Three hundred and fifty theories?

Ya gotta be kidding me. Three hundred and fifty?

I cited New Scientist Wednesday. Today I'm invoking it again in connection with another of my favorite subjects -- the mind/body problem.

What 350 different theories of consciousness reveal about reality | New Scientist

The article, by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, breaks the 350 contemporary contending theories into ten buckets:

1. materialism

2. non-reductive physicalism

3. quantum mechanical

4. information based

5. panpsychic

6. neutral monism [buckets one and eight are the non-neutral monisms]

7. dualism

8. idealism

9. anamolous and altered states [i.e. taking 'parapsychology' seriously]

10. challenge [i.e. accepting that the answer is beyond human capacity -- as suggested perhaps by the above cartoon].

My own preferred view, emergentism, is treated by Kuhn as a form of non-reductive physicalism, bucket 2.

Comments

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