Phenomenal Ways of Thinking*

teorema Vol. XXVII/3, 2008, pp. 149-166 ISSN: 0210 - 1602

Luca Malatesti

RESUMEN Los argumentos a favor de la tesis de que las experiencias conscientes tienen propiedades no-físicas o qualia incluyen ciertas situaciones concebibles. El argumento del conocimiento de Frank Jackson toma en consideración a la hipotética científica Mary, quien a pesar de tener conocimiento científico completo de la visión del color, supuestamente carece de conocimiento de los qualia. Los argumentos mo- dales de Saul Kripke y David Chalmers incluyen zombis, criaturas concebibles que son físicamente idénticas a nosotros, pero carecen de qualia. Algunos fisicistas han respondido a estos argumentos mediante la réplica de los conceptos fenoménicos. Aunque sin tratar de socavar esta réplica en general, voy a argumentar que algunas versiones recientes de la misma, las propuestas por John Perry y David Papineau, no son satisfactorias.

ABSTRACT Certain conceivable situations figure as premises in arguments for the conclusion that conscious experiences have non-physical properties or qualia. Frank Jack- son’s Knowledge Argument considers the hypothetical scientist Mary, who despite having complete scientific knowledge of colour vision, supposedly lacks knowledge of qualia. Both Saul Kripke’s and David Chalmers’ modal arguments involve zombies, conceivable creatures physically identical to us who lack qualia. Several physicalists have replied to all these objections by endorsing the phenomenal concept reply. Without trying to undermine this reply in general, I argue that recent versions of it proposed by John Perry and David Papineau are unsatisfactory.

I INTRODUCTION

Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument aims to prove that scientific knowledge leaves out something about conscious experiences and, thus, that conscious experiences cannot have only physical properties.1 Saul Kripke (1971) and David Chalmers (1996) reach the same conclusion by means of modal arguments concerning the conceivability of creatures physically identical to us who lack consciousness.

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Some physicalists respond to these objections by embracing what can be called the phenomenal concept strategy. The central tenet of this response is that, although we can think about conscious mental states in two different ways, the ordinary first-personal and the scientific, conscious experiences are physical states and have only physical properties. In particular, the anti- physicalist objections stem from “illusions” or “equivocations” generated by phenomenal concepts. These concepts enter in our ordinary first-personal way of thinking about conscious experiences or their properties. According to these physicalists, the intuitions that underlie the anti-physicalist objections are undermined by clarifying certain features of phenomenal concepts. In this paper I criticise three recent versions of the phenomenal concepts strategy. First, I attack John Perry’s (2001) demonstrative account of phenomenal concepts. I maintain that it fails to account for the epistemic access to phenomenal properties of experiences required for the possession of phenomenal concepts. Then, I criticise David Papineau’s (2002) quotational account of phenomenal concepts. Though this account might overcome the difficulties of the demonstrative model, I argue that it requires an untenable view on introspection. Finally, I consider Papineau’s (2007) recent revision of his quotational model. Although this theory is consistent with a more plausible account of introspection, it has to face another difficulty. In fact, I argue that Papineau’s new account cannot be endorsed by the physicalist, given that it involves a physicalistically unexplainable cognitive relation between the subject and her conscious experiences. The overall conclusion is not a dis- missal of the phenomenal concepts strategy. Instead, the paper aims at pointing out certain explanatory requirements for a correct formulation of this defence of physicalism. However, here I shall not investigate whether these requirements can be satisfied.

II. CONSTRAINTS ON PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS

This paper will focus on the notion of consciousness that covers those features of our mental life that have to do with the ways in which experience the world and our body. For instance, the way in which a pain is given to us when we are aware of it or the way in which a coloured object appears to us involve aspects of our conscious life. Accordingly, the term qualia will be used to characterise these aspects. Moreover I will take qualia to characterise the types of conscious experiences we have. Thus, two token experiences are of the same type when they involve the instantiation of the same quale. In having these two experiences something appears in the same way to a subject. Some physicalists maintain that qualia are identical to natural properties, such as physical properties of the brain [Smart (1959)]. Others argue that qualia are identical to functional properties variously specified in terms of

