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Review of Philosophy and Psychology

, Volume 10, Issue 4, pp 649–667 | Cite as

Does the Explanatory Gap Rest on a Fallacy?

  • François KammererEmail author
Article
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Abstract

Many philosophers have tried to defend physicalism concerning phenomenal consciousness, by explaining dualist intuitions within a purely physicalist framework. One of the most common strategies to do so consists in interpreting the alleged “explanatory gap” between phenomenal states and physical states as resulting from a fallacy, or a cognitive illusion. In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap does not rest on a fallacy or a cognitive illusion. This does not imply the falsity of physicalism, but it has consequences on the kind of physicalism we should embrace.

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Notes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Samuel Webb and Sonia Paz Higgins for their help, as well as Joseph Levine and Uriah Kriegel for their remarks.

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© Springer Nature B.V. 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, FNRSUniversité Catholique de LouvainLouvain-la-NeuveBelgium

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