by b_b

At the end of his book on Wittgenstein, Frank tells a story about a philosophical paper (imagined or real, it is not clear) with the title “Qualia and Materialism —Closing the Explanatory Gap.” The premise of the paper is twofold: first, there is a gap between how we experience the world — our subjective, conscious experiences (qualia) — and the scientific explanation of the material forces that constitute nature; and, second, that such a gap can potentially be closed through one, overarching theoretical explanation. Frank goes on to point out that if we can imagine such a paper, then we can also imagine papers called “The Big Bang and Me — Closing the Explanatory Gap” or “Natural Selection and Me — Closing the Explanatory Gap.”