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What Mary’s Aboutness Is About

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reinforce anti-physicalism by extending the “hard problem” to a specific kind of intentional states. For reaching this target, I investigate the mental content of the new intentional states of Jackson’s Mary. I proceed in the following way: I start analyzing the knowledge argument, which highlights the “hard problem” tied to phenomenal consciousness. In a second step, I investigate a powerful physicalist reply to this argument: the phenomenal concept strategy. In a third step, I propose a constitutional account of phenomenal concepts that captures the Mary scenario adequately, but implies anti-physicalist referents. In a last step, I point at the ramifications constitutional phenomenal concepts have on the constitution of Mary’s new intentional states. Therefore, by focusing the attention on phenomenal concepts, the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness will be carried over to the alleged “easy problem” of intentional states as well.

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Notes

  1. More precisely, the easy problems according to Chalmers “(...) concern the explanation of cognitive abilities and functions. To explain a cognitive function, we need only specify a mechanism that can perform the function” (Chalmers 1996, 202). In the following, I will investigate the cognitive function of phenomenal concepts and mental content of conscious intentional states.

  2. For various ways of formulating the knowledge argument, see Nida-Rümelin (2009) and Ludlow et al. (2004).

  3. For this label and a critical discussion, see Alter (2008).

  4. For a possible way of dealing with this problem, see, for example, Papineau (2002). Notably, in his (2007) Papineau also refrained from the idea that there is a demonstrative aspect build into phenomenal concepts.

  5. I want to use the notion “phenomenal experiences” here in a neutral sense. At this point I leave it open, if phenomenal experiences are ontologically physical or non-physical states.

  6. The following objection might be raised against every constitutional account of phenomenal concepts: If the experience is a constitutive part of the phenomenal concept, how can proponents of this thesis account for Mary’s true thought involving a phenomenal concept that she is currently not having a red experience? In answering this question a distinction is often made between basic and derivative (applications of) phenomenal concepts (Balog 2009; Papineau 2007), where the latter do not imply an occurring experience and are used in the true thought above. I will not pursue this issue here, since for my present argumentation it suffices to have some phenomenal concepts (often called “basic applications” of phenomenal concepts) to be constituted by occurring experiences.

  7. The reason for this demand is that just some co-occurrence of the mode of presentation and the concept would not suffice for the concept itself to carry the necessary information. Therefore, a constitutive link is required.

  8. For the claim that in the case of phenomenal states appearance and reality collapse, see, for example, Kripke (1972).

  9. The issue of phenomenal intentionality [see, for example, Kriegel and Horgan (forthcoming, paper is available at http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/PIRP)] has received much discussion recently. In most cases it is argued that qualia have an impact on intentional states by focusing on the attitude type of intentional states (for example, Strawson (1994). Horgan and Tienson (2002) and Pitt (2004) explicitly hold that the attitude type of intentional states is partly constituted by its phenomenal character. Even if I take the attitude type to be partly constituted by qualia as well (Fürst 2008), my concern here will be the mental content of intentional states involving phenomenal concepts.

  10. The term “intentionality” is of scholastic origin, but was made explicit in the writings of Franz Brentano (1874). Focusing on the particularity of intentionality that mental states can be directed at nonexistent objects, Brentano’s scholar Kazimiersz Twardowski (1894) famously introduced a distinction between the intentional object at which the state (or act) is directed and the mental content of an intentional state.

  11. A clarification: I do not deny that a causal environmental chain leads to a phenomenal experience, but I claim that the experience itself is not constituted by externalist causes. [For a similar view see Horgan and Tienson (2002).] Since phenomenal concepts are constituted by phenomenal experiences and the inner constitution determines their reference, they resist externalist treatments.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants of the workshop “Intentionality,” which was held at the University of Graz in October 2009, for helpful comments and fruitful discussions. I am particularly grateful to Guido Melchior for extensive discussions and helpful criticism on earlier drafts of this paper.

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  1. Institut für Philosophie, University of Graz, Heinrichstraße 26/5, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Martina Fürst

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Fürst, M. What Mary’s Aboutness Is About. Acta Anal 26, 63–74 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0120-y

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