This paper challenges the soundness of the two-dimensional conceivability argument against the derivation of phenomenal truths from physical truths in light of a hyperintensional, ground-theoretic regimentation of the ontology of consciousness. The regimentation demonstrates how ontological dependencies between truths about consciousness and about physics cannot be witnessed by epistemic constraints, when the latter are recorded by the conceivability—i.e., the epistemic possibility—thereof. Generalizations and other aspects of the philosophical significance of the hyperintensional regimentation are further examined.

In his unpublished 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, Saul Kripke offers a knowledge argument against materialism focusing on deaf people who lack knowledge of auditory experience. Kripke's argument is a precursor of Frank Jackson's better‐known knowledge argument against materialism (1982). The paper sets out Kripke's argument, brings out its interest and philosophical importance, and explores some similarities and differences between Kripke's knowledge argument and Jackson's.

I argue that an identity theorist can successfully resist a Kripkean modal argument by employing what I call a metaconceptual move. Furthermore, by showing how this move fails to apply straightforwardly to Chalmers' argument, I clarify the nature of the threat presented by Chalmers and how it differs from a Kripkean modal argument.

In this paper I discuss three problems of consciousness. The first two have been dubbed the “Hard Problem” and the “Harder Problem”. The third problem has received less attention and I will call it the “Hardest Problem”. The Hard Problem is a metaphysical and explanatory problem concerning the nature of conscious states. The Harder Problem is epistemological, and it concerns whether we can know, given physicalism, whether some creature physically different from us is conscious. The Hardest Problem is a problem (...) about reference. Recently some philosophers – among them David Papineau – who advocate a physicalist approach to both the Hard and the Harder problem have called into question the common sense assumption that phenomenal concepts – subjective concepts that we apply directly to experience – refer determinately (modulo vagueness) to real properties that can be instantiated in minds other than my own. The Hardest Problem is the problem of explaining how, given physicalism, this assumption could be true. In this paper I explore how these three problems appear from the perspective of a physicalist approach to consciousness based on Brian Loar’s account of phenomenal concepts, recently dubbed the “phenomenal concept strategy”. My contention is that this approach can go quite far in handling not just the first two problems but the Hardest Problem as well. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the foundations of epistemic modality. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The dissertation demonstrates how phenomenal consciousness and gradational possible-worlds models in Bayesian perceptual psychology relate to epistemic modal space. The dissertation demonstrates, then, how epistemic modality relates to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality; deontic modality; logical modality; the types of mathematical modality; to the (...) epistemic status of undecidable propositions and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the apriori-aposteriori distinction; to the modal profile of rational propositional intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a modal mental state. Examining the nature of epistemic logic itself, I develop a novel approach to conditions of self-knowledge in the setting of the modal μ-calculus, as well as novel epistemicist solutions to Curry's, the liar, and the knowability paradoxes. Solutions to previously intransigent issues concerning the first-person concept; the distinction between fundamental and derivative truths; and the unity of intention and its role in decision theory, are developed along the way. (shrink)

According to a posteriori physicalism, phenomenal properties are physical properties, despite the unbridgeable cognitive gap that holds between phenomenal concepts and physical concepts. Current debates about a posteriori physicalism turn on what I call “the perspicuity principle”: it is impossible for a suitably astute cognizer to possess concepts of a certain sort—viz., narrow concepts—without being able to tell whether the referents of those concepts are the same or different. The perspicuity principle tends to strike a posteriori physicalists as implausibly rationalistic; (...) further, a posteriori physicalists maintain that even if the principle is applicable to many narrow concepts, phenomenal concepts have unique features that render them inferentially isolated from other narrow concepts ). I argue, on the contrary, that the case for the perspicuity principle is quite strong. Moreover, not only have versions of the PCS repeatedly failed, likely, all versions will, given the strange combination of lucidity and opacity that the PCS has to juggle. I conclude that a posteriori physicalists currently lack a principled objection to classic anti-physicalist arguments. (shrink)

Discussion of the challenge that acquaintance with the nature of experience poses to physicalism.

