PHIL-UA 104 Topics in Language and Mind: Lecture notes

Spring 2020

Mar 30, April 1

Kripke against Physicalism

Physicalism is the view that everything, including ourselves, is a purely material

entity, ultimately apt to be explained and understood purely in terms of the categories
of physical science. Discussion point: how clear is this?

Kripke’s argument doesn't depend on clarity about what should count as purely
physical and is focused in the first instance not specifically on the nature of the self,
but on certain kinds of psychological characteristics of the self: the kind of
characteristics of which one seems to be most immediately and directly aware just by
being conscious: for instance, sensations, like tickles and pains, and perhaps also
emotions, like being angry or amused, as well as intentional (propositional content-)
bearing states like belief, hope, and desire. It needs thought just how widely the
argument spreads if it is sound but, like Kripke himself, we will focus on the case of
pain.

The argument will be that pain cannot be a physical state.

It does not immediately follow that I, who experience pain, cannot be a physical
entity. What principle would we need to ensure that conclusion if pain, and it's kind,
are not physical?

Kripke’s argument — draws on concepts and principles that he argued for in the first
two lectures of Naming and Necessity.
1. The first is that many singular terms, including most proper names, and common
nouns, like 'water 'and 'heat' are rigid designators. Kripke tends to explain the notion
of rigid designation using phrases like, “denotes the same object in all possible
worlds”. This is apt to mislead. The substance of the idea, recall, is that a rigid
designator retains its actual referent when used in speaking of any possible scenario,
including counterfactual ones. Thus contrast the behaviour of 'Donald Trump' and 'the
winner of the 2016 US presidential election’, under cross-substitution in the
counterfactual conditional, “But for Russian interference in the social media, the
winner of the 2016 US presidential election would have been a woman”.
2. Note an interesting consequence of the idea of rigid designation: if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are
both rigid designators, then if the identity statement, “a=b” is actually true, it will be
true of any scenario which is possible. Class exercise
3. Such an identity statement may nevertheless be a posteriori. It may take empirical
investigation to verify it. “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus” are both, plausibly, rigid yet
as Frege emphasised, it took astronomical investigation to verify the truth of the
identity statement that configures them. Kripke gives the examples, “Water is H2O”,
and “Heat is molecular motion” as further cases of a posteriori necessities.

Now to his anti-physicalist argument: —

 2

(1) Let “C-fiber stimulation” denote whatever brain science suggests is the best
candidate for the physical identity of pain,
(2) So “Pain is C-fiber stimulation” is true if, as the physicalist believes, pain is
fundamentally a physical phenomenon.
(3) Both “Pain” and “C-fiber stimulation” are rigid designators.
(4) So if “Pain is C-fiber stimulation” is true at all, it is necessarily true. But
(5) It is coherently conceivable that one might be in pain although physical
examination shows ones C-fibers to be inactive. So
(6) By the Coherent Conceivability Principle —
(Coherent Conceivability Principle (CCP):
Coherent conceivability entails possibility), (For discussion)
— it is possible and therefore not necessary that pain is not C-fiber stimulation.
(7) So by (4), it is not true that pain is C-fiber stimulation. But
(8) This argument can be repeated for any candidate physical identification of pain.
So
(9) No such identification is true.

A similar argument can be run for any psychological property which does not present
itself in physical terms.

And maybe directly against “I am my body”? For discussion.

Objections and qualifications (Class discussion)

(i) Just as good for water = H2O?
(ii) What’s the argument for thinking “pain” and “C-fiber stimulation” are rigid?
(iii) Does the argt work against token-token physicalism?
(iv) Against the CCP.