Phil 5170M MA Dissertation 960248476

THE EXPLANATORY GAP: MYSTERY OR ILLUSION?

ABSTRACT

This dissertation will examine ‘the explanatory gap’ for phenomenal consciousness. Some
see the gap as supporting some form of mind-body dualism; others see any gap as illusory.
In this paper I will argue that although the explanatory gap need not imply any ontological
gap, its presence cannot be wholly dismissed as an illusion or a pseudo-problem. I argue
there are distinct types of explanatory demand raised in relation to the explanatory gap.
Whilst one strand of these questions can perhaps be shown to be confused, or lack any
answer in principle. I will argue that there remain legitimate problems of accounting for
conscious experience which cannot simply be dispelled as pseudo problems.

OVERVIEW

Chapter 1. (p 3) – Introduction and Background

I give an introduction of the problem and an overview of the relevant intellectual terrain
concerning phenomenal consciousness and physicalism.

Chapter 2. (p14) - Explanations and Conceivability

I discuss the explanatory gap in relation to the nature of explanations generally and the
conceivability arguments of David Chalmers and Joseph Levine.

Chapter 3. (p22) - Different Gaps?

I outline three potential philosophical views on what the gap represents. I distinguish different
types of explanatory demand. A brief indication of my position in relation to these differing
demands and views is provided.

Chapter 4. (p26) – Accounting for Source of the Gap: Lack of Analysis

Many take it that the source of the gap lies in the lack of functional or causal role analysis for
phenomenal consciousness. I explain how this can lead to metaphysical speculations, which I
take to be potentially confused.

Chapter 5. (p31) – ‘Phenomenal Concepts’: A diagnosis of the Explanatory Gap?

I discuss the nature of ‘phenomenal concepts’. I look at David Papineau’s anti-pathetic fallacy
defense of physicalism about consciousness and another potential fallacy relevant to
conceivability arguments.

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Chapter 6. ( p40) - Explaining away the Gap?

I consider to what extent accounts based on phenomenal concepts might dispel the gap as an
epistemic problem. I find Papineau’s account unsatisfactory. In relation to one type of
explanatory demand, I find Michael Tye’s illusion position to be more apt. I consider the
prospect for explanations corresponding to other types of demand.

Conclusion. (p49)

Accounting for the quality of a phenomenal quality like ‘red’, looks to be an illegitimate demand.
I hold that this does not imply either, that such features are ‘intrinsic’, or that an explanation of
the presence of phenomenal consciousness need be ruled out.

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1.) INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND

1.1) CHAPTER OUTLINE:

This introduction attempts to give an overview of the explanatory gap and relevant

philosophical debates. In section 1.2, I explore plausible intuitions about the subjectivity of

conscious experience. In 1.3, I discuss the thesis of physicalism, and it’s relevance to the

explanatory gap. In 1.4, I attempt to distinguish how; conceptually, at least, ‘phenomenal

consciousness’ differs from other senses of ‘consciousness’.

1.2) WHAT IS THE EXPLANATORY GAP BETWEEN?

“Science cannot give you the taste of chicken soup!” Albert Einstein is said to have remarked.

Knowing all about the molecular structure of chicken soup and having a precise description of

all the physical events that happen in a person when they taste chicken soup, would not, many

might think, give one sufficient basis to deduce the qualitative character of that person’s

gustatory experience. Similarly for other first person experiences of sensations, vision, smells

and so on. If I want to know, what it is like to smell skunks or taste vegemite, the presumption,

summed up by David Lewis is that;

“It won’t help at all to take lessons on the chemical composition of skunk scent or vegemite, the
physiology of the nostrils or the taste buds, and the neurophysiology of the sensory nerves and the
brain.” (1998, p579)

The split between objective, third person descriptions of nature and our subjective, first

person understanding of conscious experience, was raised in Nagel’s (2004) famous paper

‘What is it like to be a bat’. Assuming that bats are conscious in some sense, Nagel argued that

even if we had given complete knowledge about the behaviour and physiology of bats, we would

still seem not to know a real feature of nature, namely, what it is like to be a bat. This gulf

between our objective and subjective grasps on reality doesn’t just concern our understanding

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of creatures with such starkly different sensory modalities to ourselves. We obviously have no

idea about how it might feel, for a bat to perceive the world around it by echolocation or for a

shark to sense deformations in the electromagnetic field. 1 The cut off also seems to extend to our

understanding the relation between the nature of our own first person states and their

presumed correlates in the electrophysiological processes studied by neuroscientists.

It is baffling to many that those physical properties instantiated in the brain and the nervous

system could be sufficient for the properties of conscious experience, when they just seem so

utterly distinct. Joseph Levine (1983) coined the term ‘the explanatory gap’ for the lack of

intelligibility between what our subjective experiences are like (the qualia) and the objective,

description of the physical properties instantiated in the body and brain thought to underlie

those experiences. As Levine says,

“The connection between the neurological description and our first-person conception of what it’s
like seems totally arbitrary.” (2007, p145)

One way of thinking about the gap, discussed frequently by David Chalmers, is that

neuroscience can give us the correlations that hold between certain types of neural process and

certain types of conscious experience. In trying to bridge the explanatory gap, we would

however, be seeking to understand why those correlations should hold. Why should this brain

state produce this type of experience, rather than some other? So, for instance, on receipt of

evidence that brain state G is correlated with experiences as-of-green and brain state R with

experiences as-of-red,2 one can ask whether brain state G could be the basis of experiences of

red instead. Or indeed, why brain states B and G should be correlated with any conscious

experience at all.3 As Michael Tye (1999) has pointed out parallel questions in relation to other

scientific connections are obviously confused. Once one has been given the microphysical story
1 Dretske (1995) argues to the contrary

2 The ‘as-of-red’ terminology is to make it clear that I’m referring to subjective colour experiences, rather
than the public properties of coloured objects that fix the reference of our colour terms. I do so
throughout.

3 I shall be arguing that the difference between the first and second questions is important and that they
deserve to be treated separately.
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about how the macro property of solidity is realized, one cannot then ask ‘why couldn’t those

molecular lattice structures have given rise to liquidity instead of solidity?’ without betraying an

obvious lack of understanding.

1.2.1) ‘MARY’

This apparent lack of connection between such subjective qualities and knowledge of

their physical correlates is the key intuition in Frank Jackson’s (2004, p765) knowledge

argument. Jackson gave us his ‘Mary’ thought experiment, which he originally took to show that

there were more facts than just the physical facts.

Mary has been raised in a controlled environment, which prevents her from ever seeing

any coloured objects, she lives in a black-and white world. Mary is however a brilliant scientist

and she has learnt all about the neurophysiology of colour perception, through lectures on a

black and white television. She also knows all about optics, molecular chemistry and so on.

Jackson takes it that once Mary is allowed out of her unusual imprisonment and sees for the first

time, say, a red rose, she will gain some new knowledge about the world - i.e. she will learn what

it’s like to see red and so on, knowledge that she would have been unable to derive beforehand.

Whether or not the knowledge argument implies there are non-physical facts, it vividly

demonstrates the seemingly substantive content of our intuitions about these qualities of first

person experience. Knowing what it’s like to see red, seems to be substantive knowledge and

looks to be knowledge of something different than knowledge about the neural events

correlated with that colour experience.

1.2.2) NOVEL LAWS?

David Chalmers (1996) argues that we should accept that at some level, the explanatory

gap cannot be closed. There are fundamental ‘natural’ laws relating the phenomenal and the

physical aspects of reality. We have to accept these laws as brute, or not further explicable. Such

laws are fundamental, in as much as they are not themselves derived from, or logical

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consequences of, fundamental physical laws. Such laws would be mysterious ‘unexplained

explainers’.

Positing such ‘phenomeno-physical’4 laws as fundamental laws of nature alongside the

fundamental laws of physics would be anathema to physicalists. The idea of such laws was

considered by J.J.C. Smart in his influential 1959 paper, ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’

advancing mind-brain identity theory. Smart accepted that although behaviour seemed to be

explicable in purely mechanistic terms, for a full description of what is happening in a person

the subjective elements of experience cannot be left out.

“So sensations, states of consciousness, do seem to be the one thing left outside the physicalist
picture…” (p117, 2004)

Smart, though, was unwilling to accept that such subjective states could not be ultimately

accounted for in physical terms. “That everything should be explicable in terms of physics except

the occurrence of sensations seems to me to be frankly unbelievable.” (p117, 2004)

That subjective experience should turn out to be ultimately explicable by physics, was, as Smart

admitted, really a profession of faith. Nowadays many physicalist philosophers are less

optimistic than Smart was, about the prospects for accounting for these subjective states in

physical terms.

1.3) PHYSICALISM

The explanatory gap is often discussed in relation to the thesis of physicalism, as it is has

been taken to pose a substantive problem for the physicalist programme. What is physicalism?

