Some crucial issues of mind-body monism

pp. 351-365

in: Herbert Feigl, Inquiries and provocations, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

The following considerations concern exclusively one of the (at least) three components of the traditionally as well as currently discussed mind-body problems. It is the sentience aspect rather than the aspects of sapience or selfhood that I wish to review in brief compass. Although I admit that the obvious interconnections of these three strands make it hazardous to separate them and thus to concentrate only on sentience (traditionally: consciousness, awareness, direct acquaintance, the phenomenally given, etc.), it nevertheless seems timely, even urgent, to attempt once again to clarify and reappraise what is right and what is wrong with physicalism (or the new materialism) as well as with some antiphysicalistic points of view.