Reductive Physicalism: What Is Phenomenal Consciousness?

In life, the average person will undergo numerous subjective experiences. These experiences can be sensational, perceptual, and even imaginary. Together, these “what it's like” experiences are the general make up of what is known to be phenomenal consciousness. Consciousness emerges from the minds awareness and perceptions of self and the external world. The phenomenal properties associated with consciousness emerge from the underlying experiential states of the mind when going through physical processes. However, phenomenal consciousness poses a hard problem for philosophers to provide a coherent explanation for. The problem is that there is no clear understanding of how consciousness can surface from purely physical neural processes, let
Reductive physicalists claims that altogether conscious phenomena can be reduced to physiological principles in neuroscience. This means to say that mental processes can be thoroughly explained through the physical processes of the brain, physical stimuli, and bodily reactions. However, this stance only gives the solution that there is no hard problem to begin with; mental states just are physical states. Unsatisfied with this conclusion, the non-reductive physicalist aims to prove that the mental supervenes on the physical, and is not ontologically reducible to the physical given that their properties are too distinct to be thrown together into the same explanation. Through this affirmation that the mental, in all of its states and structuring, cannot be understood solely through the physical, non-reductive physicalism chooses to acknowledge that there is a problem involving consciousness. However, the non-reductionist has three separate routes to take in selecting a plausible theory to how this supervening on the physical actually
This assents that although the microphysical network itself is causally closed, it is combined with these intrinsic phenomenal properties which play a causal role in consciousness. However, this brings forth questions as to how conscious phenomena can actually arise from the unification of proto-phenomenal properties within a microphysical system. To avoid this, another non-reductionist view that can be taken into account is type E dualism, or epiphenomenalism. This outlook involves the denial that phenomenal experiences can affect the microphysical network, while allowing for microphysical states to cause phenomenal ones. Yet this view too is counterintuitive, as we see in the case of an individual placing their hand on a hot stove. According to type E dualism, pain sensations would have no causal role in the removal of the hand from the burning surface, which ultimately goes against common sense. Furthermore, type E dualism’s theory of consciousness actually negates the awareness of being conscious in that the phenomenal states would have no causal role in allowing the belief of consciousness. This leaves only one more viable option for the non-reductionist to consider; type D Dualism, otherwise known as Cartesian interactionism. Similar to type E dualism, type D dualism