This might be it:

So qualia are not functionalizable, and hence physically irreducible. Qualia, therefore, are the "mental residue" that cannot be accommodated within the physical domain. This means that global physicalism is untenable. It is not the case that all phenomena of the world are physical phenomena; nor is it the case that physical facts imply all the facts. There is a possible world that is like this world in all respects except for the fact that in that world qualia are distributed differently. I don't think we can show it to be otherwise. [Kim, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, p. 170]

Hello Panu
The text you are reffering to is probably "The Many Problems of Mental Causation" Jaegwon Kim. You may find this text in "PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Classical and Contemporary Readings" under Chalmers redaction, or just try to google it. 

Good luck with your work

Paweł Gwiaździński

Kim is careful not to rule out epiphenomenalism.  What he might mean is that although it happens to be the case that in this universe, brain states may give rise to physically inefficacious conscious experiences, these are not identical to brain states. They are therefore not 'metaphysically' necessary - meaning there is nothing illogical about a universe in which our brains operated by physical law (as Kim believes they do anyway) but were not accompanied by consciousness (ie zombies are logically possible). Kim may believe that consciousness cannot be deduced as a necessary consequence of neural events, which is what (I think) physicalism really requires to guarantee identity of the neural and consciousness.Norman Bacrac.

Norman, 
It's nice to see such a succinct summation of a complex issue. I agree that physicalism cannot "guarantee identity of the neural and consciousness". But this is not only because their non-identity is non-contradictory, as you point out it is. Physicalism has no explanation at all for consciousness because it only deals with physical causes and effects. So, if consciousness were to be epiphenomenal ... an effect that is not a cause... physicalism would not find it. 

Physicalism reduces substances to the causal properties they exhibit. Physicalism finds the only measurable properties to be physical particles and fields. These are the only efficient causes and effects that can function to do anything. They are the only realities physical science can ever find. We know things scientifically by how the behave, how they function.

The defense of physicalism in the philosophy of mind is to deny consciousness as anything real or even knowable; eliminative materialists like Churchland come to mind. Kim, Nagel and others see consciousness itself as a refutation of physicalism. But neither side has any clue at all as so how  the neural and consciousness could be identical or have any sort of necessary connection between them.

I suggest that a possible way to explain how is to re-visit the ousted notion of substance, without the burdens of final causes or immaterial essences. Briefly, substances can have intrinsic and extrinsic properties. Therefore one and the same thing can do things related to other substances extrinsically, while being what it is in itself, at the same time and in the same place. Epiphenomenal properties might be intrinsic properties that occur at the same time that the substance is doing things with other substances. Consciousness might be intrinsic to the brain as the neural networks go about their functional work of perceiving, reflecting and directing behaviors.

I'm curious what you think about that approach to the problem.

Thanks,

DCD  

Hi Daniel, 
I see we are no longer Kim's perspective on the issue per se. I mostly agree with what you're saying here, but I have some comments to add. 
You claim that physicalism only deals with physical causes and effects and that physicalism does not find epiphenomena. It seems to me that you are confusing 'physics' with 'physicalism'. Physicalism is a metaphysical position on the nature of everything or perhaps a sub-class of everything. Physicalism does not 'find' or 'deal with' things.Perhaps you have in mind what Strawson calls physicSalism, according to which all true knowledge is acquired by means of 'physics' (whatever we choose to mean by that precisely). One way to consider the distinction is to say that the physicSalist believes in physical science, the physicalist believes in a physical universe.  
    By conflating physicalism with physics or physicSalism, you misrepresent our possible options in the discussion. There is a physicalist version of Russellian monism and a version of identity theory that differ substantially from the physicalism you are describing. The extrinsic - intrinsic distinction has been exploited by neo-Russellians.I am in agreement with you that using this distinctio will help us understand 'how' monism could be right.(In fact, I believe Russell, Feigl, Hill and Papineau to name a few have all given more or less the same ansewer to this question.) The way you suggest we should understand the relation between phenomenal and physical properties ends up being a kind of property dualism. My point would be that there are also monist options to be investigated. I recommend Emmett Holman's Panpsychism, Physicalism, Neural Monism and the Russellian Theory of Mind for an interesting overview and discussion of approaches along these lines.     
Greetings, 
Arjen
     
  

Arjen,
Thanks for your comments. The approach I am recommending is not a property dualism. It is a substance dualism that explains how physical and phenomenal properties can both be parts of the same physical world. It holds that the physical universe is not completely described by contemporary or Classical physics and that physicalism is false.

