Jonathon VandenHombergh

Some embodied theories of concepts state that concepts are represented in a sensorimotor manner, typically via simulation in sensorimotor cortices. Fred Adams (2010) has advanced an empirical argument against embodied concepts reasoning as follows. If concepts are embodied, then patients with certain sensorimotor impairments should perform worse on categorization tasks involving those concepts. Adams cites a study with Moebius Syndrome patients that shows typical categorization performance in face-based emotion recognition. Adams concludes that their typical performance shows that embodiment is false. Moebius patients must draw on amodal (non-embodied) emotion concepts. In this paper, I review face-based emotion recognition studies with Moebius patients yielding conflicting results and diagnose these conflicts as a difference in experimental design. When emotion labels are provided, patients have typical performance, but when labels are not provided patients are severely deficient. I then show how an embodied, psychological constructionist view of emotions predicts and explains these performance differences. The upshot is that embodied theories of concepts are vindicated.

This paper is mostly about the role of modal system S5 in conceivability arguments against, as well as in the defense of, different versions of physicalism. Jonathon VandenHombergh argued in a recent article that “[s]o far as the modal epistemology of reduction is concerned, therefore, it pays to go intrinsic.” His reasoning is that while the weaker, extrinsic version of reductive physicalism is vulnerable to conceivability arguments, the stronger, intrinsic, version is uniquely resistant to this type of challenge. To get to this surprising conclusion, VandenHombergh claims that the standard strategies of preempting the Dualist’s reasoning rely on some premise(s) that the Dualist can do without: one such premise is axiom-scheme S5. I will argue that the use of S5 is legitimate in countering the Dualist, as she herself relies on it, not to secure the _validity_ of her arguments as VandenHombergh assumes, but rather, its _soundness_. I will also argue that this axiom-scheme is tacitly present in the auxiliary premises the stronger, intrinsic version of physicalism relies on: Kripke’s postulates about identity and non-identity statements. Indeed, this paper will forge an interesting and potentially important connection between Kripke’s postulates and modal system S5.