Phenomenal Ways of Thinking 151 causal roles. These roles are given by conditions defining each mental state as whatever is caused by certain types of stimuli, that causes certain types of behaviour, and that has certain causal relations with other mental states [Put- nam (1967)]. However, these identifications advanced by physicalists have been criticised. Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument (KA) against physicalism goes as follows. The vision scientist Mary possesses a complete physical knowledge of colour and colour vision without having ever seen a colour. In fact, Mary has been held captive in a monochromatic environment where she has acquired her scientific knowledge by seeing white, black and shades of grey. According to Jackson, Mary’s scientific knowledge is of the type that physicalists assume will eventually accommodate colour and colour vision within the natural world. However, Jackson continues, when Mary is released from her monochromatic environment and sees a colour for the first time she acquires new knowledge. In particular, she comes to know that the type of colour experience she is having has a quale. Jackson concludes that this property and its instantiation are not physical. Some physicalists reply to the KA by endorsing the phenomenal concept strategy [see Loar (1990)]. They maintain that the KA reveals the existence of phenomenal concepts. In fact, they embrace the intuition that Mary, by seeing colours, learns something about colour experiences. Moreover, they think that this intuition supports the assumption that she acquires new beliefs concerning colour experiences, which are not included amongst the scientific beliefs she had before her release. The supporters of this reply assume that the identity of beliefs in general or, more specifically, of Mary’s new beliefs is a function of the identity of the concepts that are required to express their contents. Moreover, they assume some criteria for distinguish- ing concepts that imply that distinct concepts can refer to the same property. Finally, they claim that phenomenal concepts refer to physical properties. Therefore, the conclusion of the KA does not follow. This physicalist reply to the KA relies on some features of phenomenal concepts. First, phenomenal concepts refer to certain physical properties. Second, when Mary acquires these concepts by having colour experiences, she comes to have new beliefs. Third, phenomenal concepts must be a priori inferentially detached from scientific concepts. In particular, phenomenal concepts cannot be specified by means of relational descriptions. This requirement excludes functional analyses of phenomenal concepts in terms of causal roles and of relational descriptions. In fact, Mary might possess these descriptions before her release. Fourth, acquiring a phenomenal concept requires having the right type of experience. This is the type of experience specified by the quale, understood as a physical property, to which the phenomenal concept refers. Let us now consider further features of phenomenal concepts used to reply to the anti-physicalist modal objections.

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Saul Kripke’s modal objection to physicalism is based on modal considerations. Consider the physicalist’s identification Q = N, where Q is a quale and N a natural or physical property. Now, according to Kripke the terms “Q” and “N” refer rigidly to their referents. This means that they have the same referent in every possible world. We might also say that the concept [Q] refers rigidly to the quale of the experience; similarly the concept [N] refers rigidly to the natural property N.2 This means that both concepts refer to their referents in all possible worlds. Therefore, the identity Q = N is necessary. Kripke observes that the identity between Q and N appears to be contingent. In fact, it is conceivable that there might be creatures that, despite sharing with us the same physical, functional and natural make-up, do not feel anything when they are in pain and, in general, they lack the qualia that characterise conscious experiences. In recent philosophy of mind, these hypothetical creatures are called zombies. However, according to Kripke, there is no way to explain away the intuition of zombies and thus the appearance of contingency of the identity Q = N. According to Kripke, the only case in which a necessary identity appears to be contingent is when at least one of the terms in the identity picks out its referent by means of a description, which involves some of the contingent properties of the referent. For instance, consider the case of H2O and water. Although we can conceive that water is not H2O, what we conceive is the situation in which something else from H2O, the substance XYZ, satisfies the cluster of superficial and contingent properties (drinkable, available in lakes and seas etc.) employed to fix the reference of the term “water”. However, Kripke thinks that we cannot explain in the same way the appearance of contingency of the identity of Q with N. In fact, the reference of the term “Q” is not fixed by means of a contingent property of its referent. For instance, in the case of pain, Kripke claims that the peculiar ways in which this mental state is given to us, its “hurtfulness”, is an essential feature of it. Thus, in conceiving that Q is different from N we are thinking about the quale as what it is essentially. This conceived scenario concerns the quale and not some other property that might happen to satisfy certain superficial criteria associated with it. Therefore, we cannot explain away the appearance of contingency of the identity Q = N. What we are conceiving is mirroring the metaphysical possibility that Q is not N. Therefore, Q cannot be identical to N. Denying that phenomenal concepts involve any description is a way to resist Kripke’s objection. This move requires arguing that phenomenal concepts refer directly. These concepts do not invoke certain further features of their referents, as in the case of the concept [water] whose reference is fixed via superficial properties. Of course, this poses the question whether a phenomenal concept can refer to its referent without the mediation of a description. However, here it is sufficient to say there are doctrines that support this account of reference.3