Physicalism, as I understand it, is the belief that physics describes the most basic components and laws of nature that allow us to explain and predict everything that happens in the world ... including consciousness, rationality, morality, beauty, truth and knowledge. Physicalists believe everything can be reduced to physical properties and laws discovered by the empirical methods of science. It is a commitment to a methodology and to whatever results it supports. As a philosophy, it is basically a rubber stamp of whatever physics, and the "derivative" sciences, can support through cogent inductive reasoning. Basically, physicalism is the belief that we can reduce all properties, powers, qualities, dispositions, events or objects to physical properties.

The references to Russellian Theory of Mind may be helpful to me in clarifying my position. Russell speaks of  “intrinsic qualities”, so Russellian Monism (RM) assumes that events have intrinsic qualities. He also distinguishes between "dispositional properties"  or "powers" that are the objects of science and "categorical properties" or  "intrinsic qualities" that are not properly objects of scientific knowledge but are things with which we are "acquainted". 

This treatment leaves open the question of whether dispositions also have a categorical basis. Russell sees no reason why  intrinsic qualities must have a physical basis, but they could. But if dispositions also must have a categorical basis, it is not at all clear how they could be of the same categorical basis. Thus RM has this fundamental tension at its core. It would have to be a monist ontology that supports property dualism.  Further, Russell  insists on an event ontology, rather than one of objects or substance. So the one "event" has to account for both dispositional properties which have "manifestations" and categorical properties which do not, despite our undeniable acquaintance with them.

This kind of monism illustrates the problem of mind very well. But it does not offer a promising solution that I can see.   A "disposition-only" ontology like that of  John Heil and C.B.Martin, tries to identify qualities with dispositions, seeing qualities as another aspect of the same dispositional property. But this still begs the question of how a single property can have 2 such radically different "aspects". 

My approach draws the difference as that between the intrinsic and extrinsic properties any substance must have. It must be something in itself or intrinsically that defines what it is as distinct from everything else. And it must also be something  that interacts with other substances in the world and these are its extrinsic or "dispositional" properties. The categorical basis of both properties is the material substance (not an event) which constitutes its properties. Further, substances have properties that are either essential to their nature or only accidental; so water must be H2O, atomically, but it might be in a solid, liquid or gaseous state. 

However, being H2O is not to have phenomenal properties as essential or accidental to a body of water. Different physical substances have correspondingly different dispositional or extrinsic properties. So different physical substances may have correspondingly different categorical or intrinsic properties. We can't say that they must correspond in this way. But, they might. So phenomenal properties (intrinsic or categorical properties in RM terms) might have a categorical basis in differences in what it is to be different kinds of animals who may have evolved to develop perceptual systems of representing causal interactions of sensory organs and the environment. 

Our "acquaintance" with phenomenal properties can then be explained as the intrinsic nature of animals with these kinds of perceptual systems for representing nature. But please be clear: the phenomenal properties are NOT the things that represent nature. The neural systems do this and they direct animal behaviors by linking what is neurally represented to preexisting repertoires of possible responsive behaviors and using instincts and desires to make specific selections from among the possible responses. These are all physical, dispositional properties at work and they are fully manifested in ways that science can understand. The intrinsic properties are caused by the same neural activity that informs and moves us animals around in various adaptive ways. But the crucial difference between me and Russell is that I add that the intrinsic quality of the experience is not the cause of the behavior.  In this way we account for how the "mental" appears to interact with and control the "physical" ... but in reality is does not control or cause anything. It's is just what it is to be a living animal. The human animal if different form the rest of the animal kingdom only in that we can behave in another way, that is, rationally.  This is because we can use language to talk about what we perceive and use reasons to select justifications for behaviors, too.

I haven't talked about the other substance in my dualism yet, at all.   

Thanks,
DCD
   

Reply to Daniel Clay DavisI concur with DCD: his referring to the 'intrinsic and extrinsic properties' of substance (in this case, brain matter) can explicate the relationship between consciousness (the intrinsic property) and the physical brain (the extrinsic property). Consciousness simply exists when and where the (awake) physical brain exists, this latter being wholly responsible for effecting one's deliberate actions.*

One may also apply Aristotle's causal scheme here. The efficient cause of someone's consciousness has to be their history, which has brought their brain to the present moment; its material cause is the totality of atoms etc which now compose that brain; while its formal cause, unless this is subsumed under the material cause, could be the structure and organisation of those atoms. It's this material cause that, moment by moment, creates the stream of consciousness.

As for the final cause, I think we both eschew that one. Consciousness in general was never envisaged by evolution, neither has nature a role for it; it's just a happy (or not so happy) accident.

*I argue a subjectively felt 'free' choice is compatible with a closed ohysical world in my article Epiphenomenalism explained. (Philosophy Now, 81, Oct/Nov 2010).
Norman Bacrac

Norman,
Thanks so much for your comments. You are one of the few in these discussions who seems to get the point I'm making here. The analogies to Aristotle's 4 causes are instructive, too. The way in which the active brain constitutes consciousness has to do with the intrinsic particular form or organization of the material neurons, which were structured as they were due to forces of natural selection acting in the chain of causes and effects (efficient causation)  that constitute the entire natural world.

