Abstract
It has recently been claimed that there is a “new hard problem” for physicalism. The new hard problem, according to Goff (Philosophical Studies, 160, 223–235, 2012), is based on “semantic phenomenology”, the view that conscious perceptual experience represents linguistic expressions as having determinate meanings. Goff argues that Kripke’s rule-following argument demonstrates that it is particularly difficult for a physicalist to account for semantic phenomenology. In this paper, we argue that (a) Goff’s discussion of semantic phenomenology fails to uncover a “new” hard problem for physicalism and (b) there is a hard problem—which Goff misses—facing philosophers who accept the reality of semantic phenomenology, but that this is as much a problem for non-reductionists about meaning as it is for physicalists. All we have been given is a familiar hard problem about rule-following, not a new hard problem about consciousness.
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Notes
The existence of semantic phenomenology has recently been challenged by Casey O’Callaghan (2011).
We’ve made some small typographical changes to this passage.
Kripke’s Wittgenstein himself proposes a “skeptical solution” which concedes that there are no meaning-constituting facts and then tries to rehabilitate talk of meaning via a form of non-factualism about ascriptions of meaning. See Miller (2010) for discussion.
For Goff’s repudiation of a qualia-based account of semantic phenomenology, see Goff (2012: 224 and 226).
Thus, for Goff, consciousness is an intrinsic property.
Note that Goff sometimes slides between characterising semantic phenomenology as the view that we can be consciously aware of determinate meanings and the stronger view that it is our conscious awareness that somehow “grounds” facts about meaning and understanding. Our argument in this paper does not turn on correcting for this tendency to slide, so we ignore it in what follows.
Of course, we are not saying that there are no philosophical arguments capable of justifying semantic externalism over semantic internalism or vice versa: merely that the rule-following arguments by themselves are not capable of doing this. Everything we say in this section applies to teleosemanticist theories as well as causal-informational theories. See Fodor (1990: 64–82) for an account of how KW-style indeterminacy problems vitiate teleological accounts of content.
See also Paul Boghossian’s claim that “in all essential respects, a causal theory of meaning is simply one species of a dispositional theory of meaning” (Boghossian 1989: 527). Speaking of the relationship between causal-informational theories and dispositionalism, he says (1989: 528):
It is unfortunate that this connection is obscured in Kripke’s discussion. Because Kripke illustrates the skeptical problem through the use of an arithmetical example, he tends, understandably, to focus on conceptual role versions of a dispositional account of meaning, rather than on causal/informational versions. This has given rise to the impression that his discussion of dispositionalism does not cover causal theories. But the impression is misleading. For the root form of a causal/informational theory may be given by the following basic formula:
O means (property) P by predicate S if and only if (it is a counterfactual supporting generalization that) O is disposed to apply S to P.
We actually need only the weaker claim that causal-informational theories and dispositionalist theories face the same KW-inspired problems to the same degree, not the stronger claim that causal-informational theories are a species of dispositionalism—but it would be fine by us if Boghossian’s stronger claim turned out to be correct.
That externalist views of content are as susceptible to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s arguments is also illustrated by the fact (well-described in McGinn (1984)) that Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s challenge can be directed even at expressions that appear to be most suited for externalist treatment, such as indexicals. For further discussion of the relationship between the rule-following considerations and the internalist-externalist debate, see Hattiangadi (2007), chapter 5, and Miller (2004).
In rejecting the idea that linguistic understanding might have a “distinctive occurrent phenomenology” Wright is concurring in Goff’s rejection of a qualia based account of semantic phenomenology.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to a number of colleagues and friends for comments: Matthew Jones, Krzysiek Poslajko, Joss Walker, Daniel Wee, Daniel Whiting. Thanks also to Grant Gillett, Neil Pickering, Ali Knott and the other participants in the June 2013 Concepts workshop at the University of Otago.
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Miller, A., Saboohi, A. Rule-Following and Consciousness: Old Problem or New?. Acta Anal 30, 171–178 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-014-0237-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-014-0237-5