Description - Metaphysics of Consciousness by William Seager
Metaphysics of Consciousness outlines a physicalist view of the mental independent of the current "mind-brain" theories. It is argued that these impose severe constraints upon physicalism and that recent philosophy reveals a retreat from more to less specific claims about the relations between the mental and the physical. The notion of the "supervenience" is explored as the ground of a moderate, plausible physicalism. Such a minimal physicalism demands surrender of the pursuit of physical explanation of the mental. Thus a "theory of inexplicability" is sketched to make it clear that explanatory impotence need be no barrier to the acceptance of physicalism. Problems of consciousness remain even for a minimal physicalism. The particular modes of subjective consciousness that attend or constitute experience threaten a paradigm of scientific understanding, labelled "physical resolution", that prospers in all other realms of enquiry. A phenomenon is physically resolved by demonstrating that its components are made up of the physical properties of these parts.
The apparent inability to resolve physically consciousness, leaves it not only inexplicable, but inexplicable in a way that threatens even a minimal physicalism.
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