As to final causes, of course there is no preexisting plan that nature follows. However, that does not entail that it's all a big accident, either. I think this model even explains the appearance of design in nature. It's not that we were designed in God's image or according to a Divine plan or Intelligent Design. The world is hospitable to us (to the extent that it is),  not because it was designed for us but because "we", and ever other plant and animal that ever survived here, were enabled by trying out all the variations that were possible over very long periods of time, these periods were so long that if another, better adaptation were possible, it would have been tried and tested for its power to enable reproduction in the best possible way. In the sense, the world this the best of all possible worlds, where reproductive success is the only measure of greatness or goodness.

The world seems like it was "designed" (intelligently) for us because we were "designed" for it by natural selection.

Consciousness, as you point out, is not part of the "design" which derives solely from the efficient causation that results from trying out various possible adaptations. Consciousness is an ineffectual by-product of the evolutionary process, not a function for which it was selected. But it is not an accident, either, it is quite necessary, as a consequence of the way life evolved on this planet. Everything that happens is necessitated by the unchanging forces of nature and the regularities about change which these forces determine. So as I see it, a "subjectively felt 'free' choice is compatible with a closed physical world" if an only if this "freedom" is an illusion of rational subjectivity. This illusion is caused by the epiphenomenal nature of consciousness, which makes it seem to us to support the belief that there is also a phenomenal self which is the "knower" of our experience and the ultimate cause of our behavior.

While we may have a difference here, we do seem to agree on some basic notions.

Thanks,
DCD     

Hi Daniel, 
Thank you for expanding a little on your project. Since I'm also working on the mind - body problem, it's always interesting to hear how other approach the issue. As of yet, I cannot say I understand the basic merit of your position. I have difficulties with your interpretation of Russell, I have difficulties with your use of ontological categories and finally some questions about your own position.  

It is a substance dualism that explains how physical and phenomenal properties can both be parts of the same physical world. It holds that the physical universe is not completely described by contemporary or Classical physics and that physicalism is false.

If the world you claim to be the real one is wholly physical, how can it contain non-physical substances? And if it does not, how can your position rightly be called 'substance dualism'? The view that the physical universe is not completely described by contemporary physics is uncontroversial. It certainly does not follow from that that physicalism is false.

I have some problems with your interpretation of Russell:

This treatment leaves open the question of whether dispositions also have a categorical basis.

I don't think Russell leaves it open whether dispositions have a categorical basis (I don't believe Russell uses the term 'categorical basis'). It is necessary that they do: we describe events by abstracting from sense experience the structural properties of their cause. A 'property' is identified by how it designates that cause. For an event, anything, to exist, it must be a certain way and in this sense too, it will have properties. It is due to these intrinsic properties that something interacts with other things.

Russell sees no reason why  intrinsic qualities must have a physical basis, but they could.

I do not recognize Russell in this statement (although it may be a Russellian position). Russell talks of physical and mental knowledge; not so much of physical and mental things or properties. If he talks of any basis at all, it is the 'neutral basis' of sense perception. The same data, namely perceptions, can be used to arrive at physical knowledge of an outside stimulus or psychological knowledge of the one having the perceptions. If we want to reserve the term physical for properties or substances or events, I suggest that something is physical when it is the referent of physical knowledge. Mental descriptions describe the same referent as does a physical description of a brain process. So Russell sees every reason to believe intrinsic qualities must also be physical, but no reason to call the physical the basis of the mental. The mental is what it is; it has no 'basis' (it has causes, like the outside stimuli, and various non-conscious parts of the brain).

But if dispositions also must have a categorical basis, it is not at all clear how they could be of the same categorical basis.

I take it this is you responding to Russell? I don't understand what you're saying here: how could dispositional properties be of the same categorical basis as what? Mental properties are intrinsic, categorical by definition, they have no further categorical basis.

Thus RM has this fundamental tension at its core. It would have to be a monist ontology that supports property dualism.

Well, there's certainly something to be worked out here. But I certainly think we would not want it to be that Russellian Monism has to be a monist ontology that supports property dualism. The reason is this: if property dualism is supposed to be ontological dualism, then we have a dualist ontology right here and what you are proposing makes no sense. If you do not think property dualism is an ontological dualism, then what kind of dualism do you think it is? I suggest we take dualism and monism always to be ontological positions, just for the sake of much needed clarity.

