Abstract

Conscious experiences are those that have a special feel, or in Thomas Nagel’s words: ‘It is something it is like to have them’. One version of the mind-body problem is to explain how physical-functional states can generate conscious experiences. In this paper, I present a type of theory called ‘Russellian physicalism’ that proposes that we cannot solve the mind-body problem because natural science cannot tell us about the categorical properties of physical entities which are necessary to know in order to explain qualia. I will argue that in order to avoid epiphenomenalism Russellian physicalism should adopt the Heil-Martin theory of dispositions. This theory claims that every disposition is identical to a categorical property. However, our conception of a property as a disposition does not describe it as it is in itself, that is, as a categorical property. Since we cannot know the dispositions considered as categorical properties, we cannot explain consciousness.