explanatory gap

Consciousness is one of the main challenges of the philosophy of mind in the contemporary period; in other words, the big philosophical problem in the contemporary discourse is how consciousness is possible and how the brain causes it.This is called "hard problem," and the lack of explanation about it is "explanatory gap". In order to address the problems in the field of consciousness, Hasker has expressed the theory of mental substance emergence. According to him, consciousness is a mental substance that is created from matter through a complex process. But can this theory solve the problems of previous theories in the field of consciousness? In this article, the intellectual foundations of the followers of substance emergentism are first scrutinized. Subsequently, based on the analysis and investigation of the nature of consciousness, the challenges of consciousness and the answers provided are examined. It is determined that although Hasker and the followers of the theory of substance emergentism, by accepting the intuition of "self", have made an effective scientific effort to address some challenges, they have not been able to resolve the conflicts caused by the intuition of "self" and physicalism. Issues such as the cause of emergence, the duality of determinability and inexplicability, the relationship of irreducibility with causal reduction and suspension of laws, conflict with the principle of exclusion, and the independence or dependence of mental substance on matter are issues that the theory of the emergent mental substance has encountered.

“The problem of systemic evil” is a self-made concept belongs to Yujin Nagasawa. He unveiled in his article “The Problem of Evil for Atheists”. The main claim of the article is that evil is not limited to natural disasters and human catastrophes, even "the universe is based on evil" basically. He uses the famous example of Charles Darwin for his purpose, which is Ichneumonidae . The existence of this mosquito is a sign of excessive and gratuitous evil in the natural world and a clear evidence of the existence systemic evil in the universe, In this article, while explaining and analyzing his purpose of the " The problem of systemic evil ", we evaluate its contents by the content analysis method. In this regard, while taking advantage of the latest findings of the cognitive science and relying on Nigel's "explanatory gap principle", we seek to prove logically that basically we can have no understanding of the suffering of hosts of Ichneumonidae mosquito because pain understand by the mind ultimately, and since the mind is embodied, and the bodies are different, so there is no way for us to understand the pain of the victims of the Ichneumonidae mosquito, denial of benevolence to actions of God is not reasonable. In contrast, pastoral theology is introduced as a suitable alternative to confirm the incomprehensibility of pain, to be able to empathize with the suffering person based on the teachings of this type of theology.

The idea of ​​intuition, which is expressed in Suhrawardi's philosophy to explain the ontology of the soul and perception, can comprehensively justify perceptual phenomena. Muslim philosophers and Western thinkers have given various answers to the question of what perception and consciousness are. Among the answers, the two traditions of dualism and monism are more famous and efficient. The tradition of dualism, which is the belief of Muslim philosophers and conforms to religious teachings, has been expressed in various ways. Meanwhile, Suhrawardi's view, which is based on intuitive empirical perception of the soul and uses intuition as a method of studying the problems of the soul, has a greater ability to solve the problem of perception. The intuitive feature of Suhrawardi's view allows us to approach the issues of the soul with a direct understanding and offer an acceptable explanation for each of the problems. In this study, we try to answer the main question of what perception and consciousness are based on the illuminating attitude. Using descriptive-analytical method, this research has used the idea of intuition to understand and study the problems of perception.

Probably, the answer to the difficult problem of consciousness is one of the most complicated problems in the philosophy of mind. At the same time, consciousness is very familiar to us, but it seems difficult to explain it. So far, many theories have come up to answer the difficult problem of consciousness. One of these theories is the sensory-motor approach claims that the rules between sensory inputs and motor outputs are able to explain the phenomenal quality. Adherents of the neural workspace approach try to explain consciousness by separating personal and sub-personal space and consider consciousness to be the result of what happens at the personal level. Sensory-motor approaches have problems in explaining their claim. Degnar believe that the integration of sensory-motor and neural workspace solves the challenges of both well.

The research method in this article is descriptive and the challenges in both approaches have been addressed as much as possible.

Neural workspace theories alone face the challenge of considering only the internal aspects of the brain and neural processes responsible for creating consciousness. Although they can provide explanations about the neural correlates of consciousness, they cannot explain the quality of a experience tells us something. In contrast, embodied approaches tried to solve this problem by moving away from the idea that perception is something related to our brains. They try to attribute conscious understanding to a person with a body who is in a certain position and is interacting with the world. Oregan claims mastery of the sensorimotor rules that we acquire in interaction with the environment alone to explain How to get consciousness is enough, but despite the efforts of the organization, such a view has serious challenges. Although Degennar tries to create a coherent structure of these two theories, he does not reach the desired result. Therefore, the combination of these two views may be a relatively suitable explanation to describe the extroverted and introverted aspects of awareness, but it cannot explain the quality of consciousness. What these approaches should answer exactly is why combining these approaches and structuring them with each other creates a certain complexity, after which we get a phenomenal feeling. The combination of sensorimotor and workspace approaches, contrary to their claims, do not have the ability to respond to the absolute gap of explanation. The integration of such views may be able to provide descriptions about the comparative gap, but the question still remains, why are some of our experiences associated with consciousness?

According to sensorimotor approach, they have many descriptive problems in response to such a challenge. Although sensorimotor theories have relative success by combining bodily actions with the outside world and trying to distance themselves from the explanation of consciousness through brain processes, there is always this question. that all that is talked about as the discovery of meaning and consciousness, apart from the fact that it takes place in the brain or in our bodily interactions under a series of sensorimotor criteria, in what context does such views happen ? this view by discarding concepts such as the soul or The human ego considers such concepts responsible for the mysteriousness of the intellectual space regarding the way of perception, but they do not provide much explanation about the self that is discovering external meanings.

