Phenomenal Concepts as Complex Demonstratives

Res Philosophica 98 (3):499-508 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

There’s a long but relatively neglected tradition of attempting to explain why many researchers working on the nature of phenomenal consciousness think that it’s hard to explain.1 David Chalmers argues that this “meta-problem of consciousness” merits more attention than it has received. He also argues against several existing explanations of why we find consciousness hard to explain. Like Chalmers, we agree that the meta-problem is worthy of more attention. Contra Chalmers, however, we argue that there’s an existing explanation that is more promising than his objections suggest. We argue that researchers find phenomenal consciousness hard to explain because phenomenal concepts are complex demonstratives that encode the impossibility of explaining consciousness as one of their application conditions.

Author Profiles

Nathan Robert Howard
University of Toronto, St. George Campus
N. G. Laskowski
University of Maryland, College Park

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-01-11

Downloads
619 (#23,120)

6 months
162 (#15,554)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?