As a philosopher, I feel compelled to advocate rigor at all costs. So, just because "most philosophers feel comfortable extrapolating from a few bits of especially intriguing data" (Barresi) does not mean we should let them be pretend that they are doing more than that, or hide behind the fact that there are "philosophers" as a justification for doing sloppy science. Similarly, scientists should not be allowed "conceptual inconsistancies" just because they have not been schooled in first order predicate calculus. Each side has much to teach the other and pointing out the mistakes in reasoning is one good way to do this. Patience and tact might be called for, but not looking the other way.
I also don't want to pick nits with Sutherland, but (Michelson-Morley aside) Einstein did rely primarily on thought experiments in support of his general theory of relativity and it wasn't until later that that theory was corroborated by experiment. But even if this is a bad example, I still want to defend my earlier point, which I probably put rather badly. Let me try again.
Let us pretend that my version of Einstein is correct for the sake of this dicussion. Einstein proposed a theory that was well-grounded in reasoning, but for which there were no confirming experiments available at the time (for lack of technology). So the theory was unproven, true, but I would say that it was also nonnaturalistic because there *wasn't* an experiment that could be done at the time to corroborate or refute Einstein's hypotheses.
This is fundamentally different from a chemist proposing some hypothesis and then dashing over to her lab to test it. The test could be run; the general chemist population could see how it could be done, whether it is done or not. This theory then (before testing) is naturalistic, but unproven.
So, Sutherland is right when he says that a theory must be open to empirical testing to be naturalistic. I also claim (and here I think he disagrees with me) that "open to empirical testing" means "open to empirical testing using the tools we currently have available;" that is, we can see how the test should go.
Okay, back to Chalmers. What sort of test are we supposed to run to test his hypothesis? Beats me. So far as I know, there aren't any experiments, given the tools we have available today, that would shed light on his proposal. Hence, I claim his theory is nonnatural.
Sutherland asks what evidence there is for any of the competing theories. There may not be a lot of good evidence, but people like Bernie Baars and Jim Newman have been working very hard in collecting relevant evidence for their theory. Though I don't agree with all their claims, I certainly would not want to say what they claim isn't empirically grounded. Similarly, I have tried to collect what evidence I think is relevant to my pet theory and others do the same. There is lots of data out there; the difficulty is fitting it together into a solid theory. I just disagree that phenomenal experience as such isn't studied anymore; that is what psychophysics is largely about. Other relevant areas include clinical neurology, psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience, anthropology, and aspects of cognitive psychology. Progress may be slow, since phenomenal experience is approach in a haphazard fashion, but progess still occurs.
Finally, on McGinn: he is an odd duck and doesn't fit well into the natural/nonnaturalism divide. He has argued that not only do none of the current theories work, but none can work in principal because we are too stupid to devise the requisite self-reflective theory. I take him to be saying that no theory is possible. That position prevents him from being a naturalist, so, by default, I shove him into the nonnaturalist corner. Really, I guess, the most accurate description would be him opting out of the debate.
Valerie Hardcastle
valerie@vt.edu
jcs-online
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