There Are No Phenomenal Concepts

It has long been widely agreed that some concepts can be possessed only by those who have undergone a certain type of phenomenal experience. Orthodoxy among contemporary philosophers of mind has it that these phenomenal concepts provide the key to understanding many disputes between physicalists and their opponents, and in particular offer an explanation of Mary’s predicament in the situation exploited by Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument. I reject the orthodox view; I deny that there are phenomenal concepts. My arguments exploit the sort of considerations that are typically used to motivate externalism about mental content. Although physicalists often appeal to phenomenal concepts to defend their view against the knowledge argument, I argue that this is a mistake. The knowledge argument depends on phenomenal concepts; if there are no phenomenal concepts, then the knowledge argument fails. Anti-physicalist philosophers of mind since Descartes have sought to ground a metaphysical distinction between mind and body by appealing to epistemic facts. (Recent examples include the knowledge argument (Jackson 1982, 1986) and arguments which exploit the explanatory gap, including modal arguments based on conceivability or rational intuition (Kripke 1972; Bealer 1994; Chalmers 1996), or on semantic features associated with the necessary aposteriori (White 1986, 2006).) Many physicalists now maintain that these arguments can be defused by a proper understanding of the concepts that we Forthcoming in Mind.