The Explanatory Gap: The Responses of Horgan and Papineau

2935 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on consciousness

The Explanatory Gap: The Responses of Horgan and Papineau

The what it is like to undergo an experience is essential to understanding that experience. Known by philosophers as subjective qualia, these characteristics are part of what makes a felt experience exactly that experience. If we introspect our own mental states, this seems apparent and incontrovertible. Most philosophers are unwilling to grant that subjective qualia are non-physical states, and attempts to face this problem and maintain physicalism must address arguments from qualia. While differing physical explanations for these subjective qualia exist, I will only briefly refer to them here as qualia will serve only as a means of leading the reader to the Explanatory Gap(1). The Explanatory Gap is a uniquely puzzling problem for physicalist philosophies of mind.

The felt qualities of any experience, in addition to being essential to and inseparable from that very experience, are also perspectivally subjective. This means that the experiencer must be experiencing those felt qualities now or have felt them at some previous time and be recalling them to have a full concept of the phenomena. Perhaps this philosophical language will be more understandable with examples of what is really another readily apparent notion- Could a person know the awfulness of pain if she was born without the capacity to feel any pains? Could a person experience the specific joy of strawberries and Champagne without ever having had this exact experience? It would be difficult to deny that subjective qualia are perspectivally unique. One would face seemingly absurd possibilities such as feeling someone else's pains, and not having any subjective character to your own phenomenal experienc...

... middle of paper ...

... from Kripke by Joseph Levine, "Materialism And Qualia: The Explanatory Gap," Pacific Philosophic Quarterly, Vol. 64, eds. Hartry Field, Barbara Herman, Brian Loar, Miles Morgan, 1983; p.359.

8 This paragraph and the next are a paraphrase of Terence Horgan, "Jackson On Physical Information And Qualia" Philosophical Quarterly, 34: (1984) 147-52.

9 David Papineau's position is taken from chapter 4 of his book Philosophical Naturalism, entitled "Consciousness and the Antipathetic Fallacy." I acquired this from the world wide web @ http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/philosophy/ch4.html, but it was published in print in 1993.

10 Ibid., this connection is made in a footnote by Papineau to Horgan on the eighth page of chapter 4 (I am afraid I don't know the printed version's page number).

11 Ibid., page 11 of chapter 4.

12 Ibid., page 18 of chapter 4.

Show More
Related

  • Bordetella Pertussis or Whooping Cough

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Whooping cough is a highly contagious and acute respiratory disease caused by an aerobic Gram negative encapsulated coco-bacillus bacterium, Bordetella pertussis. It is a strict human pathogen with no known animal or environmental reservoirs and an air-borne disease. On inhalation, Bordetella pertussis colonizes the ciliated cells of the bronchio-epithelium to cause disease characterised by; epithelial damage, hyper mucus secretion, pulmonary edema and paroxysmal coughing. It is often accompanied by pneumonia, otitis edema, seizures, post-tussive vomiting and encephalopathy (1).

    Read More

  • Essay On Property Dualism

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this paper, I will argue that it is more likely that the qualia of colour could be explained by physicalism rather than by property dualism. Qualia are subjective experiences, such as our senses (pg. 3). Physicalism views every property as physical, and can be explained by science (pg. 29). Property dualism refers to the philosophical view that minds are made out of one substance, but contain physical properties, and a non-physical mind (qualia) that are not related to each other (pg. 29).

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Ned Block In Troubles With Functionalism

    879 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ned Block in Troubles with Functionalism offers his Absent Qualia Argument. The argument provides a counter example to functionalism. The essential aspect to the functional theory of mind defines mentality in terms of its functional states of a system. The functional states of a system match states according to their inputs, outputs, and internal states. Block’s counter example argues for the possibility of two systems to have the same functional states which determines their functional equivalence. In addition to functional equivalence, the two systems have distinguishable mental states. If functionalism is as adequate account of mentality, then functional equivalence entails mental state equivalence. Block argues against the consequent of

    Read More

  • Comparing Dualism And Jackson's Knowledge Argument

    1174 Words  | 3 Pages

    The philosophical theory of dualism holds that mind and body are two separate entities. While dualism presupposes that the two ‘substances’ may interact, it contrasts physicalism by refusing to denote correlation between body and mind as proof of identity. Comparing the two theories, dualism’s invulnerable proof of the existence of qualia manages to evade arguments from physicalism. While a common argument against qualia—non-physical properties defined in Jackson’s Knowledge Argument—targets the unsound nature of epiphenomenalism, this claim is not fatal to the theory of dualism as it contains claims of causation and fails to stand resolute to the conceivability of philosophical zombies. This essay argues that epiphenomenalism, while often designated as a weakness when present in an argument, can remain in valid arguments from qualia.

