Jaegwon Kim, in the philosophy of mind, suggested physicalism;Physicalism can be summarized like this; According to physicalism, everything in the world, including minds and consciousness, is ultimately made up of physical things and their interactions;Physicalism holds the principle of causal closure, which states that all physical events can be fully explained by physical causes; M1 causes M2 (M: mental events), and P1 causes P2 (P: physical events); P1 realizes M1, and P2 realizes M2; However, M1 does not causally affect P1; If P1 is the cause of P2 and M1 is the result of P1, then M2 is the result of P2;
One argument that challenges physicalism is the philosophical zombie idea; Imagine the famous thought experiment called the "zombie argument" proposed by David Chalmers; This world is physically identical to our own, including every physical process in people’s brains;
However, there is one difference: in this world, people do not have any conscious experiences;They act like us, talk like us, and even report having experiences, but they are all "zombies" with no inner consciousness;This argument points out that physicalism can only explain the "easy problems" of consciousness, but not the subjective "what it’s like" aspect;Even if the zombie sees the same red color, there is a lack of recognizing the red; That is, even if we see the same thing, each person’s perception of redness might differ;That’s what the zombie argument points out;