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> . I feel similarly about this as to what I've read of Chalmers - I agree with pretty much all of the conclusions, but I don't feel like the text would convinc
by exe34 2y ago
> . I feel similarly about this as to what I've read of Chalmers - I agree with pretty much all of the conclusions, but I don't feel like the text would convince me of those conclusions if I disagreed;
my limited experience of reading Chalmers is that he doesn't actually present evidence - he goes on a meandering rant and then claims to have proved things that he didn't even cover. it was the most infuriating read of my life, I heavily annotated two chapters and then finally gave up and donated the book.
- zoogeny 2y agoI haven't read any Chalmers so I can't comment on his writing style. I have seen him in several videos on discussion panels and on podcasts. One thing I appreciate is he often states his premises, or what modern philosophers seem to call "commitments". I wouldn't go so far as to say he uses air-tight logic to reason from these premises/commitments to conclusions - but at the least his reasoning doesn't seem to stray too far from those commitments. I think it would be fair to argue that not all of his commitments are backed by physical evidence (and perhaps some of them could be argued to go against some physical evidence). And so you are free to reject his commitments and therefore reject his conclusions. In fact, I think the value of philosophers like Chalmers is less in their specific commitments and conclusions and more in their framing of questions. It can be useful to list out his commitments and find out where you stand on each of them, and then to do your own reasoning using logic to see what conclusions your own set of commitments forces you into.
- exe34 2y agoyeah while reading the book he would keep saying things that are factually wrong or just state that things are impossible, basically he builds the conclusion into the premises and then discovers the conclusions like he just defended them.