    Read More

  • The Virtues of the Vices of Virtue Ethics by Robert Louden

    1596 Words  | 4 Pages

    American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1984): 227-36.

    Read More

  • Property Dualism: The Main Issue Of The Mind-Body Problem

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    The mind-body problem can be a difficult issue to discuss due to the many opinions and issues that linger. The main issue behind the mind-body problem is the question regarding if us humans are only made up of matter, or a combination of both matter and mind. If we consist of both, how can we justify the interaction between the two? A significant philosophical issue that has been depicted by many, there are many prominent stances on the mind-body problem. I believe property dualism is a strong philosophical position on the mind-body issue, which can be defended through the knowledge argument against physicalism, also refuted through the problems of interaction.

    Read More

  • Critique on Thomas Nagel's What it is like to be a bat?

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    The 'mind-body' problem has troubled philosophers for centuries. This is because no human being has been able to sufficiently explain how the mind actually works and how this mind relates to the body - most importantly to the brain. If this were not true then there would not be such heated debates on the subject. No one objects to the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun because it is empirical fact. However, there is no current explanation on the mind that can be accepted as fact. In 'What is it like to be a bat?', Thomas Nagel does not attempt to solve this 'problem'. Instead, he attempts to reject the reductionist views with his argument on subjectivity. He examines the difficulties of the mind-body problem by investigating the conscious experience of an organism, which is usually ignored by the reductionists. Unfortunately, his arguments contain some flaws but they do shed some light as to why the physicalist view may never be able to solve the mind-body problem.

    Read More

  • Taking a Look at Physicalism

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    Physicalism, or the idea that everything, including the mind, is physical is one of the major groups of theories about how the nature of the mind, alongside dualism and monism. This viewpoint strongly influences many ways in which we interact with our surrounding world, but it is not universally supported. Many objections have been raised to various aspects of the physicalist viewpoint with regards to the mind, due to apparent gaps in its explanatory power. One of these objections is Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument. This argument claims to show that even if one has all of the physical information about a situation, they can still lack knowledge about what it’s like to be in that situation. This is a problem for physicalism because physicalism claims that if a person knows everything physical about a situation they should know everything about a situation. There are, however, responses to the Knowledge Argument that patch up physicalism to where the Knowledge Argument no longer holds.

    Read More

  • Pertussis Essay

    777 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pertussis, although extremely contagious, does not have an extensive background. Pertussis was first discovered in the sixteenth century (1). During this time period, vaccinations were limited. Nonetheless, when vaccinations

    Read More

  • The Argument of Dualism

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    The desire to avoid dualism has been the driving motive behind much contemporary work on the mind-body problem. Gilbert Ryle made fun of it as the theory of 'the ghost in the machine', and various forms of behaviorism and materialism are designed to show that a place can be found for thoughts, sensations, feelings, and other mental phenomena in a purely physical world. But these theories have trouble accounting for consciousness and its subjective qualia. As the science develops and we discover facts, dualism does not seems likely to be true.

    Read More

  • Self Concept Through Interpersonal Communication

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    D. W. Hamlyn - author. Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Place of Publication: Sensation and Perception: A History of the Philosophy of Perception. Contributors: London. Publication Year: 1961. Page Number: iii.

    Read More

  • Perception Essay

    1376 Words  | 3 Pages

    With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...

    Read More

  • Pertussis In Adolescents: Case Study

    306 Words  | 1 Pages

    Among cases reported in the United States, what was the incidence rate of pertussis in infants (6-11 months) compared to adolescents (11-19 years) in 2015?

    Read More

  • David Hume's Theory of Knowledge

    1350 Words  | 3 Pages

    Impressions are given sensations that arise from "unknown causes". Remember that what we know are our impressions, according to this trend. Whether there is something that corresponds to these impressions is unknown, for we don't know real being, we know impressions (a la Descartes).

    Read More

  • A.I. Film Analysis

    1587 Words  | 4 Pages

    But, “human persons have an ‘inner’ dimension that is just as important as the ‘outer’ embodiment” (Cortez, 71). The “inner” element cannot be wholly explained by the “outer” embodiment, but it does give rise to inimitable facets of the human life, such as human dignity and personal identity. The mind-body problem entails two theories, dualism and physicalism. Dualism contends that distinct mental and physical realms exist, and they both must be taken into account. Its counterpart (weak) physicalism views the human as being completely bodily and physical, encompassing no non-physical, or spiritual, substances.

    Read More

More about The Explanatory Gap: The Responses of Horgan and Papineau

Open Document