Towards a Scientific Account of Experience

I defend the thesis that the physicalist two perspectives position on qualia described below merits further examination and debate – that it has potential as a possible basis for a correct account of the relationship of qualia1 to our physical world view. The idea that what is a quale to one observer is a brain state to another – that each is simply a different perspective on a single reality – is not new, of course, but the position considered here has a number of interesting features. First, it is a position in which the single reality in question is wholly physical, so that reductionist physicalism is true, but the unique “like something” qualities of experience identified by Chalmers (1995, pp. 200–202) with the hard problem of consciousness2 are nonetheless irreducible and required parts of our physical world view. Second, it is a position in which it is true of a quale that it is a physical state like any other, able to be studied and accounted for using the standard scientific approach applied to all physical things – a position that, in consequence, provides a possible basis for a scientific account of human experience. Finally, it is a position in which the notion of an unbridgeable gap between the mental and the physical is dispelled, and challenges to physicalism associated with Leibniz's Law, Jackson's knowledge argument, and Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness are successfully countered.