In the early twentieth century, Hilda Diana Oakeley set out a new kind of British idealism. Oakeley is an idealist in the sense that she holds mind to actively contribute to the features of experience, but she also accepts that there is a world independent of mind. One of her central contributions to the idealist tradition is her thesis that minds construct our experiences using memory. This paper explores the theses underlying her idealism, and shows how they are intricately connected (...) to the wider debates of her period. I go on to explain how the parts of Oakeley's idealism are connected to further areas of her thought – specifically, her views on history and her growing block theory of time – to provide a sense of Oakeley's philosophy as a system. As there is no existing literature on Oakeley, this paper aims to open a path for further scholarship. (shrink)

Though physicalism remains the most popular position in the metaphysics of mind today, there is still considerable debate over how to retain a plausible account of mental concepts consistently with a physicalistic world view. Philip Goff (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89(2), 191–209, 2011) has recently argued that physicalism cannot give a plausible account of our phenomenal concepts, and that as such, physicalism should be rejected. In this paper I hope to do three things, firstly I shall use some considerations from (...) ontology to rebut Goff’s argument and consider some objections and replies. Secondly, I shall outline a version of a posteriori physicalism about phenomenal consciousness which draws on this particular ontology. Thirdly, I shall give support to this version of physicalism by arguing that it marries well with prominent theories in cognitive science, and has important advantages over other versions of a posteriori physicalism. (shrink)

It's a common idea in philosophy that we possess a peculiar kind of "phenomenal concept" by which we can think about our conscious states in "inner" and "direct" ways, as for example, when I attend to the way a current pain feels and think about this feeling as such. Such phenomenal ways of thinking figure in a variety of theoretical contexts. The bulk of this article discusses their use in a certain strategy – the phenomenal concept strategy – for defending (...) the physicalist view that conscious states are reducible to brain states. It also considers, more briefly, how phenomenal concepts have been used to defend dualism about consciousness, and how they have been used to explain our special access to our consciousness. It concludes with a discussion about whether, and in what more precise sense of the term, we at all possess "phenomenal concepts" of our conscious states. (shrink)

Imagism about Phenomenal Thought is (roughly) the view that there is some concept *Q* (for some sensory quality Q) that we can employ only while we experience the quality Q. I believe this view is theoretically significant, is or can be made intuitively appealing, and is explicitly or implicitly accepted by many contemporary philosophers However, there is no good reason to accept it. Or so I argue.

Humans can think about their conscious experiences using a special class of ?phenomenal? concepts. Psychophysical identity statements formulated using phenomenal concepts appear to be contingent. Kripke argued that this intuited contingency could not be explained away, in contrast to ordinary theoretical identities where it can. If the contingency is real, property dualism follows. Physicalists have attempted to answer this challenge by pointing to special features of phenomenal concepts that explain the intuition of contingency. However no physicalist account of their distinguishing (...) features has proven to be satisfactory. Leading accounts rely on there being a phenomenological difference between tokening a physical-functional concept and tokening a phenomenal concept. This paper shows that existing psychological data undermine that claim. The paper goes on to suggest that the recalcitrance of the intuition of contingency may instead by explained by the limited means people typically have for applying their phenomenal concepts. Ways of testing that suggestion empirically are proposed. (shrink)

Alleged self-evidence aside, conceivability arguments are one of the main reasons in favor of the claim that there is a Hard Problem. These arguments depend on the appealing Kripkean intuition that there is no difference between appearances and reality in the case of consciousness. I will argue that this intuition rests on overlooking a distinction between cognitive access and consciousness, which has received recently important empirical support. I will show that there are good reasons to believe that the intuition is (...) misguided—at least on the reading that the conceivability arguments require—and hence that the arguments are unsupported. This, in turn, alleviates the Hard Problem but leaves us with what I think is a not easy problem. (shrink)

