3 ms·
I don't accept the paradigm. The problem of qualia is only an issue if you assume a Cartesian account of matter (CM) while dropping his immaterial account of th
by danielam 9y ago
I don't accept the paradigm. The problem of qualia is only an issue if you assume a Cartesian account of matter (CM) while dropping his immaterial account of the mind. Descartes assumes that things like color are not properties of material things but properties of minds. Materialism rejects the notion of an immaterial mind, but does so without rejecting CM, so you're left with a reality made of a kind of matter in which color cannot exist. Materialists are therefore condemned to looking for an impossible solution for as long as they fail to understand the futility of trying to find things like color in CM. Materialism is a halfway house between Cartesian dualism and eliminativism (where the latter denies the existence of things like color because, having accepted CM, it can't account for them -- Procrustean, to be sure).
The solution is not to embrace some version of dualism. Dualism has its own issues. The solution is to embrace a richer metaphysics. Aristotle provides such a metaphysics.