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)

A number of philosophers have recently argued that consciousness properties are identical with some set of physical or functional properties and that we can explain away the frequently felt puzzlement about this claim as a delusion or confusion generated by our different ways of apprehending or thinking about consciousness. This paper examines David Papineau’s influential version of this view. According to Papineau, the difference between our “phenomenal” and “material” concepts of consciousness produces an instinctive but erroneous intuition that these concepts (...) can’t co-refer. I claim that this account fails. To begin with, it is arguable that we are mystified about physicalism even when the account predicts that we shouldn’t be. Further, and worse, the account predicts that an “intuition of distinctness” will arise in cases where it clearly does not. In conclusion, I make some remarks on the prospects for, constraints on, and alternatives to, a successful defence of the claim. (shrink)

This paper articulates a case for supposing that all shades of colour are visually complex.

This paper distinguishes two types of qualia theory, which I call Galilean and non-Galilean qualia theories. It also offers considerations against each type of theory. To my mind the considerations are powerful. In any case, they bring out the importance of distinguishing the two types of theory. For they show that different considerations come into play—or considerations come into play in quite different ways—in assessing the two types of theory.

Colours and consciousness both present us with metaphysical problems. But what exactly are the problems? According to standard accounts, they are roughly the following. On the one hand, we have reason to believe, about both colour and consciousness, that they are identical with some familiar natural phenomena. But on the other hand, it is hard to see how these identities could obtain. I argue that this is an adequate characterisation of our metaphysical problem of colour, but a mischaracterisation of the (...) problem of consciousness. It mischaracterises the problem by presenting consciousness as more 'colour-like' than we have reason to take it to be. The real problem of consciousness is, I suggest, that almost nothing theoretically useful is known about this phenomenon at present. I also explore some implications of this perspective on the problem of consciousness. Given the shape of the problem, I argue that we can't rule out all forms of eliminativism about consciousness. Nor can we rule out that future research will close the ' explanatory gap' that consciousness gives rise to. (shrink)

A visual experience, as understood here, is a sensory event that is conscious, or like something to undergo. This chapter focuses on three issues concerning such experiences. The first issue is the so-called ‘transparency’ of experiences. The chapter distinguishes a number of different interpretations of the suggestion that visual experiences are ‘transparent’. It then discusses in what sense, if any, visual experiences are ‘transparent’, and what further conclusions one can draw from that. The second issue is which properties we are (...) presented with in visual experiences. It is widely accepted that we sometimes experience red for example. But exactly which properties do we sometimes visually experience, and which properties do we never visually experience? The third issue is which particulars, if any, we are presented with in visual experiences. Do we for example sometimes visually experience mind-independent particulars like trees? Do we sometimes visually experience mind-dependent, particular ‘sense-data’? (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand and assess Thomas Nagel's influential case against physicalism in the philosophy of mind. I show that Nagel has claimed that experience is "subjective", or "essentially connected with a single point of view" in at least three different senses: first, in the sense that it is essential to every experience that there be something it is like to have it; second, in the sense that what an experience is like for its possessor cannot be (...) understood by a radically different type of organism; and third, in the sense that an experience cannot be "apprehended" or "observed" from a third-person perspective. I also show that these three claims have entered into two different arguments for his view that experience cannot be accounted for in physicalist terms. By way of assessment, I suggest that physicalists have decent resources for responding to the second and third of Nagel's claims about the subjectivity of experience, but that they currently have less convincing things to say about the first claim. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand and assess Thomas Nagel's influential case against physicalism in the philosophy of mind. I show that Nagel has claimed that experience is "subjective", or "essentially connected with a single point of view" in at least three different senses: first, in the sense that it is essential to every experience that there be something it is like to have it; second, in the sense that what an experience is like for its possessor cannot be (...) understood by a radically different type of organism; and third, in the sense that an experience cannot be "apprehended" or "observed" from a third-person perspective. I also show that these three claims have entered into two different arguments for his view that experience cannot be accounted for in physicalist terms. By way of assessment, I suggest that physicalists have decent resources for responding to the second and third of Nagel's claims about the subjectivity of experience, but that they currently have less convincing things to say about the first claim. (shrink)

What could you learn if you saw a colour after being confined from birth to a black-and-white room? It turns out that this is surprisingly hard to say. I suggest that reflection on this question teaches us that colour perception has a richer content than we might have thought.

This paper develops a proposal about phenomenal consciousness that is (somewhat) eliminativist in two respects. First, regarded in the light of some common ways of conceiving of consciousness, the proposal is "deflationary". Second, it opens up space for a development in which what we now naturally think about as consciousness turns out to be many different things.