The thesis of physicalism is often formulated by the claim; that the physical facts about the

universe just are all the facts about the universe. Physicalism is most usually presented in terms

of a ‘supervenience’ claim. Once the physical facts are fixed, all the other prima facie non-

physical facts are thereby fixed. Facts about, biology, meteorology, economics and psychology
4 ‘Psycho-physical’ is the more common term. As I’m here concerned with the phenomenal rather than
cognitive aspects of consciousness, uses of ‘psycho-physical’ in the text should be understood as
concerning phenomenality.
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are ultimately physical facts, so too for the ‘facts’ about the phenomenology of subjective

experience. There are different strengths of supervenience claim. Here, I will distinguish as does

Chalmers (1996), between ‘logical’ and ‘natural’ supervenience. A higher level fact logically

supervenes on lower level facts, if there is nothing more to it holding than just the lower level

facts holding. In holding that subjective experience should ultimately be explicable in terms of

physics, Smart would seem to be committing himself to the logical supervenience of

consciousness on physical properties. Something naturally supervenes, if the higher level facts

can’t be changed without changing the lower level ones, but there is something more relating

those higher level and lower level facts.

In relation to the mind-body problem, opposing themselves to dualism, physicalists

insist that consciousness is not ontologically distinct from the physical properties of the world.

The strongest motivations for accepting that consciousness is just physical in nature are those of

maintaining the causal efficacy of consciousness as well as the general desideratum of

ontological parsimony.

The principle of the causal closure of the physical, which many philosophers find

compelling, says that the physical domain is causally closed. As Jaegwon Kim states the thesis:

“No physical event has a cause outside the physical domain." (Kim, 2002)

If our conscious states aren’t physical how could they make a difference in the world? For

physicalists such as Levine and David Papineau, mind-body dualism, therefore implies

epiphenomenalism about consciousness. If conscious states are somehow non-physical states

they would be causally irrelevant to the distribution of matter and energy in the world. Many

philosophers, including myself, would find epiphenomenalism to be an unattractive position to

have to adopt about consciousness. It would imply that our conscious experiences are utterly

redundant and totally irrelevant to explaining our behaviour in the world. Consciousness would

be a kind of side effect, that itself had no further effects.

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For physicalists, giving any determinate content to the concept ‘physical’ has, though,

proved to be a problematic challenge. Modern physics has undermined traditional conceptions

of the nature of matter. As Chomsky has noted in relation to the mind-body problem we really

have no clear conception of what ultimately constitutes ‘body’.

“The material world is whatever we discover it to be, with whatever properties it must be
assumed to have for the purposes of explanatory theory.” (Chomsky,1988, quoted by Levine, 2001,
p19)

As noted by C.G. Hempel, physicalists face a dilemma: either they formulate their doctrine with

reference to the posits of our best current physics, or with reference to some future ideal and

complete physics. If they opt for the first option, their doctrine is likely to be falsified by

developments in physical theory. If they take the latter, their thesis, just becomes trivially true,

as the domain of physics is just understood as all encompassing.

In order to give physicalism some defeasible content, physicalists like Levine and

Papineau would commit themselves to the idea that mental properties such as phenomenality or

intentionality won’t turn out to be amongst the irreducible posits of physics. They take it that

physicalism would be falsified by a future physics positing phenomenal or other mental

properties alongside elementary particles and quantum fields in their inventory of basic

properties. 5

In this dissertation, I am not primarily concerned with whether the presence of an

explanatory gap for consciousness constitutes a counterexample to the truth of physicalism, as

some have taken it to. Rather, my focus here is on the explanatory gap itself. Does the gap pose a

genuine theoretical problem, perhaps giving consciousness some unique status in relation to

other scientific subject matters or is it just an example of conceptual confusion?

5 I think the strategy, contemplated by Levine, of understanding the physical as non-mental, looks to be
problematic. If theorists want to say, mental states are just physical states, and the physical is definitively
non-mental. They soon commit themselves to saying that mental states just non-mental states!
Eliminativism or an error theory seems to be implied.
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1.4) PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND OTHER CONCEPTIONS OF

CONSCIOUSNESS

I’ve been talking of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. To try to avoid confusion I should

distinguish it from other senses and concepts of ‘consciousness’. Armstrong (1999) and Block

(2007) have offered explications of differing conceptions of ‘consciousness’. Justifiably, Block has

pointed out that not recognising these differences can be a potential source of confusion and

talking past one another in debates over consciousness.

Philosophers have been unable to provide any explicit definition or analysis for

‘phenomenal consciousness’. Instead of defining it, they have had to simply allude to the

phenomenon, often with Thomas Nagel’s “what it is like” phrase. There is something it is like to

have sensations, feelings and be the subject of conscious experiences. As common sense would

have it there is nothing it is like to be a table or a rock, but presumably there is something it is

like to be ‘Tibbles the cat’ or indeed Tibbles’ owner. I think this phenomenal aspect of

consciousness can be usefully understood as ‘sentience’. Plausibly, if an organism is sentient,

there is something it is like to be that organism.6

It is this notion of consciousness which is my concern in this paper, rather than other

more cognitive or reflexive conceptions of consciousness. The latter include self-consciousness -

the having of a concept of oneself - and introspective consciousness; where the thought is that

you are in an introspectively conscious state if you have accompanying higher order thoughts to

the effect that you are in some conscious state. This introspective sense of ‘consciousness’

depends on the ability to be aware of one’s own mental states. There would, though, seem to be

plenty of plausible examples of creatures that we could not say were introspectively or

reflectively conscious, but we wouldn’t deny them consciousness. It might be that a dogfish or a

bat is aware of its environment, but not further aware of its own awareness.

6 There seems to be a difference between an organism having sensations or feelings and say, being able to
react to stimuli and changes in the environment. A physical system could plausibly do the latter without
being sentient.
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More cognitive accounts of consciousness have also been formulated. Ned Block has

contrasted phenomenal consciousness with what he calls ‘access-consciousness’. Block’s ‘access

consciousness’ is a cognitive, information processing, conception of consciousness. On this

model consciousness could potentially be understood as ‘availability of information’. Block tries

to leave it an open question, whether or not phenomenal consciousness might collapse into

access consciousness. If, for instance, phenomenal consciousness is an essentially biological

phenomenon then it could not be understood along these lines. Daniel Dennett is perhaps the

most prominent skeptic of the idea that there is really a problem of phenomenal consciousness

separate from understanding all the functional and cognitive mechanisms of a conscious being.

Broadly speaking, there are two main types of physicalist position about phenomenal

consciousness. Following Chalmers (1996, pp165-8) taxonomy: “Type A” positions are

eliminativist or reductive accounts of consciousness. These positions, such as Dennett (1991),

Dretske (1995) do not recognize any prima facie conceptual irreducibility of phenomenal

consciousness. So these positions wouldn’t really recognise the presence of an explanatory gap

as they don’t really hold that there is this distinct aspect of consciousness for it to be about.

Other “Type B” physicalist positions such as Loar (2004), Papineau (1993a) and Tye (1996) do

accept at least some conceptual irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness and qualia, and

would therefore recognize at least the prima facie problem of an explanatory gap, but don’t hold,

as have Jackson and Chalmers, that its presence entails the falsity of physicalism. In this

dissertation, I will focus on the implications of such type B accounts for the explanatory gap as

epistemic.

1.4.1) ‘QUALIA’

In much of the literature ‘phenomenal consciousness’ is treated together with the having

of qualia. Chalmers (1996) seems to treat ‘being phenomenally conscious’ and ‘having qualia’ as

synonymous. This is potentially controversial, but, for ease of exposition I’ll follow suit. I should

note that, sometimes the term ‘qualia’ is used for way our conscious sensations feel or seem to

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us, whilst sometimes just for those conscious sensations. Qualia, as the qualitative feels of

phenomenally conscious states (like pain, seeing red, tasting chicken soup, etc) have been

widely taken to be irreducible to physical properties. The philosophical and scientific status of

qualia is widely disputed. Some such as Dennett, Rorty and the Churchlands are critics, of the

idea, that we really know such qualia. My interest here is not really to engage in this debate. For

the sake of argument I assume a realism about phenomenal properties here. But I note that in

understanding qualia as the “what-its-likenesses” of phenomenal properties such as pain or a

greenish after image, what ‘qualia’ might refer to seems to drift between the the phenomenal

qualities themselves and the nature of our conceptualisations thereof. Dennett’s (1988) attack

on qualia seems to be focused most forcefully against their presumed second order

characteristics, their incorrigibility, etc.

I should also make it clear that I will be taking the idea of a quale as picking out simple,

unanalysable elements of our experience (as in simple colour sensations). The taste of chicken

soup might be analyzable into a few flavours, but at some point those flavours have to be taken

as not further decomposable. Wider phenomenal states will be thought of as being composed of

such qualia.

1.4.2.) THE ‘HARD PROBLEM’ OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The idea of phenomenal consciousness presenting the ‘hard problem’ is due to Chalmers,

but others such as Joseph Levine and Jaegwon Kim take similar positions. The basic idea is that

the cognitive aspects of consciousness such as intelligence, psychological dispositions or

faculties of sensory discrimination, seem to be susceptible of explanation in mechanistic terms.

