Consciousness and Fundamentality

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter considers whether, if sound, the knowledge argument shows that there are brute facts about consciousness. Strawson and Goff each present arguments that would, if sound, vindicate that conditional claim. This chapter argues that they are mistaken. To establish brute facts about consciousness, it is not enough to show there is an ontological gap between the physical and the phenomenal. One would have to show that there is an ontological gap between the non-phenomenal and the phenomenal. Yet the knowledge argument works partly by exploiting specific features of the physical: features some non-phenomenal entities might lack. That possibility, the chapter argues, shows that the knowledge argument does not generalize in the way that establishing brute facts about consciousness would require.