Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness
Joseph Levine
Abstract
Consciousness presents a problem. There are excellent reasons for believing that materialism, or physicalism, is the correct metaphysical view of our world, yet it is extremely difficult to see how conscious experiences, or qualia, can be incorporated into the materialist framework. Both aspects of the problem are defended. First, a positive argument for materialism is given, with responses to dualist objections. Second, objections are presented to most materialist attempts to explain consciousness – in particular, higher‐order theories, representationalism, and eliminativism. Finally, it is a ... More
Consciousness presents a problem. There are excellent reasons for believing that materialism, or physicalism, is the correct metaphysical view of our world, yet it is extremely difficult to see how conscious experiences, or qualia, can be incorporated into the materialist framework. Both aspects of the problem are defended. First, a positive argument for materialism is given, with responses to dualist objections. Second, objections are presented to most materialist attempts to explain consciousness – in particular, higher‐order theories, representationalism, and eliminativism. Finally, it is argued that to make genuine progress on this problem we need to delve deeper into the question of our cognitive access to our own experience. Thus the problems of intentionality and consciousness are not as separable as has often been thought.
Keywords:
consciousness,
dualism,
eliminativism,
higher‐order theory,
intentionality,
materialism,
physicalism,
qualia,
representationalism
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2001 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195132359 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 |
DOI:10.1093/0195132351.001.0001 |