ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates into potential reasons for thinking that the explanatory gap is permanent. These are the argument from ignorance and the argument from structure and dynamics. The chapter argues that chronically ignorant of some truths about the world. It examines the prospects of the argument from ignorance by focusing on and evaluating three different versions of the argument. The chapter suggests the nature of the physical sciences to know that such sciences will never explain consciousness. Rae Langton argues that what is missing is a claim about the irreducibility of relational properties of substances to their intrinsic properties. According to Langton, if there are substances, then substances must have intrinsic properties. The chapter examines four arguments that attempt to establish the permanence of the explanatory gap: the argument from subjectivity, the argument from intersubjectivity, the argument from ignorance, and the argument from structure and dynamics.
