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Philosophers have reacted in different ways to the apparent explanatory gap between physical processes and consciousness. Some deny that any explanatory gap exists at all. Some hold that there is an explanatory gap for now, but that it will eventually be closed. Some hold that the explanatory gap corresponds to an ontological gap in nature. This chapter explores another reaction to the explanatory gap — those who react in this way agree that there is an explanatory gap, but they hold that it stems from the way we think about consciousness. In particular, this view locates the gap in the relationship between our concepts of physical processes and our concepts of consciousness, rather than in the relationship between physical processes and consciousness themselves.

This chapter raises a problem for the phenomenal concept strategy. The problem is framed partly in terms of the explanatory gap, which is roughly the claim that the existence or nature of phenomenal consciousness cannot be completely explained in physical terms. As applied to the explanatory gap, the phenomenal concept strategy requires a physicalist account of phenomenal concepts on which the gap derives from phenomenal concepts rather than phenomenal consciousness itself. It is argued that to pass muster, such accounts must satisfy the following constraint: that no appeal be made in the explanation to any mental property or relation that is basic. An account violates this constraint if, for example, it makes appeal to an unexplained notion of acquaintance between a subject and her brain states. It is not understood how any physicalist account can both meet this constraint and explain how the explanatory gap derives from the peculiar features of phenomenal concepts. Although some physicalist account might achieve these goals, it is suggested that physicalism may be false not because phenomenal properties themselves are not physical but rather because somehow we embody a relation to them that is itself brute and irreducible to physical relations.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the phenomenal-concept strategy and to show some serious difficulties that it encounters. Physicalists have thought that they were wedded to phenomenal concepts since without them, physicalism becomes a falsehood. In order to explain away the difficulties presented here, it must be accepted that there are no such things as phenomenal concepts. There is widespread agreement that consciousness is, and should be, a physical phenomenon, even if it is one that we do not yet understand and perhaps may never do so fully. There is also widespread agreement that the way to defend physicalism about consciousness against well-known objections is by an appeal to phenomenal concepts. The previous chapter has shown, however, that there is no agreement on the nature of phenomenal concepts. It is the goal of this and subsequent chapters to show that the view assuming a conjugal relationship between physicalism and phenomenal concepts is gravely mistaken.

Phenomenal truths cannot be inferred a priori from P – or not with proper understanding. Yet the distinctness of physical-functional and phenomenal concepts does not prevent P from entailing mental truths logico-conceptually. Contrary to what the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ is usually taken to imply, the special features of phenomenal concepts do not explain the explanatory gap; and Chalmers’s argument against that strategy is no threat to redescriptive physicalism. Since physicalism commits one to (deep) functionalism, physicalists had better appeal to the latter to explain how P l-c entails phenomenal consciousness, and with it our special epistemic position. That will show how purely physical systems like us can employ phenomenal concepts, and also why these concepts seem to float free of physical and functional ones. The failure of a priori entailment from P will then be seen not to threaten the l-c entailment thesis.

This book is primarily aimed at showing that “the phenomenal-concept strategy” for defending materialism is a flawed strategy. This strategy posits that we are possessors of a range of concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences—concepts very different in how they function from concepts applied elsewhere. These concepts permit us to think of our experiences in a first-person, subjective way even though the aspects of our experiences about which we so think are, in reality, purely material or physical entities. It is argued here, however, that phenomenal concepts, as materialists typically suppose them to be, simply do not exist. There is nothing inherently special about the concepts whereby we form a conception of what it is like for us subjectively.

‘Real acquaintance’ is a special kind of intimate relationship subjects bear to their phenomenal qualities, in virtue of which: (i) a psychologically normal subject can know the real nature of one of her phenomenal qualities by attending to that quality, (ii) a psychologically normal subject is able to put herself into a situation in which, with respect to one of her phenomenal qualities, she is justified in being certain that that quality is instantiated. Our phenomenal qualities do not seem to have a physical nature when we attend to them; hence, if subjects do bear the real acquaintance relationship to their phenomenal qualities, we have strong reason to think that physicalism is false. This chapter argues for real acquaintance on the grounds that its existence explains certain facts about our epistemic situation with respect to our phenomenal qualities. Tghe chapter then argues against physicalism, with particular reference to the phenomenal concept strategy.

An extremely modest and, hence, uncontentious version of the transparency of experience entails that phenomenal qualities are amongst the fundamental building blocks of our, lived, manifest or common-sense world. As such, all attempts to conceive of them physicalistically seem to be self-destructive: I do not construct my manifest world out of neural firing frequencies. In particular, the phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) can give no account of how a neural state can manifest itself as the sort of sensible quality out of which our apparent world is constructed. In fact, PCS does not even begin to touch the ‘hard problem’ that faces physicalism.

This chapter complete the argument against physicalism. The chapter defends the thesis of Revelation, roughly the thesis that we stand in a special epistemic relationship to our conscious states such that (i) their nature is introspectively revealed to us, and (ii) we know with something close to certainty that they are instantiated. Revelation is supported on the grounds that it is the best explanation of Super-Justification, roughly the thesis that certain truths about our conscious experience can be known with something close to certainty. Revelation implies that we grasp the essences of our conscious states, and hence it secures the crucial premise of the transparency conceivability argument outlined in the last chapter. However, Revelation is also inconsistent with physicalism in a more straightforward way: Revelation in conjunction with physicalism entails that we have introspective access to the supposed physical nature of our conscious states, which is clearly not the case.

In this paper I develop a model of what it is to entertain a demonstrative thought, whether about an individual or a property. The primary question I investigate is the mechanism responsible for securing the referent of the demonstrative component of the thought. I characterize mechanisms of demonstrative reference for both token-demonstratives and type-demonstratives, drawing a distinction between genuine type-demonstratives and “quasi” type-demonstratives in the process. I then use the results of this discussion to criticize various philosophical uses of the notion of a demonstrative concept, including the “phenomenal concept strategy” for responding to challenges to materialism and the attempt to explain concept acquisition by appeal to demonstrative concepts.

The first half of the book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness and hence must be false. One of the most well-known arguments that tries to show this is Frank Jackson’s form of the knowledge argument. The knowledge argument has two aims. First to show that there is an epistemic gap between the physical facts and the facts about consciousness, in the sense that there are truths about consciousness that one could not deduce from complete knowledge of the physical facts. Second, to infer from this epistemic gap to the falsity of physicalism. This chapter argues that the knowledge argument achieves the first aim but fails at the second.

This chapter discusses the conceivability argument against physicalism. David Chalmers’ “two-dimensional” version of the conceivability argument is rejected on the grounds that it relies on a highly contentious semantic assumption that Chalmers has not adequately defended. The chapter offers an alternative conceivability argument, rooted in an alternative view of the relationship between conceivability and possibility. According to the Transparency Conceivability Principle, conceivability entails possibility when one’s conception involves only transparent concepts, where a concept is transparent just in case it reveals the essence of its referent. The crucial premise of this conceivability argument is Phenomenal Transparency: the thesis that phenomenal concepts are transparent. The defense of Phenomenal Transparency itself is postponed until the next chapter.