What do you mean by no duality? Isn't there a duality between the non-conscious (stones, tables etc) and the conscious. But why do we regard the former as non-conscious, as if it is a sure fact? Or at least a "common sense" assumption...
That is a distinction.
For dualism consciousness needs to be made out of an entierly differn't "stuff".
Ok if the causation of pain is the same (identical) to other forms of causation then we ought to infer that all things subject to that type of causation are sentient. i.e. allcausation is mental causation. Otherwise it seems like special pleading.
Not really.
If sentience is a feature of a certian kind of physical system, why would we assume that sentience is the primary feature of that system that relates to causation?
Why would we assume that physical systems that lack sentience cant cause?
I'm really not following your logic.
I am not saying it ought not to. But the models of causation we have in physics afaik are not mental causal models. They work without sentience, therefore sentient causation is a new form of causation, different form normal causation in some way.
If pain is a complicated set of physical things interacting then they follow the laws of physics.
Perhapse the sentience adds new properties to go with the distinct abstract self awareness of the system and perhapse not.
Still what is the problem? That just gives us physical and physical+mental causation and dosen't rule anything out.
Look: "
P There is NO DIFFERENCE between me responding to mental events and a stone responding to physical events.
C Therefore physical events of a stone's response are actually caused by mental evens."
That is valid.
Just rewrite it so that your not loopy and add a premice.
Try this:
P: There is no physical difference between how a rock and how a mind respond to the universe as per phsyics.
P2: The rock and the mind have many differn't phsycial properties.
C: There is no reason to believe that the rock and mind will not have novel features regardless of being made of the same kind of stuff.
If you disagree with the conclusion you must modify the premise such that mental and physical causation are actually held to be different to rather than identical. IOW you cannot claim that physical and mental causation are identical but that they have different properties.
They are physically differn't.
So are apples and oranges, but there is no apple-orange problem.
My position is that consciousness arises out of how the system is set up and how it operates. But this dosen't lead to a dualism it leads to a distinction between differn't properties of physical systems.
Q: How does a non dualist materialist account for the differences between minds and rocks?
A: Minds and rocks have differn't physical properties.