In Max Black’s Objection to Mind–Body Identity, Ned Block seeks to offer a definitive treatment of property dualism arguments that exploit modes of presentation. I will argue that Block’s central response to property dualism is confused. The property dualist can happily grant that mental modes of presentation have a hidden physical nature. What matters for the property dualist is not the hidden physical side of the property, but the apparent mental side. Once that ‘thin’ side is granted, the property dualist (...) has won. I conclude that although Block is wrong to think that the property dualist must argue for so-called thin mental properties, Block, and the physicalist, are able to resist property dualism. But any attempt to bolster this resistance and do more than dogmatically assert the crucial identity runs a serious risk of undermining the physicalism it is meant to save. (shrink)

An influential thesis in contemporary philosophy of mind is that subjectivity is best conceived as inner awareness of qualia. has argued that this unique subjective awareness generates a paradox which resists empirical explanation. On account of this “paradox of subjective duality,” Levine concludes that the hardest part of the hard problem of consciousness is to explain how anything like a subjective point of view could arise in the world. Against this, I argue that the nature of subjective thought is not (...) correctly characterized as inner awareness, that a non-paradoxical approach to the first-person perspective is available, and that the problem about subjectivity should be distinguished from the perennial problem of qualia or phenomenal properties. (shrink)

This paper presents a distinctively metaphysical version of the problem of other minds. The main source of this version of the problem lies in the principle that, when it comes to consciousness, no distinction can sensibly be drawn between appearance and reality. I will argue that, unless we want to call that principle into question, we should seriously consider the possibility of accepting the conclusion that other minds are not like our own. This option is less problematic than it might (...) seem at first if we are willing to reconceive facts of consciousness as subjective rather than objective in nature. -/- . (shrink)

This paper argues, not that physicalism is wrong, but that it is irrational. The paper defines standards of rationality, both metaphysical and epistemological, that physicalism necessarily inherits from science. Then it assesses physicalist efforts to naturalize consciousness in light of these. It concludes that physicalism allows its metaphysics to outrun its epistemology, in defiance of applicable standards, revealing a fundamental incoherence in the doctrine. The paper also briefly reviews other naturalization programs, to claim that physicalism, unlike the sciences, hasn’t proved (...) fruitful. (shrink)

It is often held that in imagining experiences we exploit a special imagistic way of representing mentality—one that enables us to think about mental states in terms of what it is like to have them. According to some, when this way of thinking about the mind is paired with more objective means, an explanatory gap between the phenomenal and physical features of mental states arises. This paper advances a view along those lines, but with a twist. What many take for (...) a special imagistic way of thinking about experiences is instead a special way of misconstruing them. It is this tendency to misrepresent experiences through the use of imagery that gives rise to the appearance of an explanatory gap. The pervasiveness and tenacity of this misrepresentational reflex can be traced to its roots in a particular heuristic for monitoring and remembering the mental states of others. The arguments together amount to a new path for defending the transparency of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Both a priori physicalism and a posteriori physicalism combine a metaphysical and an epistemological thesis. They agree about the metaphysical thesis: our world is wholly physical. Most agree that this requires everything that there is must be necessitated by the sort of truths described by physics. If we call the conjunction of the basic truths of physics P, all physicalists agree that P entails for any truth Q. Where they disagree is whether or not this entailment can be known a (...) priori. The a priori physicalist says it can, the a posteriori physicalist says it cannot. Though a posteriori physicalism is probably the dominant view, it is really a surprising and somewhat unlikely stance. In this article, the nature of the view is discussed, and two arguments are presented that should cause us to look again at the potential of a priori physicalism. (shrink)

Is it rational to believe that the mind is identical to the brain? Identity theorists say it is (or looks like it will be, once all the neuroscientific evidence is in), and they base this claim on a general epistemic route to belief in identity. I re-develop this general route and defend it against some objections. Then I discuss how rational belief in mind–brain identity, obtained via this route, can be threatened by an appropriately adjusted version of the anti-physicalist knowledge (...) argument. Responses to this threat usually appeal either to different modes of presentation or to phenomenal concepts. But neither type of response is satisfactory. I provide a novel response, which appeals to an innocuous epistemic peculiarity of phenomenal states, namely their, as I shall call it, evidential insulation. (shrink)

