Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism * By DERK PEREBOOM

Abstract

Derek Pereboom�s book is a comprehensive investigation of the prospects of physicalism in the study of consciousness. Pereboom provides the reader, in a clear and informative fashion, with several physicalist options that he takes to be serious candidates in providing an explanatory account of consciousness. In effect, he is not explicitly proposing any of the accounts on offer though there is a tendency to lean towards non-reductive alternatives and perhaps, on occasion, to concede too much to the non-reductivist. As I understand it, the moral of the book is that for all we know, physicalism may well be true, but if so, it will be physicalism of an aberrant form. Pereboom begins with the premise that we introspectively represent phenomenal properties as having qualitative natures distinct from any features that physical theories represent them as having. However, it may be that our introspective representations fail to represent mental states as they are in themselves. He calls this possibility the qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis (QIH for short). According to QIH, our introspection might consistently misrepresent and the possibility that phenomenal properties lack the qualitative natures they are represented as having is �universal�. This has implications for a wide range of hotly debated issues in the contemporary philosophy of mind, including the knowledge argument, the zombie hypothesis and conceivability arguments. Prima facie, QHI may sound like a far-fetched hypothesis and Pereboom, to his credit, takes great pains to motivate QIH to the effect that it really �