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The purpose of the phenomenal concept strategy is to explain our epistemic situation regarding consciousness by appeal to the nature of our physically explicable phenomenal concepts alone. Chalmers’s (2007) argument against the phenomenal concept strategy is based on the claim that one defining feature of our epistemic situation is that there are “distinctive epistemic gaps” (172) between consciousness and physical facts that exist in our world, epistemic gaps that do not exist in the zombie-world. Chalmers’s criteria for “sharing an epistemic situation” are that subjects have corresponding beliefs with corresponding truth- value and corresponding epistemic status “as justified or unjustified, as cognitively
significant or insignificant” (2007: 176). Despite the zombie-dualists’ and zombie-a posteriori physicalists’ protest to the contrary, whatever corresponding beliefs our zombie- twins have about an “epistemic gap” in their world will be either false or less justified than our own.69 As such, zombies cannot share our epistemic situation regarding phenomenal consciousness.
The central purpose of the phenomenal concept strategy is to establish that the nature of the relationship between phenomenal concepts and non-phenomenal concepts in our cognitive economy can account for our epistemic situation. But on a physicalist account of phenomenal belief, our phenomenal beliefs and zombie “phenomenal” beliefs would be formed by the same causal or functional mechanisms, equally reliable, and as such the
69 There is the possibility that these zombie beliefs are meaningless, though we will not entertain that option
justification of human and zombie phenomenal beliefs will be equally strong and their corresponding beliefs will have corresponding truth value. The fatal flaw in the phenomenal concept strategy is that any fully physical accounts of phenomenal concepts will the explain the zombies’ epistemic situation regarding consciousness as well as our own, making the physicalist phenomenal concept strategy insufficient for explaining why we find “distinctive” epistemic gaps in our own world, and why we can conceive of zombies, inverted-twins, and why Mary learns something when she encounters color for the first time.
Subjects may share their epistemic situation though the content of their corresponding beliefs might differ. Both physicalists and property dualists agree that, “the claim that a zombie and conscious being share their epistemic situation does not require that their beliefs have the same content… epistemic situations should be understood in topic-neutral terms,” to avoid begging the question against the physicalist (2007: 177). Differences in the content of human and zombie subjects’ corresponding “phenomenal” beliefs- on its own- is irrelevant to our comparative epistemic situations, just as the difference between the content of Oscar’s and Twin Oscar’s corresponding ‘(t)water’ beliefs is irrelevant to whether they share their epistemic situation.
This is the theory behind Chalmers’s much-discussed dilemma for the phenomenal concept strategy, which he described informally here, arguing that no physicalist account of phenomenal concepts could be both
…powerful enough to explain our epistemic situation with regard to consciousness, and tame enough to be explained in physical terms. That is: if the relevant features of phenomenal concepts can be explained in physical terms, the features cannot explain the explanatory gap. And if the features can explain the explanatory gap, they cannot themselves be explained in physical terms. (2007: 168)
More formally, we can present Chalmers’s argument in this way: take C below to be an account of the entire set of mental features of human beings, both functional and
phenomenal, focusing particularly on how we acquire and deploy phenomenal concepts.70 Take P to be the set of all and only physical facts about a human being, or of the world as a whole, if the difference is significant. Chalmers gives the phenomenal concept strategist two options.
1. Accept that P&~C is conceivable 2. Accept that P&~C is inconceivable
In either case, the phenomenal concept strategy supposedly fails.
Consider the first horn of the dilemma. Assume P&~C is conceivable, and that physicalism is true, such that C metaphysically supervenes upon P. This supervening set, C, includes our acquisition, possession, and use of phenomenal concepts. Prima facie, if the physicalist embraces the first horn, she merely grants that the falsity of physicalism is conceivable; if zombie creatures are conceivable, it seems an inconsequential step to agree that one can conceive of phenomenal concepts having a non-physical feature as well. This modesty is common among a posteriori physicalists.
