responded yet but I think I've got this right):

In our face-to-face discussion, you used the analogy of weather. I understand that what you mean to say by this is that just as we can say that at its level of abstraction, weather phenomena cause other weather phenomena (e.g., the evaporation of water vapour off the ocean causes coastal clouds, which the wind causes to blow inland, and which causes rainfall upon the land) - a causal description that is an abstraction that ultimately reduces to a causal description in terms of basic physics (sub-atomic particles, the four fundamental forces, stochastic quantum mechanical events, etc) - so we can say that consciousness and all its associated mental phenomena do, at their level of abstraction, cause other mental phenomena (e.g., when I thought such-and-such, it caused me to become angry), even though - likewise - this causal description is ultimately an abstraction that reduces to a causal description in terms of basic physics.

Does my friend's view on consciousness seem to fit any existing philosophy of mind of which you're aware, Titus? Would you agree that "reductionism" is the best fit? Does it seem coherent? I offered a couple of arguments against it in my email but would like to get your own take before sharing them.