David Papineau on Physicalism

Is the mind physical? Can we explain all human conscious experience in terms of physical events? David Papineau believes that we can. In this interview for Philosophy Bites he explains what physicalism is, why he believes it to be true, and how it can be defended against various criticisms.

Listen to David Papineau on Naturalism

Comments

[Tom Clark]

Thanks for posting these. Some likely mistaken thoughts:

Papineau says that Mary acquires a new concept of the experience of seeing something red, in that she can in her imagination reproduce the (less vivid) experience of red, and thus think about the experience in that way, as opposed to thinking about it in scientific terms.

But I'd suggest what Mary really acquires is a new-for-her representation of red objects, that realized by a new-in-her neural process, and it's that *neural process* that she previously only knew about in scientific terms. She doesn't acquire a new concept *about* seeing red, rather she instantiates seeing red for the first time. That is, she represents red objects in her neurally realized color state space for the first time.

The experience of red, even when recreated in the imagination, is about red objects, not about itself. When Mary thinks about experiencing red, it's then that she deploys concepts that have as their referent the experience of red.

True, when I think about experiencing red, I might in the process recreate the experience in my imagination, but that's not to refer to my experience of red using a concept, but to actually experience red.

I wonder if we can in fact have concepts that refer to basic individual qualia. We certainly have concepts of the *category* red, blue, pain, sweet, etc. since there are many different but related experiences that fall within these categories. But as to each individual member of the set, I'm not sure.

regards,

Tom Clark
Center for Naturalism