1) Acquaintance and the Mind-Body problem, in New Perspectives on Type Identity: The Mental and the Physical, Christopher Hill and Simone Gozzano (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2012. In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides support for physicalism.

2) In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84(1), 2012. During the last two decades, several anti-physicalist arguments based on an epistemic or conceptual gap between the phenomenal and the physical have been proposed. The most promising physicalist line of defense in the face of these arguments – the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – is based on the idea that these epistemic and conceptual gaps can be explained by appeal to the nature of phenomenal concepts rather than the nature of non-physical phenomenal properties. Phenomenal concepts, on this proposal, involve unique cognitive mechanisms, but none that could not be fully physically implemented. David Chalmers has recently presented a Master Argument to show that the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – not just this or that version of it, but any version of it – fails. Chalmers argues that the phenomenal concepts posited by such theories are either not physicalistically explicable, or they cannot explain our epistemic situation with regard to qualia. I argue that it is his Master Argument that fails; his argument does not provide any new reasons – reasons that go beyond the ones offered in the original anti-physicalist arguments – to reject the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. I also argue that, although the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is successful in showing that the physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up physicalism in the light of the anti-physicalist arguments, the anti-physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up the anti-physicalist argument in the light of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy either.

3) Jerry Fodor on Non-Conceptual Content, Synthese 170 (2), (2009), 311-320. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9585-x.

Proponents of non-conceptual content have recruited it for various philosophical jobs. Some epistemologists have suggested that it may play the role of “the given” that Sellars is supposed to have exorcised from philosophy. Some philosophers of mind (e.g., Dretske) have suggested that it plays an important role in the project of naturalizing semantics as a kind of halfway between merely information bearing and possessing conceptual content. Here I will focus on a recent proposal by Jerry Fodor. In a recent paper he characterizes non-conceptual content in a particular way and argues that it is plausible that it plays an explanatory role in accounting for certain auditory and visual phenomena. So he thinks that there is reason to believe that there is non-conceptual content. On the other hand, Fodor thinks that non-conceptual content has a limited role. It occurs only in the very early stages of perceptual processing prior to conscious awareness. My paper is examines Fodor’s characterization of non-conceptual content and his claims for its explanatory importance. I also discuss if Fodor has made a case for limiting non-conceptual content to non-conscious, sub-personal mental states.

4) Conceivability, Possibility and the Mind-Body Problem, The Philosophical Review 108 (4), 1999, 497-528. Chosen by The Philosopher’s Annual as one of the ten best articles appearing in print in 2000. Reprinted in Volume XXIII of The Philosopher’s Annual. In his very influential book David Chalmers argues that if physicalism is true then every positive truth is a priori entailed by the full physical description – this is called “the a priori entailment thesis – but ascriptions of phenomenal consciousness are not so entailed and he concludes that Physicalism is false. As he puts it, “zombies” are metaphysically possible. I attempt to show (I think successfully) that this argument is refuted by considering an analogous argument in the mouth of a zombie. The conclusion of this argument is false so one of the premises is false. I argue at length that this shows that the original conceivability argument also has a false premise and so is invalid.

Under review:

5) Illuminati, zombies, and metaphysical gridlock In this paper I survey the landscape of anti-physicalist arguments and physicalist responses to them. The anti-physicalist arguments I discuss start from a premise about a conceptual, epistemic, or explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal descriptions and conclude from this – on a priori grounds – that physicalism is false. My primary aim is to develop a master argument to counter these arguments. With this master argument in place, it is apparent that there is a puzzling symmetry between dualist attacks on physicalism and physicalist replies. Each position can be developed in a way to defend itself from attacks from the other position. Therefore the debate comes down to which metaphysical framework provides the better overall explanatory/theoretical framework.

Work in progress:

6) Hard, Harder, Hardest. In this paper I discuss three problems concerning consciousness. The first two problems have been dubbed “The Hard Problem” and “The Harder Problem”. The third problem has received less attention and I will call it “The Hardest Problem”. The Hard Problem is a metaphysical, and explanatory problem concerning the nature of conscious states. The Harder Problem is epistemological. The problem is that if physicalism is true then all facts supervene on physical facts including facts about consciousness and so it is natural to expect that, given enough physical information, I can know whether another being is conscious. But it seems that I cannot know this. The Hardest Problem is a problem about reference. Both the Hard and the Harder Problems presuppose the common sense view that our subjective concepts refer determinately – modulo vagueness – to real, objective properties that can be instantiated in minds other than my own. It follows that there will be a matter of fact – even if I can never find it out – about whether a phenomenal concept of mine applies to another creature. The Hardest Problem is the problem of explaining how, given physicalism, this could be so. Together the three problems present, I suggest, a particularly difficult challenge to those philosophers who are, like me, both physicalists and phenomenal realists, and agree with dualists that there is an explanatory gap involving phenomenal consciousness. My aim is to spell out the relations among them and then to explore how they appear from the perspective of an approach that strikes me as quite promising in so far as the first two problems are concerned. The approach I have in mind attempts to explain the various special and puzzling features of phenomenal consciousness in terms of what Stoljar has recently called “the phenomenal concept strategy.” This approach can go quite far in handling the first two problems but, as we will see, runs into serious difficulties with the Hardest Problem.

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