Essential Indexicality and Thoughts about Experience – EssInTEx

A fundamental and rather radical disagreement, rarely explicitly addressed, underlies the competing methodologies in contemporary theoretical approaches to mental phenomena in general and consciousness in particular. This disagreement concerns the relationship between philosophy and the empirical sciences (including cognitive sciences and certain areas of linguistics), and can be seen as an extension of the traditional opposition between empiricism and rationalism.

According to empiricism as we understand it here, philosophy's only potential contribution to empirical studies of the mind consists in preliminary conceptual clarification and, possibly, speculation on questions not yet resolved by empirical science. According to this view, no substantial philosophical foundation is required for the scientific study of the mind. Moreover, according to empiricism, there are no genuine philosophical and non-scientific questions about the mental realm. According to rationalism as we understand it here, the empirical sciences of the mind in general and of consciousness in particular need substantial philosophical foundations that go far beyond conceptual clarification. Theoretical decisions about these foundations inform the kinds of questions that can be asked or formulated in the sciences concerned, they are necessary to fix the reference to the phenomena to be studied and, in many cases, no rational decision can be made between different interpretations of empirical results without addressing the underlying theoretical questions, which in turn cannot be discussed without the use of philosophical tools. Moreover, according to rationalism, there are genuine philosophical questions, both substantive and non-scientific, about the mental realm.

A clarification of the difference between the empiricist and rationalist approaches, as regards the relationship between philosophy and empirical approaches to mind and thought, was proposed in Martine Nida-Rümelin's first "Jean-Nicod Lecture" in 2019 and is further developed in her book currently under contract with MIT Press: "Philosophical Fundamentals for Empirical Studies of Consciousness". The present project is based on some of the statements that characterize the rationalist approach. According to the rationalist approach we endorse, important work can and must be done in philosophy, and independently of empirical studies, in order to make a substantial contribution to the philosophical foundations of the empirical sciences that study the mind and mental phenomena.

The project comprises seven research questions, ranging from semantics to epistemology and metaphysics.

With regard to the semantics of indexical and phenomenal concepts, the outlines of three quite distinct and all three defensible approaches are becoming increasingly clear: the first is an externalism of the content of indexical thoughts (Recanati and the mental file framework), the second is an internalism of the content of indexical thoughts (Bochner), and the third is an internalism of the content of phenomenal thoughts (Nida-Rümelin, Bugnon). The first international conference in June 2024, devoted to the dynamics of indexical concepts, led to further progress on semantic issues. An article by François Recanati (dealing with the impossibility of certain identity mistakes in the case of indexical thoughts) was published in the journal Philosophical Psychology; and two articles by Gregory Bochner (one on the nature of mental indexicality according to the analytic philosopher David Lewis, the other discussing François Recanati's positions on reference and indexicality) are under review.

With regard to the epistemological predictions of the various semantic frameworks involved, the second international conference in June 2024 provided an opportunity to compare the recent and diverse viewpoints of several international experts and to identify new avenues for reflection.

The new epistemological lines of inquiry, in particular the distinction between different theses of epistemic transparency (according to which every subject knows in a direct, privileged, certain, and/or first-person way what she thinks and/or feels), will serve as a basis for addressing in the third phase of the project the metaphysical questions on the relationship between body and mind, to which a third conference will be dedicated in June 2025.

Issues about phenomenal consciousness are of general significance: they are central for our

understanding of ourselves, of what we are as human beings, as well as our understanding of nonhuman animal conscious subjects. This project compares and evaluates two competing

