creators_name: Medina, Jeffrey A. type: journale datestamp: 2002-12-11 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:07 metadata_visibility: show title: What It's Like and Why: Subjective Qualia Explained as Objective Phenomena ispublished: pub subjects: phil-mind subjects: phil-metaphys full_text_status: public keywords: physicalism Nagel subjectivity qualia subjective objectivity objective dualism Churchland abstract: Notably spurred into the philosophical forefront by Thomas Nagel's 'What Is It Like To Be a Bat?' decades ago, and since maintained by a number of advocates of dualism since that critical publication, is the assertion that our inability to know 'what it's like' to be someone or something else is inexplicable given physicalism. Contrary to this well-known and central objection, I find that a consistent and exhaustive physicalism is readily conceivable. I develop one such theory and demonstrate that not only is it consistent with the private and varied nature of subjective experience, it, in fact, entails it. date: 2002-11 date_type: published publication: Cerebrals Online Journal volume: 12 refereed: FALSE referencetext: Paul Churchland, 'Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States', Journal of Philosophy, January 82, no. 2, 1985. Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, MIT Press, 1984. Frank Jackson, 'Epiphenomenal Qualia', Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 127, 127-136, April, 1982. Frank Jackson, 'What Mary didn't know', Journal of Philosophy, 83, 5, 291-295, May, 1986. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, Oxford University Press, 1986. Thomas Nagel, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', Philosophical Review, 435-50, 1974. citation: Medina, Jeffrey A. (2002) What It's Like and Why: Subjective Qualia Explained as Objective Phenomena. [Journal (On-line/Unpaginated)] document_url: http://cogprints.org/2649/1/medina_subj.html