The Phenomenal Concept Strategy And Anti-Physicalist Arguments

At present,Physicalism has become a prevailing view in the philosophy of mind.However,Physicalism still have to deal with some very serious challenges,mainly reflected in two aspects.On the one hand,Physicalism has its internal problem,called the Hempel's Dilemma,first postulated by Hempel,which is generating when answering the question--What is the physical things?On the other hand,the second challenge was caused by Qualia,named The Hard Problem of Consciousness.So many Anti-Physicalists make use of "Qualia" or "Phenomenal Experience" to put forward a variety of Anti-Physicalist Arguments.The three most famous anti-Physicalist Arguments are Knowledge Argument,Zombie Argument,and Explanatory Gap Argument.According to these arguments and the rational reasons,Anti-Physicalists believe that the essence of phenomenal property of consciousness is different from the physical thing.Therefore,there is an Explanatory Gap on the cognitive level between phenomenal facts and physical facts.And the Gap is not only in the Epistemological level,but also in the Ontological Level.Consquently,Dualism is a more reasonable ontological theory,comparing with Physicalism.To deal with the challenge,Physicalists proposed the Phenomenal Concept Strategy(PCS).The essence of PCS is the combination of ontological monism and conceptual dualism.In other words,PCS not only insists ontological monism of physicalism,but also admits that the conceptual dualism is acceptable.From the formulation of the three arguments,the physicalist uses concept/knowledge dualism principle of phenomenal concept strategy,reasonably refuting the thoughts of anti-physicalist,which is a good defence for itself.The essence of anti-physicalist thoughts is that the dualist intuition of epistemology is unreasonably enlarged to ontology,but the phenomenal concept strategy is to isolate epistemology and ontology,in order to defending physicalism effectively.However,the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is also facing internal and external challenges,which are the Master Argument,presented by Chalmers,and "There are not phenomenal concepts",raised by the Physicalist Derek Ball.At last,I explound the significance of Phenomenal Concept Strategy.