These “easy problems” can be understood in terms of the performance of a role, they can be

given a ‘job description’. Subsequently, their presence would make a verifiable difference in how

events play out. You could in principle verify whether or not a physical system had certain

cognitive capacities and give mechanistic explanations of how these functions are realized, 7 even

7 Levine suggests that rationality could be thus ‘captured’, “To the extent rationality can be captured in
formal terms –through logic, decision theory, and confirmation theory –to that extent we have reason to
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if those explanations were not necessarily the most salient. But how could you verify that a

physical system was really sentient, or enjoyed any phenomenology? There is a widespread, if

not universal, feeling that phenomenal consciousness and qualia look to pose the most

intractable problems for scientific explanation.8 As Kim puts it:

We can imagine designing and constructing novel physical devices that will instantiate certain
cognitive capacities and functions (e.g. perception, information processing, information storage,
inference and reasoning, the use of information to guide behaviour) – arguably, we have already
designed and manufactures such devices in certain robots and other computer-driven devices. But
it is difficult to imagine our designing devices and structures that will have phenomenal
experiences, for example structures that will feel pain and itch. I don’t think we have any idea
where to begin. 9 (1997, p4)

1.5) SUMMARY

The idea of objective science accounting for presence and nature of our subjective

experiences has seemed to many, to be a bridge too far. The phenomenal aspect of consciousness

is held by many, to be something conceptually distinct from the performance of functions. My

aim in this dissertation is to show that some explanatory demands in relation to phenomenal

consciousness are potentially legitimate and hence significant, whilst others are not.

expect a realization theory to be forthcoming.” Levine 2001, p

8 Dan Dennett will deny that there is such a problem.

9 Kim is talking about a design based on theoretical understanding rather than just copying or cloning
something we already know to have phenomenal states.

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2.) EXPLANATIONS AND CONCEIVABILITY

2.1) CHAPTER OUTLINE

In this chapter, I further analyse the nature of the explanatory gap, in relation to a rough

understanding of the nature of explanations and the conceivability arguments of David

Chalmers and Joseph Levine. I think their working accounts of explanation are adequate in

relation to this problem, but I suggest that intelligibility rather than deducibility is a more

realistic philosophical expectation. I think it is plausible to hold that the conceivability

considerations they raise do demonstrate a lack of ‘conceptual entailment’ or ‘intelligibility’

between conscious experience and its physical correlates, and hence an explanatory gap.

2.2) A FEW REMARKS ABOUT EXPLANATIONS

According to C.G. Hempel, a key idea in understanding explanations is expectability. A

good explanation should remove any surprise associated with the nature of the explanandum,

and show why, on reflection, the explanandum is to be expected. Chalmers (1996) takes it that,

what we are looking for in an explanation is to remove any mystery associated with a

phenomenon. It is the presence of this kind of mystery that explanatory gap questions reveal.

Those taking the gap at face value and looking to close it seek an account of why, given the

physical facts the phenomenal ‘facts’ with which they are correlated should be expected. So far

as reductive explanations are concerned, this expectability has to go beyond mere inductive

predictability. We might already know the correlations are reliable. It is theoretical predictability

or derivability that figures in the anti-physicalist arguments – such as Jackson’s knowledge

argument - against reductive explanations of consciousness.

Levine (2001, p72) notes that deductive models of explanation tend to leave out

understanding. As far as the explanatory gap is a philosophical problem, I think it is intelligibility

or understanding rather than strict predictability or deducibility, which philosophers are

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looking for to close the explanatory gap. This intelligibility would go beyond mere inductive

predictability, but need not require the strict derivability of a theoretic reduction. Finding a

feature known in one way intelligible in terms of another set of descriptions need not require a

formal deduction. I can find it intelligible, that the fact of the current room temperature is

determined by an ensemble of molecules and their momenta, without having to work through

an exhaustive deduction of the temperature from those statistical mechanical facts. I think it is

plausible that such intelligibility would depend on there being conceptual connections, or

parallels which would, at least, begin to show how the explanandum could follow from the

explanans.

2.3) WHAT KIND OF EXPLANATION IS RELEVANT TO THE GAP?

The conceptual terrain is outlined clearly by Chalmers 1996. 10 He takes his arguments to

establish: the in principle impossibility of an explanation in purely physical terms of the

synchronic determination of phenomenal truths by physical truths. This problem is different

from that tackled by, say, evolutionary accounts of the purpose of consciousness in the world.

One interesting approach to studying consciousness noted by Crick and Koch (2001, pp256-7) is

to note that many of the functions of an animal can be carried out by automatic mechanisms – as

e.g. when a frog’s tongue lashes out at a stimulus, or it jumps away from looming discs. However,

as the complexity of an organism and the variety of potential demands placed on it, in its

environment context, increase it would become progressively more inefficient and cumbersome

for the organism to simply have a larger and larger array of such automatic mechanisms. An

insight such as this would give us some understanding of the evolutionary advantage conferred

by consciousness, why there needs to be information shared between the differing functional

parts of an organism.11 That Crick and Koch insight would, though, seem to be tackling a

10 Chapters 2 and 3

11 Such an evolutionary role could perhaps be met by something along the lines of Ned Block’s concept of
‘access consciousness’
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different problem, than bridging the gap between correlated physical processes and conscious

sensations and experiences.

In arguing for the irreducibility of consciousness, Chalmers takes it that a reductive

physical explanation would make it inconceivable that the physical facts could be held fixed,

whilst the phenomenal facts with which they are correlated might vary. 12 In so far as, we are

discussing explanations qua scientific and the relation of determination, I take it that this kind of

conceivability constraint does look to be a prima facie plausible requirement on reductive

explanatory schemes. In Chapter 5, I look at an account that would imply the inappropriateness

of this constraint for phenomenal consciousness.

2.4) CONCEIVABILITY ARGUMENTS FOR THE PRESENCE OF AN

EXPLANATORY GAP

Levine (1996, 2001) and Chalmers (1996) both offer conceivability arguments that they

take to demonstrate the presence of an explanatory gap. For Levine, conceivability

considerations show that there is an epistemic problem of understanding how physical states

could realize conscious experience. For Chalmers, conceivability arguments motivate the

positing fundamental phenomeno-physical laws and his ‘naturalistic dualism’ about

consciousness.

Chalmers overall strategy for establishing the irreducibility of phenomenal

consciousness is; to argue that reductive explanations require that, the higher level

phenomenon to be explained is logically supervenient upon lower level physical phenomena.

Chalmers (pp, 93-106) offers a range of arguments against the logical supervenience of

conscious experience upon physical facts. Most relevant to my purposes here are those from the

conceivability of zombies and inverted qualia. Chalmers takes it that the conceptual coherence

of these scenarios is sufficient to establish the failure of logical supervenience.

12 Presumably the phenomenal nature of conscious experience is supervenient on a base that is wider
than just the brain state, but it is natural to assume, as Chalmers does that the external environment
affects the phenomenally conscious states, through “modifications of internal structure”.
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2.4.1) ZOMBIES AND INVERTS

The zombie thought experiment is of beings that are physically and behaviourally the

same as us, but which lack any qualia. There is nothing it is like to be a zombie, no “inner light”.

Our zombie counterparts have the same cognitive abilities as us, can make sensory

discriminations as well as we are able to do, but all is dark on the inside, there is no

phenomenology attendant upon their being in whatever physical/functional state they are in.

Although they are indistinguishable from ourselves, they don’t have any more inner experience

or feeling, than we take tables and chairs to have. Chalmers argues for the conceivability of a

physically identical zombie world, but without the subjective, phenomenal features. Such a

scenario does not seem logically inconsistent. Although, it is rather implausible to imagine

beings that host dinner parties, go on holiday or seek counseling for depression, but never really

feel or experience anything.

Such a case seems to provide a startling counterexample to the global supervenience

claims of physicalists. It is hard to imagine a physically identical world, where the facts about

biology are different, or the course of world history isn’t the same, or the facts about economic

organization aren’t the same. But, it does seem readily conceivable, if implausible, that there

could be a physically identical world, in which there was no conscious experience, or where, for

example, people’s colour experiences were inverted relative to ours. In considering how brain

states might realize visual experiences, logically speaking, “nothing in the neurophysiology

dictates that one sort of processing be accompanied by red experiences rather than by yellow

experiences.” (Chalmers, 1996, p100)

As Chalmers presents his arguments; zombies are taken to illustrate the idea that the

presence or existence of phenomenal states isn’t conceptually entailed by the physical facts,

whilst the inverted spectra scenarios demonstrate the idea that the character of phenomenal

properties isn’t logically fixed by their physical properties.13

13 In the following chapters, I argue that explanatory demands concerning the character of phenomenal
states are not of a piece with those concerning the presence of phenomenal consciousness.
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To expound on the zombie idea in a little more detail, its real strength is that it illustrates

the difficulty of accounting for how phenomenal features arise on physicalistic or mechanistic

models of explanation.14 In his 1983, Levine took it that materialism;

...implies explanatory reductionism of at least this minimal sort: that for every phenomenon not
describable in terms of the fundamental physical magnitudes (whatever they turn out to be), there
is a mechanism that is describable in terms of the fundamental physical magnitudes such that
occurrences of the former are intelligible in terms of occurrences of the latter.” (Levine, 1983,
p358-359)

All the causal-mechanical workings of the brain and body from sensory affect and

transduction, to neuronal activation and motor function output seem logically compatible with

the absence of phenomenality or experience. Suppose that the Crick and Koch (1997)

hypothesis that the neural correlate of consciousness is certain synchronous 40hz neural

oscillations is correct. There doesn’t seem, on the face of it, to be any logical or conceptual

reason for us to dismiss the idea that such neural oscillations could be present and conscious

experience not. There seems to be nothing incoherent in the description of the scenario. It is not

clear how you could go about ruling such a scenario out, even if you think it isn’t really possible.

