A number of recent objections to physicalism are based on the apparent gap between physical knowledge and phenomenal knowledge. In response, some physicalists accept the epistemic gap, but deny the inference from the epistemic gap to a metaphysical gap. One popular strategy is to argue that there is something unique about our phenomenal concepts, the concepts that we use to think about our phenomenal states in terms of their subjective character, that explains the apparent gap. I develop a version of this strategy.Specifically, I argue that phenomenal-physical identities are necessarily true. These identities only seem contingent due to peculiarities of our phenomenal concepts. Phenomenal concepts have a unique connection to their referents; they are "self-presenting" concepts, which include their referents as components of the concepts themselves. Regardless of how we conceptualize the world, a phenomenal concept will always refer to the phenomenal state. But this is not true of non-phenomenal concepts, even concepts like `H2O' that seem to get at the essence of their referents. There is always an element of contingency in the connection between a non-phenomenal concept and its referent.When we consider an identity between a phenomenal concept and a non-phenomenal concept, like `pain = the firing of p-neurons', the more intimate connection between the phenomenal concept and its referent generates the intuition that the two concepts could come apart. This is true in a sense. If we were to adopt conceptualize things differently, the physical concept might not refer to the same state. For example, if we were to adopt a different theory of neuroscience, we might not conceptualize the firing of p-neurons as `the firing of p-neurons'. Phenomenal concepts, on the other hand, will always pick out the same referents, regardless of how we represent the world. For this reason, the concepts `pain' and `the firing of p-neurons' do come apart, but not in a sense that makes trouble for physicalism. What is possible is not a world in which pain isn't identical to the firing of p-neurons, but only a world in which pain isn't conceptualized as the firing of p-neurons.

Jakub Mihálik: Consciousness in Nature. A Russellian Approach Abstract: This thesis attempts to provide a philosophical answer to the question of how phenomenal consciousness, or experience, can exist in the physical world, i.e. in the world as it is described by science. The thesis has three parts: In the first part (chapter 1) I explicate the concept of phenomenal consciousness and contrast it with other concepts of consciousness common in the literature. Moreover, I suggest that the project pursued in this thesis can be naturally viewed as a part of the more general project of trying to find a stereoscopic view of man, taken by Wilfrid Sellars to be a crucial task for contemporary philosophy. In the second part of the thesis (chapters 2 to 4) I offer a detailed evaluation of the attempts at a materialist reduction of consciousness. While in chapter 2 I explore and critique the approach of apriori physicalism (Dennett, Lewis, Rey, etc.), in chapters 3 and 4, I focus on the more recent doctrine of a posteriori physicalism and especially its most prominent variety called the phenomenal concept strategy (Loar, Papineau, Levin, Schroer, etc.). One problem with a posteriori physicalism is that, as Nida-Rümelin, Goff and others argue, the view cannot make sense of the plausible thesis that our phenomenal...

Diese Arbeit bewertet verschiedene Argumente, die nicht nur leugnen, dass Gehirnzustände und bewusste Zustände ein und dasselbe sind, sondern auch behaupten, dass eine solche Identität unverständlich bleibt. Ich argumentiere, dass keiner der Ansätze einen Physikalismus unterminieren, da sie für ihre stillschweigenden Annahmen über die Verbindung zwischen Arten der Präsentation und ihrer Erklärung keine direkte oder unabhängige Begründung liefern. Meiner Ansicht nach sollte die Intelligibilität psychologischer Identität nicht ausschließlich auf einer Meinungsanalyse basieren. Der Haupteinwand sollt dann sein, warum man annehmen sollte, dass eine vollständig intelligible Erklärung auf Beschreibungen der kausalen Rollen als Modi von Präsentationen beruhen sollte. Ich schlage dazu vor, den Blick auf “psychologische Konzepte” zu werfen. Psychologische Konzepte sind Konzepte, die eine Beschreibung von funktionalen Rollen benutzen aber von Erfahrungsqualitäten handeln. Ich schlage vor, diese in Qualitätsraum-Modellen zu analysieren um aufzuklären, warum von phänomenalen Konzepten erwartet wird, dass diese sich durch Beschreibungen der kausalen bzw. funktionalen Rollen auf etwas beziehen sollten. Der Qualitätsraum soll hier verstanden werden als multidimensionaler Raum, der aus mehreren Achsen relativer Ähnlichkeit und Unterschieden in den Anordnungsstrukturen verschiedener Modalitäten bewusster Erfahrung besteht. In meinem Vorschlag ist es möglich, dass einige Achsen des Qualitätsraumes selbst aus ihrem eigenen Qualitätsraum bestehen, so dass wir in die Beschreibungen der funktionalen Rollen “hinein zoomen” und “heraus zoomen” können und damit klarer sehen, wie die Erklärung eines bestimmten Bewusstseinsaspekts gestaltet ist, wenn man ihn in Begriffen psychologischer Konzepte betrachtet. / This thesis evaluates several powerful arguments that not only deny that brain states and conscious states are one and the same thing, but also claim that such an identity is unintelligible. I argue that these accounts do not undermine physicalism because they don’t provide any direct or independent justification for their tacit assumptions about a link between modes of presentation and explanation. In my view intelligibility of psychophysical identity should not be based exclusively on the analysis of meaning. The main concern then should be why expect that fully intelligible explanation must be based on the descriptions of the causal roles as modes of presentation. To this effect I propose that we examine "psychological concepts". The psychological concepts are concepts that use descriptions of the functional roles but are about qualities of our experiences. I propose to analyze them in quality space models in order to unveil why phenomenal concepts are expected to refer via descriptions of the causal or functional roles. The quality space should be understood here as a multidimensional space consisting of several axes of relative similarity and differences among the structures of ordering in different modalities of conscious experience. On my proposal it is possible that some axes in the quality space consist of their own quality spaces so we could “zoom in” and “zoom out” into the descriptions of the functional roles and see more clearly what the explanation of certain aspects of consciousness looks like when thought of in terms of psychological concepts.