Explanatory gap

This, Kim says, is the main issue we face with the problem of the explanatory gap. How do we, say, derive 2md explain the fact that Sam will experience pain at t from the fact that Sam is in a certain neurophysiological state at t, when the term pain is not in the vocabulary of neurophysiology. Why is it that pain and not some other experiential state is realized by this particular neurophysiological state ... 

The features are (a) multiple realizability, (b) externalism, and (c) the existence of an explanatory gap between mental and physical facts. 

The phrase explanatory gap is from Joe Levine (1983), but the point that there is a problem with understanding how physical phenomena can constitute consciousness is as old as the philosophy of mind. 

At this point it may be useful to remind ourselves what is at stake in the exclusion argument. Various considerations (functionalism, multiple realization, externalism, explanatory gap) make M P persuasive. Also, there are scientifically compelling reasons to accept physicalism and Closure. Giving up mental causation is a last resort. So, Kim s argument is a paradox. Each o] M P, Closure, Mental Causation, and Exclusion is plausible, but together they are inconsistent. We proponents of NRP accept M P, Closure, and Mental Causation, so we have to reject Exclusion. 

A further way to fix the referent of the term phenomenal character is to say that it is what gives rise to the explanatory gap (Levine, 1983). Tell me everything you like about what goes on physically and functionally in someone who is experiencing red, and, it seems, you still won t have told me what it is like to experience red. For even after I have all the relevant physical and functional information, I can still intelligibly ask, Why do those physical and functional goings-on generate that phenomenal character (the phenomenal character of the experience of red) Why couldn t another phenomenal character be present ... 

Tye, Michael. 1999. Phenomenal consciousness The explanatory gap as cognitive illusion. Mind 108 705-725. 

Block, Ned, and Robert Stalnaker. 1999. Conceptual analysis, dualism, and the explanatory gap. Philosophical Review 108 1-46. 

ABSTRACT The new control system standard ISO 13849-1 deals with the theoretical probabilities of hypothetical individual events however, it avoids depicting them as relative frequencies. For the practical design engineers, a relative frequency approach is a more comprehensible form, because with the relative frequency a reconciliation with statistically acquired data is possible. This article closes some explanatory gaps caused by the one-sided emphasis on theoretical probability. In doing so, four contributions are provided in the context of field experience ... 

There are some scientists and philosophers who still claim that a model by definition "furnishes a concrete image" and "does not constitute a theory." 10 But if the model is the mathematical description, then the question of whether the model is the theory appears to become moot, since most people accept the view that rigorous mathematical deduction constitutes theory. For others, like Hesse and Kuhn, even if the model is a concrete image leading to the mathematical description, it still has explanatory or theoretical meaning, for, as Kuhn put it, "it is to Bohr s model, not to nature, that the various terms of the Schrodinger equation refer." 11 Indeed, as is especially clear from a consideration of mathematical models in social science, where social forces are modeled by functional relations or sets of mathematical entities, the mathematical model turns out to be so much simpler than the original that one immediately sees the gap between a "best theory" and the "real world." 12... 

The middle plot in Figure 8.1 shows the values predicted (asterisks) with the model shown in the upper right comer and the original observations (solid dots). The observations are distributed uniformly along the axis of the explanatory variable with no obvious gaps. This minimizes the chance of a few extreme observations having more influence on the model fitting than others. The coefficient of determination, r. ... 

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