In his 1996 book, after using the conceivability of zombies to argue that phenomenal

consciousness is not logically supervenient upon physical facts, Chalmers then appeals to the

implausibility of zombie scenarios, to argue that phenomenal consciousness, naturally

supervenes on the physical facts. This natural supervenience isn’t a conceptual truth, but just a

brute feature of nature. Hence, Chalmers holds that there are phenomeno-physical laws, rather

than identities.

2.4.2) A DIGRESSION ON SATISFACTORY EXPLANATIONS

14 This is more plausibly construed in relation to local rather than global supervenience.
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Zombies illustrate another closely related difficulty for reductive and causal-mechanical

models of explanation, that of demonstrating, how the higher level property of experience could

be a resultant of interactions of presumed non-experiential physical parts. Complexity of

organization seems to be just that. It is hard to see how an attempt to explain consciousness

along these lines wouldn’t just give us complex structure and dynamics, rather than sentience.

As Chalmers’ sees it, “mere complexity among neurons could not conceptually entail

consciousness…” (1996, p98) How could facts about complex causation add up to facts about

conscious experience?

Somewhat paradoxically, a contrary intuition about explanation is, as Dennett would

argue, that an explanation of consciousness would not have succeeded if it hasn’t analysed

consciousness into components that aren’t themselves conscious. 15 If the explanandum feature,

is present in the component parts referred to in the explanans you have just displaced the

phenomenon to be explained. This difference of emphasis on satisfactory explanations can be

traced back to the ancient Greeks16. On the Empedoclean idea of explanation the parts of the

whole must have the property of the whole that they explain, whereas, on the Democritean

model, an explanation of a property of the whole must be such, that none of its parts themselves

possess that property. Dennett seems to hold to the Democritean idea, whilst perhaps Chalmers

is inclined to the Empedoclean model. Maybe such tacit presuppositions explain why some

philosophers might lean to panpsychist or panprotoconscious theories of consciousness and

others to reductivist and eliminativist approaches.

2.4.3) BRIDGE PREMISES AND GAPPY IDENTITIES

Joseph Levine also illustrates the nature of the explanatory gap with conceivability

arguments. Levine as a physicalist commits himself to holding that there have to be at least

15 The caveat here is that Dennett doesn’t really accept phenomenal consciousness as a feature distinct
from the cognitive aspects of consciousness. Claiming that once the so called 'easy problems' of
consciousness, that cognitive science tackles are solved, any hard-problem will be solved for free.

16 I owe this observation to Robert Klee 1984

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token psycho-physical identities, so zombies aren’t really possible, but conceivability

considerations lead him to say that these identities are ‘gappy’. Such gappy identities are

conceivably false in a stronger sense, than say, the conceivability of water not being H 20.

Considering the role played by identity in explanations, and adopting a DN model of

explanations as adequate to demonstrate his points, Levine (1996, 2001) contrasts standard

reductive explanations with those concerning qualia. In a standard case of reductive explanation

a bridge premise is involved; “a premise that identifies the phenomenon to be explained with some

phenomenon describable in the relevant micro-vocabulary.” (Levine, 1996, p2) So, in a reductive

explanation of the boiling point of water, a bridge premise is needed giving the microphysical

features that realize, or are identical with, the macro phenomenon of boiling. This might be:

‘boiling occurs when the molecules in a liquid gain sufficient kinetic energy to exceed a

threshold of velocity so as to break their bonds and escape into the air’. It would seem

inconceivable, according to Levine, that such features could hold and the water not boil. Given a

sufficiently rich elaboration, potential questions like, ‘what makes this bridge premise true?’, or

‘why couldn’t those microphysical events realize freezing instead?’ look to be unintelligible. I see

no reason why Levine might be wrong here. In the case of qualia, a bridging premise identifying

a feature in the differing vocabularies is also involved; such as “occupying brain state [B] is to

have a reddish quale”. But, in this case, it does not seem unintelligible to request an explanation

of the identifying bridge premise. I don’t think one can coherently entertain the falsity of the

first kind of bridge premise as one can do in the latter case.

Levine concludes that although the argument from the causal closure of the physical,

forces him to accept the metaphysical identity of the conscious state with a physical state, an

explanation of how these apparently distinct properties could be co-instantiated, or at least why

the identity is conceivably false, is found wanting. As Levine writes:

But even someone convinced by causal considerations to accept the identity would still understand
what someone was asking when requesting an explanation. We don’t just stare blankly wondering

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what they could possibly have in mind. On the contrary the sense of puzzlement is all too familiar.
(1996, p5)

I will examine accounts of this sense of puzzlement in Chapters 5 & 6.

2.5) SUMMARY

The explanatory gap is illustrated by the conceivability and apparent conceptual

coherence of zombies and inverted qualia. It seems to consist in a lack of conceptual entailment

between our concepts for physical properties and those for phenomenal properties, or the

intelligibility of a request for explanation of an identifying psycho-physical bridge premise. I

examine and evaluate differing accounts of the source of this gap in chapters 4, 5 & 6.

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3.) DIFFERENT GAPS?

3.1) CHAPTER OUTLINE

In section 3.2, I briefly describe three different types of philosophical position on what

the gap represents.17 In section 3.3, I distinguish between different types of explanatory demand.

These differences, I think, are often not recognised. I think debates concerning phenomenal

consciousness and the significance of the explanatory gap for physicalism could be clarified by

treating such demands separately. In section 3.4) I give an overview of my position in respect of

these types of position and explanatory demands.

3.2) PROBLEM, ILLUSION OR MYSTERY

Par Sundstrom (2007, p136) distinguishes two types of philosophical position on the

explanatory gap qua epistemic. One type of position is that the gap represents a genuine

problem of a lack of understanding. Something that must be true, but we can’t work out how it

could possibly be true. As Nagel puts it we are in a similar epistemic position to a caveman told

that matter and energy are equivalent, we don’t have the conceptual resources to see how this

could be true. This seems to be Levine’s position, as a physicalist he construes the gap as

epistemic, rather than metaphysical in nature. Following Sundstrom, I’ll call this type of

position: the Lack of Understanding Hypothesis. Sundstrom also places Nagel and McGinn under

this umbrella.

Other physicalists developing responses centered on the nature of ‘phenomenal

concepts’, such as Papineau, Tye, and Melnyk, see the seeming intelligibility of gap questions as

illusory, a product of conceptual confusion. Sundstrom groups these views together as: the

Illusion Hypothesis.

17 This is not intended as an exhaustive taxonomy.

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The other type of response that I’ll discuss is more metaphysical, such as the

speculations considered by Chalmers, following Russell (1927) that phenomenal properties

could be seen as, amongst the intrinsic aspects of physical properties. I’ll call these kinds of

metaphysical speculations examples of the ‘intrinsic nature’ hypothesis. I would also place

epiphenomenalist positions, such as Jackson’s (2004), as closely related to such a view.

3.3) DIFFERENT EXPLANATORY DEMANDS

As I have intimated, I think there are different types of question that are asked in

relation to ‘the explanatory gap’. Typically the explanatory gap idea is summed up with a

question such as: ‘why should brain state x, feel like that, or any way at all?’ I feel the different

emphases of the two halves of this disjunction have been overlooked in much of the literature. 18

The first element concerns, why the qualitative character of a specific phenomenal

property should be as it is given the nature of its neural basis e.g. ‘Why does nociceptive

neuronal activity feel painful?’, ‘Why is such and such activity in V4 the experience of red?’, ‘Why

red and not green, or the sound of a trumpet? These demands having the general form: ‘why

should being in such and such physical state feel like that?’

The other part of the question, concerns the presence or existence of any conscious

experience at all given the physical facts e.g. ‘why should 40hz neural oscillations produce

anything it is like to be?’ ‘Why couldn’t I have physical duplicate lacking qualia?’ The general

form is less clear but, ‘Why should being in these physical states feel any way at all?’

approximates.

There seems to me, to be a significant difference between the two types of question. With

respect to the former case, I think there are good grounds for dismissing expectations of an

explanation as unrealistic.
18 Chalmers (1996 p101) notes in passing that “Somebody might conceivably hold that inverted spectra
but not zombies are logically possible. If this were the case, then the existence of consciousness could be
reductively explained, but the specific character of particular conscious experiences could not be.” My
interest here is not so much as regards reduction, but whether the differing demands are equally
legitimate.
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I think there is room for further delineation of potential types of explanatory demand,

although I don’t think any taxonomy is likely to neatly fit all the nuanced questions that could be

raised. That said, I think it is worthwhile to distinguish between asking for an explanation of:

1) The character of a quale19

2) The having of some quale

3) The character of wider phenomenally conscious states

4) The having of wider phenomenally conscious states

If one understands ‘being phenomenally conscious’ as ‘having qualia’, then demands 2)

& 4) aren’t significantly distinct. I think it is obvious that 3) does present a reasonable demand,

in so far as this is understood, as concerning the structural or relational features of experience,

rather than its “intrinsic” nature.

