A posteriori physicalism has been challenged by philosophers who claim that it cannot do justice to the substantial nature of the content of phenomenal concepts. This is called the New Challenge. This paper focuses on Philip Goff’s version of the New Challenge, where “the substantial nature” is understood in terms of conceptual transparency. Three existing objections to Goff’s argument will be examined: radical opacity, soft translucency, and Dual Carving. It will be demonstrated that none of th…
Read moreA posteriori physicalism has been challenged by philosophers who claim that it cannot do justice to the substantial nature of the content of phenomenal concepts. This is called the New Challenge. This paper focuses on Philip Goff’s version of the New Challenge, where “the substantial nature” is understood in terms of conceptual transparency. Three existing objections to Goff’s argument will be examined: radical opacity, soft translucency, and Dual Carving. It will be demonstrated that none of them is successful. By identifying an implicit assumption about reference determination in Goff’s argument that a posteriori physicalists need not and should not accept, I propose a novel reply to the New Challenge. The solution consists in a combination of two ideas: first, phenomenal concepts have substantial contents in the sense of being essence-indicating; two, phenomenal concepts can refer non-satisfactionally. In this way, a posteriori physicalists can do full justice to the challenging fact without jeopardizing minimal intelligibility of the world.
