Phenomenal concepts: Neither circular nor opaque

Philosophical Psychology 29 (8):1186-1199 (2016)
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Abstract

In this paper, I focus on an influential account of phenomenal concepts, the recognitional account, and defend it from some recent challenges. According to this account, phenomenal concepts are recognitional concepts that we use when we recognize experiences as “another one of those.” Michael Tye has argued that this account is viciously circular because the relevant recognitional abilities involve descriptions of the form “another experience of the same type,” which is also a phenomenal concept. Tye argues that we avoid the circularity worry if we explain the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts in terms of dispositions to re-identify tokens of the same type without appealing to any further phenomenal concepts. However, he argues, this account is incompatible with the intuitive claim that phenomenal concepts seem to involve rich modes of presentation of their referents. Philip Goff and others have similarly argued that a recognitional account of phenomenal concepts would make phenomenal concepts opaque, that is, unable to reveal anything about their referents, which seems problematic. In this paper, I present a new version of the recognitional account that avoids the circularity worry without entailing that phenomenal concepts are opaque.

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Author's Profile

Esa Diaz-Leon
Universitat de Barcelona

Citations of this work

What is an aesthetic concept?Andrea Sauchelli - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1-17.

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References found in this work

Epiphenomenal qualia.Frank Jackson - 1982 - Philosophical Quarterly 32 (April):127-136.
Consciousness and its place in nature.David Chalmers - 2003 - In Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. pp. 102--142.
Thinking About Consciousness.David Papineau - 2002 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.

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