So the one "event" has to account for both dispositional properties which have "manifestations" and categorical properties which do not, despite our undeniable acquaintance with them

Well, this is a difficult issue, but dispositional properties would have the event as their relevant cause, which in turn has an intrinsic nature; properties that account for dispositional properties.

 

A "disposition-only" ontology like that of  John Heil and C.B.Martin, tries to identify qualities with dispositions, seeing qualities as another aspect of the same dispositional property. But this still begs the question of how a single property can have 2 such radically different "aspects".

I'm looking forward to reading Heil, but haven't as of yet. From what I can tell, what Heil and Martin are saying is another way of making Russell's point. For Russell, no question is begged: one is an abstraction from the effected sense experience, ascribed to a cause. The other is lived experience. The radical epistemic difference accounts for the radically different aspects.

As for your own approach, there are three things that are unclear to me: 1. Is the intrinsic property of animals phenomenal? And only phenomenal? Does 'phenomenality' render the intrinsic property non-physical? 2. What is the benefit of considering substances rather than events or any other ontological class? Assuming that you do not deny that there are events, would you not have to give some account of what is going on there? 3. Why do you insist on epiphenomenalism, when you could have done without it by adopting a Russellian (or any old Identity Theory) view? 

Gretings, 

Arjen

Hi Arjen,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. As to your first question or objection:

"If the world you claim to be the real one is wholly physical, how can it contain non-physical substances? And if it does not, how can your position rightly be called 'substance dualism'? The view that the physical universe is not completely described by contemporary physics is uncontroversial. It certainly does not follow from that that physicalism is false."


The dualism is offer for consideration is between matter/energy and space, both of which are substances. Space is not material but it is part of the physical universe. 
moreover, our understanding of space and spatial relations as 3-dimensional is something that evolved throughout the animal kingdom and is, therefore, Euclidean geometry is not just a conceptual construct we can choose at will. 

I argue that physicalism is false because it denies or overlooks the existence of the spatial substance. It's not just a matter of incompleteness, as if physicalism or science generally is a "work in progress" and we should just give them more time to figure it out or gather more data. Physics is deeply vested (for strong reasons) in the exclusion of absolute space as a substance having causal powers that affect matter, preferring instead to calculate the distances between material masses, thereby "relativizing" space. It's replacement is "spacetime", which denies the existence of both space and time as distinct aspects of the physical world. We are left with an infinite range of 4-D spacetime coordinate, all of which are equally true at any moment. 

My question here is an attempt to stimulate people to consider the natural world outside of the spacetime concept that engulfs our thinking about the universe in an invisible, ubiquitous and entirely conceptual black hole. Most of us today lack the intellectual "velocity" to escape this singularity of thought. We see it as a waste of time. Even most educated people are like you and react immediately with skepticism, killing any inferential momentum that might be gained by taking a new and different look at things. 

In my view Physicalism is fundamentally flawed as a way to explain the disparity between quantum physics and the physics of gravitation, the GTR. It is also fatally flawed as a way to understand how consciousness fits in as a part of the physical universe. It also turns moral and aesthetic reasoning into a quagmire of relativistic equivocation. Now I am not trying to turn us toward some rationalistic deduction or spiritualistic insight to seek a solution. 

Rather, I suggest we need to step back and take a broader look at what empirical reasoning is, as a product of biological and cultural evolution... not just as a formal system. So, it is a very broad and comprehensive critique that I am suggesting. It requires significant intellectual background and learning just to understand the factual and inferential power and scope of the received wisdom... more than what most people even bring to the table. But what I ask is the additional willingness to suspend belief in the mainstream views and, at the same time, to suspend disbelief in discredited beliefs in the existence of space, the viability of metaphysics and ontology as credible empirical inquiries and the possibility of intelligible solutions to the philosophical problems of mind, morality and aesthetics.

I'll discuss Russell with you in another post. Gotta go now.

Thanks,
DCD   

Hello Arjen, Daniel and others,

Since Arjen's post recommending Holman's paper ( Holman 2008 ) there has been significant discussion of Neutral Monism and Russellian Theory of Mind on this thread.

My own view of Holman's paper is that it only presents one narrow, specific view of Russellian Monism that is quasi-physicalist in tenor.  There are other possibilities that he does not explore.

Torin Alter and Yujin Nagasawa's paper What is Russellian Monism? ( Alter & Nagasawa 2012 ) does a far better job of formulating Russellian Monism in general terms, and discussing how different philosophers use different language to express similar ideas.  The authors provide a comprehensive and balanced account of the ways in which philosophers might develop RM.  Section 7 of their paper asks how RM might relate to other theories concerning consciousness and the physical world, and here they discuss variants of RM that are close to neutral monism, physicalism, panpsychism, dualism, and idealism.

I hope this helps,
Peter E
(Message posted 11 Feb 2015)