Peter Unger, “The Mystery of the Physical and the Matter of Qualities: A Paper for Professor Shaffer”*

For some fifty years now, nearly all work in mainstream analytic philosophy has made no serious attempt to understand the nature of physical reality, even though most analytic philosophers take this to be all of reality, or nearly all. Whereas we’ve worried much about the nature of our own experiences and thoughts and languages, we’ve worried little about the nature of the vast physical world that, as we ourselves believe, has them all as only a small part.