Philosophy Research Works

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Start date: 2000Subject: search.filters.subject.explanatory gap

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    Consciousness: Explaining the Phenomena
    (Cambridge University Press, 2001) Carruthers, Peter
    Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Many people argue not. They claim that there is an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical and/or intentional states and processes, on the one hand, and phenomenal consciousness, on the other. I reply that, since we have purely recognitional concepts of experience, there is indeed a sort of gap at the level of concepts; but this need not mean that the properties picked out by those concepts are inexplicable. I show how dispositionalist higher-order thought (HOT) theory can reductively explain the subjective feel of experience by deploying a form of ‘consumer semantics’. First-order perceptual contents become transformed, acquiring a dimension of subjectivity, by virtue to their availability to a mind-reading (HOT generating) consumer system.
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    Reductive Explanation and the 'Explanatory Gap'
    (University of Calgary Press, 2004-06) Carruthers, Peter
    Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical, functional and intentional facts, on the one hand, and the facts of phenomenal consciousness, on the other, argue that there are reasons of principle why phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively explained (Jackson, 1982, 1986; Levine, 1983, 1993, 2001; McGinn, 1991; Sturgeon, 1994, 2000; Chalmers, 1996, 1999). Some of these writers claim that the existence of such a gap would warrant a belief in some form of ontological dualism (Jackson, 1982; Chalmers, 1996), whereas others argue that no such entailment holds (Levine, 1983; McGinn, 1991; Sturgeon, 1994). In the other main camp, there are people who argue that a reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness is possible in principle (Block and Stalnaker, 1999), and yet others who claim, moreover, to have provided such an explanation in practice (Dennett, 1991; Dretske, 1995; Tye, 1995, 2000; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000.) I shall have nothing to say about the ontological issue here (see Balog, 1999, for a recent critique of dualist arguments); nor shall I have a great deal to say about the success or otherwise of the various proposed reductive explanations. My focus will be on the explanatory gap itself – more specifically, on the question whether any such principled gap exists. I shall argue that it does not. The debate will revolve around the nature and demands of reductive explanation in general.