Arguably explanations of type 3) are already in place. Comparative features of

experience can be made intelligible in terms of isomorphisms with our internal physical

structures. For a simple example; why is it that greenish after images can follow red visual

perceptions, and vice versa? Red impressions occur when one of our three visual pathway’s

activity is excited above a norm and green impressions when the same pathway’s activity is

inhibited beneath the norm. Looking at a red surface for a period of time and then switching to a

white background means that the pathways activity is then relatively inhibited so a fleeting

green impression transpires. The reverse effect from green (inhibited) to red (relatively excited)

also occurs. Parallel effects on another pathway occur with ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’. Note that in such

an explanation, that the activity should produce reddish or greenish impressions in the first

place, is taken for granted. Given that explanations of type 3) seem less philosophically

19 By ‘quale’ I mean roughly, some instance of a simple phenomenal quality or sensation.

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problematic, in what remains I will focus my discussion around the potential for explanations of

types 1) and 2/4).20

3.4) ARGUMENTATIVE OVERVIEW

To give an overview of my position: I will argue that the first sort of explanatory gap

question, 1) demanding an explanation of why the character of an individual quale, is as it is

given its specific physical correlate, does not look to constitute a suitable candidate for

explanation, and can usefully be understood along the lines of the Illusion hypotheses. I will

argue that the Illusion hypotheses offered can help show why the explanatory demands such as

1) seem initially plausible, but can be dismissed. However, the question as in 2) & 4) of why

there should be any such quale, or any structured experience at all, seems to present, I think, a

distinct problem that can’t be dismissed in the same manner. I don’t think you can rule

explanation in or out here. So the Lack of Understanding type hypotheses are more applicable

here. This lack of understanding needn’t justify, I think, metaphysical speculations about

phenomenal properties being amongst the intrinsic properties of the physical domain. These

metaphysical speculations are to some extent appealing, but I will argue that they can be

undermined, if not ruled out.

20 I have omitted discussion of distinctions between token, structure specific, or broader type property
identifications or explanations.
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4.) ACCOUNTING FOR THE SOURCE OF THE GAP: LACK OF

ANALYSIS

4.1) CHAPTER OUTLINE

Before examining the Illusion hypotheses, I think it is worthwhile to examine the widely

held view that the source of the gap is attributable to the lack of causal role analysis for (or

unfunctionalizablity of) phenomenal consciousness. I agree that the absence of such an analysis

is a major factor in understanding the lack of conceptual connections, which explanations

plausibly require. This unfunctionalizability has been taken by some to imply the

epiphenomenality or non-relational nature of phenomenal properties, but I take issue with such

speculations.

4.2) NO ANALYSIS

The consensus on the explanatory gap is that it consists in a lack of derivability or

entailment of phenomenal states, from physical states. Marras (2005,) outlines this consensus

on the nature of the gap as follows:

The gap is said to consist in the lack of a priori, conceptual entailment from physical truths
P to phenomenal truths Q, that is in the fact one cannot deduce from knowledge of P alone,
or one can rationally conceive of P without Q, or again that Q fails to logically supervene
on P. (p,336)

The lack of entailment of, or derivability of ‘phenomenal truths’ is not just attributed to the idea

that one has to have had the relevant experience oneself in order to know what it is like to have

it; but according to Chalmers, Kim, and Levine it is the lack of any kind of analysis for, or

elucidation of, phenomenal properties, that precludes their being entailed by, or deducibility

from the physical facts.21 22

21 A parallel line of thought is that the physical concepts involved in putative psychophysical laws or
identities are associated with descriptions, but there are no such descriptions for the intrinsic nature of
qualia. I’ll discuss this consideration later in the paper in relation to Michael Tye’s response to the gap.
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“For consciousness to be entailed by a set of a physical facts one would need some kind of analysis
of the notion of consciousness – the kind of analysis whose satisfaction physical facts could imply –
and there is no such analysis to be had.” (Chalmers, 1996, p104)

Such an analysis would potentially allow for there being explanatory connections between the

higher level explanandum (phenomenal consciousness) and the lower level explanans

(neurophysiology, or what have you). For example, the functional role of a gene can be analysed

as: the maintenance and transmission of certain biological traits. That, in the right conditions,

DNA molecules interact with other molecules to produce self-duplicates, allows one to begin to

see how the functional role of the gene could be implemented by the physical properties of DNA

molecules.

We do lack much of an analysis of what it is to be phenomenally conscious, especially

given the conceivability of a robot or a zombie that could make sensory discriminations, process

information and manifest appropriate behavioural responses, without having any

phenomenology or experience.23 As Levine says, “The problem is that we can’t elucidate what it is

to have a conscious experience in either formal or causal-nomic terms.”(2001, p17) This seems to

leave us torn between feeling that qualia must make a difference and their apparent irrelevance

to the explanation of behaviour.

4.3) FROM LACK OF ANALYSIS TO ‘INTRINSIC NATURE’

Proceeding naturally, from the unfunctionalizability of phenomenal states and looking to

avoid epiphenomenalism about phenomenal consciousness, Chalmers (1996, p153-154)

speculates that phenomenal properties might be amongst the intrinsic properties of the physical

realm; whilst Kim writes that qualia look to be emergent intrinsic features.

“Qualia are intrinsic properties if anything is, and to functionalize them is to eliminate them as
intrinsic properties.” (Kim, 1997, p14)

22 Papineau (2011) rejects this consensus view, holding that the explanatory gap is just a consequence of
an illusory feeling of mind-brain distinctness.

23 Functionalist may see this as validating a deflationary approach to phenomenal consciousness.

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Functionalization, in the case of mental states usually implies construing the mental

state in terms of a ‘black-boxed’ something that achieves the right kind of mapping from sensory

inputs to appropriate behavioural outputs. The functionalized mental state is relational, in as

much as, it relates inputs to outputs in a certain way. According to some conceptions of science,

the explanatory posits of a science are characterized, in terms of their extrinsic properties in

relation to one another, rather than any intrinsic nature they might have. So, for instance: the

property of mass is characterised in terms of resistance to acceleration, the properties of

electrons are understood in terms of their dispositions to behave in relation to other particles,

and so on.

According to Chalmers (1996, p153) science give us a picture of all this ‘causal flux’

without giving us the intrinsic nature of what it relates. We have no idea what the intrinsic

nature of electricity might be. Given that, the objective scientific worldview, in tracing this

relational structure seems to leave out the what it’s likeness of the subjective realm, it is a natural

line of thought to wonder whether the subjective phenomenal features might belong among the

intrinsic, non-relational properties of the physical world. Perhaps we can’t capture phenomenal

consciousness in this relational, causal structure, because as intrinsic it is essentially non-

relational. Chalmers feels that;

“It is natural to speculate that there may be some relation or even overlap between the
uncharacterized intrinsic properties of physical entities, and the familiar intrinsic properties of
experience.” (1996, p154)

Placing phenomenal properties with the intrinsic aspects of certain physical properties has a

venerable history (Russell, 1927) and seems like an elegant solution. Such a view would seem to

fit with the non-observability of consciousness in experimental contexts. Zombies are supposed

to be extrinsically the same as us after all!

Perhaps this move is a bit too natural and elegant. Just as we would be wary of inferring

the epiphenomenality of phenomenal consciousness from our lack of a causal role analysis for it,

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so too should we be wary of inferring some metaphysical intrinsicality to phenomenal

properties from our inability to functionalize them. I’ll criticise these intrinsic property

speculations more fully in section 6.4 after my discussion of Illusion responses.

In what follows, I look at views that stress, that it is the way we conceptualize

phenomenal states, which accounts for their seeming distinctness from the physical states

captured by objective science. Such views would imply I think, that our inability to capture

qualia in causal or relational terms is attributable not to their ‘intrinsic nature’ but simply to the

way our ‘phenomenal concepts’ refer to them. These accounts focus on what they take to be a

‘special’ feature of phenomenal concepts which is supposed to account for the conceivability

intuitions outlined above.

4.4) SUMMARY

I accept that the lack of analysis, description or elucidation of phenomenal

consciousness and phenomenal qualities, does look to be a significant factor in understanding

the lack of conceptual connections that the gap is said to consist in. I think, however, that we

should be cautious about what we infer about the nature of phenomenal consciousness on the

basis of this lack of analysis.

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 5.) PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS: A DIAGNOSIS OF THE
EXPLANATORY GAP?

5.1) CHAPTER OUTLINE

After placing phenomenal concepts in the context of the Kripkean framework for

analysing a posteriori necessities, in 5.2., I will outline in 5.3 what their proponents take such

concepts to be. I’ll discuss, in 5.4 how David Papineau takes his ‘anti-pathetic fallacy’, to explain

away dualistic conceivability intuitions. I focus on Papineau’s work as he holds that once an

intuitive feeling of mind-brain distinctness is accounted for the gap can be seen as reflecting

nothing more than that feeling. I will agree that Papineau’s account of the ‘anti-pathetic fallacy’

does reveal a significant tendency in our reflection on psycho-physical connections. It plausibly

provides a useful case study in, how the apparent lack of entailment between the physical and

phenomenal concepts arises. In 5.5, I consider another potential fallacy raised by identity

theorists. I will argue further in Chapter 6, that Papineau’s arguments are inadequate to show

that there is no more substance to the explanatory gap as an epistemic and theoretical problem,

than just a feeling of mind-brain distinctness.

