Canberra Plan

David Chalmers (2012, p. 362) describes his view as at least a close relative of the Canberra Plan, even though he is skeptical of the explicit definition aspect of the view. However, he has in the past endorsed something that sounds very Canberrish, for example, here ... 

Although Chalmers is skeptical about explicit definitions, his scrutability framework shares the features of the Canberra Plan that I will be criticizing. The key similarity with the Canberra Plan is that reductive accounts are always accounts of determination by the reductive base without consideration of the ground of similarities in cases in which similar facts are determined by different reductive bases. In other words, Chalmers s vision of the reductive physicalism that he rejects does not require that phenomenological similarities with different scrutability bases be explained by physical similarities in the scrutability bases. 

The Canberra Plan as I have been construing it is functionalist in that mental states are analyzed functionally in terms of their causal role. And it is physicalist in that mental states are said to be the physical occupants of these roles. 

So, Kim departs from the Canberra Plan precisely for mental properties whose substantive nature and need for metaphysical grounding are most obvious, favoring dualism. I think his view here is clearly superior to the views of Lewis, which treat all mental properties as equally lacking in ground. 

To sum up, the Canberra Plan does not adequately capture the physicalist reductionist point of view because it neglects ground that is, it does not involve any sort of metaphysical physicalism. 

Thinking of reductive physicalism in terms of theoretical identities is more conducive to grounding than the picture of reductive physicalism embedded in the Canberra Plan. But identities are not grounding claims. Identity is symmetrical and grounding is not. The identity claim that... 

What was wrong with AI approaches to consciousness is invisible from the point of view of the Canberra Plan with its excessive focus on ontology at the expense of metaphysics. The flaw in traditional AI was metaphysical. It was not that the Al-ers failed to notice that neurotransmitters have important causal or computational roles. They had the mistaken view that the metaphysical problem of mind could be solved at a level of description that paid no attention to details of neuroscience. Now that mistake can be corrected in one of two ways ... 

The Canberra Plan is supposed to be a model of reductive physicalism, but it neglects ground, sacrificing what I am calling metaphysics on the altar of ontology. In particular, it has no room for an account of the physicalistic ground of mentality. I mentioned that the kind of reductive physicalism acknowledged by the Canberra Plan is blind to the dualistic implications of the Commander Data case, so the account of reductive physicalism is inadequate. 

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