Thought Experiments, Physicalism, & Philosophy of Mind

source: Philosophical Overdose     2015年5月18日
David Papineau argues that thought experiments and the intuitions they elicit play a central role in philosophical theorizing. They help us to identify deep-seated principles that direct our thinking. And although such principles aren't always trustworthy, they're methodologically very important. After giving an example from the history of science, he illustrates his points with examples from recent debates in the philosophy of mind regarding the hard problem of consciousness - the supposed explanatory gap between the mental and physical. He argues that the philosophical intuition of an explanatory gap is a dualistic intuition, and materialists (physicalists) who take such a gap seriously are implicitly committed to dualism, not having fully thought through their own materialist view.
This talk was part of a conference on metaphilosophy and the future of philosophy. For more with Papineau on consciousness, check out the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlJFO....