[PhilStudies 2013] Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Knowledge Argument Against Materialism and the Strategy of Phenomenal Concepts
Filosofska Dumka, 2023
Materialism/physicalism that generally dominates in the contemporary analytic philosophy is challenged by fairly powerful anti-materialist arguments, notably the zombie argument (most influentially defended by David Chalmers) and the knowledge argument (the most widely discussed version of which was advanced and defended by Frank Jackson). These arguments highlight the explanatory gap from the physical (which, if materialism is true, should constitute everything that exists, including consciousness) to phenomenal mental states, the principal impossibility to explain the latter by the former, and from this conclude that phenomenal consciousness is not physical, and so materialism is false. Materialist philosophers attempt to neutralize these arguments in several ways, the most influential of which is the strategy of phenomenal concepts. This article analyzes the main points of this debate with a focus on the knowledge argument, examines and responds to the main objections to the knowledge argument-that it should be mistaken because the alternative is epiphenomenalism, which is unacceptable; that no new knowledge but only new capacities and/or acquaintance are involved; that the knowledge is the same but in different forms; that the knowledge argument affects only type physicalism but not token physicalism. The case is made that psychophysical identities assumed by a posteriori physicalism are unexplainable in principle, and the postulation of brute unexplainable psychophysical identities glossed over by the strategy of phenomenal concepts amounts to dogmatic commitment (motivated by scientism) to a view despite its apparent falsity and its unintelligibility (the impossibility to explain how it can be true), made less unpalatable by offering an ad hoc theory about the mindbrain arrangement that makes us unable to see how the view can be true. As opposed to this, the position of the supporters of the knowledge argument and the zombie argument can be seen as guided by the principle of rational trust in obviousness and our capacities of judgement.
A posteriori Physicalists get our Phenomenal Concepts Wrong
Dualists say plausible things about our mental concepts: there is a way of thinking of pain, in terms of how it feels, which is independent of causal role. Physicalists make attractive ontological claims: the world is wholly physical. The attraction of a posteriori physicalism is that it has seemed to do both: to agree with the dualist about our mental concepts, whilst retaining a physicalist ontology. In this paper I argue that in fact a posteriori physicalism departs from the dualist’s intuitive picture of our phenomenal concepts in just as radical a manner as more traditional forms of physicalism. Whereas the physicalism of David Lewis and David Armstrong is counterintuitive in holding that our only way of thinking about pain is in terms of its causal role, the physicalism of David Papineau and Brian Loar departs from common sense in holding that our phenomenal concept of pain is opaque: thinking of pain in terms of how it feels reveals nothing of what it is for something to feel pain. The arguments of David Chalmers and Frank Jackson against a posteriori physicalism involve general claims about all concepts. In contrast, my argument makes a claim only about phenomenal concepts: phenomenal concepts are not opaque.
The Physical: Empirical, Not Metaphysical
Philosophical Studies, 2006
Intuitively, physicalism is the thesis that there's nothing Ôover and above' the physical. Going beyond this intuitive formulation requires an account of what it is for a property, kind, relation, or object to be a physical one. Here I defend an unfamiliar implementation of the familiar strategy of defining physical properties, etc. as those posited by the complete and ideal physical theory. That implementation ties being a physical theory to being a theory with the hallmarks of scientific theories and then identifies physical theories among the scientific ones by their characteristic subject matter, roughly, the world's relatively fundamental elements. I then argue that, fully fleshed out, such an account is able to satisfy an array of constraints on any account of the physical, as well as avoid a number of prima facie objections, without imposing Wilson's No Fundamental Mentality Constraint.
A Note on the Definition of Physicalism
Thought, 2015
Abstract: Physicalism is incompatible with the possibility (called the possibility of “zombies”) of a world physically like ours, but in which there are no conscious experiences. But it is compatible with the possibility (called the possibility of “ghosts”) of a world which is physically like ours, but in which there are additional nonphysical entities. In this paper we argue that a revision to the traditional definition of physicalism designed to accommodate the possibility of ghosts inadvertently accommodates the possibility (called the possibility of “inverted spectra”) of a world which is physically like ours, but in which colour experience is inverted. This consequence is unwelcome, because it’s widely agreed that the possibility of inverted spectra is incompatible with physicalism. We argue for a revised definition of physicalism which resolves this problem. We then use our definition to argue that physicalism is not compatible with the possibility (called the possibility of “blockers”) of a world which is physically like ours, but in which additional nonphysical entities have prevented the existence of conscious experience. This undermines Stephan Leuenberger’s (2008) attempt to defend physicalism from arguments which purport to establish the possibility of zombies.
Physicalism: The Philosophical Foundations
Philosophical Books, 1996
i.e. souls. A broader defence of the coherence of the notion of the soul (so understood) unfolds with a determined effort to take on the difficulties traditionally associated with the idea of body-soul interaction, and with the demands to vindicate the notion of soul by providing adequate criteria of individuation and persistence. Appendix 1 concerns the abstract-concrete distinction. The overview taken there is notable in standing apart from almost every recent view in conceiving the distinction as at once important, exhaustive, exclusive and rather straightforwardly drawn. The intriguing proposal is, swiftly, that concreteness is constituted by instantiating a category that could have an instance that has spatial or temporal parts, and abstractness is nonconcreteness. Appendix 2 offers a defence of an Aristotelian account of continuous space and time and their (respective) parts.
A new challenge for the physicalist: Phenomenal indistinguishability
Philosophia, 1994
In this paper I will present a new argument against the physicalist approach to the mind. The argument deals with what I will call the domain of the phenomenal, or what can be described metaphorically as the way things are for a cognizer from the inside, from a first-person point of view. Loosely, the phenomenal can be characterized in the traditional way, as what 'appears' to, or is present for a cognizer at a given moment, bracketed from any assumption about its existence. The phenomenal domain includes, for example, sensations of pain, smells, sounds presented auditorily and objects appearing visually, whether veridical or not, But the precise borders of this domain are not crucial here. 1. Phenomenal knowledge as ability: Laurence Nemirow (1980) and David Lewis (1983) claim that knowing what a state is like is not a factual type of knowing, that is, a knowledge of some information, or in other words, an epistemic relation between a cognizer and a fact.
2018
This paper aims at exposing a strategy to organize the debate around physicalism. Our starting point (following Stoljar 2010) is the pre-philosophical notion of physicalism, which is typically formulated in the form of slogans. Indeed, philosophers debating metaphysics have paradigmatically introduced the subject with aid of slogans such as "there is nothing over and above the physical", "once every physical aspect of the world is settled, every other aspect will follow", "physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical". These ideas are very intuitive but they are, of course, far from being a satisfactory metaphysical conception of Physicalism. For that end, we will begin with the definition of physicalism as the thesis that everything is physical, following Stoljar, we should be able to respond to one central question: how to interpret the physicalist claim that everything in physical.