Perceptual disjunctivism, as I regard it in this paper, is the view that veridical perceptions and hallucinations, while indistinguishable via introspection, are states of fundamentally different kinds. This fundamental difference can be spelled out in various ways. According to the view I will be concerned with, it is a fundamental difference in the personal-level structure of both states. Against this version of disjunctivism, I will raise a new challenge. It is a variant of what can be seen as the standard (...) challenge against disjunctivism: how to do justice to the indistinguishability of veridical perceptions and hallucinations. It differs, however, from common versions of this challenge in where it locates the potential incompatibility of disjunctivism with the relevant fact of indistinguishability. Commonly, it is the disjunctivist assumption of a fundamental difference between both kinds of states which is regarded as incompatible with the indistinguishability of these states. In contrast, I will suggest that if hallucinations and veridical perceptions differed in the way proposed by structural disjunctivism, this difference would induce a corresponding difference in the psychological processes of their introspection and that the assumption of such a difference in the manner of introspection is most likely incompatible with a properly formulated indistinguishability claim. (shrink)

The phenomenal character of conscious experience has long been regarded as the major problem for physicalist accounts of consciousness. In recent years, defenders of physicalism have typically been relying on the so-called Phenomenal Concept Strategy to avoid dualism. In this paper, we argue with PCS that cognitive-physicalistic explanations can account for the peculiarities of phenomenal character. However, we think that the conceptual features PCS investigates are not the genuine causes of the special characteristics of phenomenal consciousness but only symptoms, which (...) can themselves be explained in terms of the features of the sensory-perceptual representations underlying conscious experiences, namely that some, but not all, of these states are representationally unstructured. (shrink)

A celebrated problem for representationalist theories of phenomenal character is that, given externalism about content, these theories lead to externalism about phenomenal character. While externalism about content is widely accepted, externalism about phenomenal character strikes many philosophers as wildly implausible. Even if internally identical individuals could have different thoughts, it is said, if one of them has a headache, or a tingly sensation, so must the other. In this paper, I argue that recent work on phenomenal concepts reveals that, contrary (...) to appearances, this standard conjunction of externalism about content and internalism about phenomenal character is ultimately untenable on other models of phenomenal character as well, including even “qualia realism.” This would be significant for a number of reasons. The first is patent: it would undermine a primary objection to representationalism. The fact that representationalism is incompatible with the conjunction would be no serious problem for representationalism if no other plausible model of phenomenal character is compatible with it. The second is that the many philosophers who embrace the conjunction would be forced to abandon one of the two views; externalism would be true either of both content and phenomenal character, or of neither. Likewise, those philosophers who have taken a stance on only one of the two internalism/externalism debates would have to be seen as thereby committed to a particular stance on the other. The third reason stems from the fact that qualia realism typically goes hand in hand with internalism about phenomenal character. To the extent that it does, my argument would reveal that qualia realism is itself in tension with externalism about content. This would perhaps be the most surprising result of all. (shrink)

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy offers the physicalist perhaps the most promising means of explaining why the connection between mental facts and physical facts appears to be contingent even though it is not. In this article, we show that the large body of evidence suggesting that our concepts are often embodied and grounded in sensorimotor systems speaks against standard forms of the PCS. We argue, nevertheless, that it is possible to formulate a novel version of the PCS that is thoroughly in (...) keeping with embodied cognition, focuses on features of physical concepts, and succeeds in explaining the appearance of contingency. (shrink)

