| Metaphysics of Consciousness Contributor(s): Seager, William (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415063574 ISBN-13: 9780415063579 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $114.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 1991 Annotation: b /b b i Metaphysics of Consciousness /i /b, a volume in the series i Philosophical Issues in Science /i, discusses the philosophical issue of the nature of consciousness. William Seager argues that the purely physicalist or materialist view of human consciousness is by no means disproved and is in fact strongly supported by some developments in artificial intelligence. br br William Seager proceeds by addressing the problems of consciousness that remain even for a minimal physicalism. The particular modes of subjective consciousness that constitute experience threaten a paradigm of scientific understanding, labelled "physical resolution," that prospers in all other realms of inquiry. A phenomenon is physically resolved by demonstrating that its components are made up of purely physical parts and its causal efficacy is grounded in the physical properties of parts. The apparent inability to resolve physical consciousness leaves it not only inexplicable, but inexplicable in a way that threatens even a minimal physicalism. br br This book is distinctive in its emphasis on the legitimacy of inexplicability and its argument that consciousness transcends the paradigm of physical resolution. It will be of great use to advanced students and lecturers in philosophy. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Mind & Body |
| Dewey: 126 |
| LCCN: 91016739 |
| Lexile Measure: 1430 |
| Series: Politics in Asia (Paperback) |
| Physical Information: 0.75" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (1.09 lbs) 270 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Metaphysics of Consciousness opens with a development of the physicalist outlook that denies the need for any explanation of the mental. This inexplicability is demonstrated not to be sufficient as refutation of physicalism. However, the inescapable particularity of modes of consciousness appears to overpower this minimal physicalism. This book proposes that such an inference requires either a wholly new conception of how consciousness is physical or a deep and disturbing new kind of physical inexplicability. |
