Mere phenomenal experience

pp. 349-367

in: Joseph Mendola, Human thought, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

We are left with few resources in our attempt to construct a plausible account of the realization of our experience. Nothing with the characteristic intrinsic phenomenal properties remains. The only coherently conceivable resources still available are causal microevents, standing in spatio-temporal relations. But that may seem enough. Our post-galilean tradition holds, at least on one natural interpretation, that the true and objective properties and relations of things are those which our physics uncovers, and those properties and relations seem to be causal powers and spatio-temporal relations. The charge of an electron and its mass seem to be capacities to affect other particles in various ways, as the electron moves through space.