But Chalmers takes the conceivability of P&~C to imply something stronger. If P&~C is conceivable, then our phenomenal concepts, which, as concepts, are part of C, i.e., the set of all mental states are, “not tame enough to be explained in physical terms” (ibid: 168). The conceivability of P&~C supposedly implies that there is some feature or features
70 In the context of this “dilemma”, Chalmers uses the phrase “psychological feature” to encompass all aspects
of the mental, phenomenal as well as functional. This diverges from his standard use of “psychological”; ordinarily, it refers only to mental processes/states that are fully explicable in functional terms. To alleviate any confusion here, I will use the term “mental state” where he uses “psychological”, except in direct quotations.
of C, the set of all mental facts about ourselves, that P, the set of all physical facts, cannot explain. If the set of all physical facts itself contained a full explanation of the nature of our phenomenal concepts such that these phenomenal concepts gave rise to the explanatory gap, C would be a proper part of P, and P without C would be conceptually incoherent, i.e.,
inconceivable.
Per the second horn, if P&~C is inconceivable, there would be no conceivable
difference between any aspect of our mental states and our physical duplicates’ mental states, including our phenomenal concepts and phenomenal mental states. The inconceivability of P&~C implies that any creature who we conceive of as sharing our physical properties we necessarily conceive of as sharing our mental properties across the board; both zombies and inverts would be inconceivable, as the a priori physicalist maintains. It would be
inconceivable for any phenomenal facts to differ between two worlds in which the physical facts are identical. To claim that P&~C is inconceivable would be to deny the epistemic gap between physical knowledge and phenomenal knowledge, which both a posteriori
physicalists and dualist agree exists.
To embrace horn (2) of the dilemma would be to give up a posteriori physicalism for a position closer to a priori physicalism. As Chalmers sets up his “master argument”,
…either physical duplicates that lack the key features are conceivable, or they are not. This allows us to set up a master argument against the phenomenal concepts strategy, in the form of a dilemma:
1. If P&~C is conceivable, then C is not physically explicable.
2. If P&~C is not conceivable, then C cannot explain our epistemic situation. ____________
3. Either C is not physically explicable, or C cannot explain our epistemic situation. (2007: 174)
The “key features” here are the physicalist’s phenomenal concepts that supposedly account for the existence of the explanatory gap. There are myriad responses to this dilemma, but given the way the argument is posed, the key point of contention is the state of our
epistemic situation. Chalmers argues that the phenomenal concept strategist must provide some theory of phenomenal concepts that explains why we can conceive of physical
duplicates of ourselves who are in a different epistemic situation from our own, and that no physicalist account of phenomenal concepts has the resources to do so.
The physicalist might try to argue that since it is merely conceivable for our epistemic situation to differ from our zombie-twins’, given that zombies are metaphysically impossible, any epistemic inequality between ourselves and zombies would be impossible as well. Our phenomenal concepts need not explain why we can conceive of zombies in a different epistemic situation than ourselves, since no zombie would ever be in a different epistemic situation than her human twin, given that zombies would never exist.
But the property dualist has good ground for claiming that this physicalist defense of the phenomenal concept strategy would be weak. If our phenomenal concepts explain our
epistemic situation, and it is conceivable that 1) zombies do not share our epistemic situation (that is, we can conceive of zombies as not sharing our epistemic situation), then it must be conceivable that 2) zombies do not share our phenomenal concepts. But so long as a concept- and our possession of that concept- is physically explicable, our zombie-twins must have that concept as well; this general rule would apply to phenomenal concepts as well as any
ordinary, non-phenomenal, concepts. So our zombie-twins will possess the same concepts that- according to the phenomenal concept strategy- explain our epistemic situation;
whatever features of our phenomenal concepts that explains our epistemic situation also explains the zombie’s.
His case for premise 2 of the master argument above spells this out directly: Premise 2 says that if P&~C is not conceivable, then C cannot explain our epistemic situation… One can put the case [for premise 2] informally as follows:
4. If P&~C is not conceivable, then zombies satisfy C. 5. Zombies do not share our epistemic situation.
6. If zombies satisfy C but do not share our epistemic situation, then C cannot explain our epistemic situation.
7. If P&~C is not conceivable, then C cannot explain our epistemic situation. (2007: 176)