There is a widespread intuition that physicalist theories of consciousness are importantly incomplete. But the psychological facts give us reason to think that the gap-intuition does not justify the belief that physical theories of consciousness always leave out some facts about consciousness. I target this belief, and aim to establish that it is not epistemically justified by the gap-intuition. I begin by making a case for thinking that a purely psychological analysis of the "explanatory gap" is not only a viable one, but is in many ways preferable to the standard modal-epistemological analysis. Then I marshal a body of empirical findings in support of the view that various sub-personal psychological processes play a key role in producing the gap-intuition. The most crucial of these processes is the agent-detector, a cognitive system specifically dedicated to detecting other conscious agents in the third-person mode. Leveraging this account, I argue that while the relevant sub-personal processes are generally accurate, in the case of the gap-intuition they are "tricked" in a manner analogous to a visual blind spot or a bias in decision-making. Thus gap-intuitions are not trustworthy and do not confer justification upon belief in a "real" gap. I conclude by situating my account within the context of existing literature on the explanatory gap. My account naturally complements various physicalist accounts of the gap, and also deserves consideration as an outright replacement for such accounts. The overall lesson is that the gap-intuition would arise whether or not physicalist theories of consciousness really do leave something out, and would persist even if we came to accept a true physicalist theory of consciousness. Thus anti-physicalist arguments that are based on the gap-intuition pose no serious threat to physicalist theories of consciousness.

In contemporary philosophy of mind, the issue of consciousness has taken center stage. Broadly speaking, those who deal with consciousness fall into two camps: those who prioritize empirical work and those who favor conceptual investigation. One prominent argument has served to deepen the divide: the argument for the possibility of zombies. In this paper I intend to examine closely this argument, as it’s presented by David Chalmers, and some of the attempts to discredit it. In so doing, I present some of my own arguments against it, as well as the claim that if it’s sound, then materialism is false. Finally, I present a sketch of a new way of thinking about consciousness that would, I argue, guard against the threat—real or merely apparent—of arguments such as the zombie-argument.

A given qualitative mental experience possesses qualitative aspects, or qualia, that identify and distinguish it from other qualitative mental states. While some philosophers explained the mental phenomena by positing nonphysical kinds of entities, some others propose wholly physical explanations. Even if those physicalistic explanations of the mental shed some light on the issue of body-mind relation, Joseph Levine claims that there still exists an explanatory gap between a qualitative mental state and the physical state supposedly responsible for it, since there is no explanation of how and why a certain kind of physical state gives rise to a specific kind of quale.This thesis is an exploration of this problem and evaluation of some of the views that interpret the gap as either ontological or epistemological in order to find out whether the gap is compatible with physicalism or not. The focus is on the Phenomenal Concept Strategy that proposes a physicalistic account for the existence of the gap that is based on the character of phenomenal concepts. I examine whether this strategy is satisfactory or not and propose a possible physicalist account to the special character of phenomenal concepts.

Chapter 1 of Phenomenal Acquaintance is devoted to taking care of some preliminary issues. I begin by distinguishing those states of awareness in virtue of which we’re acquainted with the phenomenal characters of our experiences from those states of awareness some claim are at the very nature of experience. Then I reconcile the idea that experience is transparent with the claim that we can be acquainted with phenomenal character. In Chapter 2 I set up a dilemma that is the primary focus of the dissertation. In the first part of this chapter I argue that phenomenal acquaintance has three key features, what I call its ‘directness’, ‘thickness’, and ‘infallibility’. In the second part I argue, however, that it’s really quite puzzling how thoughts about phenomenal character (or any thoughts, for that matter) could have them. In the next two chapters I consider how we might resolve the dilemma described above. I begin in Chapter 3 by considering an account of phenomenal acquaintance inspired by Bertrand Russell’s discussion of acquaintance. The general idea here is to excise mental representation from phenomenal acquaintance, and I ultimately reject the proposal. Chapter 4 is the core chapter of Phenomenal Acquaintance. In it I propose an account of phenomenal acquaintance that doesn’t excise mental representation. My account is comprised of three theses. First, token experiences are complex and have instances of phenomenal properties as components. Second, instances of phenomenal properties are mental representations, and they represent themselves. Third, the attention relevant to phenomenal acquaintance is underwritten by self-representation. I argue that my account explains how phenomenal acquaintance is direct, thick, and infallible, thereby resolving our dilemma. I argue in Chapter 5 that my account of phenomenal acquaintance explains why there is an explanatory gap between the phenomenal and non-phenomenal truths. Accordingly, I conclude that the explanatory gap doesn’t pose a problem for physicalism. Here I implement what has come to be called the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ for responding to the challenge posed by the explanatory gap.

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.

Contemporary philosopher, Joseph Levine, has argued that human phenomenological experience cannot be explained solely through the resources of neuroscience, and that a significant ‘explanatory gap’ exists between the rich features of human experience and scientific explanations of the mind. This thesis examines Guiseppina D’Oro’s novel suggestion that the gap exists, but that it is a semantic rather than an empirical problem. D’Oro argues that the ‘gap’ is a persistent philosophical problem because of its semantic nature, and that advances in neuroscience will fail to resolve the gap because its source is a conceptual distinction that is not marked by empirical difference. In the thesis I will discuss some virtues and difficulties with D’Oro’s thesis, and the implications her claim has more broadly for philosophers of mind. / Graduate / 0422

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This paper compares two models of the philosophy of mind: René Descartes' substance dualism and Daniel Dennett's multiple-drafts model. Descartes posits that the body and consciousness are distinct substances capable of independent existence, with the pineal gland serving as the point of interaction between the physical and conscious realms. Conversely, Dennett rejects this dualist approach, proposing that consciousness and all mental activities emerge from complex, multitrack neurophysiological processes distributed across various brain regions. Additionally, the paper examines the knowledge argument as a significantchallenge to physicalism. The study aims to demonstrate that Dennett's physicalist model, grounded in contemporary neuroscience, offers a more plausible explanation for the emergence of consciousness through neuronal activity, whereas substance dualism fails to elucidate the phenomenon and instead contributes to its mystification. / I denna uppsats jämförs två modeller av medvetandefilosofin, den substansdualistiska modellen av René Descartes och the multiple drafts model av fysikalisten Daniel Dennett. Descartes ser kropp och medvetande som två skilda substanser som kan existera oberoende av varandra. Enligt Descartes är tallkottkörteln den fysiska platsen där det fysiska och medvetandet kommer i kontakt med varandra. Dennett förkastar Descartes teori och beskriver uppkomsten av medvetande och alla former av mental aktivitet som ett resultat av komplexa flerspåriga neurofysiologiska processer på olika platser i hjärnan. Uppsatsen tar också upp och analyserar ett viktigt argument mot fysikalismen, kunskapsargumentet eller Mary i det svartvita rummet. Syftet med uppsatsen är att visa att Dennetts fysikalistiska modell är en samtida, neurovetenskapligt välgrundad och lämplig modell för att förklara uppkomsten av medvetandet som en produkt av neuronal aktivitet i hjärnan och att substansdualism inte ger förklaringar till fenomenet medvetande, utan snarare stöder ämnets mystifiering.

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.