Our Phenomenal Universe: Resolving the Mind-Body Problem

Abstract

Many philosophers argue that the mind-body problem is unresolvable, that there are irreconcilable differences between the physical world and the way the mind experiences it. Several others argue that the problem represents an incompleteness of the Galilean view, which conceptually divides the world into two models (physical and consciousness). Recent debates have centered around a proposal to radically alter the physical model to account for the mind-body relationship. However, critics argue that the general approach is flawed and that the specific proposal results in a ‘messy’ and highly complex model with inconsistencies with well-known phenomena. This paper, first, critically examines the argument that the general approach is flawed. Then this paper argues that the proposal is much broader than necessary and that the aspects required to resolve the mind-body problem are already present in the physical model. This results in, I argue, a resolution to the mind-body problem without increased complexity for either model or the aforementioned inconsistencies.

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References found in this work

The Rediscovery of the Mind.John R. Searle - 1992 - MIT Press. Edited by Ned Block & Hilary Putnam.
The philosophical writings of Descartes.René Descartes - 1984 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap.Joseph Levine - 1983 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (October):354-61.
Metaphors We Live By.George Lakoff & Mark Johnson - 1980 - Ethics 93 (3):619-621.
Strong and weak emergence.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Philip Clayton & Paul Davies (eds.), The re-emergence of emergence: the emergentist hypothesis from science to religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

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