Time and Consciousness in Cognitive Naturalism

Abstract

Eliminative materialists argue that we can overcome the phenomenological gap between two different ways of referring to our subjective experiences – either as introspectively grasped in terms of folk psychology or as explained in neurological terms – by abandoning the pre-scientific concepts of folk psychology. However, unless these theorists can offer a plausible explanation for why the scientific view of the human mind proposed by cognitive neuroscience is so deeply counter-intuitive, this argument will remain unconvincing. In order to address the difficulties involved in making the paradigm shift from folk psychology to cognitive neuroscience I (a) briefly review the theoretical revolution that marked the transition from classical mechanics to the theory of relativity at the beginning of 20th century; (b) identify some similarities between this paradigm shift in physics and the birth of a new scientific view of the mind; (c) explain by means of (a) and (b) why neurological theories that reduce consciousness and the Self to aspects of brain dynamics appear implausible from a common sense perspective despite being sound from a scientific point of view.

Keywords

• Time
• Consciousness
• Relativity Theory
• Neuroscience
• Eliminative Materialism