The Experiential World Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Richard Davnall 24th September 2013 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1. Hallmarks of the Mental ............................................................................................ 5 Mnemicity and Purposivity ........................................................................................ 6 Subjectivity ................................................................................................................ 7 Opinion .................................................................................................................. 7 Privacy .................................................................................................................... 8 Variable Realisability .............................................................................................. 9 Absolute Subjectivity ........................................................................................... 12 Privileged Access .................................................................................................. 14 The Subjectivity of Unconscious States ............................................................... 15 Space ........................................................................................................................ 17 The Qualitative/Quantitative Distinction ................................................................ 20 Feigl's Argument .................................................................................................. 20 The Problem of Judgements ................................................................................ 25 2. The Refutation of Compatibilism ............................................................................. 28 The Collected Definition of the Mental ................................................................... 28 The Coextensivity of Subjectivity, Qualitativity and Non-spatiality ........................ 30 The Mutual Exclusivity and Exhaustivity of the Mental and the Physical ........... 35 The Refutation of Compatibilism ......................................................................... 36 A Sketch of Reductive Strategies ............................................................................. 41 Appendix: Formal Proofs ......................................................................................... 43 The Coextensivity of Subjectivity, Qualitativity and Non-spatiality .................... 43 The Mutual Exclusivity and Exhaustivity of the Mental and the Physical ........... 44 The Refutation of Compatibilism ......................................................................... 47 3. The Spatial Strategy for Idealism ............................................................................. 50 The Significance of Space......................................................................................... 50 The Transcendental Aesthetic ................................................................................. 51 The Existence of Pure Intuitions .......................................................................... 51 The First Metaphysical Exposition - Experiential Contents ................................. 53 The Second Metaphysical Exposition - Abstraction ............................................ 53 The Third Metaphysical Exposition - Parts of Space and Time ............................ 55 The Fourth Exposition - Infinity ........................................................................... 57 The Transcendental Exposition of Space ............................................................. 57 The Transcendental Exposition of Time .............................................................. 59 Empirical Reality ...................................................................................................... 62 Absolute Idealism and the Relational World ........................................................... 63 The Relational Argument ......................................................................................... 64 Properties Without Relations .............................................................................. 66 The Compatibility of Properties and Relations .................................................... 68 Bradley's Critique of Relations ............................................................................. 70 The Problem of Foundationalism ........................................................................ 72 The Limits of the Spatial Strategy ............................................................................ 74 4. Intrinsic Content, Humility and Causal Structuralism .............................................. 76 Ramseyan Humility .............................................................................................. 78 Responses to Humility ......................................................................................... 80 The Perplexed Stare ............................................................................................. 84 Causal Structuralism ................................................................................................ 87 Against the Circularity Objection ......................................................................... 91 Power-Instances and Location ............................................................................. 94 5. The Experiential World ............................................................................................ 98 Nomological Organisation ..................................................................................... 100 The Interchange Case ............................................................................................ 103 'Correct' Geometries .......................................................................................... 105 Geometric Structures and Indeterminacy ......................................................... 106 The Transcendental Thesis ................................................................................ 110 Beyond the Nomological Thesis ............................................................................ 112 Physical Space and the Physical World .............................................................. 120 Leibnizian Physical Realism ................................................................................ 121 A World For Us ....................................................................................................... 124 A New Setting for the Interchange Case............................................................ 125 Zero Deviance .................................................................................................... 127 Physical Space and Fundamental Space ............................................................ 131 Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................. 133 Appendix: Attenuated Causal Structuralism ......................................................... 136 6. Naive Realism and Relativity .................................................................................. 137 Scientific Resources ............................................................................................... 137 Relativistic Time Dilation ....................................................................................... 138 Two Basic Premises ............................................................................................ 138 The Light Clock ................................................................................................... 140 Order Flexibility ................................................................................................. 142 Contexts in Naive Realism ................................................................................. 147 Naive Scientific Realism ..................................................................................... 148 Strict Naive Realism ........................................................................................... 150 7. Sketch of the Next Step ......................................................................................... 155 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 160 1 Introduction Idealism is the theory that the physical world is ontologically dependent on some facts about the (usually human) mental realm. This is ordinarily taken to be quite a strange position, since we ordinarily take the human mental realm to be constituted by physical things - atoms, quarks or whatever our best physical theories take as their fundamental ontological ingredients. It therefore seems natural to think that all facts about the human mental realm are sustained by physical facts, rather than the other way round. But the theories of physical science which fundamentally constitute the normal assertion that there is a mind-independent physical world were developed empirically. That is to say, they were formulated based on experience - more precisely, on patterns among our experiences. We ordinarily assume that ontological dependence runs in the opposite direction to epistemic dependence; that our experiences depend