Churchland (1985) is much struck with the possibility that we might learn to make introspective reports in “the conceptual framework of a matured neuroscience”. He thinks that this would yield “a quantum leap in self-apprehension”. And he apparently thinks that the possibility of this strengthens the case for reductionism. I will not question the claim that we might learn to make in a...
It is frequently argued that the phenomenological or qualitative features of our sensations will never be satisfactorily reduced by a purely materialistic neuroscience. They constitute, it is often said, a permanent barrier to the reductive aspirations of physlcalism. In what follows I provide a critical examination of several of the most popular of these arguments. I also explore the...