Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T14:51:52.330Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subjective Qualia from a Materialist Point of View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Paul M Churchland
Paul M Churchland*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is frequently argued that the phenomenological or qualitative features of our sensations will never be satisfactorily reduced by a purely materialistic neuroscience. They constitute, it is often said, a permanent barrier to the reductive aspirations of physlcalism. In what follows I provide a critical examination of several of the most popular of these arguments. I also explore the transformation and expansion of human subjective consciousness that a successful psycho-physical reduction could sustain. The conclusion is that, far from being Immune to neurophysiological explanation and reduction, the subjective qualities of our inner lives will enjoy a dramatic unfolding as the representational and computational strategies of the brain are revealed.

Type
Part XIX. Qualitative Experience
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 772 - 790
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This is an abridged version, with various additions, of a larger paper (Churchland 1985). My thanks to the editors of the Journal of Philosophy for permission to reprint much of that paper here as a target for the commentaries of Shoemaker and Cummins. Research for this paper was supported by a grant from the Institute for Advanced Study, by a research/study leave from the University of Manitoba, by SSHRC grant no. 451-83-3050, and by the University of California, San Diego. Thanks to Ernest Nagel, Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson, Daniel Dennett, Philip Hanson, Charles Marks, and Brian Loar for critical discussions of earlier versions of this paper.

References

Brandt, R and Kim, J (1967). “The Logic of the Identity Theory.” Journal of Philosophy 64: 515-537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, K (1983). “Abstract Particulars and the Philosophy of Mind.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61: 129-141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churohland, P (1979) Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churohland, P (1981). “ELiminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes.” Journal of Philosophy 78: 67-90.Google Scholar
Churohland, P (1985). “Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States.” Journal of Philosophy 82: 8-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, P (1963). “Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem.” Review of Metaphysics 17: 49-66.Google Scholar
Hooker, C.A (1981). “Towards a General Theory of Reduction.” Dialogue 20: 38-59, 201-236, 496-529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, F (1982). “Eplphenomenal Qualia.” Philosophical Quarterly 32: 127-136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Land, E (1977). “The Retinex Theory of Color Vision.” Scientific American 237(6): 108-128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D (1983). “Postscript to ‘Mad Pain and Martian Pain.1” Philosophical Papers, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 130-132.Google Scholar
Nagel, E (1961). “The Reduction of Theories.” In The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Pages 336-397.Google Scholar
Nagel, T (1974). “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83: 435-450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nemirow, L (1980). “Review of Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions.” The Philosophical Review 89: 473-477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, R (1965). “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories.” Review of Metaphysics 19: 24-54.Google Scholar
Sellars, H (1956). “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” In The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Volume 1.) Edited by H. Feigl and M. Scriven. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pages 253-329.Google Scholar