Gasparyan, D. E. «Ignoramus et ignorabimus»? Does Contemporary Antiphysicalism Have a Positive Program?

Abstract: The purpose of the present article is to find out whether the contemporary antiphysicalism has a positive program and to analyze anti-physical solutions of the mind-body problem in the contemporary philosophy of mind. Using the approaches of such cotemporary analytical philosophers as Colin McGinn, Joseph Levine, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers, the author evaluates the ratio of negative and positive component in modern anti-physical approaches and determines the role of skepticism in their theories. Research methodology includes the historical descriptive method and the method of comparative studies which, within the framework of the present research, involves the comparison of physicalistic and antiphysicalistic approaches to the mind-body issues. The present research is based on contemporary English and American antiphysicalistic programs in the philosophy of mind including substantial dualism and different kinds of substantial dualism, property dualism or naturalistic dualism, epistemological skepticism, interactionism, qualitatism and a few others. The conclusions are the following: although today antiphysicalism gives very serious criticism of physicalism, the positions of the later are still strong. Whether this situation will change depends on how convincing the positive program of antiphysicalists will turn out to be. The results of the research allow to better understand a number of important writings on physicalistic and antiphysicalistic programs in contemporary analytical philosophy of mind. The novelty and originality of the research is in viewing antiphysicalistic programs in terms of contemporary English-American philosophy of mind, critical analysis of the main thought processes and key arguments of contemporary English-American antiphysicalism and description of many works that have been written by modern English and American philosophers recently but haven’t been translated into Russian yet.

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