Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness

by John R. Perry

Physicalism is the idea that if everything that goes on in the universe is physical, our consciousness and feelings must also be physical. Ever since Descartes formulated the mind-body problem, a long line of philosophers has found the physicalist view to be preposterous. According to John Perry, the history of the mind-body problem is, in part, the slow victory of physical monism over various forms of dualism. Each new version of dualism claims that surely something more is going on with us than the merely physical. In this book Perry defends a view that he calls antecedent physicalism. He takes on each of three major arguments against physicalism, showing that they pose no threat to antecedent physicalism. These arguments are the zombie argument (that there is a possible world inhabited by beings that are physically indiscernible from us but not conscious), the knowledge argument (that we can know facts about our own feelings that are not just physical facts, thereby proving physicalism false), and the modal argument (that the identity of sensation and brain state is contingent, but since there is no such thing as contingent identity, sensations are not brain states).

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John R. Perry (born 1943) is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He has made significant contributions to areas of philosophy, including logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. He is known primarily for his work on situation semantics (together with Jon Barwise), reflexivity, indexicality, and self-knowledge.

Reviews

[Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been thinking about consciousness since reading Searle's Rediscovery of Mind. Perry is not reductionist, but defends a form of physicalism, more or less a type-identity theory of mind. His discussion of issues is closely related to his account of structured propositions (originally developed with logician Jon Barwise in the form of Situation Semantics). It helped me reconcile ideas about the nature of consciousness with issues in philosophy of language and philosophy of cognition. I also like that Perry can mix dense arguments with light humor.