In this and the next two posts on the Transcending Zombies argument, I discuss Premise 4 (My Physical Properties Fix My Conceptualized and Egocentric Contents). In the current post, I concentrate on conceptualized contents.
Prima facie, it looks like physical similarity would entail conceptual similarity, that my physical doppelganger is my conceptual doppelganger. He and I have all of the same sorting and discriminatory abilities. We have all the same problem-solving capabilities. We can process all of the same information and do so in virtue of the same information-processing computational/functional architecture. We would perform exactly as well in conversation. On the face of it, such similarities entail conceptual similarity.
While the nature of concepts is far from a settled matter we can sketch some details about them that help to further show that my physical doppelganger would be my conceptual doppelganger.
First, having a concept is having a representation that is general, abstract, or allocentric. Second, concepts are mental dispositions (or the categorical bases thereof). Concepts are abeyant (as opposed to occurrent) representations that allow the possessor to satisfy the re-identifiability criterion, the requirement on possessing concept C that the possessor is able to re-identify objects falling under C as such. Thus, George has the concept of dogs only if George is able to identify dogs as such on multiple occasions.
Third, concepts are endogenously triggerable (Weiskopf, 2007); their deployment is not strictly stimulus-bound or conditioned to current environmental conditions but may be deployed in various “off-line” mental processes such as inference and imagination.
We may summarize these three features by saying that concepts are allocentric, abeyant, endogenously triggerable representations. It seems clear that my physical doppleganger would duplicate all of my allocentric, abeyant, endogenously triggerable representations.
It is worth mentioning that the current argument does not depend on construing my physical doppelganger as being only intrinsically similar, we may allow various environmental and historical similarities as well. Thus the argument in this paper is consistent with semantic externalism. This is not to say, however, that I’m a great fan of semantic externalism. The key to note about what counts as my physical doppelganger is that we are careful to not simply assume phenomenal similarity.
There should be no objection to the claim that physical properties fix my concepts since neither possessing nor applying a concept by itself entails phenomenal consciousness. Regarding possession, I have been in possession of the concept of cats for a long time, including all day today. However, as I look up and see my cat for the first time today, this is the first time today that my cat concept has had anything to do with my conscious experience. Regarding application, arguably, blind-sight patients who identify objects in their blind field under forced-choice guessing conditions (Weiskrantz, 1996) are applying concepts without thereby having phenomenally conscious experiences of the objects thereby identified.
Some, like Chalmers (2003), may object that fixing my physical properties does not fix all of my concepts, since phenomenal character is non-physical and there are some concepts, so-called direct phenomenal concepts, which can be possessed only if one has had or is having a state with phenomenal character. My main complaint against this response is that I don’t think there are such concepts as concepts one can only have if one has had or is having a state with phenomenal character. I address this issue at greater elsewhere (Mandik, 2009b). One brief point to make here, though, is that really direct phenomenal concepts, concepts had only while one is currently having a state with phenomenal character seem not to be concepts at all for their violation of both the re-identifiability criterion and the criterion of endogenous triggering (Prinz 2007 pp.207-208 makes a similar point).
1. Introducing Transcending Zombies
2. Anti-Skeptical Maneuvers
3. I Know I’m Not a Zombie
4. Some Remarks on Phenomenal Knowledge
5. The Egocentricity of Phenomenal Knowledge
6. The Knowing and the Known