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Phenomenal experience and the measure of information

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Abstract

This paper defends the hypothesis that phenomenal experiences may be very complex information states. This can explain some of our most perplexing anti-physicalist intuitions about phenomenal experience. The approach is to describe some basic facts about information in such a way as to make clear the essential oversight involved, by way illustrating how various intuitive arguments against physicalism (such as Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument, and Thomas Nagel’s Bat Argument) can be interpreted to show that phenomenal information is not different in kind from physical information, but rather is just more information than we typically attribute to our understanding of a physical theory. I clarify how this hypothesis is distinct from Nagel’s claim that the theory of consciousness may be inconceivable, and then in conclusion briefly describe how these results might suggest a positive and conservative physicalist account of phenomenal experience.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Gabriele De Anna, Carla Fehr, Malcolm Forster, Lilia Gurova, Nikolay Milkov, John Norton, Athanassios Raftopoulos, Wang Wei, and Brad Wray for helpful observations. Thanks also to the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where I did some work on this paper. Finally, I am grateful and indebted to two anonymous reviewers for Erkenntnis.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, State University of New York, Oswego, Piez Hall, Oswego, NY, 13126, USA

    Craig DeLancey

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  1. Craig DeLancey
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Correspondence to Craig DeLancey.

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DeLancey, C. Phenomenal experience and the measure of information. Erkenntnis 66, 329–352 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-006-9024-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-006-9024-z

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