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If phenomenal concepts refer directly, they are a priori detached from scientific concepts. This detachment explains the conceivability of zombies. Moreover, the fact that they refer directly explains why conceiving zombies does not imply their metaphysical possibility. From the perspective of the physicalist, in employing a phenomenal concept we are thinking about a physical property. Given that this concept lacks an associated descriptive access to its referent, we cannot exclude a priori that the concept might refer to something other than this physical property. However, this is consistent with the fact that it is metaphysically, as opposed to conceptually, impossible that the phenomenal concept can refer to something other than the physical property.4 David Chalmers has advanced another influential modal argument against the physicalist view on qualia. According to him, our capacity to think about possibilities and necessities involves a dimension of the meaning of linguistic expressions (and concepts) that is accessible a priori. To illustrate Chalmers’ objection to physicalism we can introduce the notions of semantic instability and semantic stability.5 A concept is semantically unstable if its reference varies as a function of how the world turns out to be. For instance, if [water] is fixed as whatever has certain properties such as colour- less, drinkable, fills the lakes etc., its referent will vary in accordance with how the world turned out to be with respect to what satisfies these properties. Now, Chalmers’ argument can be expressed as follows:6

i. The identity Q = N is a posteriori. ii. The identity Q = N is necessary. iii. If the necessary claim Q = N is a posteriori, then Q and N cannot be semantically stable. iv. Q and N are semantically stable.

Therefore:

v. Q = N cannot be a posteriori and necessary.

The physicalist who uses phenomenal concepts to reply to the knowledge argument should accept premise i). Phenomenal concepts are a priori detached from scientific concepts. Therefore, the physicalist promotes an a posteriori identity between the referents of phenomenal concepts and those of scientific concepts. Premise ii) derives from the general Kripkean considerations on identity that we have seen above; the majority of physicalists nowadays accept them. Therefore, it is open to the physicalists to question premises iii) and iv). Here, I shall focus on premise iii). The conditional iii) requires that the stability of concepts implies some special epistemic access to the contents of the identity statement within which they enter. In particular, the semantic stability of the concepts [Q] and

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[N] has to be somehow logically related to the fact that possessing these concepts involves grasping the essential nature of the properties to which they refer. In fact, this would mean that any subject that possesses these concepts would be able a priori, given some optimal procedure of reflection, to under- stand that they have the same referent [see Papineau (2007)]. However, the physicalist can maintain that possessing a phenomenal concept does not require grasping cognitively the essential nature of its referent. In connection with this requirement, at least two things are worth noting. Firstly, reasons could be advanced to defend the consistency of this constraint with the assumption that phenomenal concepts refer directly to the essential nature of their referent. Notoriously, Kripke and other externalists have of- fered influential arguments for the conclusion that what determines the reference of certain concepts is independent from what the subjects might know about their referents. Secondly, the physicalist can concede a somehow privi- leged epistemic role to the beliefs involving phenomenal concepts. In having a conscious experience we can come to know, on the basis of its quale, that we are having an experience of a certain type. So, we can know that that quale is instantiated. However, the existence of discriminatory or recogni- tional capacities that allows us to judge correctly that the quale is instantiated does not imply that in thinking about the quale by using a phenomenal concept we grasp its essence. Thus, we have two more requirements on phenomenal concepts that derive from the modal arguments against physicalism. These constraints derive from accepting that the identity Q = N is necessary and a posteriori. Firstly, phenomenal concepts are not connected to their referents by means of a reference fixing description, instead they refer directly. Secondly, their use does not involve understanding the essential nature of phenomenal properties. To the previous requirements, we have to add that the physicalist should provide his account of phenomenal concepts without postulating irre- ducibly mental entities. Otherwise, although he might use phenomenal concepts to resist anti-physicalists’ conceptions of consciousness, she might be embarrassed by the other irreducible mental entities. Moreover, resisting the objections to physicalism by assuming certain properties of phenomenal concepts might amount to a mere ad hoc strategy. What is needed is an independent justification of these properties of phenomenal concepts on the basis of some independently justified theory of phenomenal concepts. Preferably, this theory should sit well in a general theory of concepts. The most interesting developments in the recent philosophical debate on the naturalisation of consciousness are the physicalists’ attempts at proving such a theory.7 In the next section I will consider one advanced by John Perry.

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III. THE DEMONSTRATIVE ACCOUNT

Some physicalists have argued that phenomenal concepts are demonstrative concepts [see Perry (2001) and McMullen (1985)]. Thus, for example, John Perry says that when Mary sees a colour for the first time she will learn that:

(1) QR = thisi phenomenal property.

