Against Materialism

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.