committed to physicalism. Unlike Type-A Materialists, however, Type-B Materialists do accept
inconceivability arguments often cited in support of the hard problem, but with a key caveat: that
inconceivability arguments give us insight only into how the human mind tends to conceptualize the
relationship between mind and matter, but not into what the true nature of this relationship actually
is.[43][52] According to this view, there is a gap between two ways of knowing (introspection and
neuroscience) that will not be resolved by understanding all the underlying neurobiology, but still believe
that consciousness and neurobiology are one and the same in reality.[43]
While Type-B Materialists all agree that intuitions about the hard problem are psychological rather than
ontological in origin, they differ as to whether our intuitions about the hard problem are innate or
culturally conditioned. This has been dubbed the "hard-wired/soft-wired distinction."[88][89] In relation to
Type-B Materialism, those who believe that our intuitions about the hard problem are innate (and
therefore common to all humans) subscribe to the "hard-wired view".[89] Those that believe our intuitions
are culturally conditioned subscribe to the "soft-wired view". Unless otherwise specified, the term Type-B
Materialism refers to the hard-wired view.[89]
Notable philosophers who subscribe to Type-B Materialism include David Papineau,[90] Joseph
Levine,[91] and Janet Levine.[55]
Joseph Levine (who formulated the notion of the explanatory gap) states: "The explanatory gap argument
doesn't demonstrate a gap in nature, but a gap in our understanding of nature."[91] He nevertheless
contends that full scientific understanding will not close the gap,[43] and that analogous gaps do not exist
for other identities in nature, such as that between water and H2O.[92] The philosophers Ned Block and
Robert Stalnaker agree that facts about what a conscious experience is like to the one experiencing it
cannot be deduced from knowing all the facts about the underlying physiology, but by contrast argue that
such gaps of knowledge are also present in many other cases in nature, such as the distinction between
water and H2O.[93][12]
To explain why these two ways of knowing (i.e. third-person scientific observation and first-person
introspection) yield such different understandings of consciousness, weak reductionists often invoke the
phenomenal concepts strategy, which argues the difference stems from our inaccurate phenomenal
concepts (i.e., how we think about consciousness), not from the nature of consciousness itself.[94][95] By
this view, the hard problem of consciousness stems from a dualism of concepts, not from a dualism of
properties or substances.[43]
Some consciousness researchers have argued that the hard problem is a cultural artifact, unique to
contemporary Western Culture. This is similar to Type-B Materialism, but it makes the further claim that
the psychological facts that cause us to intuit the hard problem are not innate, but culturally conditioned.
Notable researchers who hold this view include Anna Wierzbicka,[96] Hakwan Lau and Matthias
Michel.[97]
Wierzbicka (who is a linguist) argues that the vocabulary used by consciousness researchers (including
words like experience and consciousness) are not universally translatable, and are "parochially
English."[96] Weirzbicka calls David Chalmers out by name for using these words, arguing that if
The "hard-wired view"
The "soft-wired view"