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You're listening to the Partially examined life episode 218 on the hard and harder problem

of consciousness we've been discussing. To this point, David Chalmer's consciousness and his

place in nature 2003, we continue to be joined by PENCYCAST representative Gregory Miller.

Yeah, so where do we want to start? I think the reign of our discussion of this Chalmers paper,

we at least have to get out the different types of materialism, the different types of dualism,

etc. that he lays out. Well, I guess the most obvious one to start with, and the most naturalist

to start with, A, and that's Taipei materialism, and this is what historically people might have

called A-Priori materialism or A-Priori physicalism. And the easiest way to understand this view

is just to say, well, all those arguments that Chalmers gives where you move from an epistemic claim

about the epistemic gap between the physical and consciousness, they just deny that that gap

exists, right? So the A-Priori physicalist or the type A materialist says, well, no, when Mary

is in her room, if she reads enough neuroscience and in enough detail, and with the correct scientific

theory, she does know what it's like to see red. When she leaves the room, she doesn't learn

anything new, she doesn't have a new fact, or they might say, zombies are inconceivable.

If I have the proper concept of a thing that is identical to me, wholly physically identical to me,

then I can't have that thing lacking conscious experience. And likewise, they say, well, when it comes

to the kind of explanatory gap argument, explaining the structure and function in that much detail,

and with the right theory, does entail facts about consciousness. So pain is identical to C-Fibers,

is just as clear and is just as transparent, let's say, as Walter is H2O. That's the idea.

So yeah, like with the knowledge argument, she clearly has a different experience when she leaves

...