It is common for an object to present different colour appearances to different perceivers, even when the perceivers and viewing conditions are normal. For example, a Munsell chip might look unique green to you and yellowish green to me in normal viewing conditions. In such cases, there are three possibilities. Ecumenism: both experiences are veridical. Nihilism: both experiences are non-veridical. Inegalitarianism: one experience is veridical and the other is non-veridical. Perhaps the most important objection to inegalitarianism is the ignorance objection, (...) according to which inegalitarianism should be rejected because it is committed to the existence of unknowable colour facts. The goal of this paper is to show that ecumenists are also committed to unknowable colour facts. More specifically, I argue that, with the exception of colour eliminativism, all major philosophical theories of colour are committed to unknowable colour facts. (shrink)

Many contemporary physicalists concede to dualists that conscious subjects have distinctive “phenomenal concepts” of the phenomenal qualities of their experiences. Indeed, they contend that idiosyncratic characteristics of these concepts facilitate responses to influential anti-physicalist arguments. Like some some other critics of this approach, James Tartaglia maintains that phenomenal concepts express contents that conflict with physicalism, but as a physicalist, the moral he distinctively draws from this is that phenomenal concepts misrepresent. He contends further that the contemporary physicalists’ account cannot accommodate (...) this feature, and that in consequence, physicalists should abandon phenomenal concepts and return to the identity theory championed by Place and Smart in the 1950s. I respond to Tartaglia by identifying lacunae in his interpretation of contemporary physicalism and arguing that phenomenal concepts as conceived by the contemporary physicalists do not express content... (shrink)

Most philosophers, including all materialists I know of, believe that I am a complex thing?a thing with parts?and that my mental life is (or is a result of) the interaction of these parts. These philosophers often believe that I am a body or a brain, and my mental life is (or is a product of) brain activity. In this paper, I develop and defend a novel argument against this view. The argument turns on certainty, that highest epistemic status that a (...) precious few of our beliefs enjoy. For example, on the basis of introspection, I am certain that I am not in fierce pain right now. But if I am a complex thing like a body or a brain, then introspection might be a causal series of events extended in time. And any such process could go awry. So, if introspection is such a process, then I could gain good evidence that the introspective process has gone awry and that I am, contrary to appearances, feeling fierce pain right now. Therefore, the view that I am a complex thing like a body or a brain forces open the possibility that I cannot be certain that I am not feeling fierce pain right now. Since that is clearly not an open possibility, it follows that I am not a complex thing. I conclude by responding to three objections. (shrink)

In the standard thought experiments, dualism strikes many philosophers as true, including many non-dualists. This ‘striking’ generates prima facie justification: in the absence of defeaters, we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be, i.e. we ought to be dualists. In this paper, I examine several proposed undercutting defeaters for our dualist intuitions. I argue that each proposal fails, since each rests on a false assumption, or requires empirical evidence that it lacks, or overgenerates defeaters. By the (...) end, our prima facie justification for dualism remains undefeated. I close with one objection concerning the dialectical role of rebutting defeaters, and I argue that the prospects for a successful rebutting defeater for our dualist intuitions are dim. Since dualism emerges undefeated, we ought to believe it. (shrink)

It has long been widely agreed that some concepts can be possessed only by those who have undergone a certain type of phenomenal experience. Orthodoxy among contemporary philosophers of mind has it that these phenomenal concepts provide the key to understanding many disputes between physicalists and their opponents, and in particular offer an explanation of Mary’s predicament in the situation exploited by Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. I reject the orthodox view; I deny that there are phenomenal concepts. My arguments exploit (...) the sort of considerations that are typically used to motivate externalism about mental content. Although physicalists often appeal to phenomenal concepts to defend their view against the knowledge argument, I argue that this is a mistake. The knowledge argument depends on phenomenal concepts; if there are no phenomenal concepts, then the knowledge argument fails. (shrink)

According to social externalism, it is possible to possess a concept not solely in virtue of one’s intrinsic properties but also in virtue of relations to one’s linguistic community. Derek Ball (2009) argues, in effect, that (i) social externalism extends to our concepts of colour experience and (ii) this fact undermines both the knowledge argument against physicalism and the most popular physicalist response to it, known as the phenomenal concept strategy. I argue that Ball is mistaken about (ii) even granting (...) (i). The knowledge argument and the phenomenal concept strategy might have to be modified to make them consistent with social externalism, but not in fundamental or detrimental ways. (shrink)

