Acquaintance and the Mind-Body Problem

In Simone Gozzano & Christopher S. Hill (eds.), New Perspectives on Type Identity: The Mental and the Physical. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 16-43 (2012)
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Abstract

In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides support for physicalism.

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Katalin Balog
Rutgers University - Newark

Citations of this work

Acquaintance.Matt Duncan - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (3):e12727.
Revelation and physicalism.Kelly Trogdon - 2017 - Synthese 194 (7):2345-2366.
Renewed Acquaintance.Brie Gertler - 2012 - In Declan Smithies & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Introspection and Consciousness. , US: Oxford University Press. pp. 89-123.
In Defense of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy1.Katalin Balog - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (1):1-23.

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References found in this work

The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.

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