Physicalism

Phi of Mind: Paper Two I. Introduction In this paper, four important features of qualia will be made explicit. From these, we will examine two specific features of qualia (privacy and immediate apprehensibility) which Dennett attempts to debunk in his article, Quining Qualia. His reasoning – in the form of intuition pumps – will be critiqued, and a rejection formulated. II. Qualities of Qualia Qualia are traditionally held to possess four characteristics that make them unique. They are ineffable

The mind-body is made up of physical and mental properties. The physical properties “have a certain weight, shape, etc., and are publicly accessible” (Osmundsen, 2016), whereas, with the mental properties “there is a raw qualitative feel to have a mental state” (Osmundsen, 2016). These two properties cause many problems within human life, however there are five major problems arising about the mind and body. The majority of people do not put enough thought into these problems, but they are very important

I believe that physicalism gives the most plausible answer to the mind- body problem because of its growing amount of physical evidence. Everything that exists is made of matter, matter takes up space and is a physical substance which supports that fact that the mind is a physical substance. Every thought and interaction that takes place in a person’s life can be connected to simultaneous activities in the brain of said person. Every physical neural activity of the brain that is associated to every

hope to answer through the entirety of this paper: is the mind physical? As simple as this question may seem to be, there still, to this day, is not a definite answer. There are, mostly, two approaches to answering this problem, through dualism or physicalism. The dualist, for the purposes of this paper, simply believes that the mind and the body are not equal and therefore, they are not one in the same. The physicalist, however, would come back to say that there are no such things as non-physical objects

Physicalism is the view that all things in our mental phenomena ultimately belong to the domain of physical phenomena. This could mean, that they either are physical, or depend on physical phenomena’s such as neural signals in the brain. Another way to look at physicalism is that everything lies within the domain of physics, and everything physical is made up of different arrangements of the fundamental physical elements. The opposite of physicalism would be anti-physicalism. Anti-physicalism

Frank Jackson and Physicalism Frank Jackson begins his article by writing about what he feels to be a fatal flaw in physicalism. He writes a story about a girl named Mary who is raised in a black-and-white room. In this room Mary was taught everything there is to know about the physical world. The only catch is she learned only from media, which was black-and-white, so she knows nothing of the colors outside this room. After learning everything about the physical world, she is then given

Knowledge Argument against Physicalism. I will be stating each of the premises and giving an explanation on why they are plausible. Then, I will choose the strongest reply to the Knowledge Argument--the Ability Reply. I will be explaining and justifying the objection to the Ability Reply. Lastly, evaluating whether the reply and argument succeed or not, and whether it settles the debate between Physicalism and Dualism. (P2) The Knowledge argument contests Physicalism. The Knowledge Argument entails

Hypothetically speaking, the presence of any god more than likely would disprove physicalism by disproving the foundation of which physicalism is built upon, that all things are physical, because an omnipresent being could not be physical, and their divine powers would also not be a physical property, but rather a supernatural power. The presence of supernatural people and events is riddled throughout almost every culture, with ancient Mayans portraying deities in art work and making human sacrifices

Section 4: The Gap Revisited This chapter so far has defended physicalism; however, the problems with the reductive view – in the form of identity theory – have highlighted the advantages of non-reductive physicalism. It has been suggested that this position is the most promising path for the metaphysics of consciousness. Empirical research will also be needed in order to attain a full understanding of consciousness in physical terms. Nonetheless it seems doubtful that science cannot deal only

comes when we put the emphasis on mind and body. Are the mind and body one physical thing, or two separate entities. Two arguments have stood amongst the rest, Interactionism and physicalism. Interactionism claims that mind and matter are two separate categories with a casual integration between the two. By contrast, physicalism draws from the idea that all aspects of the human body are under one physical being, there are no nonphysical connections that come into play. While both state a clear and arguable