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The Percept and Vector Function Theories of the Brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeff Foss
Jeff Foss*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of Victoria
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Abstract

Physicalism is an empirical theory of the mind and its place in nature. So the physicalist must show that current neuroscience does not falsify physicalism, but instead supports it. Current neuroscience shows that a nervous system is what I call a vector function system. I provide a brief outline of the resources that empirical research has made available within the constraints of the vector function approach. Then I argue that these resources are sufficient, indeed apt, for the physicalist enterprise, by offering a vector functional, hence physicalist, theory of the percept—the perceptual experience itself, a paradigm of phenomenally immediate, introspectively accessible consciousness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 511 - 537
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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