ABSTRACT

There are many metaphysical puzzles about the human mind and its relationship to the brain and its physical environment. Some that have been considered previously in this volume are: what kind of thing a mind is; how mental causation works in relation to physical causation; and how minds are able to represent their environment, or even non-existing possibilities. In contemporary philosophy of mind, it is widely thought that the hardest puzzle concerns the nature of conscious experience and its relationship to physical processes of the brain. There are a family of puzzles in the neighborhood, in fact, though they appear to be intimately related. All are puzzles for those inclined to suppose that materialism is true. (So for the dualist, these “puzzles” are actually disguised arguments for some form or other of dualism.)

One puzzle about consciousness was raised in Part II, by Kripke. Kripke’s argument is specifically focused on pain, but it readily generalizes to other types of conscious experience, such as the visual experience of looking at this page. If pain = C-fiber firing pattern 257, then this identity statement must be absolutely necessary. It must be impossible for pain to occur in the absence of that C-fiber firing, or for the firing to occur without the pain. But while it is no doubt true that pains in human beings are intimately associated with certain types of neural events, it is possible, argues Kripke, for either one to occur without the other. The conclusion drawn is that the type-type identity form of materialism, at least, must be false.