Concepts, Introspection, and Phenomenal Consciousness: An Information-Theoretical Approach

Abstract

This essay is a sustained information-theoretic attempt to bring new light on some of the perennial problems in the philosophy of mind surrounding phenomenal consciousness and introspection. Following Dretske (1981), we present and develop an informational psychosemantics as it applies to what we call <em>sensory concepts</em>, concepts that apply, roughly, to so-called secondary qualities of objects. We show that these concepts have a special informational character and semantic structure that closely tie them to the brain states realizing conscious qualitative experiences. We then develop an account of introspection which exploits this special nature of sensory concepts. The result is a new class of concepts, which, following recent terminology, we call <em>phenomenal concepts</em>: these concepts refer to phenomenal experience itself and are the vehicles used in introspection. On our account, the connection between sensory and phenomenal concepts is very tight: it consists in different semantic uses of the same cognitive structures underlying the sensory concepts, like RED. Contrary to widespread opinion, we show that information theory contains all the resources to satisfy internalist intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, while not offending externalist ones. A consequence of this account is that it explains and predicts the so-called conceivability arguments against physicalism on the basis of the special nature of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Thus we not only show why physicalism is not threatened by such arguments, but also demonstrate its strength in virtue of its ability to predict and explain away such arguments in a principled way. However, we take the main contribution of this work to be what it provides in addition to a response to those conceivability arguments, namely, a substantive account of the interface between sensory and conceptual systems and the mechanisms of introspection as based on the special nature of the information flow between them.

Available Versions of this Item

• Concepts, Introspection, and Phenomenal Consciousness: An Information-Theoretical Approach. (deposited 23 Feb 2002) [Currently Displayed]
  • Cognitive Architecture, Concepts, and Introspection: An Information-Theoretic Solution to the Problem of Phenomenal Consciousness. (deposited 06 Aug 2004)