“QR” is the term expressing a concept that Mary can possess before her release and that refers to a physical property. Of course, it is open to a physicalist such as Perry to maintain that phenomenal concepts refer to certain physical properties. “Thisi” is what Perry calls an “internal” demonstrative that is related to Mary’s ability to make epistemic contact with a feature of her colour experience. As Perry says:

When we are attending to a subjective character in the subjective way and wish to communicate what we are feeling or noticing, we use our flexible demonstrative, “this”, as in “this feeling is the one I've been having”. Let's label this use of “this” as an inner demonstrative: “thisi” [Perry (2001), p. 146].

The notion of an act of inner attending to a feature of experience is central in Perry's account of phenomenal concepts. Possessing these concepts requires the capacity of inner attending to the subjective character of the experience. Having the experience is not sufficient to ground the demonstrative identification that they involve:

This act of attending to the experience is quite different than the experience itself [Perry (2001), p. 49].

In fact, we can have an experience with a distinctive character even if we do not notice it. The demonstrative account appears to satisfy, at least prima facie, the desiderata that the defence of physicalism imposes on phenomenal concepts. It is sufficient to notice that a belief that involves a demonstrative and one that does not can be about the same fact, or as Perry says the same subject matter, although they differ in cognitive content. John Perry provides a detailed theory to explain this difference; here we can keep things at an intuitive level. Consider for example, a person who believes that George Lakoff is author of Women Fire, and Dangerous Things, and who wants to shake hands with him. However, she has never met him in person or seen his photograph. Now, if at a conference she discovers that “George Lakoff is this person”, we

156 Luca Malatesti can easily imagine that her belief that “This person is the author of Women Fire and Dangerous Things” will have a different cognitive value, for example manifested behaviourally by her shaking hands with Lakoff, than her belief that “George Lakoff is the author of Women Fire and Dangerous Things”. However, these beliefs are about the same fact, namely, that George Lakoff is the author of Women Fire and Dangerous Things. Similarly, when Mary discovers that “Q is thisi”, there is a difference, at the level of the cognitive content, between Mary’s belief that “Q is the quale of the experience of seeing red” and her belief that “Thisi is the quale of the experience of seeing red”. The a priori independence between phenomenal concepts and Mary’s scientific concepts derives from a feature of demonstrative concepts. Mary can only refer to the referents of phenomenal concepts by means of descriptions she can read about in her black and white book. However, she cannot refer by means of an internal demonstrative to the features of the experiences she is having. Moreover, many maintain that demonstrative concepts are conceptually independent from scientific concepts. The general intuition that mo- tivates this difference is that demonstrative concepts are connected to the perspective of the subject in ways that the other concepts are not. Moreover, phenomenal concepts, in common with other demonstrative concepts, are taken to refer directly to their referents without the mediation of modes of presentation.8 Acquiring a phenomenal concept requires having the right type of experience. This is the type of experience specified by the quale, understood as a physical property, to which the phenomenal concept refers. In the demonstrative account, the relation between having a type of colour experience and the relative phenomenal concept is spelled out in terms of an act of introspection. In fact, Perry maintains that in order to acquire and use the demonstrative thisi, Mary needs to have a colour experience and attend to its quale. Finally, the use of phenomenal demonstrative concepts does not involve understanding the essential nature of phenomenal properties. Demonstratively pointing to a property does not reveal its essential nature. Each of the previous explanations raises interesting issues and might be open to objections. Here, I will investigate whether this account of phenomenal concepts offers a satisfactory description of the content of first-personal beliefs about qualia. It can be objected that Perry’s account fails to capture what is peculiar to phenomenal concepts. He maintains that these concepts are demonstrative concepts that for their acquisition and application require an introspective self-directed act that is focussed on certain physical properties. Specifically, the epistemic peculiarities of phenomenal concepts, used to defuse the dualist’s objections, depend on their being demonstrative concepts that involve these introspective acts. However, this analysis of phenomenal concepts can be challenged. In fact, we can conceive demonstrative concepts whose acqui-

