The Conceivability Argument and Two Conceptions of the Physical

Anti-materialist arguments such as the knowledge argument, the conceivability argument, and the explanatory gap argument do not establish the existence of brute phenomenal facts about consciousness. First, those arguments work by exploiting specific features of the physical, which some nonphenomenal entities might lack. Even if the arguments establish an ontological gap between the physical and the phenomenal, they do not establish a gap between the nonphenomenal and the phenomenal. But they would have to establish such a gap to show that there are brute phenomenal facts. Second, the arguments do not rule out certain views on which there are no such facts. The chapter’s conclusion leaves open the possibility that combining the anti-materialist arguments with other considerations would establish the existence of brute phenomenal facts. However, whether that strategy can succeed is unclear. That and other considerations are used to support agnosticism about the existence of brute phenomenal facts.

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Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

10.1093/oso/9780190677015.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 44

Author(s):

Philip Goff

Keyword(s):

Conscious Experience ◽

Knowledge Argument ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Conceivability Argument ◽

Animal Consciousness ◽

Fundamental Nature ◽

David Chalmers ◽

The World ◽

Philosophical Project ◽

Russellian Monism

A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism: the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience and hence that physicalism cannot be true. However, the book also tries to show that familiar arguments to this conclusion—Frank Jackson’s form of the knowledge argument and David Chalmers’ two-dimensional conceivability argument—are not wholly adequate. The second half of the book explores and defends a radical alternative to physicalism known as “Russellian monism.” Russellian monists believe that (i) physics tells us nothing about the concrete, categorical nature of material entities, and that (ii) it is this “hidden” nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. Ultimately the book defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.

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Consciousness

Metaphysical Emergence ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198823742.003.0007 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 214-251

Author(s):

Jessica M. Wilson

Keyword(s):

Good Reason ◽

Mental States ◽

Knowledge Argument ◽

Explanatory Gap ◽

Conceivability Argument ◽

Emergent Phenomenon ◽

Strong Emergence ◽

Physical Features

Wilson considers whether consciousness is either Weakly or Strongly emergent. Some have seen consciousness as the best case for a Strongly emergent phenomenon, reflecting that subjective or qualitative aspects of consciousness depart so greatly from physical features that some anti-physicalist view (perhaps Strong emergence) must be true. Wilson considers two such ‘explanatory gap’ strategies, associated with the knowledge argument (Jackson 1982, 1986) and the conceivability argument (Chalmers 1996, 2009). She argues that each strategy fails, for reasons not much previously explored; hence while the Strong emergence of consciousness remains an open empirical possibility, there is currently no motivation for taking this to actually be so. Wilson then argues that attention to the determinable nature of qualitative conscious states provides good reason to take such states to be Weakly emergent by lights of a determinable-based account, and defends the application of such an account to mental states against various objections.

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Physicalism Unfalsified: Chalmers's Inconclusive Conceivability Argument

Physicalism and its Discontents ◽

10.1017/cbo9780511570797.018 ◽

2001 ◽

pp. 331-349 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Andrew Melnyk

Keyword(s):

Conceivability Argument

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Moral supervenience

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1080/00455091.2018.1436034 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 48 (3-4) ◽

pp. 592-615 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Anandi Hattiangadi

Keyword(s):

Possible Worlds ◽

Conceivability Argument ◽

Natural Properties ◽

Moral Properties ◽

Moral Supervenience ◽

The One ◽

Special Case

AbstractIt is widely held, even among nonnaturalists, that the moral supervenes on the natural. This is to say that for any two metaphysically possible worlds w and w′, and for any entities x in w and y in w′, any isomorphism between x and y that preserves the natural properties preserves the moral properties. In this paper, I put forward a conceivability argument against moral supervenience, assuming non-naturalism. First, I argue that though utilitarianism may be true, and the trolley driver is permitted to kill the one to save the five, there is a conceivable scenario that is just like our world in all natural respects, yet at which deontology is true, and the trolly driver is not permitted to kill the one to save the five. I then argue that in the special case of morality, it is possible to infer from the conceivability of such a scenario to its possibility. It follows that supervenience is false.

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