A postmodern physicalism that can accommodate experience

Abstract: While most previous physicalist approaches to the problem of
experience run afoul of Chalmers' logical supervenience argument, there is no a
priori reason - as Stoljar has shown - for all varieties of physicalism to be
ruled out tout court. However, since the bar has been raised rather high, any
new physicalism must show why it is accompanied by experience. Otherwise, the
explanatory gap remains. We address this problem using two moves. Drawing upon
recent work in quantum gravity, we begin with the notion of the physical world
as a quantum computer - or more simply as a multiverse. We point out that the
quantum computer conception of the multiverse is incomplete since it merely
specifies a measure on a set of possibilities - or possible worlds - with no
actual events. In our second move, we note that the postmodern critique of
experience faults phenomenology for not seeing the importance of perspective.
The postmodernist argues that raw experiences are never to be found. Instead,
experience is always situated within a particular perspective. Based on this, we
allow a set of physical perspectives to operate on the multiverse, thereby
generating - among other events - experience. Our new physicalism comprises a
set of perspectives and the multiverse - with both being entirely physical.
While physical perspectives may be counter-intuitive at first, we argue that
they are natural candidates to complete the physicalist picture and
simultaneously accommodate experience. 

An obvious question to ask at this juncture is: Why should physical perspectives
and their interaction with the multiverse generate experience? First, we can and
will argue that the definition of a physical perspective includes the generation
of experience; an experience occurs when a perspective interacts with the
multiverse. Next, the incompleteness of the multiverse allows us to specify a
new entity - perspectives - to complete the physicalist picture. To see why
physicalism can accommodate perspectives, it is important to realize that the
multiverse merely specifies a measure on possibilities. Actual events occur only
when perspectives - in their interaction with the multiverse - convert
possibilities into actualities. In this way, perspectives and possibilities form
an interacting base that is necessary for actual events. Furthermore, we can
expect a perspective to divide the multiverse into an interior and exterior.
Experience then is an interior event which is accessible only from a particular
perspective and exterior events are those which are accessible from different
perspectives. This notion of access - when an event is accessible and from which
perspective - plays an important role in our scheme [and we note that it plays
an important role in the philosophy of relativism (Hales, Kolbel, Bennigson) as
well]. However, this is entirely to be expected given the asymmetry of
experience. The crucial difference is that rather than posit a self or a first
person point of view to explain this epistemic asymmetry, we instead offer
perspectives and accessibility. The result is a postmodern physicalism with
experience and processes being supervenient on perspectives and the multiverse.

Abstract Keywords: experience, supervenience, quantum computer, multiverse,
perspectives, possibilities, accessibility, events, physicalism, relativism,
postmodern, phenomenology