Materialist and Causal Bridges Over the Explanatory Gap

Abstract

I offer that the explanatory gap about consciousness can be bridged by a materialist account that is compatible with the causal closure of the physical world. I suggest that Jaegwon Kim’s argument for causal closure is the best motivation for materialist explanations of consciousness, or the character of subjective experience. I then propose that the best materialist account available to do this explanatory work, that is also compatible with a causal closure condition, is Austen Clark’s feature-placing hypothesis. Feature-placing has it that sensory individuals, or qualitative properties, are picked out by their locations in space around a perceiver, and it accounts for preattentive perceptual processes. Featureplacing is not compatible with functionalism however, which is a solution Kim offers to epiphenomenal theories of consciousness. I hold that despite feature-placing’s problems with functionalism, Clark’s account remains compatible with causal closure because it suggests physical reduction to neural processes, like selective attention mechanisms. I conclude that causal closure, combined with the featureplacing of sensory individuals by the spatial discrimination capacities organisms have can go a far way in bridging the explanatory gap.