Phenomenal Ways of Thinking 157 sition and application involve self-directed introspective acts that cannot be phenomenal concepts.9 Certain empirical evidence can help us to construe such a counterexample. The phenomenon of blindsight is the pathological condition of patients who, because of damages to their visual cortex, can discriminate on the basis of visual information certain stimuli even though they are visually unaware of them [see Stoerig and Cowey (1997)]. Specifically, patients who denied seeing colours performed discriminatory task reliably above chance, even when the wavelengths of the visual stimuli were falling relatively close to- gether. However, the subjects described themselves as guessing rather than reporting how things seemed to them. The case of perceptual blindsight authorises us to speculate that a simi- lar disorder might affect introspection as understood by Perry.10 In fact, we can conceive subjects, affected by “introspective” blindsight, who can use demonstrative concepts, concerning certain physical properties of their experiences, whose acquisition and application involves self-directed acts of introspection directed at those physical properties. Thus, if Perry’s account is correct, these subjects should possess phenomenal concepts. However, it is clear that this cannot be the case. In fact, as in the real case of perceptual blindsight, they would be unaware of their colour experiences and their properties. They would judge that they are merely guessing that their experiences are given to them with certain subjective characters. But, phenomenal concepts are introduced in the first place in order to capture how ordinary subjects think, from the first person perspective, about properties of experience of which they are aware. Thus, the demonstrative account appears to offer too “thin” a characterisation of what is involved in thinking in the first person about qualia. A simple response to this objection is that the difference between phenomenal concepts and the introspective demonstratives used by the blindsighted subjects is based on their referents. Introspective demonstratives used by these subjects do not refer to qualia, phenomenal concepts do.11 There- fore, there is a difference between these concepts that can be spelled out without assuming that the possession of phenomenal concepts requires some exclusive epistemic relation of the subject with their referent. However, can we really avoid assigning epistemic “robustness” to phenomenal concepts? The cognitive features of phenomenal concepts cannot be captured simply by assuming that they involve a mere demonstrative pointing, without passing via some cognitive route, to their referents. We can use Mary’s case to illustrate this conclusion. Before her release, by pointing to the screen of a video that shows her an image of a physical property, for instance a neural feature, Mary can have a thought expressible as “This is the quale of the experience of red”. Of course, the physicalist cannot deny this possibility. Then, when she sees a red object for the first time, she can have a thought expressi-

158 Luca Malatesti ble by “This is the quale of the experience of red”. Both demonstrative concepts [this] in these thoughts have the same referent. However, there is an intuitive difference between these two epistemic situations. In the second case she can recognise the quale of the experience without the aid of an instrument and theoretical knowledge, while in the first she cannot. This difference should be reflected by a further difference in the demonstrative concepts that Mary can employ, respectively, before and after her release to refer to the quale of her experience. However, the only difference contemplated in Perry’s model is that one demonstrative involves an introspective act while the other is grounded on perception. However, it seems that the explanation of this difference requires establishing the distinctive feature of the epistemic relation to the referent required by the possession of a phenomenal demonstrative concept. In the next section, I will consider an account of phenomenal concepts that, by attaching to their possession and use a special epistemic relation with their referents, might overcome the difficulty faced by the demonstrative account.

IV. THE QUOTATIONAL ACCOUNT

David Papineau has advanced his “quotational” account of phenomenal concepts in his book Thinking about Consciousness [Papineau (2002)]. Ac- cording to this version, phenomenal concepts are structured representations that include examples of the type of experience to which they refer. Their structure is analogous to that of linguistic expressions such as: “The word ‘cat’”. These expressions contain an occurrence of the word to which they refer. Analogously, the phenomenal concept of a type of experience is the representation [The experience …], where that type of experience occurs in the position represented by the dots. Therefore, Papineau suggests that phenomenal concepts are constituted in part by the exemplification of the experiences to which they refer. The capacities that allow us to “fill” phenomenal concepts with the experiences to which they refer are central in this proposal, as Papineau has stressed recently:

To have a phenomenal concept of some experience, you must be able introspec- tively to focus on it when you have it, and re-create it imaginatively at other times; given these abilities you can then form terms with the structure the experience: _, in which the gap is filled either by a current experience or by an imaginative recreation of the experience. [Papineau 2007, p. 112]

