Consciousness, Subjectivity and Physicalism

Abstract

Even if cognitive science has made some important progress in its approach to human mental activities, consciousness and subjective experience still strike us as highly puzzling from a 'scientific' point of view. This may not be surprising, since the Cartesian distinction between res cogitans and res extensa seems to have a priori ruled out the very possibility of understanding the human mind as an object of physical science. However, in this paper, I argue that some Cartesian intuitions about the nature of consciousness may still deserve sustaining by showing that it is a mistake to seek some physicalist reduction of the phenomena of consciousness. At the same time, I also try to show in what sense Colin McGinn's transcendental naturalism may be intelligible.