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Fundamentality and the Mind-Body Problem

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Abstract

In the recent metaphysics literature, a number of philosophers have independently endeavoured to marry sparse ontology to abundant truth. The aim is to keep ontological commitments minimal, whilst allowing true sentences to quantify over a vastly greater range of entities than those which they are ontologically committed to. For example, an ontological commitment only to concrete, microscopic simples might be conjoined with a commitment to truths such as ‘There are twenty people working in this building’ and ‘There are prime numbers greater than 5.’ I argue that a significant challenge to this project comes from the philosophy of mind. As Theodore Sider has pointed out, anti-physicalism is consistent with a sparse ontology. However, I will try to show that the premises of the standard anti-physicalist arguments can be used to form an argument to the conclusion that sentences which quantify over subjects of experience ontologically commit us to subjects of experience. Truths about consciousness cannot be bought more cheaply than their superficial grammar suggests.

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Notes

  1. Cameron (2008, 2010), Horgan and Potrč (2008), Sider (2009, 2012a, 2012b), Williams (2010) and Fine (2001) is an important influence on many of these views, but is not himself a cheap truth theorist.

  2. Horgan and Potrč (2008).

  3. Although this goes beyond what Horgan and Potrč suggest, it may be possible to give an account of direct correspondence which does not require predicates to correspond to properties, and which would thereby be compatible with austere nominalism. I will not explore this here.

  4. It seems that Horgan and Potrč implicitly assume some metaphysically privileged notion of ‘Existence’ or ‘Reality’, such that the objects and properties to which sentences correspond Exist or are Real in this sense. For if they were just working with our everyday notion of ‘existence’, it would be trivial that ‘The table is near to the chair’ corresponds to a table, as the sentence trivially implies that a table exists (at least in our ordinary sense of ‘exists’). Most of the cheap truth theorists seem to rely at least implicitly on some such distinction between ordinary existence/reality and metaphysically significant Existence/Reality, such that it is the things we take to Exist that constitute our metaphysical commitments. In his 2010 paper Cameron makes this explicit by appealing to Sider’s (2009, 2012a, b) notion of quantificational structure, and I have confirmed with Williams in conversation that he intends his talk of what worlds ‘represent to be the case’ (Williams 2010) to be understood as what obtains at a world in a metaphysically serious sense. Fine (2001) and Sider (2009, 2012a, b) are more explicit, giving detailed accounts of how we are to distinguish between the way we carve the world and the way the world is carved in and of itself.

  5. Chalmers (1996, 2002, 2009), Jackson (1982, 1986) and Levine (1983).

  6. Bealer (1994, 2002).

  7. Nida-Rümelin (2007).

  8. Goff (2011, 2015b, MS), Goff and Papineau (2014).

  9. Chalmers (2009).

  10. Usually Chalmers talks about terms, rather than concepts, having primary/secondary intensions. We might think of the intension of a concept C as corresponding to the intension of a term expressing C. I talk of concepts rather than terms to fit in with the discussion of phenomenal concepts, but the claims of the paper could be easily be expressed in terms of phenomenal terms rather than phenomenal concepts.

  11. Chalmers thinks of the worlds considered as actual as having ‘centres’ indicating the location of the speaker/thinker in the world. I shall ignore this subtlety to keep things simple.

