Ennui: “In that special Cartesian theater, I can picture an even smaller Homunculus pulling the strings of the larger.”
But what if the homunculus were ontologically fundamental?--of course the notion is silly and of course it’s false, but I’m not yet convinced that it’s literally nonsense on the order of square circles or A-and-not-A. It could be that I just need some intuition-reshaping, but in the meantime I can do nothing else but call it as I see it.
Substance dualism doesn’t even require that homunculi be fundamental. It only requires that they be built from mind-stuff. They can be composite agents in the sense of co-operative game theory. Maybe that explains why humans are not perfectly rational. We are controlled by a committee.
Ennui: “In that special Cartesian theater, I can picture an even smaller Homunculus pulling the strings of the larger.”
But what if the homunculus were ontologically fundamental?--of course the notion is silly and of course it’s false, but I’m not yet convinced that it’s literally nonsense on the order of square circles or A-and-not-A. It could be that I just need some intuition-reshaping, but in the meantime I can do nothing else but call it as I see it.
Substance dualism doesn’t even require that homunculi be fundamental. It only requires that they be built from mind-stuff. They can be composite agents in the sense of co-operative game theory. Maybe that explains why humans are not perfectly rational. We are controlled by a committee.