Description
Many philosophers doubt that one can provide any successful explanation of sensory qualities - of how things look, feel, or seem to a perceiving subject. To provide such an explanation, one would need to explain qualitative facts in non-qualitative terms. Attempts to construct such explanations have seemed, in principle, doomed. Austen Clark examines the strategy used in psychophysics, psychometrics, and sensory neurophysiology to explain qualitative facts. He argues that this strategy could succeed: its structure is sound, and it can answer the various philosophical objections lodged against it. On this basis Professor Clark presents an analysis of senosry qualities that offers the possibility of explaining at least some qualia, and he sketches how this scheme might eventually reduce to neurophysiology. If he is correct, we are not doomed to an eternity of mere acquaintance with our qualia.
About the Author
Austen Clark is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Psychological Models and Neural Mechanisms: An Examination of Reductionism in Psychology (Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy, 1980).
Reviews
clearly written, informative and stimulating . . . Its major contribution ... is to have presented a fruitful and interesting way to think about the qualitative character of experience. It may not change minds about the standard arguments against physicalistic theories of qualia, but, in my view, it should. * Mind *
Besides offering us the most useful account of sensory qualities to have yet appeared, Clark shows himself to be a clear and sure-footed expositor of the empirical and theoretical apparatus he employs ... This is truly psychophysics for philosophers. It will appeal particularly to veterans of the qualia wars who hunger and thirst after real data, worked-out examples, and minimal hand-waving. * Philosophy and Phenomenological Research *
Book Information
ISBN 9780198236801
Author Austen Clark
Format Paperback
Page Count 268
Imprint Clarendon Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 139mm * 17mm
About the Author
Austen Clark is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Psychological Models and Neural Mechanisms: An Examination of Reductionism in Psychology (Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy, 1980).
Reviews
clearly written, informative and stimulating . . . Its major contribution ... is to have presented a fruitful and interesting way to think about the qualitative character of experience. It may not change minds about the standard arguments against physicalistic theories of qualia, but, in my view, it should. * Mind *
Besides offering us the most useful account of sensory qualities to have yet appeared, Clark shows himself to be a clear and sure-footed expositor of the empirical and theoretical apparatus he employs ... This is truly psychophysics for philosophers. It will appeal particularly to veterans of the qualia wars who hunger and thirst after real data, worked-out examples, and minimal hand-waving. * Philosophy and Phenomenological Research *
Book Information
ISBN 9780198236801
Author Austen Clark
Format Paperback
Page Count 268
Imprint Clarendon Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 139mm * 17mm
