Abstract
According to the scrutability argument against physicalism, an a priori gap between the physical and conscious experience entails a lack of necessitation and the falsity of physicalism. This paper investigates the crucial premise of the scrutability argument: the inference from an a priori gap to a lack of necessitation. This premise gets its support from modal rationalism, according to which there are important, potentially constitutive, connections between a priori justification and metaphysical modality. I argue against the strong form of modal rationalism that underwrites the scrutability argument and suggest a more moderate rationalist view. I offer a novel demonstrative reply to the scrutability argument, according to which demonstratives play a vital role in the generation of meaning for our representations of conscious experience. This connection between conscious experience and demonstratives, rather than a metaphysical gap generated by the truth of dualism, is the source of the epistemic gap between consciousness and the physical.
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Notes
Two points deserve clarification. First, physicalism defined in terms of fundamentality does not require a maximally fundamental level. In a situation of “infinite descent”, physicalism requires only that, after a certain “depth”, everything is physical. Second, physicalism does not require physical fundamentalia to be microscopic. Physicalism is compatible with fundamental particles the size of bowling balls. However, if physicalism is true about the actual world, the most likely form is microphysicalism. For ease of exposition I treat the two as equivalent. For more on this conception of physicalism, which makes essential use of the notion of fundamentality, cf. Rabin (2013, MS).
Each argument latches onto its own particular features of the mind/body problem, some of which the scrutability argument ignores. I believe that examination of the kernel of similarity between these arguments is fruitful.
The popularization of the term ‘scrutability’ post-dates the emergence of the scrutability argument in contemporary philosphical literature, but the term remains apt. For more on the philosophy of scrutability, cf. Chalmers (2012).
\({\mathcal {P}}\) should be understood to contain what Chalmers and Jackson (2001) call a “that’s all” clause, which effectively states that \({\mathcal {P}}\) is a complete description of the fundamental state of the world. Without a “that’s all” clause, a descripton of the fundamental level won’t put one in a position to rule out certain possibilities for how the world is, and thus won’t permit a priori reasoning to all truths. For example, a fundamental physical description without a “that’s all” clause won’t enable one to rule out the existence of ghostly non-physical angels.
There are interesting questions about whether the “that’s all” clause expresses a fundamental feature of the world, or whether it is merely an enabling condition that allows the genuine fundamentalia to make everything the case (including the non-existence of angels). Similar questions arise about whether the “that’s all” clause should be counted as “physical”. At the least, it seems like a topic-neutral truth whose occurrence in a description of the world’s fundamental level should not thereby jeapordize physicalism. (In the same way, the need to use mathematics and logic, which are not strictly “physical”, in a description of the world’s fundamental level, does not jeapordize physicalism.) For more on this cf. Rabin (2013, MS). From here, I’ll suppress issues about the “that’s all” clause. They do not alter the dialectic.
The modal commitments of fundamentality do not require the “necessitation principle” for ground, which says that if P grounds Q, then P necessitates Q. For our purposes here, all that is required is the much weaker thesis of global supervenience on the fundamental: no two worlds can differ without differing in their fundamentalia. Cf. Leuenberger (2014) for more.
Throughout this paper I use a Fregean approach to propositions, according to which propositions are structured composites of concepts. This contrasts with a Russellian approach, according to which propositions contain objects or properties themselves. This move is controversial, but harmless. Our target phenomenon, the relations between necessity and the a priori, provide the main motivation for choosing a Fregean approach. Russellian propositions are not well suited to such an investigation. To start, I’m unsure how to describe the phenomenon of a priori knowability on a Russellian approach. For the Russellian, the sentences ‘Hesperus is Hesperus’ and ‘Hesperus is Phosphorous’ express the same proposition: \(\langle \bigodot = \bigodot \rangle \) (where \(\bigodot \) is Venus itself (a.k.a. Hesperus, a.k.a. Phosphorous)). But one can know a priori that Hesperus is Hesperus, whereas that Hesperus is Phosphorous is a paradigm of knowability only a posteriori. (Perhaps the Russellian will deny this?) On the Russellian approach, it looks like propositions are not the bearers of a priori / a posteriori knowability. (At the least, they’re not the complete bearers). To account for the differences between the a priority knowability of “Hesperus is Hesperus” and “Hesperus is Phosphorous”, the Russellian must appeal to additional tools. Following the suggestions of Salmon (1986), one might appeal to Russellian-propositions-under-guises. Proposition P could be knowable under one guise but not under another. I hypothesize that in the end, the Russellian account, appropriately supplemented to deal with the a priori (perhaps via guises), will behave much like a Fregean account of propositions. I don’t care much which of the available entities we dub ‘propositions’.
