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According to phenomenal particularism, external particulars are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of experience. Mehta (J Philos 111:311-331, 2014) criticizes this view, and French and Gomes (Philos Stud 173(2):451-460, 2016) have attempted to show that phenomenal particularists have the resources to respond to Mehta's criticisms. We argue that French and Gomes have failed to appreciate the force of Mehta's original arguments. When properly interpreted, Mehta's arguments provide a strong case in favor of phenomenal generalism, the view that external particulars are never part of phenomenal character.Keywords Phenomenal particularism Á Phenomenal generalism Á Phenomenal character Á Naive realism Á Particularity of experience Phenomenal particularism and phenomenal generalism are competing views about the phenomenal character of experience. According to phenomenal particularism, external particulars-perhaps including external objects, events, masses, surfaces, and property/relation instantiations-are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of experience. To say that a particular is part of the phenomenal character of an experience is to say that an exhaustive characterization of what the experience is like for the subject of the experience must reference that very

It is widely acknowledged that a complete theory of consciousness should explain general consciousness (what makes a state conscious at all) and specific consciousness (what gives a conscious state its particular phenomenal quality). We defend first-order representationalism, which argues that consciousness consists of sensory representations directly available to the subject for action selection, belief formation, planning, etc. We provide a neuroscientific framework for this primarily philosophical theory, according to which neural correlates of general consciousness include prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, and non-specific thalamic nuclei, while neural correlates of specific consciousness include sensory cortex and specific thalamic nuclei. We suggest that recent data support first-order representationalism over biological theory, higher-order representationalism, recurrent processing theory, information integration theory, and global workspace theory.

Here I advance a unified account of the structure of the epistemic normativity of assertion, action, and belief. According to my Teleological Account, all of these are epistemically successful just in case they fulfill the primary aim of knowledgeability, an aim which in turn generates a host of secondary epistemic norms. The central features of the Teleological Account are these: it is compact in its reliance on a single central explanatory posit, knowledge‐centered in its insistence that knowledge sets the fundamental epistemic norm, and yet fiercely pluralistic in its acknowledgment of the legitimacy and value of a rich range of epistemic norms distinct from knowledge. Largely in virtue of this pluralist character, I argue, the Teleological Account is far superior to extant knowledge‐centered accounts.

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In this paper, I argue that debates over “phenomenal character” have suffered from fragmentation: philosophers who use the term have had in mind at least three (and probably more) radically different kinds of properties. This has occurred because the expression “what it’s like” exhibits a particularly deep form of context‐sensitivity, and when this expression has been used to define phenomenal character, at least three very different contexts have been operating in the background. I then identify four important applications of this idea. First, there is a serious error in an important argument for skepticism about the hard problems of consciousness. Second, contrary to a common line of thought, Nagel’s “what it’s like” characterization of consciousness is not trivial, and is in fact very plausible. Third, an influential naïve realist argument against representationalism rests on a misunderstanding. Finally, and most excitingly, it is possible and indeed very attractive – for representationalists and naïve realists alike – to hold that a veridical perception and a matching hallucination are exactly the same with respect to one kind of phenomenal character, while being radically different with respect to another kind of phenomenal character.

I construct a tempting anti‐physicalist argument, which sharpens an explanatory gap argument suggested by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson. The argument relies crucially on the premise that there is a deep epistemic asymmetry (which may be identified with the explanatory gap) between phenomenal truths and ordinary macroscopic truths. Many physicalists reject the argument by rejecting this premise. I argue that even if this premise is true, the anti‐physicalist conclusion should be rejected, and I provide a detailed, physicalist‐friendly explanation of the relevant premise. Along the way, I sketch an account of a priori conceptual knowledge that is compatible with naturalistic accounts of intentionality. I conclude by noting that the resulting view is a version of the popular phenomenal concept strategy that avoids a potentially worrying dilemma facing earlier incarnations of this strategy.

I assume that there exists a general phenomenon, the phenomenon of the explanatory gap, surrounding consciousness, normativity, intentionality, and more. Explanatory gaps are often thought to foreclose reductive possibilities wherever they appear. In response, reductivists who grant the existence of these gaps have offered countless local solutions. But all such reductivist responses have had a serious shortcoming: because they appeal to essentially domain-specific features, they cannot be fully generalized, and in this sense these responses have been not just local but parochial. Here I do better. Taking for granted that the explanatory gap is a genuine phenomenon, I offer a fully general diagnosis that unifies these previously fragmented reductivist responses.That we, like Descartes, can conceive of phenomenally unconscious physical duplicates of ourselves; that we, like Moore, can coherently ask whether what we desire to desire is truly good; that we, like Searle, can imagine an operator in a Chinese Room who lacks the slightest understanding of Chinese -I regard these facts, and many more, as mere instances of a general and philosophically pervasive phenomenon that I call the explanatory gap. 1 Explanatory gaps are often thought to foreclose reductive possibilities wherever they appear.Here I set myself three tasks. First, I show that these familiar antireductivist arguments based on explanatory gaps can be fitted to a common template. On the one hand, we have standard reductive claims, like the claim that water reduces to (say) H2O. Such reductive claims are entailed by an a priori conceptual truth stating a possible condition for what it is, essentially speaking, to be the entity in question, together with outside information of a certain limited kind telling us what meets that condition. In this sense, all standard reductive claims are transparent. On the other hand, we have gappy reductive claims -claims purporting to reduce the phenomenally conceived to the non-phenomenally conceived, the normatively conceived to the non-normatively conceived, and so on. What distinguishes these gappy reductions is that we are missing the relevant kind of a priori conceptual truths about essences. 2 As a consequence, such reductions are never transparent. The anti-reductivist would have us conclude, by inference to the best explanation, that the gappy reductions are spurious ( §1- §2).Many reductivists have responded by denying the existence of the asymmetry, and thereby denying that explanatory gaps are real. Though I, too, 1 The term "explanatory gap" is of course most familiar from the phenomenal case and originates in Levine (1983). 2 As I suggest in a later footnote, a similar argument template can be constructed using identitybased rather than essence-based models of reduction.