Abstract

Recently certain physicalists have mobilized a special kind of concept in order to respond to some challenges to the physicalist thesis, challenges that aim to show the apparent incompatibility between the subjective character of consciousness and physicalism. The paper will be divided in three parts, first, I will take some time to deal with terminology issues and contextualize the debate around phenomenal concepts. Next, I want to expose Michael Tye and Derek Ball’s objection to the conception of phenomenal concepts and finally I want to propose that Ball and Tye’s argument is flawed. First, it is problematic to apply social externalism to phenomenal concepts. However, granting that this might be the case, we may still change phenomenal concepts constraints as suggested by Torin Alter. My conclusion is that although Ball and Tye show that possession condition may not be what marks the difference between phenomenal and physical concepts, the drastic conclusion that there are no phenomenal concept is false.