Jaegwon Kim, "Philosophy of Mind"

 

Jaegwon Kim, "Philosophy of Mind" (2011, 3rd ed.)

"The causal argument ... only shows the conditional proposition that if

mental causation is to be saved, the mental must be brought into the physical

domain -- that is, physically reduced. And this exactly is the issue we are now grappling with.

We have to conclude that an identity reduction of qualia is no more promising than

their functional reduction and that qualia epiphenomenalism looms as a real threat." (p 332)

"We should note, however, that saving intentional-cognitive states from

epiphenomenalism is not a small accomplishment. In saving them, we save

ourselves as agents and cognizers, for cognition and agency are located in the

realm of the intentional-cognitive, not the phenomenal." (p 332)

"There are reductive approaches to consciousness that attempt to reduce it

to intentional-representational states. ... If ... we can reduce qualia to

intentional-representational states, these later states could in turn be functionalized,

and that would yield a solution to both the mental causation problem and the explanatory

gap problem. ... It is fair to say that qualia representationalism is currently the

leading physical approach to phenomenal consciousness." (p 332-333)

"Qualia differences and similarities are behaviorally manifest, ... and this

opens the door to their potential functionalization and reduction. We can conclude,

therefore, that qualia are not entirely lost to epiphenomenalism; we can save

qualia differences and similarities, if not qualia as intrinsic qualities." (p 333)