Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Chalmers and Jackson (2001) argue that PQTI, a conjunction of microphysical, phenomenal, and indexical truths along with a "that's all" truth, can serve as a basis.

Some theoretical terms (perhaps including microphysical terms) may be excluded, but information conveyed using these terms can instead be conveyed by the familiar Ramsey-sentence method, characterizing a network of entities and properties with appropriate causal/nomic connections to each other and to the observational and the phenomenal.

Because there is no conceptual analysis of consciousness in physical or functional terms, there is no contradiction in the notion of a zombie that is a functional duplicate -- or even a microphysical duplicate -- of one of us, but that has no consciousness at all.

But since the word "boil" is not a term of the microphysical and chemical theories, how is this to be done?

Levine of course recognizes that many of the required bridge principles connecting folk with scientific vocabulary (such as that water is H2O, and that boiling is the particular microphysical process that it is) will not be analytic definitions: very often, what is needed are the notorious necessary a posteriori truths.

Levine grants that we cannot reason a priori from the existence of boiling water to the existence of H2O undergoing the particular physical process that constitutes boiling, but he argues that we can reason a priori in the other direction -- from microphysical theory and fact to the presence of water and the realization of the property of boiling -- and that this reasoning reveals a contrast with the case of conscious states and brain processes.

Let C be a complete description, in microphysical terms, of a situation in which water (H2O) is boiling, and let T be a complete theory of physics.

One presents her with the theory T, and a description (in microphysical terms) of a water boiling situation.

Perhaps, if she were told, or could figure out, that the theory was actually true of the relevant stuff in her environment, she could then conclude (using her knowledge of the observable behavior of the things in her environment) that H2O is water, and that the relevant microphysical description is a description of boiling, but the additional information is of course not a priori, and the inference from her experience would be inductive.

They argue that one can give conceptual analyses of terms like 'water' and 'heat', analyses that when conjoined with contingent empirical microphysical claims are sufficient to deduce the a posteriori necessities, and so to connect folk descriptions of phenomena with their scientific explanations.