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I don't normally lump all of scientific discovery and inquiry into just "science", nor do I normally call an idea "nonsense", but I have reasons on this particular occasion.
Vitalism was the idea that, no matter how well science and philosophy could explain the function that produce "life", they could never explain what the "life" itself was. This is nonsense. It was shown, through many different fields of science and philosophy (hence the lumping together..."science"), that "life" had no meaning except for those exact functions that the vitalists had deemed unsatisfactory.
So, science has discovered that some supposed "mysteries" are not mysteries at all, but there simply needs to be a re-intuiting of the concept being studied - such that the function that were said to "produce" the mysterious phenomenon can now be seen to be the phenomenon, and there is nothing more to add.
The reason I bring this up is because of the current problems with consciousness. People constantly say that scientific explanations of the functions of the brain will not be enough to explain how they "produce" consciousness. Well, I say (in agreement with Daniel Dennett and many cognitive scientists) that these functions are the consciousness, and there's nothing more (mysterious) to find.
Indeed, I'm surprised that the proponents of the vitalist view of consciousness can't see that they are doing just what the previous vitalists did with regard to "life". In fact, one philosopher has gone so far as to mention these previous vitalists, but then to say that he was different in his view of consciousness, since no physical function could ever be shown to be "subjective awareness"...isn't that exactly what the "life" vitalists said?!? It's not like people with such views are saying that you can't explain these mysteries because the physical functions can't be explained well enough. No, they are/were saying exactly what Chalmers (the aforementioned philosopher was David Chalmers, btw) said: "You can explain all of the physical functions, but you can never explain why this produces the mysterious phenomenon.
Vitalism was the idea that, no matter how well science and philosophy could explain the function that produce "life", they could never explain what the "life" itself was. This is nonsense. It was shown, through many different fields of science and philosophy (hence the lumping together..."science"), that "life" had no meaning except for those exact functions that the vitalists had deemed unsatisfactory.
So, science has discovered that some supposed "mysteries" are not mysteries at all, but there simply needs to be a re-intuiting of the concept being studied - such that the function that were said to "produce" the mysterious phenomenon can now be seen to be the phenomenon, and there is nothing more to add.
The reason I bring this up is because of the current problems with consciousness. People constantly say that scientific explanations of the functions of the brain will not be enough to explain how they "produce" consciousness. Well, I say (in agreement with Daniel Dennett and many cognitive scientists) that these functions are the consciousness, and there's nothing more (mysterious) to find.
Indeed, I'm surprised that the proponents of the vitalist view of consciousness can't see that they are doing just what the previous vitalists did with regard to "life". In fact, one philosopher has gone so far as to mention these previous vitalists, but then to say that he was different in his view of consciousness, since no physical function could ever be shown to be "subjective awareness"...isn't that exactly what the "life" vitalists said?!? It's not like people with such views are saying that you can't explain these mysteries because the physical functions can't be explained well enough. No, they are/were saying exactly what Chalmers (the aforementioned philosopher was David Chalmers, btw) said: "You can explain all of the physical functions, but you can never explain why this produces the mysterious phenomenon.