philosophical hypotheses that radically disagree about the nature of phenomenal consciousness. While the first hypothesis uses the common conceptual framework presupposed in contemporary discussions of these issues, the second hypothesis breaks quite radically with the tradition within analytic philosophy and uses a fundamentally different conceptual framework for the analysis of consciousness and phenomenal concepts, a framework that differs from standard presuppositions present in philosophy of language within the analytic tradition. The questions addressed in this project are common in analytic philosophy, and the results will contribute to the debate within that domain. However, by discussing the merits of radical changes in the established conceptual framework, the project has the potential to open new perspectives within analytic philosophy of mind and language. It re-establishes in a clear manner the link between the technical framework used and our shared understanding of consciousness, as well as the link to other conceptual approaches outside analytic philosophy. The originality of the contribution resides (a) in the exploration of an uncommon, internalist approach to indexicality, opening up new paths not only with respect to phenomenal concepts but to our understanding of self-directed thought in general, (b) by suggesting and discussing the merits of a radically new conceptual approach, and (c) by taking seriously (more seriously than is common in contemporary analytical discussion) the possibility that physicalism about consciousness (and about our own nature as experiencing and thinking beings) cannot be upheld or at least not without fundamental revision of the theoretical framework. In the longer run, the project will foster fruitful international collaborations between philosophers working in France and in Switzerland. These collaborations will result in the

organisation of joint events and in common publications, and this network could lead to the

submission of further joint projects to research management institutions (e.g., ERC, Mind

Association) and to the development of further collaborations with other international scholars

involved in the relevant research areas (semantics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind,

epistemology, metaphysics, phenomenology, possibly also philosophy of science).

This project explores the relations between two central themes in contemporary philosophy of language and mind, mental indexicality and phenomenal consciousness, in connection with the mind/body problem. The thesis that there is indexicality at the mental level is the thesis that some thoughts, typically expressible with indexicals like ‘I’ or ‘now’, present the world from a particular perspective in the world. Phenomenal consciousness refers to the subjective quality of our conscious experiences: there is, for instance, ‘something it is like’ to see red. Indexical knowledge (of who and where I am in the world) and phenomenal knowledge (of what it is like to see red) share an important feature: they seem irreducible to objective, third-personal knowledge. But how do the two notions of ‘first-person perspective’ relate exactly? This semantic/epistemic question has metaphysical import in current debates on the mind-body problem, since the apparent gap between the phenomenal and the physical knowledge we have of our conscious experiences is exploited in anti-physicalist arguments. One way to resist the anti-physicalist conclusion is to claim that this epistemic gap has its source not in the nature of consciousness (metaphysical gap), but only in the features of our thoughts about our conscious experiences (epistemic gap). According to a thesis we will call indexicalism, the special features of thoughts about our conscious experiences are indexical features: that is, the epistemic gap is explained via mental indexicality. Given indexicalism, phenomenal knowledge will be reduced to indexical knowledge, which is not usually taken to threaten physicalism. However, indexicalism as it has been developed so far faces important objections that have led many authors to abandon that theoretical pathway. The project brings together philosophers with complementary expertise on mental indexicality (on the French side) and on phenomenal consciousness (on the Swiss side) to systematically assess two rival hypotheses about so-called phenomenal concepts (concepts we use to think about the phenomenal character of experience). According to the first hypothesis (the Index-hypothesis), an improved understanding of mental indexicality in general will make it possible to elaborate a version of indexicalism about phenomenal concepts which is not vulnerable to the relevant objections. If successful, it protects physicalism about phenomenal consciousness. According to the second hypothesis, phenomenal concepts are not indexical concepts but genuine property concepts which individuate the properties they serve to attribute by the thinker's understanding of what it is to have the relevant property. This claim (the GPC-hypothesis) leads in a natural manner to an anti-physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. We expect a vivid and fruitful discussion within the project, since the French and the Swiss sides start out with incompatible stances on the two working hypotheses. While important work on both sides in recent years has prepared the ground for elaborating the two working hypotheses, there has been very little direct confrontation of their emerging competing views on the matter. This project is intended to provide the opportunity to do so. Such a confrontation is bound to provide substantial insights into issues that run deep into the origin of the mind-body problem. These insights should contribute crucially to our understanding of ourselves as human beings who are aware of themselves as experiencing subjects with the capacity to reflect on their own conscious states.