I think Clark and Zahnoun ultimately take similar approaches to the mind body relation, both of which are more or less the approach I currently favor.
While Clark avoids the claim that the mind and body share a relationship of identity, Zahnoun claims exactly that. However, this seeming disagreement appears to be semantics. While Zahnoun argues the mind and body do share an identity, he makes it very clear that its not an identity that entails reduction of one into the other, mind into body nor body into mind. Clark is content to say that mind and body are merely correlated.
However, both of them agree that mind and body do not share a casual relationship. Mind does not cause body nor body cause mind. Is it problematic that Zahnoun uses the term identity? Maybe. Should Clark use a stronger term than correlate? Maybe.
On my understanding, they both argue that there is one reality onto which it can be said we have two perspectives:
"Instead of dual aspects, Feigl thinks it is “wiser to speak instead of twofold access or double knowledge.” (Feigl 1958: 80) In a similar vein, Peter Strawson speaks of our capacity to occupy “alternative standpoints”, namely the “scientific-objective standpoint” and the “humanperceptual-and-moral standpoint” (Strawson 1985: 55). Indeed, the identity theoretical view I want to defend may very well be dubbed dual-perspective or dual-standpoint theory. It claims that states or events experienced from within the subjective perspective are identical with the referents of (certain) terms of the language of physics, i.e., as ‘seen’ from an objective, or rather, intersubjective perspective. -Zahnoun"
"We can think of this transition, from descriptions of objects in terms of qualities (folk-physical) to entirely quantitative descriptions (science-physical), as a matter of increasing objectification. The phenomenal qualities in folk descriptions of objects can of course vary from individual to individual, depending on their sensory-perceptual capacities. Color-blind individuals may not be able to reliably discriminate a red from a green apple, and if you’ve lost your sense of smell, cider will taste merely sweet, lacking its characteristic appley-ness that would allow you to discriminate it from orange juice (texture and mouth feel aside). The descriptions afforded by science aren’t prone to such variability since the objects they pick out are reliably identified as having quantifiable properties according to reproducible measurements that in principle anyone or anything could carry out, including aliens and AIs. Because we ordinarily think of reality as having its own mind-independent nature, descriptions that leave behind experienced, minddependent qualities in favor of quantifiable characteristics are in that sense more objective. We should not forget, however, that the maximally objective, quantified specification of the world – the spatio-temporal world as described by science – is still a representationally encoded model, not the unrepresented world itself. The unrepresented self-nature of reality, what we intuitively believe exists independently of our representations of it, is still at an epistemic remove, even though we ourselves participate in that reality. At its best, what the scientific model can afford us is a predictively successful and explanatorily consistent structurally isomorphic rendition of reality, one couched in terms of physical parameters and constants (Ladyman and Ross, 2007). Unrepresented self-natures – Kantian things in themselves – are necessarily left out of the maximally objective picture of the world since the epistemic, representational interface between knowers and known is always in place. -Clark"
So the mind and body are two perspectives--subjective and intersubjective--on a process that transcends both perspectives. And yet:
"Some believe that, in light of the HPC, assuming a strict physical-phenomenal identity relation fairs no better than other approaches. The reason is that it fails to account for why certain physical event-structures exhibit phenomenal consciousness, but other similar structures do not. -Zahnoun"
So we have described the mind body relation as one of identity via dual perspective. We can avoid the HP which asks how mind derives from matter. It doesn't. By why do certain physical event-structures exhibit phenomenal consciousness, but other similar structures do not? Paging
@USI Calgary ...
"From an identity theoretical point of view, the physical does not “give rise” to the phenomenal, as Hardcastle still puts it. Yet, we might nevertheless still legitimately wonder what it is about certain physical event-structures, but not others, that make these events identifiable, not with, but as an experience. To be clear, this is not the same as asking, nonsensically, for an explanation of the strict identity relation. Compare, for instance, the question “What causes a collection of H2O molecules to be identical with water?” to the question “What is it about this liquid, but not another, that makes it identifiable as water?” On the assumption of a strict identity between water and H2O, the first question is impossible to answer because it makes no sense. But the second question is not. It is answerable, and we know what the answer is: “The fact that the liquid is identical with a collection of H2O molecules”.
In other words, from an empirical point of view, we might still want to know which physical event-structures can be identified as phenomenal consciousness, and how this can be determined. Indeed, assuming strict phenomenal-physical identity does not absolve us from these questions (which are questions for probably all mind-body theories). However, compared to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, these questions are probably just hard, and not downright impossible. -Zahnoun"
In other words, we are no longer asking how certain physical event-structures
cause consciousness. (We know that physical event-structures and consciousness are two perspectives on an identical transcendent reality.) But we
can seek and possibly pin down which physical event-structures (the so-called NCCs) share an identity with subjective experience. However, we will never be able to reduce either perspective into the other. Nor will we ever have direct (non-perspectival) access to the transcendent process in-itself.
The below is MPs formulation of the MBP. It's interesting.
"19 It is worth quoting Merleau-Ponty at length here, for the passage including the phrase ‘chose entre les choses’ also contains a summary of his interpretation of the mind-body problem: “Abordons la question du rapport de l'homme et son entourage naturel ou social. Il y a là-dessus deux vues classiques. L'une consiste à traiter l'homme comme le résultat des influences physiques, physiologiques et sociologiques qui le détermineraient du dehors et feraient de lui une chose entre les choses. L'autre consiste à reconnaître dans l'homme, en tant qu'il est esprit et construit la représentation des causes mêmes qui sont censées agir sur lui, une liberté acosmique. D'un côté l'homme est une partie du monde, de l'autre il est une conscience constituante du monde. Aucune de ces deux vues n'est satisfaisante.” (Merleau-Ponty 1945/1948: 142, m.e.) In English translation:
“The question is that of man's relationship to his natural or social surroundings. There are two classical views : one treats man as the result of the physical, physiological, and sociological influences which shape him from the outside and make him one thing among many; the other consists of recognizing an a-cosmic freedom in him, insofar as he is spirit and represents to himself the very causes which supposedly act upon him. On the one hand, man is a part of the world; on the other, he is the constituting consciousness of the world. Neither view is satisfactory.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 71-72, m.e.) 20 See Merleau-Ponty 1945: 81, 126."