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Let us consider, for instance, the phenomenal concept of the experience of red. Papineau maintains that possessing this concept requires the ability to fill the incomplete representation [the experience ….] with our experience of the red object. This is achieved either by paying introspective attention to the experience of red we are undergoing or by imagining it.12 Papineau argues that his model of phenomenal concepts is suitable for the formulation of the phenomenal concept strategy [Papineau (2002)]. His central idea is that the objections to materialism are founded on a basic intuition of “mind-brain distinctness”. According to Papineau, this intuition derives from the use of phenomenal concepts. In fact, they involve a relation with the exemplifications of their referents that play no role in the use of those concepts, which from the third person perspective refer to physical and functional properties of the brain. Thus, the central feature of phenomenal concepts is that when we exercise a phenomenal concept of a certain experience, we use that experience to mention it. Here we can avoid entering into the details of how the quotational model explains the various features of phenomenal concepts required by the phenomenal concept strategy. Neverthe- less, it is clear that the quotational account is not affected by the same shortcomings of Perry’s analysis of phenomenal concepts in terms of demonstrative concepts. We saw, in fact, that hypothetical blindsighted subjects can possess these demonstrative concepts. However, these subjects lack awareness of their experience. Thus, they lack the capacities to perform the required “filling” of the quotational structure of phenomenal concepts. However, there is another problem with Papineau’s account. Papineau’s assumption that possessing phenomenal concepts requires introspective focussing on experiences is untenable. To appreciate this point, some preliminary clarification is needed. We can be aware of different types of entities. First, we can be aware of objects. For example, when we see a cat we are visually aware of an object. Second, we can be aware of properties. Thus, when we see a furry cat we can be aware of the property of being furry. These two types of perceptual awareness can be indicated as o-awareness and p-awareness respectively.13 There is an intuitive difference between direct and indirect o-awareness. For instance, the belief that “The building is new” can be taken to depend on our visual awareness of the building. However, we might say that our awareness concerns the part of the building we are seeing. Thus, our awareness of the building is indirect and depends on the awareness of its part. Now it seems plausible to interpret Papineau’s account of how we possess phenomenal concepts as involving this necessary condition:

Possessing the phenomenal concepts [the experience: E] requires that we are directly o-aware of experience E in virtue of our introspective awareness of what is going on when we see a red object.

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However, this account is problematic. Edward Moore (1953) and more recently Michael Tye (2000), Gilbert Harman (1990) and other philosophers have argued convincingly that we are not directly aware of our experiences. Instead, we are aware of the ways in which the objects of our experiences appear to us. According to these thinkers, we can try as much as we like to “look inside” to discover our experiences and the features that typify them. However, we can only end up staring at visually available objects and their features. As these philosophers put it, experiences, like a perfectly polished glass, are “transparent” and thus invisible to our perceptual or introspective gaze. These philosophers use the transparency of conscious experiences as the starting premise to support substantive claims about the nature of these mental states. However, here our problem is establishing how we ordinarily self-ascribe in thought the type of conscious experiences that we are undergoing. For this explanatory purpose, it is sufficient to maintain that the transparency of experience, at least, guides our ordinary, non-reflective and non- philosophical way of thinking about our experiences. This view appears to gain some support from the fact that linguistically we would typify the experience of colour we are having in terms of the colour we are seeing. For instance, in order to specify the type of experience we are having in seeing a red object, we would say that we are having an experience of red. Thus, the ordinary linguistic practice of specifying experience indicates that the capacity for self-ascribing certain types of colour experiences depends on observ- ing the colours that objects appear to have. Therefore, the idea that phenomenal concepts in their acquisition and application require an act of introspection that makes us directly aware of the experience is undermined. Similarly, a prima facie plausible account of the epistemic capacities required for the mastery of the quotational concept [the experience: …] is not viable. However, it seems that certain core assumptions of the quotational account can stand this criticism. Recently, Papineau has modified his quotational account in order to overcome other difficulties [Papineau (2007)]. This modification requires abandoning the idea that phenomenal concepts involve the “filling” of incomplete representation [the experience …] by means of the referred experience, which is somehow made salient in the “internal” life of the conscious subject. This new approach is based on his account of perceptual concepts. Papineau’s view on perceptual concepts involves two principal assumptions. His first thesis is that we can regard perceptual concepts as involving stored sensory templates set up by our initial perceptual encounters with their referents [Papineau (2007), p. 113-120]. These templates are then reactivated by later perceptual encounters with the referents or by means of imaginative processes. For instance, when we see a bird in the garden, we can think “I haven’t seen that bird before”. Then, in successive encounters with the bird