Physicalism is standardly construed as a form of monism, on which all concrete phenomena fall under one fundamental type. It is natural to think that monism, and therefore physicalism, is committed to a supervenience claim. Monism is true only if all phenomena supervene on a certain fundamental type of phenomena. Physicalism, as a form of monism, specifies that these fundamental phenomena are physical. But some argue that physicalism might be true even if the world is disorderly, i.e., not ordered by (...) supervenience relations in the way commonly supposed (Montero in J Philos 110:92–110, 2013; Leuenberger in Inquiry 57:151–174, 2014; Montero and Brown in Topoi 37(3):523–532, 2018; Zhong in Philos Stud 178(5):1529–1544, 2021). Unless these authors intend to challenge the claim that physicalism is a type of monism—a claim so central to the dialectic in philosophy of mind that rejecting it risks changing the subject—they are committed to challenging a supervenience requirement for monism. We argue that monism entails that there are substantial supervenience relations among concrete phenomena: relations that would not obtain in a disorderly world. Our argument thus has implications for debates about physicalism and supervenience, and sheds light on an under-discussed issue: what is implied by classifying a theory in the philosophy of mind as a form of monism? We also argue that physicalism’s commitment to monism creates problems for _via negativa_ physicalism, on which the physical is characterized negatively. (shrink)

How does one know the phenomenal character of one’s own experience? I aim to present and defend a new view of the epistemology of qualia that addresses this issue. My view results from a reworking of Dretske’s displaced perception model. The guiding line is the key Wittgensteinian insight of his Private Language Argument, namely the claim that no inner perception of qualia can justify our corresponding qualia beliefs. My reworking of the original model starts with the rejection of Dretske’s representationalism, (...) as well as any other metaphysical views about the ultimate nature of qualia. The reworking of the displaced perception model I am proposing is supposed to be compatible with any available metaphysical view on qualia. The second step consists of rejecting the epistemological misgivings of the original model, namely the view that knowing qualia requires “connecting beliefs” along with “meta-representations.” Yet, Dretske’s crucial mistake has been to force knowledge of qualia into the “belief-box.” As a matter of fact, there is only one belief involved in introspecting qualia, namely the qualia-belief itself. The third final step is this. Assuming the key Wittgensteinian insight, I argue that introspection of qualia is a process that is both epis- temically reliable and automatic. It is reliable because it dispenses with justification of any beliefs whatsoever. Moreover, it is automatic because it also dispenses with reflexive connecting beliefs. For example, it takes nonconceptual awareness of the color blue as an input and automatically yields the belief that phenomenal blue is the conscious character of my experience of the sky as an output just by employing the concept BLUE. (shrink)

How does one know the phenomenal character of one’s own experience? I aim to present and defend a new view of the epistemology of qualia that addresses this issue. My view results from a reworking of Dretske’s displaced perception model. The guiding line is the key Wittgensteinian insight of his Private Language Argument, namely the claim that no inner perception of qualia can justify our corresponding qualia-beliefs. My reworking of the original model starts with the rejection of Dretske’s representationalism, as (...) well as any other metaphysical views about the ultimate nature of qualia. The reworking of the displaced perception model I am proposing is supposed to be compatible with any available meta- physical view on qualia. The second step consists of rejecting the epistemological misgivings of the original model, namely the view that knowing qualia requires “connecting beliefs” along with “meta-representations.” Yet, Dretske’s crucial mistake has been to force knowledge of qualia into the “belief-box.” As a matter of fact, there is only one belief involved in intro- specting qualia, namely the qualia-belief itself. The third final step is this. Assuming the key Wittgensteinian insight, I argue that introspection of qualia is a process that is both epis- temically reliable and automatic. It is reliable because it dispenses with justification of any beliefs whatsoever. Moreover, it is automatic because it also dispenses with reflexive con- necting beliefs. For example, it takes nonconceptual awareness of the color blue as an input and automatically yields the belief that phenomenal blue is the conscious character of my experience of the sky as an output just by employing the concept BLUE. (shrink)

