Consciousness And Michael Tye's Theory Of Materialism

There has been a growing trend among philosophers to consider consciousness as being a strictly material phenomenon with no transcendent characteristics. Consciousness is, to those who subscribe to this school of thought, merely the effect of matter and energy interacting. This trend owes its origin to the recent advancement of neuroscience coupled with certain philosophical trends. Though neuroscience has provided many answers to ancient questions about the mind, it cannot explain the source of consciousness. The philosophical trends are, much like the appeals to neuroscience, also flawed. This philosophical camp, which will henceforth be referred to as materialists, has much popularity, but cannot explain a highly important phenomenon that

It is an incredibly common phenomenon, something so common that it is rarely ever defined. Michael Tye, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, states that when an individual experiences something with the senses, he is “the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character” (“Qualia”). Color, taste, mood, and sound are all considered to be qualia, according to Tye. He also elucidates the standard definition of qualia, stating that it is “the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives.” Qualia is experienced only subjectively, and it is essentially impossible to say what it is. Tye references a thought experiment about the exact nature of qualia that makes this clear; one can know all objective knowledge about a color, but until one actually sees a color, one knows nothing of it. The essence of the thought experiment can be expressed in this rhetorical question: is it possible to explain what a color is without using examples? This seems like a simple question, but it boggles the mind. We must conclude that qualia is a strange

Eliminative Materialists believe that “the concept of mental events forms part of a theory we use to interpret and apply our experience” (Freeman 94). Therefore, they would claim that qualia is merely a theory we use. But, how does this explain qualia away? Whether it is a mental construct or not, it still seems to exist. An eliminative materialist may be able to claim that qualia is merely an illusion, but this is ultimately of no importance. An illusion of qualia is still qualia. Such of a claim would be merely the addition of another layer, so to speak, in a theory of the mind. It can reasonably be concluded that any attempt to explain qualia away is incoherent at best, and begging the question at worst. The failure of Strong Eliminative Materialism, along with the failure of Reductive Materialism, means that Weak Eliminative Materialism suffers from the worst of both