Phenomenal Ways of Thinking 161 we can think “that is the same bird I saw yesterday”. Therefore, Papineau maintains that possesing perceptual concepts requires that the subject is actu- ally perceiving or imagining the referent of the concept by means of the activation of a certain sensory template. The second assumption in Papineau’s theory of perceptual concepts is that two factors determine their reference. The first factor is the entity that is causally the origin of the perceptual concept. The second factor is given by the type of information that the subject who employs the perceptual concept is disposed to “attach” to that concept.14 For instance, in the first encounter with a bird, a subject can form the perceptual concept “that bird”, based on the setting up of a certain sensory template. However, on the basis of the same sensory template, the subject might be disposed to carry over in further perceptual encounters different kinds of information. For instance, if the subject observes that the bird has a certain peculiar feature she can expect the animal to present it in further encounters. In this case, the subject is disposed to attach to the perceptual concept [that bird] what Papineau calls “particular- bird-information”. Thus, the concept will refer to the particular bird that caused it. However, if the subject observes that the bird eats seeds, then he can be disposed to carry over this “bird-species-information” to other mem- bers of the same species. In that case [that bird] will refer to the species. It is important to note, that both the perceptual concept that refers to the individ- ual and that which refers to the species will share the same phenomenology, understood as what it is like to undergo the activation of the perceptual template involved in these concepts. The difference in reference of these two concepts depends on the disposition to attach information to this template. Let us now see how this bears on our discussion concerning phenomenal concepts and the transparency of experience. In his new account, Papineau maintains that phenomenal concepts are a species of perceptual concepts. They, in fact, comprise the same sensory templates that are involved in perceptual concepts. However, they refer to conscious experiences, instead of perceived objects, because of the subject’s disposition to attach a certain type of “experience-appropriate-information” to them. For instance, consider once more the case of seeing a bird:

Suppose that I am disposed to project, from one encounter to another, such facts as that what I am encountering ceases when I close my eyes, goes fuzzy when I am tired, will be more detailed if I go closer, and so on. If this is how I am using the template as a repository of information, then I will be referring to the visual experience of seeing the bird, rather than the bird itself. [Papineau (2007), p. 122-123]

Papineau points out that this account of phenomenal concepts is consistent with the transparency of experience:

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If we try to focus our minds on the nature of our conscious experiences, all that happens is that we focus harder on the objects of those experiences. I try to concentrate on my visual experience of the bird, but all that happens is that I look harder at the bird itself. Now, there is much debate about what this implies for the nature of conscious experience … But we can bypass this debate here and simply attend to the basic phenomenon, which I take to be the phenome- nological equivalence of (a) thinking phenomenally about an experience, and (b) thinking perceptually with that experience. What it’s like to focus phenomenally on your visual experience of the bird is no different from what it’s like to see the bird. [Papineau (2007), p. 124]

Despite the differences between Papineau’s quotational account and this new one, they share a central assumption that plays a fundamental role in his re- plies to the dualist objections. According to Papineau, this new approach to phenomenal concepts explains the intuition of distinctness between conscious mental states or their properties and physical or functional states of the brain that grounds the anti- physicalist’s objections. The fact that phenomenal concepts involve a perceptual sensory template, either caused in perceiving a certain object or imaginatively reactivating it, confers on them the specific property of involving the use of the phenomenology associated with a certain experience in order to mention that experience. The scientific concepts we might employ to think about the physical and functional properties of the brain lack this feature. Such a difference is taken by Papineau to explain the features of phenomenal concepts that generate the different kind of cognitive illusions involved in the anti-physicality arguments. Thus, these arguments wrongly exploit the difference between phenomenal and physical functional concepts for supporting the ontological distinction between their referents. Instead of discussing in detail these explanations, I will focus on a more general and pressing problem for his account. It is important to note that in Papineau’s new model the possession of a phenomenal concept requires a cognitive relation with the ways in which perceptual objects are phenomenally given to a subject. The epistemic peculiarities of phenomenal concepts are explained by the inclusion in them of sensory templates. In fact the difference in cognitive significance between a phenomenal concept concerning a certain conscious experience and the physical or functional concepts, which refer to the same conscious experience, depends on the presence within the phenomenal concepts of the sensory template that is involved in the perception or re-creative imagination of an object. This authorises the thought that the relation of inclusion of the sensory template within the phenomenal concept is “manifested” to the subject as a specific way of appearing of a certain perceived or imagined object. This point can be fully appreciated when we realise that Papineau’s account does