  12. Chalmers defines the primary intension in terms of what could be known a priori given idealised rational faculties.

  13. Chalmers uses the word ‘physicalism’ and ‘materialism’ interchangeably.

  14. I am oversimplifying in two respects. As noted by Chalmers in the above quotation, premise 1 also requires that there is a no distinction between the primary and secondary intensions of P, which allows for the loophole of Russellian monism, which we will discuss below. However, what is crucial for Chalmers’ argument, and for my argument in this paper, is that the primary and secondary intensions of phenomenal concepts are identical. Secondly, Chalmers also suggests an alternative way that the two-dimensional argument might go through, even if phenomenal concepts have different primary and secondary intensions. If P&~Q is conceivable, then its primary intension is true at some world W conceived as actual. Our world must differ from W, as the primary intension of P&~Q is false at our world. Given that W is physically indiscernible from our world, there must be some extra non-physical object or property at either our world or W. P contains a ‘that’s all’ fact, which specifies that there is nothing more in W than the physical facts specified by P. Therefore, there must be some extra non-physical object or property present in our world, which distinguishes our world from W. On this style of argument, even if we don’t have a priori access to what is required for consciousness to be satisfied, we do have a priori access to what is required from the primary intension of consciousness to be satisfied (for consciousness to actually refer at a world considered as actual). We could form a concept consciousness*, which denotes the property expressed by the primary intension of consciousness, and replace all discussion of ‘consciousness’ or ‘phenomenal properties’ in what follows with talk of ‘consciousness*’ and ‘phenomenal* properties’, and then move from Phenomenal* Transparency to the conclusion that cheap truth theory cannot account for truths about consciousness*. For the sake of keeping things simple, I shall ignore this complication in what follows.

  15. Chalmers (2012): Excursus 14. Martine Nida-Rümelin (2007) gives a more detailed account of Phenomenal Transparency in terms of the two-dimensional framework.

  16. One interesting exception is Joe Levine’s (2014) recent defence of an argument for the best explanation against physicalism: Levine thinks the best explanation of the explanatory gap is that there is a metaphysical gap. The anti-physicalist arguments I am concerned with in this paper are attempts to demonstrate the falsity of physicalism a priori.

  17. To be more precise, premise 3 of Chalmers’ argument is dependent on the referential transparency of phenomenal concepts, which I have argued makes Phenomenal Transparency extremely plausible. Perhaps there is room for the cheap truth theorist to respond to the argument of this paper by accepting that phenomenal concepts are referentially transparent, but denying Phenomenal Transparency as I have defined it above (in terms of phenomenal sentences). This would be an interesting position to explore. The aim of this paper is to set up a debate which needs to be had, rather than explore every possible move in that debate.

  18. Russell (1927) and Eddington (1928).

  19. See for example Pereboom (2011), and the essays collected in Alter and Nagasawa (2015).

  20. The general understanding of ‘structure’ in this context is roughly what can be captured in vocabulary involving only mathematical, formal and nomic terms. Russellian monists follow Russell (1927: 325) in arguing that there must be more to the nature of concrete reality than causal structure.

  21. See Ney (2008) for a good survey of views on the definition of physicalism.

  22. Sider (2012b). Actually, Sider is somewhat agnostic over whether we can get full blown truth on the cheap, or merely semantic correctness.

  23. Sider (2013: 29).

  24. Williams (2010).

  25. Plausibly the content of a phenomenal concept does not vary with context.

  26. Sider (2013). Actually, Sider is somewhat agnostic over whether we can get full blown truth on the cheap, or merely semantic correctness.

  27. C.f. Theodore Sider’s emphasis on the importance of a reductive theory offering ‘toy’ metaphysical truth conditions (Sider 2012a: 116–118).

  28. Strawson (2006), Chalmers (2015) and Goff (2015a, MS).

  29. In the theories of Papineau (1993) and Perry (2001) phenomenal concepts are demonstratives; in Tye (1995, chapter 6) and Lycan (1996) they are indexicals; and in Loar (1990/1997, 2003), Tye (2000, chapter 2), Carruthers (2004) and Perry (2001) they are recognitional concepts.

  30. Schroer (2010), see also Goff (2011, 2015b, MS), Diaz-Leon (2014), Balog (2012) and Veillet (2015).

  31. Schroer (2010).

  32. Goff (2015b, MS).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Zrinyi u. 14, 4th Floor, Room 403, Budapest, 1051, Hungary

    Philip Goff

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Goff, P. Fundamentality and the Mind-Body Problem. Erkenn 81, 881–898 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9773-7

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