Abstract
A recent strategy for defending physicalism about the mind against the zombie argument relies on the so-called conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts. According to this analysis, what kinds of states our phenomenal concepts refer to depends crucially on whether the actual world is merely physical or not. John Hawthorne, David Braddon-Mitchell and Robert Stalnaker have claimed, independently, that this analysis explains the conceivability of zombies in a way consistent with physicalism, thus blocking the zombie argument. Torin Alter has recently presented three arguments against the conditional analysis strategy. This paper defends the conditional analysis strategy against Alter’s objections.
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Notes
The current interest in the zombie argument against physicalism is largely due to Chalmers (1996).
Alter thinks that the conditional analysis denies the first premiss; I will return to this disagreement below, in my discussion of the conceivability of zombie worlds vs. individual zombies.
Again, see my response to Alter’s third objection below for discussion of the sense in which zombies are conceivable.
Two clarifications about these conditionals are in order. First, I have dropped the assumption of rigidity, because it is controversial and irrelevant to the issues at hand. Second, I am being purposefully vague about what the “non-trivial relationship” could be: it should be read roughly as a relationship which supports a satisfactory theory of phenomenal states. Personally, I think the relationship should be at least as strong as weak supervenience, but again, this issue is irrelevant to my main concerns in this paper.
Alter and Chalmers have made this response in personal communication; in Alter’s paper the response to Hawthorne on pp. 240–242 suggests this move as well.
Things would be different if the conditional analysis were employed as an argument for physicalism; then the physicalist would, indeed, be begging the question. But of course the analysis is not meant to be an argument for physicalism.
Chalmers (forthcoming, Sect. 4) expresses reservations about this as well.
I am, then, claiming that we can know a priori that we are phenomenally conscious (or that least that I can know this a priori about myself), although I was earlier willing to grant that knowledge of pains is a posteriori. There is a certain prima facie tension here, but I think it could be argued that knowledge of having had any particular phenomenal experience is a posteriori, while knowledge of being phenomenally conscious, in general, is a priori. For example, if the reference of individual sensation terms is at least partly based on deference, it might perhaps turn out that, due to some kind of neural cross-wiring, the sensations caused in me by tissue damage haven’t been pains, after all. But they have been sensations all the same; there has been something it is like to have them.
We see, then, that the conditional analysis is properly seen as denying the second premiss of the zombie argument, rather than the first one. Because individual zombies are directly conceivable, the proponent of the conditional analysis will accept the first premiss.
References
Alter, T. (2007). On the conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts. Philosophical Studies, 134, 235–253.
Braddon-Mitchell, D. (2003). Qualia and analytical conditionals. Journal of Philosophy, 100, 111–135.
Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. J. (forthcoming). The two-dimensional argument against materialism. (In Chalmers, The Character of Consciousness. Oxford University Press.).
Hawthorne, J. (2002). Advice for physicalists. Philosophical Studies, 108, 17–52.
Stalnaker, R. (2002). What is it like to be a zombie? In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility (pp. 385–400). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Towards A Science of Consciousness conferences in Copenhagen (2005) and Tucson (2006), and at the University of Geneva (2006). I am grateful to the audiences for discussion. I would also like to thank Valtteri Arstila, Jussi Jylkkä and Henri Pettersson for their comments. I am especially grateful to Torin Alter and David Chalmers for extended discussions of earlier drafts of this paper. This work was financially supported by the Academy of Finland (grant 207129).
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Haukioja, J. A defence of the conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts. Philos Stud 139, 145–151 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9108-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9108-x