Based on the interaction between science and religion, Nancy Murphy turns to a special version of non-transitive physicalism that uses empirical science, physicalism, and the Bible to formulate her holistic physicalism; A middle position between essential dualism and illusionism that defines humans as spiritual beings and hides the problem of the mind within it. Murphy brings the soul into holistic physicalism with his theological assumptions and not with scientific evidence and philosophical arguments. The distinguishing feature of non-transmission physicalism from transmission physicalism is the attention to the explanatory gap in the issue of "supervenience". Holistic physicalism has not filled this gap and has only changed the form of the problem from explaining the relationship between human parts to explaining the relationship between human dimensions. Therefore, combining the universal and weak perceptions of supervenience, along with the positive and negative teachings of holistic physicalism, that is, the use of pure holistic physicalism and avoiding introducing theological presuppositions in a philosophical theory, can be used to solve the problem.

Physicalists have given several responses to anti-physicalist arguments based on epistemic/explanatory gaps. One of the most critical answers has become known as the phenomenal concepts strategy. Proponents of this strategy embrace the explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal facts. Still, appealing to the special nature of phenomenal concepts, they try to explain why we confront this gap. Chalmers has presented an argument in the form of a dilemma against this strategy. He argues that each horn of the dilemma results in the failure of the strategy. In this paper, I will explain Chalmers’ argument. Focusing on the second horn, I will attempt to show that one of the premises of his arguments faces the problem; then, I will argue that following the second horn, the strategy could be successful, even if one of the conditions he takes necessary for the success of the strategy is not met.

Most of the scientific answers given to the problem of consciousness have either slipped towards reductionism or tried to explain it through functionalism. The common deficiency of most of them is ignoring the phenomenological and qualitative aspects of consciousness. The view of neural Darwinism has the advantage that, despite being scientific, it leaves aside both reductionist and functionalist perspectives. This view seeks to explain consciousness through the mechanism of natural selection in forming neural groups. Although this theory overcomes most of the contemporary challenges that consciousness has faced, such as Blind-sight, it leaves the hard problem or the explanation of Qualia untouched. In this regard, this view suffers from a kind of inadequacy of empirical data to determine the theory. In this article, a proposal is made to complete and develop this theory in order to overcome the mentioned deficiency. This is done by introducing a Multiple Supervenience that is rooted in Dispositionalism. This relationship relates basic properties to higher-order properties but differs from the classical supervenience in that it can explain the specific causal relationship between levels. The paper shows that this Multiple Supervenience is applicable to the theory of neuronal Darwinism. In order to explain consciousness, Neural Darwinism uses the potential of individual neurons or groups of neurons and the stimuli obtained through external sensors, as well as emergent properties.

By doubting the materiality of perceptions based on the problem of explanatory gap, a rational basis is provided for criticizing Ibn Sīnā’s arguments regarding the impossibility of the immateriality of particular perceptions, the demonstration of possibility, and also the necessity of the immateriality of different types of perception. The material interpretation of particular perceptions – whether sensory or imaginal – is among Ibn Sīnā’s views in the ontology of perception. Through providing some arguments on the impossibility of the immateriality of particular perceptive experiences, he believes that the only possible state with respect to such experiences is their immateriality. On the other hand, hypothesizing the existence of a possible world in which a metaphysical state such as pain can be imagined in the absence of a neural process makes the distinction between mental state and neural process possible. This explanatory gap between them makes the immateriality of perception possible through negating the identity of these two phenomena. Given the distinction between physical and metaphysical states and the necessity of the immateriality of perception based on various philosophical arguments, the materiality of particular perception is debatable. Therefore, Mullā Ṣadrā’s idea of the immateriality of sensory and imaginal perception, similar to rational perceptions, presents a more comprehensive explanation of perception and the soul. This paper focus on a study of the whatness and ontology of particular perceptions, the discussion of which is subcategorized under the problem of the soul-body relation in the process of perception.

Considering Ṣadrā’s view on the abstraction of perception and the arguments he has put forward, a reasoned answer to the riddle of the explanatory gap is provided. Ṣadrā’s explanation of perception and the soul is included in the dualistic interpretation, but his interpretation justifies the issue of perception and its quality more coherently, considering the abstract dignity of the soul and the fact that the soul is the source of any consciousness. On the other hand, Levin emphasizes the distinction between the nature of pain and the neural process by formulating the riddle of the explanatory gap. In his view, an explanatory gap is created between the realization of the phenomenon of perception and the similar neural processes that this gap cannot be filled based on existing neural data. The purpose of this study is to investigate the success of transcendent wisdom (Ḥikmat al-muta'aliya) in providing a reasoned answer to this issue and filling the above-mentioned explanatory gap through the rules of transcendental wisdom. Ṣadrā’s view of the abstractness of perception seems to provide a reasoned answer to the riddle of the explanatory gap by presenting it in a dualistic interpretation and by looking at the soul as a truth distinct from the material body but at the same time united with it.

Nature of the mind, mental states, and the relation between these states and body and bodily states are among the oldest and most difficult philosophical problems which have been always focus of philosophical studies concerning the mind (or soul), and philosophical systems, depending on their cosmological foundations, have spoken about them. In the present age and in the contemporary philosophy of mind, these issues are the subject of various physicalist views or views which have adopted somehow materialist approaches. This article seeks to, after a brief mention to the meaning of the term "physicalism", focus on the problems faced by this view. "Conscious states" of our mind, and to put it more precisely some kind of consciousness called "phenomenal consciousness", play a critical role in the objections posed against physicalism. While exploring various meanings of consciousness, the present writing will focus on consciousness in its phenomenal sense and the most important problems caused by it which reject materialism or physicalism, and its main goal is, after describing three classical and important arguments against physicalism, exploration, criticism, and, to some extent, defense of these arguments. In this way, the present writing will emphasize that these three arguments, though they may be defended, merely briefly touch these characteristics.