Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of Philosophy, 2021.
As substance dualism fell out of favor, philosophers became increasingly interested in making
sense of mind in purely physicalist terms. Along the way, the physicalist project has hit a few
snags. Perhaps the most popular challenge was presented by Frank Jackson’s Mary’s Room
thought experiment, wherein Mary, a brilliant color scientist, comes to know all of the physical
facts about color whilst confined to a black-and-white room. Once released, Mary is presented
with a ripe tomato. The intuition is that Mary, upon seeing a colored object for the first time,
has learned something new, but what she has learned apparently cannot be accounted for by
physicalism, thereby leaving an explanatory gap between mind and matter. There are those, like
Joseph Levine, who believe the explanatory gap to be a necessary consequence of any physicalist
theory of mind. I disagree, and in this dissertation, I aim to show that at least one physicalist
theory of mind can close the gap. However, it requires embracing a theory that physicalists are
hesitant to embrace: panpsychism.
