Katalin
Balog
Department
of Philosophy, Yale University
The Quotational Account of Phenomenal Concepts
12
April,
2006 (Wednesday) 5 PM
CEU
Department of Philosophy, 1051 Budapest, Zrínyi u. 14, 4th floor, rm.
412.
The central metaphysical
question in the philosophy
of mind is whether mental phenomena- intentionality and phenomenal
consciousness- are ultimately physical/biological
phenomena or whether they are or involve fundamental aspects of
reality
that transcend the physical and biological. Most contemporary
philosophers and
neuro-scientists reject dualism because – among other difficulties – it
cannot
account for how consciousness causally interacts with physical events
including
behavior. The central explanatory issue
is whether mental phenomena – even if they are physical – can be
explained in
terms of more basic physical/biological phenomena. While there has been
some progress
with respect to understanding intentional and rational features of
mentality in
biological/physical terms we still have no idea of how the subjective
experience – the what its like – of
seeing a sunset can emerge from a brain process. The situation with
respect to
subjective experience contrasts, for example, with the way we can
understand
(although many details are lacking) how the complex organization of
molecules
can constitute cells and how cells can constitute living organisms, and
in
general, how chemical processes can give rise to biological phenomena.
There
seems to be something about consciousness that resists
scientific explanation. Lacking a physicalist account of
consciousness, a defense of physicalism needs to explain the existence
of this
explanatory gap in a way that is compatible with the truth of
physicalism.
<> On my account, our lack of understanding the psychophysical connection, the explanatory gap, is not due to consciousness being non-physical but rather to the special nature of the concepts via which we represent our subjective experiences to ourselves. My view is that these concepts are partly constituted by the experiences they represent. This view has recently become popular among physicalists who accept the existence of the explanatory gap. However, proponents of the constitutional theory of phenomenal concepts have to offer and account of how the reference of phenomenal concepts are determined. After all, constitution doesn’t make for reference in most cases. The concept DOG is not constituted by dogs, and the fact that the concept ATOM is constituted by atoms has nothing to do with why it refers to atoms. It seems to me plausible that one must look to the conceptual role of phenomenal concepts for an explanation of their self-referential nature.
The idea of an item partly constituting a representation that refers to that item is reminiscent of how linguistic quotation works. The referent of “__” is exemplified by whatever fills in the blank. My proposal is that there is a concept forming mechanism that operates on an experience and turns it into a phenomenal concept that refers to a type of experience where the type is qualitative property (a qualia) of the experience. Further, the operation, like linguistic quotation, can be explained in terms of its conceptual roles.
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