Analytical argument against physicalism

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.

This clearly is reductionism or reductive materialism. He does not deny "consciousness" in the cognitive sense of awareness, but he does deny consciousness in the sense of irreducible subjective or phenomenal experiences or qualia. This is basically the position defended by Daniel C. Dennett.

In general, one could say that reductionists accept the validity of any concepts as long as these don't imply anything irreducible to purely physical processes.