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Abstract:
Materialism in the philosophy of mind is the thesis that the
ultimate nature of the mind is physical; there is no sharp
discontinuity in nature between the mental and the nonmental.
Antimaterialists assert that, on the contrary, mental phenomena are
different in kind from physical phenomena. Among the weapons in the
arsenal of antimaterialists, one of the most potent has been the
conceivability argument. When I conceive of the mental, it seems
utterly unlike the physical. Antimaterialists insist that from this
intuitive difference we can infer a genuine metaphysical
difference. Materialists retort that the nature of reality,
including the ultimate natures of its constituents, is a matter for
discovery; an objective fact that cannot be discerned
a priori.
The antimaterialist conceivability argument traces back (at
least) to Descartess famous demonstration of the distinction
between mind and body.1 Descartes argued that since he can
coherently conceive of a situation in which his mind exists but his
body does not, there must in reality be a genuine, metaphysical
distinction between the two. Of course one can justifiably take
issue with Descartess claim that he really can coherently conceive
of himself as a disembodied mind. But the most common materialist
response, as mentioned above, is to challenge his inference from
whats conceivable to whats possible. Why think that whats possible,
a metaphysical, mind-independent fact, should necessarily coincide
with whats conceivable, an epistemic, mind-dependent fact?
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