Abstract:A posteriori physicalism is the combination of two appealing views: physicalism (i.e. the view that all facts are either physical or entailed by the physical), and conceptual dualism (i.e. the view that phenomenal truths are not entailed a priori by physical truths). Recently, some philosophers such as Goff (2011), Levine (2007) and Nida‐Rümelin (2007), among others, have suggested that a posteriori physicalism cannot explain how phenomenal concepts can reveal the nature of phenomenal properties. In this paper… Show more
“…This line has been taken by Diaz-Leon [2014] and Elpidorou [2016] though these thinkers primarily aim to show that there is no inconsistency in this approach. What has not been put forward is a worked out account of phenomenal and physical concepts which explains how they could do this.…”
Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
“…This line has been taken by Diaz-Leon [2014] and Elpidorou [2016] though these thinkers primarily aim to show that there is no inconsistency in this approach. What has not been put forward is a worked out account of phenomenal and physical concepts which explains how they could do this.…”
Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
“…Something like this might be right if appropriately restricted, but it seems not to be true in general. (See Diaz‐Leon, .) We can conceive of redness as a property of the surfaces of objects, or as the property responsible for certain experiences in us.…”
The question of how properties are individuated is extremely important. Consider the following proposals. To be in pain is to be in a certain neurological state. To be red is to appear red to normal observers in standard conditions. To be obligatory is to maximize the good. Each makes a claim of property identity. Each is a substantive metaphysical thesis of wide interest. None can be studied with due scrutiny in the absence of a general account of property identity. Here, I will survey existing accounts and suggest a new account in terms of grounding that has some advantages over the other candidates.
“…What's more, proponents of a posteriori physicalism can amplify their response by even questioning Goff's contention that ‘[i]t is difficult to make sense of the thought that the notion of a bachelor, or the notion of sphericity, could be understood in two conceptually distinct ways’ (ibid., p. 199). Diaz‐Leon () has convincingly (at least to my mind) argued that we can make sense of the idea that the property being a bachelor can be instantiated in a number of conceptually distinct ways. She writes: I take it that in order to know that a bachelor is an unmarried man, the subject has to entertain a proposition with the following content:(A): For x to be a bachelor is for x to be an unmarried man (Diaz‐Leon, , p. 7).But entertaining a different proposition – say (B): For x to be a bachelor is for x to be an unmarried male Homo Sapiens – is not only another way of knowing what it would be for the property being a bachelor to be instantiated, it is also a conceptually distinct way of knowing it.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Diaz‐Leon () has convincingly (at least to my mind) argued that we can make sense of the idea that the property being a bachelor can be instantiated in a number of conceptually distinct ways. She writes: I take it that in order to know that a bachelor is an unmarried man, the subject has to entertain a proposition with the following content:(A): For x to be a bachelor is for x to be an unmarried man (Diaz‐Leon, , p. 7).But entertaining a different proposition – say (B): For x to be a bachelor is for x to be an unmarried male Homo Sapiens – is not only another way of knowing what it would be for the property being a bachelor to be instantiated, it is also a conceptually distinct way of knowing it. As she writes: ‘… if we are presented with different subjects who believe justifiedly only one of the propositions above (and a different one in each case), it would be a natural thing to say, first, that they all know what it is something to be a bachelor, and second, that they know what it is for something to be a bachelor in conceptually distinct ways ’ (ibid.)…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…If so, doesn't this fact run counter to the claim that phenomenal concepts are opaque? See also Diaz‐Leon, . Since the viability of this version of a posteriori physicalism is not a topic that I wish to examine any further, I shall put it aside.…”
Introspection presents our phenomenal states in a manner otherwise than physical. This observation is often thought to amount to an argument against physicalism: if introspection presents phenomenal states as they essentially are, then phenomenal states cannot be physical states, for we are not introspectively aware of phenomenal states as physical states. In this paper, I examine whether this argument threatens a posteriori physicalism. I argue that as along as proponents of a posteriori physicalism maintain that phenomenal concepts present the nature of their referents in a partial and incomplete manner, a posteriori physicalism is safe.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
