- seCtIon sIx: seLF AnD otHeR
This distinction between the A and B teams is only Dennett’s way of having fun
with the major differences, and it skates over many subtler distinctions between
ways of explaining consciousness (Davies, 2008), but it still gets to the heart of a
major gulf. We can hear echoes of familiar arguments: those about qualia, zom-
bies, conscious inessentialism, AI, Mary the colour scientist, and the function of
consciousness, to mention just a few. They seem to lie at the heart of a distinction
that will not – so far – go away.
Chalmers distinguishes three types of view about consciousness: A, B, and C:
Type-A views hold that consciousness supervenes logically on the physical
Type-B are also materialist but reject logical supervenience on the physical
Type-C deny both logical supervenience and materialism.
Type-A views include eliminativist, behaviourist, and reductive functionalist
views; type-B include nonreductive versions of materialism which hold that con-
sciousness cannot be reductively explained even though it is physical; type-C
include various kinds of dualism, in which some sort of phenomenal properties
are taken to be irreducible. For the A-type, zombies are inconceivable and Mary
learns nothing about the world (though she may gain an ability) when she comes
out of her black-and-white room; for B-type, zombies are conceivable but meta-
physically impossible and Mary does learn something; for C-type, zombies are
possible and Mary learns something about non-physical facts. For Chalmers, even
though A and B are both materialist and C is not, the gap between A and B (is
consciousness logically supervenient?) is far greater than that between B and C
FIGURE 17.2 • The A and the B teams fight it out in the playground.
