Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine an acute problem besetting any materialist attempt to reduce all mental properties to the physical properties of the brain. The qualia of experience, its 'raw feels', seem to systematically elude any and all physical descriptions of the brain and its properties. The most challenging arguments opposing materialism are those offered by Frank Jackson, Thomas Nagel and Saul Kripke. I closely examine the views of Jackson and Kripke as well as those of David Lewis, William Lycan, Brian Loar and others in assessing the materialist-dualist debate over sensory properties. I offer a new and compelling reconstruction of Jackson's Knowledge Argument which is free from the epistemic confusions in the original formulation. I argue that Jackson and Nagel's arguments both rely on a central assumption which is defended by Kripke and if Kripke's argument against the type identity theory is sound, then Jackson's and Nagel's arguments are dispensable. The pivotal Chapter in the dissertation focuses on Kripke's anti-materialist view according to which the type-identity theory cannot account for the appearance of contingency and at the same time supply an adequate semantics for sensation terms