Philosophy 75 (291):49-71 (2000)
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Abstract |
An important part of the mind-brain problem arises because sentience and consciousness seem inherently resistant to scientific explanation and understanding. The solution to this dilemma is to recognize, first, that scientific explanation can only render comprehensible a selected aspect of what there is, and second, that there is a mode of explanation and understanding, the personalistic, quite different from, but just as viable as, scientific explanation. In order to understand the mental aspect of brain processes - that aspect we know about as a result of having relevant neurological processes occur in our own brain - we need to avail ourselves of personalistic explanation, irreducible to scientific explanation. The problem of explaining and understanding why experiential or mental aspects of brain processes or things should be correlated with certain physical processes, things or states of affairs is a non-problem because there is no kind of explanation possible in terms of which an explanation could be couched. A physical theory, amplified to include the experiential, might be predictive but would, necessarily, cease to be explanatory; and an amplified personalistic explanation could not succeed either. There is, in short, an explanation as to why there cannot be an explanation of correlations between physical and mental aspects of processes going on inside our heads
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Keywords | Mind-Body Problem Dualism Experience Metaphysics Mind Consciousness Explanation Two-Aspect Theory Personalistic Understanding |
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DOI | 10.1017/S003181910000005X |
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References found in this work BETA
Understanding Sensations.Nicholas Maxwell - 1968 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):127-146.
Citations of this work BETA
Inner Experience – Direct Access to Reality: A Complementarist Ontology and Dual Aspect Monism Support a Broader Epistemology.Harald Walach - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
How Can Life of Value Best Flourish in the Real World?Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - In Leemon McHenry (ed.), Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom. Ontos Verlag.
Reply to Comments on Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (4):667-690.
Nicholas Maxwell: In Praise of Natural Philosophy: A Revolution for Thought and Life.Harald Walach - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):603-609.
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