5.2) APPEARANCE, REALITY, CONCEIVABILITY AND A POSTERIORI

NECESSITY

Physicalists who accept the conceptual irreducibility of phenomenal properties, have to

give an account of how there could be an explanatory gap and physicalism still be true. In the

Kripkean framework, the standard response to explain away the conceivable falsity of an a

posteriori identity has been to make the distinction between the thing itself and the way the

thing seems to us. The conceivability falsity of a posteriori identifications is attributed to, there

being a difference between our pre-theoretical concepts of a phenomenon (how we know it) and

the objective properties of the phenomenon itself. The apparent conceivability of ‘heat’ not

being mean molecular kinetic energy or ‘water’ not being H20 is explained away as the

possibility of something that would seem to us like heat or water having a different
microphysical nature. But, as Kripke argued, in the psycho-physical case, the appearance of a

phenomenal property is essential to it. We can conceive of pain essentially in a non-contingent

mode of presentation. There doesn't seem to be any room for our concept of pain to

misrepresent the property itself. When contemplating phenomenality as such, one can’t it seems

distinguish between the way the phenomenon appears to one's self and its real nature. 24 As A.J.

Rudd (1998, p456) remarks;

“Phenomenology just is the way things seem to us, so there is no room for an appearance
reality distinction here.”

So appeals to a posteriori necessity as undermining conceivability arguments for

dualism have been answered by dualists, with the observation that in the case of our concepts

for phenomenal properties anything satisfying their working intension should count as a proper

referent of the term. The Twin Earth watery stuff need not actually be water, but surely the Twin

Earth painful sensation has to be pain.

Accounts of phenomenal concepts such as those of Loar, Tye and Papineau aspire to give

an account of how this compelling intuition, of the appearance being the reality, can be

accommodated within the framework of a ‘type-B physicalist’25 conceptual dualism and

property monism about consciousness.

5.3) WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS?

Firstly, phenomenal concepts are the concepts we would employ in thinking about what,

first person phenomenal states, being in pain, seeing red, and so on are like. According to these

accounts the special feature of phenomenal concepts26 is that they have an unusual logical

property; which is, that the referent of the concept – a phenomenal state or property - tends to

24 Dennett will deny such an intuition.

2525 See pp 10-11 above

26 Phenomenal concepts can be understood as the mental particulars that feature in our thoughts about
first person phenomenal states, rather than Fregean incomplete abstract entities. I think Block suggests
thinking of them as “symbols in the language of thought”.
serve as the concept’s mode of presentation. In Loar’s original (2004) account of them; the

concept’s referent itself features in the concept’s mode of presentation. This makes the manner

in which phenomenal concepts refer to phenomenal properties direct and unmediated.

To render the idea more informally; when we entertain, say, the phenomenal concept for

experience as-of-red, how we present this concept to ourselves, involves the phenomenological

character of an experience as-of-red.27 So the concept refers to the phenomenal state, by the

phenomenal state itself (or more plausibly some secondary impression of the phenomenal

state) featuring directly in the mode of presentation. Whereas, in the case of most concepts such

as physical-theoretical concepts this unusually immediate grasp on the referent in the mode of

presentation is absent; e.g. how I would present the concept for, say, ‘hyper inflation’ to myself,

clearly would not directly involve the phenomenon itself. 28 It is this feature of ‘direct reference’,

which is central to understanding Illusion Hypothesis responses to the explanatory gap.

5.3.1) THE ‘STRUCTURE’ OF PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS

Various accounts of the specific nature of phenomenal concepts have been offered, as

recognitional concepts (Loar), or indexical or demonstrative concepts (Tye), other see

phenomenal concepts as being attributable to a different cognitive faculty than that associated

with linguistic concepts (Melnyk). Here, I will expound on the quotational account, (Chalmers,

Papineau) not because I particularly favour it over other accounts, but because it is central to

understanding David Papineau’s ‘antipathetic fallacy’, which I take to potentially account for the

apparent lack of conceptual entailment which ‘zombies’ illustrate.

On the quotational account of phenomenal concepts, the phenomenal concept is largely

constituted by the phenomenal state or property it refers to. According to Papineau’s account,

27 Obviously there is some phenomenological disparity between a 'mind's eye' imaginative recreation of
red, and having an actual visual experience of red, but the two things are taken to resemble one another.

28 These accounts tend to imply that our entertaining of concepts is imagistic in nature. I would not
suggest that this is always true, but in thinking about phenomenal consciousness, it would seem that the
bulk of our modes of presentation would be relatively imagistic.
the structure of the phenomenal concept is: That state: “_” - with the blank space being filled by

an embedded phenomenal state.

“Phenomenal concepts refer by simultaneously activating some phenomenal state that is like their
referent.” (Papineau, 2003, p5)

For an identity theorist like Papineau, the embedded phenomenal state is, in fact, an embedded

neural state. Papineau (1993b) has acknowledged that generally speaking the blank is filled in

by a secondary impression of the phenomenal state rather than the state itself. Although to think

about the pain of cramp obviously isn’t to have the pain of cramp, I think there is a sense in

which the quality of phenomenal states is captured by their corresponding concepts. This is

particularly evident in relation to our phenomenal concepts for colour qualia, hence the

vividness of Frank Jackson's ‘Mary’ story.

5.4) THE ‘ANTIPATHETIC FALLACY’

David Papineau (2011) has argued that the explanatory gap is only apparent and is best

seen as reflecting, only an intuitive, but illusory, feeling of distinctness between mind and brain.

Papineau (2003) has suggested that at an intuitive level everyone, even himself, falls prey to this

feeling of mind-brain distinctness; even though he has convinced himself, theoretically at least

that it is false.29 If an account can be given of how the intuition arises then the feeling of an

explanatory gap can be seen as a consequence of this seductive, but false (for the identity

theorist) intuition. Rejecting talk of the brain ‘giving rise’ to, or ‘being correlated’ with

consciousness, Papineau as an identity theorist maintains that conscious states and those

physical states are one and the same. Phenomenal states don’t just supervene with nomological

necessity on physical states as in Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism; they are nothing other than

those physical states.

29 It has been suggested by Melnyk (2003, p2) that the feeling of mind-brain distinctness could be
seen as a recurrent cognitive illusion, which can be falsified at a theoretical level. But like the Muller-
Lyon illusion it will though, recur even if one has convinced oneself that it is a misrepresentation.
 In developing his account Papineau attempts to explain why the objective identification

of phenomenal states with neural states seems to, but only seems to, in Levine’s terms ‘leave out

what it is like’. Christened the ‘antipathetic fallacy’ because it presents a contrasting case to

Ruskin’s 'pathetic fallacy', where people unthinkingly attribute phenomenality or intentionality

to aspects of nature that couldn’t have them, e.g. “That’s an angry looking sky!”, the antipathetic

fallacy is the refusal to attribute phenomenal properties to certain objectively characterised

physical features. As Papineau puts it;

“I am currently discussing a converse fallacy, where we refuse to recognize that conscious feelings
inhere in certain parts of nature, namely the brains of conscious beings” (1993, p117)

He attempts (2011) to explain away this intuitive resistance in the following manner. In

considering a potential psycho-physical identity claim such as:

The experience as of red = such and such neural activity in V4 30

The sense that the physical description on the right hand side of the identity claim leaves out the

phenomenology is, according to Papineau, occasioned by the fact that entertaining the

phenomenal concept on the left hand side of the identity claim, activates or uses the type of

experience to which it refers; whilst entertaining the physical concept on the right hand side of

the identity claim does not activate any version of the neural state itself. So entertaining the

phenomenal concept is likely to generate the type of neural activity which constitutes the

phenomenal state. But when we contemplate the neural state as such, this clearly does not

happen.31 The sense that the physical concepts omit the phenomenology is thus generated.

Michael Tye (1999) agrees closely with Papineau, when he says:

In reflecting on the identity [red = brain state B] and what is puzzling about it, the
phenomenal concept we deploy is apt to trigger in us a visual experience of red. In this

30 ‘V4’ is part of the visual cortex.

31 If that were the case, Mary the neuroscientist could experience some reddish quale just by
contemplating the right kind of neuronal activity.
event, if the identity is true, our brain actually goes into brain state B. But, of course, when
we think of the referent of the designator on the right hand side as brain state B, nothing
like that happens.

What Tye and Papineau say here is obviously an oversimplification. People don’t literally go in to

phenomenal states just by contemplating them. But the over simplification serves to get a

difficult point across, the apparent distinctness of what the two sides of the claim refer to can

potentially be accounted for. On these accounts it is the way entertaining phenomenal concepts

trigger phenomenal states resembling their referents, that lures us into thinking that the

phenomenological disparity between entertaining the two concepts implies they don’t pick out

the same thing.

“So phenomenal concepts are indeed peculiar in introspectively appearing to ‘involve’ their
referents in a way that makes other ways of referring to those referents seem pale by comparison.”
(Papineau 2003, p3)

In Papineau’s terms, the comparison is with the way the phenomenal concept both uses and

mentions the phenomenal state, as against just the mention of the phenomenal state by the

physical concept. For Papineau and Tye, to thus infer the distinctness of the phenomenal state

from the brain state, is to fall into types of use-mention or sense-reference confusions

respectively.

5.4.1) DEFLATING ZOMBIES

An account such as Papineau’s based on the unusual nature of phenomenal concepts can

be taken to account for the apparent conceivability of zombies. The entertaining of physical

concepts doesn’t directly involve or ‘activate’ their referents. So the conceivability of a physically

identical counterpart lacking phenomenology is thus given a potential psychological

explanation. Simply because, entertaining the physical concepts held fixed in a zombie scenario

does not generate the right kind of phenomenological content to match with our intuitive

understanding of phenomenal states, does not mean that those concepts do not, refer to and

thus include, those phenomenal states supposedly lacking. An account of the apparent lack of
conceptual entailment from physical facts to phenomenal facts has been offered. It should be

noted, of course, that giving the conceivability of zombies a ‘diagnosis’ - as Chalmers (2007) calls

it - is not the same as demonstrating their impossibility.

