Joseph Levine
American philosopher
Joseph Levine 's AcademicInfluence.com Rankings
Download Badge
Philosophy
Why Is Joseph Levine Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, Joseph Levine is an American philosopher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who received his PhD from Harvard University in 1981. He works on philosophy of mind and is best known for formulating the explanatory gap argument against a materialist explanation for consciousness. This has been cited as a precursor to David Chalmers's formulation of the hard problem of consciousness and as one of the main objections materialist theories in philosophy of mind must address. The idea of the explanatory gap is that an unbridgeable gap exists when trying to comprehend consciousness from the perspective of natural science, as a scientific explanation of mental states would require a reduction from a physical process to phenomenal experience. The property of mental states to be experienced from a subjective point of view might not be reducible from the objective, i.e. outside, perspective of science. In this sense there would be a gap between the outside perspective of science and the internal perspective of phenomenal experience. Levine does not believe this gap necessitates a metaphysical conclusion; that is, he does not believe his argument refutes materialism. But he believes it poses a unique epistemic problem:
Other Resources About Joseph Levine
What Schools Are Affiliated With Joseph Levine ?
Joseph Levine is affiliated with the following schools:
