Taking Type‐B Materialism Seriously

Abstract

Abstract:  Type‐B materialism is the thesis that though phenomenal states are necessarily identical with physical states, phenomenal concepts have no a priori connections to physical or functional concepts. Though type‐B materialists have invoked this conceptual independence to counter a number of well‐known arguments against physicalism (e.g. the conceivability of zombies, the ignorance of Mary, the existence of an ‘explanatory gap’), anti‐physicalists have raised objections to this strategy. My aim here is to defend type‐B materialism against these objections, by arguing that they share the common problem of not taking the central features of the view sufficiently seriously. However, I will end by noting that type‐B materialism raises other questions, and suggesting that what stands in the way of an adequate naturalistic account of phenomenal states may be the propensity to take type‐B materialism more seriously than it deserves.