sodium
February 21, 2004, 07:27 PM
This is a topic that comes up repeatedly in the Philosophy Forum, so I thought it might be useful to have a formal debate on the issue. The question is whether our subjective experience of sensations (or perceptions) is a problem for materialism.
Materialism is itself open to some argument about definition, so I'll be a bit more specific. It's my view that our sensory perceptions are perfectly understandable in a world that has nothing but the physical things, laws and properties which are described in today's physics text books. We don't need any new properties of the universe to explain the fact that we experience pleasure and pain.
I don't want to argue that we won't find any new mysterious properties to the universe that somehow explain sensation. Nor do I want to argue that sensations are the result of physical properties we know today. Although I think both of those are true, I'm trying to get to a more narrow issue: Whether it is possible to explain sensations based on today's physics, or whether we know that such an explanation is impossible (or unlikely).
Anyway, does anyone understand what I'm talking about? Does anyone want to debate me? Does anyone want to argue my side instead of me?
Materialism is itself open to some argument about definition, so I'll be a bit more specific. It's my view that our sensory perceptions are perfectly understandable in a world that has nothing but the physical things, laws and properties which are described in today's physics text books. We don't need any new properties of the universe to explain the fact that we experience pleasure and pain.
I don't want to argue that we won't find any new mysterious properties to the universe that somehow explain sensation. Nor do I want to argue that sensations are the result of physical properties we know today. Although I think both of those are true, I'm trying to get to a more narrow issue: Whether it is possible to explain sensations based on today's physics, or whether we know that such an explanation is impossible (or unlikely).
Anyway, does anyone understand what I'm talking about? Does anyone want to debate me? Does anyone want to argue my side instead of me?