Review of Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge, Torin Alter and Sven Walter (eds.)
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, May 17, 2008.
This book is a collection of thirteen essays on the nature phenomenal concepts and the ways in which phenomenal concepts figure in debates over physicalism. Phenomenal concepts are of special interest in a number of ways. First, phenomenal concepts are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. Second, they refer to phenomenal experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. There are recent arguments that purport to show that phenomenal experience is irreducibly non-physical. Both the anti-physicalist arguments and physicalist replies to these arguments turn on views about the nature of phenomenal concepts. In this review I survey the many ways in which the essays in this volume are engaged (pro or con) with anti-physicalist arguments and the role phenomenal concepts play in these arguments.
Comments on Ned Block’s target article “Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30(4), 499-500, 2007.
Block argues that relevant data in psychology and neuroscience shows that access consciousness is not constitutively necessary for phenomenality. However, a phenomenal state can be access conscious in two radically different ways. Its content can be access conscious, or its phenomenality can be access conscious. I’ll argue that while Block’s thesis is right when it is formulated in terms of the first notion of access consciousness, there is an alternative hypothesis about the relationship between phenomenality and access in terms of the second notion that is not touched by Block’s argument.
Block’s target article
Review of David Papineau’s Thinking about Consciousness, Mind
Mind 113 (452), 774-778, 2004.
In his book, David Papineau provides a detailed defense of physicalism via what has been dubbed the “phenomenal concept strategy”. I share his enthusiasm for this approach. But I disagree with his account of how a physicalist should respond to the conceivability arguments. Also I argue that his appeal to teleosemantics in explaining mental quotation is more like a promissory note than an actual theory.
Phenomenal Judgment and the HOT theory: Comments on David Rosenthal’s “Consciousness, Content, and Metacognitive Judgments”
Consciousness and Cognition, 9 (2), 215-219, 2000.
I propose a critique of David Rosenthal’s higher order thought theory of consciousness (HOT). This is one of the best articulated philosophical accounts of consciousness available. The theory is, roughly, that a mental state is conscious in virtue of there being another mental state, namely, a thought to the effect that one is in the first state. I argue that this account is open to the objection that it makes “HOT-zombies” possible, i.e., creatures that token higher order mental states, but not the states that the higher order states are about. I discuss a way to deal with this problem; but the solution leads to a theory that goes beyond HOT.
Review of Jennifer Hornsby’s Simple Mindedness: In Defense of Naive Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind
The Philosophical Review, 108(4), 562-565, 1999.
Hornsby is a defender of a position in the philosophy of mind she calls “naïve naturalism”. She argues that current discussions of the mind-body problem have been informed by an overly scientistic view of nature and a futile attempt by scientific naturalists to see mental processes as part of the physical universe. In her view, if naïve naturalism were adopted, the mind-body problem would disappear. I argue that her brand of anti-physicalist naturalism runs into difficulties with the problem of mental causation and the completeness of physics.