As I discuss further in the next chapter, Papineau argues that once this intuition of

distinctness is overcome, and psycho-physical identities are accepted, there is no explanatory

gap for consciousness. Papineau insists that if materialists want an explanation of how the

neural state realizes the conscious state, they are not really taking their materialism seriously.

He holds that, if we take the identity seriously then we can’t expect an explanation of why the

identity should hold. You can’t account for the relation of identity.

Although, I think he has provided an account of intuitions that consciousness is

something extra to the physical goings on; I do not think this account does really extend to

dispelling Levine’s explanatory gap. Before evaluating whether Papineau is right to hold that the

explanatory gap can be so dismissed. I want to discuss another psychological tendency that

earlier identity theorists - Armstrong (1999), Smart (1981) - raised but, Papineau’s account

seems to pass over. I think noting this feature is relevant to discussions over the explanatory

gap; it will inform my argument for what are and are not potentially legitimate explanatory

demands on physicalism.

5.5) THE HEADLESS WOMAN FALLACY

Perhaps a lot of the bafflement felt in considering the relation between phenomenal and

physical properties can be attributed to the representational nature of our qualia. Generally

speaking they represent qualities that we take to be external to ourselves. It should be born in

mind though, that there is a big difference between the content of a representation (what it

represents) and the representation itself. As Armstrong (1999, p74) has suggested, we have a

natural, almost incorrigible tendency to overlook this. If you show a child a picture of a polar

bear and ask them what they are looking at. They will say “a polar bear” rather than “a
representation of a polar bear”. When the conjuror makes it so that his audience can’t see the

woman’s head (the representation), he generates the illusion that they are seeing a headless

woman (the thing represented), rather than just not seeing the woman’s head. 32 Maybe the

representational content of qualia tends to make us resistant to accepting that the

representation itself could just be a certain brain process. It seems to me that what our

phenomenal concepts pick out is the content, rather than the representational activity

This distinction between representational content and representation informs my

argument that we shouldn’t expect an explanation of the character of a quale (i.e., its content),

but that needn’t rule out the request for an explanation of their being such a representation. So,

in wondering if the identity claim “the experience of red = such and such activity in V4” could be

made intelligible, or if Mary the neuroscientist could come to know the phenomenal character of

a brain state from its neurological description; we can might ask whether it is the nature of that

content we want explained or the having of some such content. As in the topic neutral analysis

presented by the early identity theorists; having that content could be identical with your brain

instantiating such and such pattern of activity. But I don’t think that means that the character of

the content is thereby identified.

5.6) SUMMARY

I have discussed the ‘structure’ of phenomenal concepts. I accept that there is a

phenomenological resemblance between our concepts for phenomenal qualities and ‘the things

themselves’, and this disparity with ‘standard’ concepts, could plausibly account for the

apparent lack of conceptual entailment, which zombie thought experiments demonstrate. I have

raised another related psychological tendency involving representations, which I think, supports

my contention that explanatory gap questions are not all of a piece.

32 Discussed in Sperry,1981
 6.) EXPLAINING AWAY THE EXPLANATORY GAP?

6.1) CHAPTER OUTLINE

In section 6.2, I present and criticise Papineau’s argument for holding that any epistemic

gap can be dismissed as illusory. In section 6.3, I discuss Michael Tye’s (1996, 1999) claims that

certain explanatory gap questions are pseudo questions which can have no answer in principle. I

argue that, when seen together with accounts of the gap in terms of a lack of analysis, Tye’s

illusion position offers a more fitting reason against expecting informative answers to ‘why

should it feel like that?’ explanatory gap questions. I argue in 6.4, that the ‘intrinsic nature’

speculations of Chalmers (considered in 4.3) are undermined by a clearer understanding of how

phenomenal concepts refer. Although I think that explanatory demands to explain the qualitative

nature of a specific phenomenal property, given its physical description can be deflated. I

suggest, in section 6.5, that there are grounds for holding that questions over the presence of

such properties do potentially present better candidates for explanation.

6.2) EXPLAINING IDENTITIES

Papineau argues that the felt need for an explanation of how brain states realize

consciousness is premised on, what he takes to be, the confused idea that consciousness is a

property distinct from those brain states. Taking himself to have offered an account of this

illusory distinctness, he feels the explanatory gap is by extension also illusory. I first present

(6.2.1) how Papineau generalises from specific phenomenal properties to consciousness in this

way. Then I will argue (6.2.2) that his argument based on an analogy with proper name

identities, is inappropriate to demonstrate that the gap does not represent a genuine epistemic

problem as Levine takes it to.

 6.2.1) FROM SEEING RED TO CONSCIOUSNESS

It is not easy to see how, noting the ‘antipathetic’ tendency raised by Papineau, might

dispel the felt need for a general explanation of how any phenomenal consciousness at all is

realized; or to put it in terms more conducive to an identity theorist, ‘why certain physical states

are phenomenal states and others not?’ Although it can dispel some of our sense of bafflement

or resistance when considering psycho-physical identity claims between qualia and neural

activity; does an account centered on removing intuitive resistance to specific phenomenal

states being identical with specific neural states generalise to phenomenal consciousness as

such?

Papineau, holds that his account of the illusory distinctness between phenomenal and

physical properties is easily generalised to consciousness. Papineau (1993b, p180) suggests:

We can think of the general property of being conscious as standing to experiences like
seeing red as determinable to determinate. Seeing red, being jealous, feeling cold, and so
on, are the determinate states which have in common the determinable state of being
conscious.

Papineau takes it that any sense that consciousness is distinct from brain activity is just a

further manifestation of the antipathetic fallacy at the general level of the ‘determinable

consciousness’ rather than the determinate states used to illustrate the fallacy. Perhaps, this

sense is based on an intuitive “inner light” idea of consciousness as something floating along

with all the brain activity.

I don’t, really think you can generalise in this manner, as the representative feature of

consciousness, noted above, goes unaccounted for. Surely, those specific neural states are all

embedded in a structure that makes them representational? But, for my purposes here, I can

pass over that move and concentrate on Papineau’s argument from ‘identity’ against any further

explanatory gap.
 6.2.2) A NON-ISSUE?

The natural nagging question ‘what makes all these states conscious?’ is addressed

explicitly by Papineau:

“Let us suppose that physicalists can somehow specify which physical occurrences constitute each
of these mental states. The current challenge is to explain what ties these different states together.
Why are pains, itches, and so on, all conscious, while the states of stones, hydrogen atoms and golf
balls, are not?” (1993b, p179)

Papineau thinks he can deal with this challenge in a straight forward manner, physicalists, he

says, should not accept the question. As it is premised on, ‘consciousness’, being a property

distinct from whatever physical feature all those states have in common, say, ‘physical

characteristic A’. If Levine and others seek a realization theory for consciousness, Papineau

would suggest they are mistaken to expect one:

“Once we fully free ourselves from the seductive ‘inner light’ picture consciousness, and
take seriously the idea that being conscious may literally be identical with some physical
A, then we should stop hankering for any further explanation of why physical state A yields
consciousness.” (1993b, p180)

As a response to those materialists like Levine who already accept the metaphysical

identity, but still think there is an epistemic gap, I think, the account has more work to do. One

might feel that the lack of intelligibility between the differing concepts, in a psycho-physical

identity presents a genuine explanatory problem. So those who insist that the gap rests on a

fallacy or an illusion must go beyond, just insisting that the different concepts have the same

referents. Given that explanations are generally taken to revolve around intensionality, a reason

is needed why, the felt need for making the relation between the co-referring phenomenal and

the physical concepts intelligible, does not represent a legitimate expectation.

In his 1983, Levine hinted that a philosophical account of intelligibility was wanted.
What we need is an account of what it is for a phenomenon to be made intelligible, along
with rules which determine when the demand for intelligibility is inappropriate. (Levine,
1983, p358)

So a likely line of response to demands to make any epistemic gap intelligible would be to show

that the expectation of intelligibility at this level is indeed inappropriate. 33

Papineau attempts to undermine such a demand for intelligibility by arguing that proper

name identities such as, ‘Mark Twain = Samuel Clemence’ are just as unexplanatory, but that no

one insists that such identities are genuinely problematic. Many theorists take it that there is no

sense to asking why an identity holds, it just does. You can’t give much of an answer to the

question: ‘Why was Mark Twain Samuel Clemence?’ Demands to explain identities are seen as

wrong-headed. One can’t expect to have the relation of self-identity made further intelligible.

I think the analogy with identities between proper names is incongruous, psycho-

physical identity claims would be of theoretical scientific identities, so deserve not to be treated

as analogous with non-theoretical identities such as those between personal names. Even if the

analogy with proper names is appropriate, isn’t there some sense to, say, Lois Lane seeking to

make it intelligible that Clarke Kent and Superman could be the same person?

Furthermore, in the psycho–physical cases we have a description, e.g. ‘40hz neural

oscillations’ rather than a name on the physical side of the identity. One might also note, that

although ‘red’ is a name and not a descriptively referring concept; ‘having a red quale’ is a more

descriptively referring concept.

