A Study Of Ontological Debate Based On The Explanatory Gap

How and why do physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience,and why is the exercise of cognitive or behavioural functions accompanied by conscious experience? This has been an unresolved and near-permanent puzzle in natural science and Western philosophy.This subjective experiential/phenomenal/empirical nature of consciousness has led to an unbridgeable ’explanatory gap’ between the functional/structural explanation of the physical and the explanation of consciousness,which in turn has provided dualists with a weapon to attack physicalism and has led to a back-and-forth ontological debate between the two.Physicalism and dualism are two different ontological positions on phenomenal consciousness in Western philosophy,neither of which has so far achieved a complete refutation of the other and a complete defence of itself.Dualists claim that the ontological gap is a best explanation of the explanatory gap and attempt to refute physicalism through conceptual-analytical arguments,knowledge arguments,modal arguments and conceivability arguments based on the explanatory gap.Physicalists,on the other hand,either deny the explanatory gap outright or acknowledge it but insist that the nature of feeling remains physical at the ontological level,offering responses to various dualistic arguments based on the explanatory gap.This paper will sort out the two types of dualist arguments that refute a priori physicalism and a posteriori physicalism,clarifying how the explanatory gap provides support for the ontological gap and dualism.A defence of physicalism is also elaborated after each dualist argument,examining whether the dualist argument can refute physicalism or not.Having done so,the paper will conclude and evaluate the dualist arguments based on the explanatory gap,pointing out that the conceptual-analytic arguments and the modal argument based on the explanatory gap cannot be sustained,that the knowledge argument can only refute a priori physicalism,that conceivability arguments do not achieve a sufficient refutation of a posteriori physicalism,and that physicalism still has a huge theoretical space.