normative

Materialist owes an explanation of qualities

Even if materialism is a coherent position, the materialist incurs an explanatory obligation: because we know directly from first-person awareness that consciousness has a qualitative nature, the materialist must show how those qualities are accounted for in the purely quantitative language of physical science, analogous to how chemistry explains the boiling point of water.

normativepending

Speaker

Philip Goff

Evidence Quote

if you're going to be a materialist then you owe us an explanation of how that is accounted for in the terms of physical science, how can you account for those qualities in the purely quantitative language of physical science?

Source

71 | Philip Goff on Consciousness EverywhereSean Carroll's Mindscape
Created: 6/13/2026, 12:10:44 AM

My Notes

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