Phenomenal Ways of Thinking 163 not contemplate other epistemic sources for determining the particular cognitive significance of phenomenal concepts. In fact, Papineau, in accordance with the explanatory requirements we have seen in section II, takes phenomenal concepts to be non-descriptive. However, it is legitimate to wonder how the relation of inclusion between the sensory template and the phenomenal concept can amount to such an epistemic relation. Of course, the idea that the relation of inclusion is a primitive mental relation can be excluded. Otherwise, the obvious constraint that a physicalist formulation of the phenomenal concept strategy should not involve reference to irreducible mental properties or relations would be violated. Moreover, given that non-phenomenal concepts of a certain experience can be caused by the instantiation of the sensory template associated with the relevant phenomenal concept, the relation between phenomenal concepts and sensory templates cannot be understood in terms of physical causal relations. For instance, let us consider Jackson’s Mary. We can conceive that when Mary is still in the monochromatic environment, she can form a non-phenomenal concept of red experience that might be causally originated by the experience of red of another subject, whose brain activity is available to her thanks to certain instruments. The option remains that the sensory templates of the phenomenal concepts are given to the subject, in the particular way that grounds the cognitive significance of these concepts, by merely being physical constituents of the phenomenal concept. However, it seems that this final option leaves unex- plained the reason why the sensory template, in the assumed physical asso- ciation with the phenomenal concept, is given to the subject in a way that grounds the specific cognitive significance of the phenomenal concept.15 Pap- ineau’s account, in fact, appears to use a metaphoric notion of containment between phenomenal concepts and sensory templates. This metaphor is surely put into use to characterise the cognitive relation between phenomenal concepts and what is phenomenologically given to the subject. In particular, this metaphorical use appears to satisfy intuitions concerning the immediacy and directness of our relation with the ways things look to us. However, it is not clear how we can explicate this metaphor in physical terms.

V. CONCLUSION

To conclude, the objections I have advanced to Perry’s and Papineau’s accounts do not undermine in general the phenomenal concept strategy. However, they illustrate some requirements on phenomenal concepts that any formulation of this approach has to account for. These concepts involve a peculiar epistemic relation with the properties of conscious experiences or the experiences themselves.

164 Luca Malatesti

If my arguments are sound, there are two extremes in a spectrum of doctrines on this relation that the physicalist should avoid. On the one side, there are positions that characterise the cognitive relation between the subjects and the reference of phenomenal concepts as extremely “thin”. For example, according to Perry what is characteristic of phenomenal concepts is that they involve an introspective pointing to their referents. I have argued that this is too “thin” a characterisation of the epistemic relation at issue. On the other hand, other models characterise phenomenal concepts in terms of some intimate and “robust” epistemic access to their referents. For instance, in Papineau’s quotational model and his recent revised approach, these concepts are partly constituted by exemplifications either of their referents or of the ways in which objects are perceptually given. However, the quotational approach involves problematic assumptions about introspection. Moreover, it is not clear how Papineau’s more recent proposal can account for phenomenal concepts in physical terms. Investigating whether there is a naturalistic account of phenomenal concepts that can avoid these extremes has to be left for another occasion.

Department of Philosophy Philosophy University of Rijeka University of Hull Omladinska 14 Hull HU6 7RX, UK 51000 Rijeka, Croatia E-Mail: [email protected]

NOTES

∗ This paper is based on work financed by the National Foundation for Science, Higher Education and Technological Development of the Republic of Croatia, grant n. 02.03./28. I have presented parts and versions of this work in conferences and re- search seminars at the University of Osijek (Croatia), University of Rijeka (Croatia), University of Hull (UK) and University of Birmingham (UK). I would like to thank the participants for their criticisms and suggestions. Moreover, I am grateful to Dr. Ángel García Rodríguez for his extremely helpful comments. 1 Jackson (1982). However, Jackson has since renounced this; see Jackson (1998) and Jackson (2004). 2 While capital letters are used to refer to properties, the same letters between square brackets stand for the concepts that refer to these properties. 3 Causal theories of reference might offer this account; see for instance Devitt (1981). 4 This argument is given in Papineau (2002). 5 This terminology is introduced in Bealer (2002). 6 On this argument, see Papineau (2007). 7 Just to mention recent versions: Carruthers (2000), Tye (2000), Papineau (2002), Aydede and Güzeldere (2005).

Phenomenal Ways of Thinking 165

8 However, for an opposing view, see Millikan (1990). 9 For this objection, see Horgan and Tienson (2001). 10 Here, for the sake of argument, I do not investigate the plausibility of Perry’s notion of internal act of introspection. I have done so in Malatesti (2008). 11 This response is advanced in Levin (2007). 12 So far, in this paper phenomenal concepts were taken to refer to properties of experiences. Papineau, instead, maintains that they refer to experiences. This is clearly an important ontological difference. However, it does not appear to be relevant in the following discussion. 13 These different notions of awareness are spelled out in Dretske (1999). 14 For this idea, Papineau acknowledges his debt to the “consumer semantics” as developed in Millikan (2000). 15 Here I am extending criticisms to Papineau’s new account that were levelled at his quotational model, see Levine (2007), pp. 161-162, and Levin (2007), pp. 97-98.

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