Philosophy of Mind Talk (Lok-Chi Chan, National Taiwan University)

In the philosophy of mind, ineffability is widely regarded as one of the key features of subjective phenomenal experience by both physicalists and non-physicalists, and both metaphysicians who discusses the hard problem and specialists who study specific experiences. Physicalists typically employ accounts under the umbrella term “phenomenal concept strategy” to explain this ineffability; yet, the resulting idea about the relationship between phenomenal and theoretical concepts appears at least incomplete, as an unqualified version of it leads to the implausible consequence that phenomenal information is isolated, thus epiphenomenal and practically useless. In this paper, I propose a novel naturalistic account of phenomenal ineffability that clarifies the relevant issues by adopting a deflationary attitude that takes seriously considerations from phenomenology, the natural sciences, and the history of knowledge. Drawing on the Enlightenment distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities in a non-literal way, this account has a two-way explanation of why certain phenomenal concepts remain untranslatable into theoretical concepts, and vice versa.