This heuristic may be only a heuristic, because of problems related to unknowable truths (Fitch 1963). If a truth T is unknowable, then no amount of a priori reasoning will allow a reasoner to know T. However, T’s unknowability does not conflict with the ability of a base of propositions B to a priori entail T. Even if T is unknowable, the conditional B \(\longrightarrow \) T might still be knowable a priori. Cf. Chalmers (2012), chapter 2.
I owe this example to Schwarz (2007).
The locating must be done in a first-person way. Gabriel is on the H2O planet will not suffice.
For our purposes here, terms for which one can run a twin-earth thought experiment in the vein of Burge (1979) do not count as “twin-earthable”. Any term is twin-earthable in that sense. Cf. Rabin (ms) for details.
This test will not always yield a verdict. If the set of truths cannot be molded into a semantically neutral form, then the strong modal rationalist test yields no verdict on whether they form a necessitation base.
Chalmers (2006a): pp. 107–108 is quite clear that primary intensions (which are a form of referential recipe) remain defined, and have determinate extensions, at counteractually considered worlds with no language users.
Evans (1973) discusses two cases that seem to demonstrate the phenomenon of continued demonstrative application functioning to meta-semantically glue a term onto an object to which the term did not originally refer. Evans (195-6) notes that the term ‘Madagascar’ originally referred to a portion of mainland Africa. But Marco Polo initiated a process of misapplication - via demonstrative application - of the term to the large island we now know as ‘Madagascar’, eventually causing the term to genuinely refer to that large island. Evans’ ‘Turnip’ case (206-7) involves a similar shift in reference through demonstrative (mis)application.
In fairness to proponents of the recipe view, the recipes need not be completely decided in advance. The recipes can be implicit in the dispositions of language users. The main claim of the recipe view is that the reference-determining work is done cognitively, via the multi-line recipe. The job of the world is limited to determining which line of the recipe to use.
The route from the recipe view to the strong rationalist link is not as simple as I have suggested. There is no guarantee that the a priori recipes are written in the same (likely fundamental) vocabulary as the necessitation base \({\mathcal {N}}{\mathcal {I}}\). In other words, the centered world description \({\mathcal {N}}{\mathcal {I}}\) might not work as input into the recipe view’s a priori reference-determination function. Thus, even if the recipe view is true, the strong rationalist link might still fail. However, I wish to ignore this further problem for the strong rationalist link. Instead I focus on denying the recipe view itself, rather than the connection between it and strong modal rationalism.
My arguments against the recipe view are reminiscent of Goff (2017)’s claim that Chalmers (2010)’s arguments beg the question against the physicalist by adopting a semantic framework that assumes that the dominant type of physicalism (type-B physicalism) is false. That semantic framework [two-dimensional semantics (Chalmers 2006b)] does involve the idea that concepts have a priori recipes for reference. But there are a lot of difference between Goff’s approach and my own. For one, Goff rejects that framework because it allegedly “begs the question”, not because of any positive argument for the falsity of the view. I have offered argumentation that the recipe view is false (Goff 2017: pp. 96–97).
A phenomenal concept applies to experiences and characterizes an experience according to what it is like to be the subject of that experience. For example, redph (the subscript ‘ph’ denotes ‘phenomenal’) is the phenomenal, experiential, concept of red. redph applies to experiences with a certain qualitative character (you know the one). Neither light-waves nor objects can be redph. Tomatoes, fire trucks, and strawberries are red, but they cause redph sensations. Analogous comments apply to phenomenal terms, such as ‘redph’ and ‘painph’. The English term ‘red’ is likely polysemous between, or a mongrel of, the red-terms that apply to light waves, to surfaces, and to sensations.
One might worry what the difference between an indexical and a demonstrative really comes to. According to Kaplan (n.d.), a demonstrative requires an accompanying demonstration, while the reference of an indexical is resolved by other features of the context, such as the time, place, or speaker (490). I resist taking any substantive stand. The rough and ready distinction should be clear enough for purposes here. None of the argumentation depends on a specific subtle understanding of the distinction.
Or, at least, they infer a need to include something more than what is described in \({\mathcal {P}}\).
Burge (1982) agrees that kind terms in general (not just phenomenal terms) are meta-semantically demonstrative in the sense explained.
Thanks are due to David Chalmers, Edward Elliott, Kelvin McQueen, and Wolfgang Schwarz for helpful discussion.
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Thanks for helpful criticism and comments are due to Ned Block, Tyler Burge, David Chalmers, Louis deRosset, Eliot Michaelson, Jonathan Simon, and Daniel Stoljar, as well as to audiences at IIT Bombay, The University of Barcelona, The University of Vermont, the University of California Los Angeles, and King’s College London. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for Synthese.
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Rabin, G.O. Modal rationalism and the demonstrative reply to the scrutability argument against physicalism. Synthese 198 (Suppl 8), 2107–2134 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02174-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02174-0