Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The problem of phenomenal consciousness
- 2 Consciousness and supervenience
- 3 The explanatory gap
- 4 Consciousness and higher-order experience
- 5 Consciousness and higher-order thoughts
- 6 The structure of consciousness
- 7 What it is like
- 8 Against objectualism II: mistakes about the way things seem
- 9 Consciousness and representation
- 10 Consciousness and the natural order
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Consciousness and supervenience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The problem of phenomenal consciousness
- 2 Consciousness and supervenience
- 3 The explanatory gap
- 4 Consciousness and higher-order experience
- 5 Consciousness and higher-order thoughts
- 6 The structure of consciousness
- 7 What it is like
- 8 Against objectualism II: mistakes about the way things seem
- 9 Consciousness and representation
- 10 Consciousness and the natural order
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In his deservedly influential book, The Conscious Mind (1996), David Chalmers develops a sophisticated case against what, in the previous chapter, were identified as vertical strategies of type 1. Phenomenal consciousness, Chalmers argues, cannot be explained in physical terms. In particular, he develops the following general argument against the possibility of a reductive physical explanation of phenomenal consciousness.
Consciousness is reductively explainable in physical terms only if it is logically supervenient on the physical.
Consciousness is not logically supervenient on the physical.
Therefore, consciousness is not reductively explainable.
This chapter tries to show that the argument fails and why this is so. The failure of the argument is, I think, important not simply because it reopens the possibility that consciousness is reductively explainable but also because it is indicative of a significant and pervasive misunderstanding of the relation of supervenience, and what this relation does and does not entail.
In more detail, it will be argued that Chalmers operates with a crucially ambiguous interpretation of the concept of supervenience. One interpretation turns around the idea of supervenience as an ontological relation of determination; the other is primarily epistemological in character and is based on the idea that logical supervenience allows us to ‘read off’ facts about consciousness from knowledge of the physical facts. These interpretations Chalmers treats as equivalent, but, as I shall try to show, they are far from this.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Nature of Consciousness , pp. 26 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001