Conceptual Independence, Cartesian Intuitions, and Co-reference: A Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy

In this paper I respond to a family of objections seeking to show that the phenomenal concept strategy must fail. Roughly, the strategy holds that antiphysicalist arguments, such as Kripke’s modal argument and Jackson’s knowledge argument, can be undercut by appealing to the unique features of phenomenal concepts. This idea is cashed out in various ways by different philosophers, but the thread uniting them is that phenomenal and physical concepts are very different. The main virtue of the strategy is that it allows one to accept antiphysicalist intuitions at face value without conceding that some form of property dualism is true. But before responding to any of the objections, let us look at the phenomenal concept strategy more closely. To this extent, I will be relying on the details of Loar, as put forth in his seminal work “Phenomenal States.”