Documento de Requisitos de Usuario (DRU)

The how and why of such a constitutive account remains altogether mysterious, but such mysteriousness is quite often embraced by proponents of such accounts. After all, it is supposedly our positive understanding of the nature of physical properties and what they are capable of constituting which allows us, assuming Robust Realism, to positively rule out the physical constitution of phenomenal properties. In contrast, the properties cited in the

foregoing constitutive accounts all rely upon a degree of ignorance regarding the constitutive capacities of their respective constituters. Who knows, for instance, what the ontologically

sui generis judgements or spirit minds postulated by some idealists might be capable of constituting? Chalmers is quite clear on this score. Regarding his protophenomenal

properties, non-phenomenalintrinsic realisers of physical properties which might potentially, at the same time, serve as the fundamental constituents of experiences, he writes:

One might object that we do not have any conception of what protophenomenal properties might be like or of how they could constitute phenomenal properties. This is true, but one could suggest that this [is] merely a product of our ignorance. In the case of familiar physical properties, there were principled reasons (based on the character of physical concepts) for denying a constitutive connection to phenomenal properties. Here, there are no such principled reasons. At most, there is ignorance of a connection. Of course, it would be very desirable to form a positive conception of protophenomenal properties. Perhaps we can do

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this indirectly by some sort of theoretical inference from the character of phenomenal properties to their underlying constituents, or perhaps knowledge of their nature will remain beyond us. Either way, this is no reason to reject the truth of the view (Chalmers 2010 pp. 135, 136).

It is for this reason that Chalmers (forthcoming a p. 15) can, in good conscience, reject arguments against protophenomenal constitution premised upon the same epistemic gap, which pertains between physical and phenomenal properties, likewise pertaining between protophenomenal and phenomenal properties. As he points out, the case against physicalism isn’t premised upon an epistemic gap born of mere ignorance, but rather, upon “a more specific gap between the physical and the phenomenal” born of an understanding of the constitutive capacities of physical properties and the nature of experience (Chalmers

forthcoming a p. 15). Contra Yujin Nagasawa (2002 p. 217), there is no reason to think that if Mary had complete protophenomenal knowledge from the confines of her black and white room, that she couldn’t thereby deduce all the relevant phenomenal facts as well. Whether or not she could gain complete protophenomenal knowledge in such a situation is another question. Experience is the only unmediated form of contact with intrinsic natures that we possess, and it is the intrinsic topic-specific natures of protophenomenal properties that Mary must comprehend if she is to have a complete account of how consciousness, according to panprotopsychism, is constituted.78 If Mary were capable of inferring the nature of the underlying constituents of her experiences from their phenomenal character, as Chalmers (2010 p. 136; forthcoming b p. 11) suggests might be possible, and if those very same constituents comprise the kinds of phenomenal colour properties that she would experience

78 _{This point seems to be lost on Nagasawa (2002 p. 219), who claims that panprotopsychism “can merely}

provide structural and functional explanations of phenomenal properties in terms of their underlying

protophenomenal properties” and takes this as a refutation of Chalmers’ (1996 p. 107) claim that “explanation of consciousness is not just a matter of explaining structure and function”. It is no such thing. A panprotopsychist explanation of consciousness is an explanation of consciousness in terms of the structuring (and functioning?) of a specific intrinsic nature.

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upon escape, there’s no reason to think she couldn’t arrive at the concept of such properties from the confines of her black and white room. Whether or not Mary the protophenomenal expert is possible, we are most definitely nothing like her, but one doesn’t need the kind of superhuman knowledge attributed to her to understand the problem besetting the view that experience is constituted by physical properties.

It might be objected that acquiescing in mystery is anathema to the explanatory goals of metaphysics. This might be true, but as we have already seen, Robust Realism is somewhat at odds with the view that existence should only be predicated of things that earn their

explanatory keep. Phenomenal properties, as Robust Realism characterises them, are something of a metaphysical nuisance, having no clearly delineated role qua explanans. What’s more, we shall see in the following chapter that to deny our experiences a ‘hidden’ constitutive nature beyond their experienced nature is to incur a significant metaphysical cost, namely, to lose all significant metaphysical connections by means of which experiences might be tethered to a transcendentally real world. Plausibly few robust realists, Cartesian ‘tough talk’ aside, would be willing to pay this price. It is therefore in the interests of such robust realists, who have already, after all, rejected any kind of conceptual entailment between existence and theoretical fecundity, to embrace a degree of mystery at the cost of explanatory edification.