Knowledge, possibility, and consciousness / John Perry.
2001
BD161 .P43 2001eb
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Details
Title
Knowledge, possibility, and consciousness / John Perry.
Author
Perry, John, 1943-
Uniform Title
CogNet library.
ISBN
9780262281416 (electronic bk.)
0262281414 (electronic bk.)
0262661357
9780262661355
0262161990
9780262161992
0262281414 (electronic bk.)
0262661357
9780262661355
0262161990
9780262161992
Publication Details
Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2001.
Copyright
©2001
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (xvi, 221 pages).
Call Number
BD161 .P43 2001eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
128/.2
Summary
Physicalism is the idea that if everything that goes on in the universe is physical, our consciousness and feelings must also be physical. Ever since Descartes formulated the mind-body problem, a long line of philosophers has found the physicalist view to be preposterous. According to John Perry, the history of the mind-body problem is, in part, the slow victory of physical monism over various forms of dualism. Each new version of dualism claims that surely something more is going on with us than the merely physical.In this book Perry defends a view that he calls antecedent physicalism. He takes on each of three major arguments against physicalism, showing that they pose no threat to antecedent physicalism. These arguments are the zombie argument (that there is a possible world inhabited by beings that are physically indiscernible from us but not conscious), the knowledge argument (that we can know facts about our own feelings that are not just physical facts, thereby proving physicalism false), and the modal argument (that the identity of sensation and brain state is contingent, but since there is no such thing as contingent identity, sensations are not brain states).
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