Against Materialism

There are no compelling arguments for materialism in the philosophy of mind, and powerful, seemingly unanswerable objections against it. Arguments for materialism that appeal to causal closure or naturalism rest on undefended assumptions. The central objection is that materialist views fail to explain the experienced character of conscious states, illustrated by Frank Jackson's example of Mary, the color-experience-deprived neurophysiologist, and by the problem of conscious intentional content. None of the available responses to the Mary example succeed, and a parallel argument applies to conscious intentional content. Materialist views are false, but no positive account of conscious content is presently available.

Study at a glance

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter argues that there are no compelling arguments in favor of, and very powerful, seemingly unanswerable objections to, materialism in the philosophy of mind. The arguments for materialism that appeal to (a) the ‘principle’ of causal closure and (b) the doctrine of naturalism are argued to rest entirely on undefended assumptions. The central objection that materialist views fail to offer any account of conscious states that explains their experienced character is then developed with reference to both the familiar problem of qualitative content (using Frank Jackson's example of Mary, the color-experience-deprived neurophysiologist) and the problem of conscious intentional content. It is argued that none of the available responses to the Mary example are successful; and further that an entirely parallel argument can be made about conscious intentional content. The negative conclusion is that materialist views are false, but that no positive account of conscious content is presently available.