Reconceiving the Conceivability Argument for Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind

Maung, Hane Htut (2023) Reconceiving the Conceivability Argument for Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind. Synthesis philosophica, 38 (1). pp. 157-181. ISSN 0352-7875

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Abstract

In the philosophical literature on consciousness and the mind-body problem, the conceivability argument against physicalism is usually taken to support a form of dualism between physicality and phenomenality. Usually, the discussion focuses on the qualitative character of experience, which is what the phenomenal feel of a given experience is like. By contrast, the subjective character of experience, or its individuation to a given first-person subject, tends to be set aside. The aim of this paper is to present a new and more robust version of the conceivability argument for dualism that appeals to the subjective character of experience. Drawing on insights by philosophers in the phenomenological tradition, I conceptualise the first-person subjective character of experience as a transcendental condition of possibility for phenomenality that cannot be reduced to third-person facts about the physical world. Given this, the mind-body problem as it pertains to consciousness does not merely concern the inability of the set of physical facts about a brain state to capture the qualitative character of experience, but concerns the existential issue of why this brain state is accompanied by first-person subjectivity at all. This allows us to reconceive the conceivability argument in a way that presents a stronger case for dualism than the traditional version of the argument.