Frankish positions his view, illusionism about qualia (a.k.a. eliminativist physicalism), in opposition to what he calls radical realism (dualism and neutral monism) and conservative realism (a.k.a. non-eliminativist physicalism). Against radical realism, he upholds physicalism. But he goes along with key premises of the Gap Arguments for radical realism, namely, 1) that epistemic/explanatory gaps exist between the physical and the phenomenal, and 2) that every truth should be perspicuously explicable from the fundamental truth about the world; and he concludes that because (...) physicalism is true, there could be no phenomenal truths, and no qualia. I think he is wrong to accept 2); and even if he was right to accept it, the more plausible response would be not to deny the existence of qualia but to deny physicalism. In either case, denying the existence of qualia is the wrong answer. I present a physicalist realist alterative that refutes premise 2 of the Gap Argument; I also make a general case against the scientism that accompanies Frankish’s metaphysics. (shrink)

This article is about the special, subjective concepts we apply to experience, called “phenomenal concepts”. They are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. Conscious experience strike many philosophers as philosophically problematic and difficult to accommodate within a physicalistic metaphysics. Second, PCs are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. The sense that there is something special about PCs (...) is very closely tied up with features of the epistemic access they afford to qualia. When we deploy phenomenal concepts introspectively to some phenomenally conscious experience as it occurs, we are said to be acquainted with our own conscious experiences. Accounts of PCs either have to explain the acquaintance relation, or acquaintance with our phenomenal experiences has to be denied. PCs have received much attention in recent philosophy of mind mainly because they figure in arguments for dualism and in physicalist responses to these arguments. The main topic of this article is to explore different accounts of phenomenal concepts and their role in recent debates over the metaphysical status of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer (...) while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides support for physicalism. (shrink)

Confronted with the apparent explanatory gap between physical processes and consciousness, there are many possible reactions. Some deny that any explanatory gap exists at all. Some hold that there is an explanatory gap for now, but that it will eventually be closed. Some hold that the explanatory gap corresponds to an ontological gap in nature.

Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained. This gives rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gulf between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this essay presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. This dual-process model, we suggest, provides an important (...) part of the explanation for why dualism is so attractive and the explanatory gap so vexing. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we think about our (...) phenomenal experiences. In this essay, the author examines David Chalmers' master argument against the PCS and the objections raised against this argument by Peter Carruthers, Bénédicte Veillet and Katalin Balog in defending the PCS. While the author finds these objections to be successful defences of the PCS, the author shares Balog's belief that in this regard, the debate between the physicalists and anti-physicalists is a stalemate. (shrink)

This paper is both systematic and historical in nature. From a historical viewpoint, I aim to show that to establish Wittgenstein’s claim that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” there is an enthymeme in Wittgenstein’s private language argument overlooked in the literature, namely Wittgenstein’s suggestion that both perceptual and bodily experiences are _transparent_ in the relevant sense that one cannot point to a mental state and wonder “What is that?” From a systematic viewpoint, I aim to show (...) that Wittgenstein’s PLA teaches us that the prevailing picture of the nature of phenomenal concepts is upside down: we can only introspectively know what is going on inside our heads, after we learn of what is going on outside. In this regard, I aim to defend two associate claims against the prevailing view of PCs on the basis of PLA. First, by means of transparency, I aim to show that there is no _de re_ awareness of our private sensation that could determine the meaning of sensation-words; for example, I am never aware _of _the phenomenal blueness of my experience of something blue. The second associated claim is that introspective self-knowledge of our private sensation is always _de dicto_. We can only know introspectively that phenomenal blueness is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned _that _ blue is the color that usually causes in us that kind of experience. Likewise, we can only introspectively know that pain is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned that pain is what usually causes some typical pain behavior. (shrink)