A priori entailment and conceptual analysis: Making room for type-C physicalism *
Author:
J. L. Dowell a
| Affiliation: | a University of Nebraska, Lincoln |
DOI:
10.1080/00048400701846582
Publication Frequency:
4 issues per year
Subject:
Philosophy;
Formats available:
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Previously published as:
Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy
(1832-8660)
until 1947
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Abstract
One strategy for blocking Chalmers's overall case against physicalism has been to deny his claim that showing that phenomenal properties are in some sense physical requires an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones. Here I avoid this well-trodden ground and argue instead that an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones does not require an analysis in the Jackson/Chalmers sense. This is to sever the dualist's link between conceptual analysis and a priori entailment by showing that the lack of the former does not imply the absence of the latter.
Moreover, given the role of the argument from conceptual analysis in Chalmers's overall case for dualism, undermining that argument effectively undermines that case as a whole in a way that, I'll argue, undermining the conceivability arguments as stand-alone arguments does not. |
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1Many thanks to Dave Chalmers, Terry Horgan, David Sobel, Daniel Stoljar, and an anonymous referee for the Australasian Journal of Philosophy for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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