What are the thoughts of Less Wrong on property dualism?

I trust your expertise in the matter, at least as far as classifying various approaches to philosophy of mind. As I said I was going by the two-line description on Wikipedia. I was hesitant to use the term functionalism because it relies on ill-defined "functional roles".

Not all forms of property dualism depend on zombie arguments or lead to epiphenomenalism.

Apply that logic to biology - start deriving fresh from scratch and see how long it takes until you get to mitochondria.

To some extent, I wish we would. I wish instead of teaching us about mitochondria in elementary school, we were shown the evidence that lead to mitochondria and asked what we think about it, Maybe not to that extreme, but in general I wish education would shift towards that direction.

In any case, I think it's different when you're dealing with a large body of steadily accumulating empirical evidence. You don't need empirical evidence for philosophy. I suppose if you used Mathematics as an example, I would have conceded it...I'm just not sure Philosophy as a discipline has progressed that far.

keep it within philosophy, apply that logic to ethics - and see how much time you waste hung up on some obscure issue with utilitarianism that Bentham already worked out two hundred years ago.

Let's try? I haven't really studied philosophy - can you name an issue which was satisfactorily worked out by the Ancients (in the sense that I can say aaah yes, this is clearly correct once I hear the answer) which I can't immediately work out? (Not trying to aggressively challenge you or anything - It's no big deal if you don't have an example on hand. I am just curious. Perhaps a specific example lead you to your conclusion?).

Philosophy majors are often told the apocryphal story of a genius who resolved to derive his own philosophy without "wasting time" on other people's ideas, only to wind up with a midget version of what Kant wrote three centuries ago.

For one who wishes to be an academic philosopher, I would agree. Anytime you are publishing in the field, it is necessary to know what has been said, and what is trite and unoriginal However, I'm not trying to be an academic philosopher - I'm simply trying to grasp at the nature of things. It's not that I think the ideas of others is a waste of time, it's that trying to ascertain exactly what is the claim of this-ism and that-ism takes forever, and the sheer network of citations required to say anything is heavy. This is what I mean by "it borders on literary criticism" - I'm not interested in doing literary criticism, I simply want to strike at the core of epistemology, ontology, etc. When I do read philosophy, it feels to me like more of a study of the evolution of ideas, rather than an actual statement of ideas.

However - progress occurs, I agree. I think philosophy does tend to seep into the culture - a lot of philosophy (both in academia and lesswrong) converge with stuff I "independently" came up with myself as a kid. ("independently" is in quotes, because I had the benefit of knowing words like "deterministic process" when I was 15, whereas Nietzche did not. I'm not claiming genius, I think most older LWers have similar experiences.) I think this is why when I read the great philosophers, my instant reaction tends to be "yeah, duh and why do you need that many words" or "that is just obviously false" and then I get to spend the next few weeks learning about how civilization sloooowly figured out why it was obviously false. (Or the third worst case option: "your writing is about clear as the Bible - I have no idea what you are trying to say and the various subsequent interpretations of your work are longer than the original text", but let's leave that aside.)

If one starts with the assumption of an intellectually privileged upbringing, it shouldn't take your whole life to re-derive Bentham. You would have absorbed Bentham's ideas through cultural osmosis. Everyone with a passing interest in philosophical matters knows the word "utilitarianism". You might be able to "independently" re-derive Bentham before you hit 20 without even knowing who he is, and when you tell your friends they might roll their eyes at your earnestness. It's thanks to Bentham's impact on culture that you were able to re-derive him at 20, but that doesn't mean you must to struggle firsthand through his 17th century English to basically get all the important bits.

I think the mistake the Philosopher's make is devaluing the apocryphal genius's insights because they are not original. A fresh independent formulation of Kant is no less enriching than the original work of Kant from the perspective of the genius (though perhaps not from the perspective of Academic Philosophy).

I'm not suggesting obstinately refusing to study Kant if you think his ideas will help you. I'm saying there is something vaguely unproductive in asking what people;s opinions on "property dualism" is when everyone who uses the word "property dualism" is using it in a slightly different sense and there are libraries of books on the subject. each with a slightly different take. Formulate the idea you want to evaluate afresh (and you can tag it "property dualism" if you so choose) and then ask what people think of it. It's okay to borrow ideas when you start from scratch, and it's also okay to not borrow ideas. In my answer to OP, you see I formulated a pseudo-"fresh" idea that may or may not be an accurate restatement of property dualism, yet I feel it goes straight to the core of what is being discussed.

I just returned to the Property Dualism wikipedia to scan some quick philosophical lit. - for example: Searle, John (1983) "Why I Am Not a Property Dualist". Just skim it over - in the first paragraph, he has a straight, common sense idea about what he thinks is the truth, which is identical to the view I espoused in my own comment. Then, he spends multiple paragraphs detailing his semantic quibbles with the word "Property Dualism" and whether it does or does not mesh with the fresh, straightforward view. This is the sort of "drag" of old ideas that I am referring to, the constant clarification and re-clarification and rarification of meaning which gives me a headache.

I'd wager that virtually no person reading this who has mastered the (weirdo, unnecessary) jargon in The Sequences would be unable to master the (weirdo, unnecessary) jargon in contemporary analytical philosophy, if curious.

Agreed, but then again I didn't dutifully set out to read the sequences with scholarly discipline. I only read the fun ones. This is my attitude to philosophy in general - read it if it is compelling and fresh, otherwise drop it. I praise the sequences for creative writing talent, not originality. Then again, I don't think I've ever praised anyone in philosophy for true groundbreaking originality... only for their ability to articulate the truth of the matter without getting muddled and confused.

Biographical disclosure

I started out in science. I took a few philosophy courses too, but I ended up getting really bored and dropping them because they were rehashing ideas that I was independently chewing through in middle school...and then testing us on definitions and other useless stuff. I'm told from the philosophy majors that this is because introductory courses suck, and that the later courses are better.

I do want to clarify that I don't think studying philosophy is useless, or anything. I just think that one's approach to philosophy aught to have a certain freshness to it. I'm not sure if this has adequately come across. I think that when it comes to understanding true meaning, the act of sitting quietly and starting from scratch and working things out on your own is the core of the matter, and it gets you 90% of the way there. Other people's writings are the supplement to this process, not the main course. I think mainstream philosophy overemphasizes the study of other people's writings, and thereby veers into literary criticism.

Do you think the senses are some conduit from the world outside our mind into the world inside our mind?

As in, if you look at something, you are getting a somewhat faithful representation of the thing you are looking at?

For example, do you think your thumb is a part of fundamental reality?

In the source code for reality, is "polymathwannabe" or polymathwannabe's thumb?

I don't think so.

The source code just has a huge array of particles. The thumb is something a mind projects onto those particles. So is the brain.

A rationalist should be aware that their senses don't reveal reality to them, their rationality does by inventing theories based on stimuli.