Other theoretical identities may hold between concepts with dissimilar modes of

presentation, but we seem to be able to find links between the two so as to enable the differing

cognitive significances to be intelligibly merged in some way. When I consider how the

microphysical theoretical concept of mean molecular kinetic energy, could refer to the same

33 Michael Tye provides a different argument to such an end.

thing as my pre-theoretic concept of heat, it seems that I am able to find intermediate steps

between the two concepts, so that any epistemic gap between the two can be filled in. For

instance, if I wonder to myself how the spread of warmth from a radiator could just be

attributable to molecular motion. I can tell myself an oversimplified story about the molecules

being agitated and transmitting energy by contact with the molecules in the air, and so on. It

does seem that the relation between the two concepts can be made intelligible. So why couldn’t

there be some bridge between the supposedly co-referring phenomenal and physical concepts

that would make their relation seem less arbitrary? Presumably, Papineau would say that

entertaining the physical theoretical concepts is just not going to activate the right kind of first

person phenomenological content, to cross the intuitive gap. 34 I think it is rash of Papineau

(2011) to dismiss the standard accounts, (see 4.2) of a lack of analysis not giving scope to

establish explanatory connections, as unhelpful.

Although we can’t expect an explanation of why an identity holds, we can I think, ask

legitimate question about how the properties associated with one side of the identification,

account for the properties associated with the other side of the identity. The question, ‘why is

H2O water?’ might be unanswerable, but we do, in fact, have explanations for how the micro-

structural properties of H20 account for the behavioural properties of water. Such explanations

do not commit us to holding that the behavioural properties of water are ontologically

additional to the properties of H20. It might be objected that my example involves different

mereological levels, but it seems to make sense to ask: how a brain state that is decomposable

into individual neural firings could account for, say, the ‘transparency of conscious experience’.

At the very least, it looks to me to be an open question whether we are talking about, just modes

of presentation of the same property, or the co-instantiation of logically distinct properties. In

the former case we shouldn’t expect much of an answer, but in the latter case we are asking a

34 Melnyk (2003) has suggested that some feature of our cognitive architecture, where perhaps the
relevant concepts are formed in different parts of the brain, might prevent such ‘file merging’.
legitimate question. The proviso being, of course, that our demand for explanation must be

accompanied by giving some explication of the explanandum property.

6.3) TYE’S ILLUSION ARGUMENT

Returning now, to the narrower issue of whether we could have an explanation for the

way specific phenomenal properties seem. I think Micheal Tye offers a stronger account, which

attempts to show, that the demand to make the relation between the distinct concepts

intelligible is illegitimate (1996, 1999). If the gap is taken as the distance between the

phenomenal and non-phenomenal modes of presentation, then once we recognize that

phenomenal concepts refer rigidly with an indexical element – this phenomenal state – rather

than referring via a description, this means that there is, in principle, no illuminating answer to

the question of how the two different concepts could refer to the same thing. No one expects

that given an objective description of some object, that there then must be an informative

answer to the question; ‘why should it be that very object?’ Tye claims;

It is conceptually guaranteed by the character of phenomenal concepts and the way they differ
from third-person descriptive concepts that the question has no answer...we find ourselves the
victims of a cognitive illusion, induced by a failure to recognize the special character of
phenomenal concepts.” (1999, p712)

The strand of explanatory gap questions, ‘why does being in such and such physical state feel

like that?’ are for Tye pseudo questions that can, in principle, have no answer. On this account,

the direct, introspectively pointing way phenomenal concepts refer prevents informative

answers to how they could be coextensive with concepts that refer mediately via descriptions.

The impossibility of an answer to such questions is then attributed to there just being a

mismatch between the ways the differing concepts refer. 35

35 Tye has since renounced phenomenal concepts, preferring to understand the apparent gap in terms of
the Russell’s distinction between ‘knowledge by description’ and ‘knowledge by acquaintance’. I do not
see that this shift makes any substantial difference to his preclusion of their being an illuminating answer
to how the differing modes of presentation are related.
 Tye then implicitly agrees with Chalmers, Kim and Levine that for there to be

explanatory links between concepts they must be associated with descriptions or analyses. That

phenomenal concepts don't refer via descriptions or can’t be analysed, means that there is no

way for the descriptively referring physical concepts to ‘latch onto’ those phenomenal concepts

and so establish the conceptual connections that explanations seem to involve. This looks a

more appropriate and fitting way of analysing that kind of explanatory demand, than Papineau’s

model of proper name identities.36 This model recognizes that, at least one side of the identity or

correlation is picked out by a description, rather than a name.

As I see it, combining these two insights, of the direct reference of phenomenal concepts

and the need for descriptions or analyses in establishing explanatory connections, can

demonstrate the preclusion of any informative answer to the question of how something known

under a complex description accounts for that simple feeling. It can be objected, that our

phenomenal concepts are more substantive than mere blind pointings. I agree, there is genuine

content to what they pick out, they aren’t purely indexical, hence the feeling of a something to be

explained. The point is, though, that we lack any elucidations of what they pick out. In the case of

a simple quale like ‘red’ that substantive content is unanalysable. If, I ask a neuroscientist to

explain, why an oscillatory pattern of a certain frequency in my visual cortex should have to be

felt as ‘red’; then he is entitled to ask me for some explication or description of that felt quality.

For the logically simple qualities of sense experience, I can’t believe that any such explication is

likely to be forthcoming.

6.4) UNDERMINING THE ‘INSTRINSIC NATURE’ HYPOTHESIS

Recognizing the different structure of phenomenal concepts from our third person

concepts, can, I think, pull the rug out from under, speculations about phenomenal qualities as

intrinsic properties of the physical. The immediate and primitive way our concepts refer to

36 I note that Tye’s approach need not imply the strict identity of what the differing concepts refer to.
They could refer to coextensive properties rather than an identity. But the in principle preclusion of there
being any further intelligibility between the concepts would still apply.
them, looks to be the likely source of our inability to capture them in the ‘causal nexus’; rather

than, perhaps, any essential intrinsicality or scientific inaccessibility to such phenomenal

properties. Our concepts for qualia don’t present themselves in causal or relational terms, but

this need not imply that qualia must be epiphenomenal or intrinsic features. It looks to me, to be

mistaken to take the ineffable and unanalyzable nature of some phenomenal content, as

implying its metaphysical intrinsicality, when the having of that simple phenomenal content

depends on, or is identifiable with, some complex, and presumably, scientifically accessible

physical process.

6.5) WHAT QUESTIONS REMAIN?

Understanding that phenomenal concepts pick out simple unanalysable content directly,

can, when understood in conjunction with the need for analyses or descriptions to establish

explanatory connections, I contend be a convincing basis for ruling out explanatory demands of

type 1)37 e.g. ‘how such and such neural state accounts for this feeling etc. It does look to be

illegitimate to expect an informative explanation for the nature of some logically simple quality. I

don’t believe there will ever be much elucidation of ‘reddish’. But the type 2) question, ‘why any

such content should present itself?’ seems to me, not to be dismissible in this same manner. I

think this, because I do not consider ‘having a quale’ or ‘being phenomenally consciousness’ to

be logically simple concepts. I admit that we do lack much explication or elucidation, beyond

functional accounts here. I think, though, that questions over the having of experiences are

potentially more analysable and hence tractable, than those concerning the ‘intrinsic’ quality of

those sensations, largely for the reasons discussed at the end of section 5.5. Potential

explanations of type 2/4) may well overlap with, or depend on gaining more explanations of

type 3)38.

37 See 3.3 above

38 See 3.3 above

 Two ways to go here, that I can see are: functionalists are liable to claim that they can

give an account of what it is to be conscious, perhaps giving an analysis along the lines of an

access consciousness conception. They can point to ‘antipathetic’ type arguments in dismissing

absent qualia scenarios. Whilst those not wishing for phenomenal consciousness to be so

deflated, might say a la McGinn (2004) that the problem is beyond our capabilities, but this

needn’t make it a pseudo problem.

 CONCLUSION

In this dissertation I have argued that accounts of the explanatory gap that see it as

illusory are instructive, but only in relation to one strand of explanatory gap questions. That

phenomenal concept do pick out some substantive content potentially creates an expectation

that an account of their relation to their physical realizers should be forthcoming. But questions

like, ‘why does being in such and such brain state feel like that?’ look to be unanswerable. There

not constituting suitable candidates for explanation can be attributable to a lack of description

or analysis for simple phenomenal content.

There still seems to me, though to be a genuine problem of a lack of understanding of

how any such content is manifested, which I don’t think can be ruled out in principle. Arguments

that justify the identity of consciousness with physical states do not block off all the explanatory

demands we might have. We can ask why some patterns of brain activity are experiential and

others not, and such questions deserve to be taken more seriously, than the response that

conscious experience is nothing other than certain patterns of brain activity, and that there is no

answer to the question of why those patterns are self-identical. The macro properties of water

are not ontologically extra to the structural properties of H2O, but the former are intelligibly

related to the latter.

I have also argued, that responses that speculate that the source of the gap might be

some overlap between phenomenal properties and the intrinsic nature of the physical, are too

quick to take the ineffability of phenomenal content, as implying its metaphysical

fundamentality.
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