Some Evidence for Physicalism about Sensations

Andrew Melnyk (University of Missouri, Columbia)

The event will be held at 11 AM (Iran Daylight Time (GMT+4:30)).

Please attend via the following link:

http://www.irip.ac.ir/u/136

and enter into the room as "Guest".

Abstract:

I will address the hardest case for physicalism: perceptual and bodily sensations with distinctive phenomenal characters that we are aware of through introspection.  I will clarify that physicalism about sensations requires that sensations and their properties are one and the same as certain physical or functional state-types.  Then I will argue that some evidence for these type-identity claims exists: the fact, discovered from numerous imaging studies, that having a particular kind of sensation with a particular phenomenal character requires—never in fact occurs without—being in a particular brain state.  I will specify precisely how this fact supports physicalism over its dualist rivals.