Chimakonam’s sense-phenomenalism and the bogey of consciousness
Filosofia Theoretica Journal of African Philosophy Culture and Religions May 23, 2024 DOI: 10.4314/ft.v13i1.1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Chimakonam's sense-phenomenalist account of personal identity, which relocates sensation to the sense organs while retaining the category of mind, is plausibly read as reductive physicalism rather than eliminativism, and that because it does not reject mind or fully identify mind with brain, it fails to radically overcome the hard problem of consciousness. |
Abstract
In the 2019 work “A Sense-Phenomenal Look at the Problem of Personal Identity,” Jonathan O. Chimakonam articulates an intriguing and novel body-only perspective of personal identity that has a direct implication for our understanding of consciousness. In this article, I focus on the aspect of the work that adopts a seemingly eliminativist stance on the hard problem of consciousness. Chimakonam’s version of physicalism rejects the reality of consciousness or experience while accepting that humans have sensations. Having transferred the location of sensation from the mind (the within), and even the brain, to the sense organs (the outside) without eliminating the category of mind, Chimakonam unwittingly raises the question of whether his philosophy of mind represents an eliminativist stance or a reductive physicalist stance. In this article, I argue that while a reductive physicalist reading of Chimakonam is a plausible interpretation of his stance, the non-rejection of the category of mind and the seeming distinction between mind and brain supports the claim that sense-phenomenalism does not radically overcome the hard problem of consciousness.