Mikołaj Kotuła
Doctoral School of University of Szczecin
What explains the emergence of intuitions that there are particularly difficult problems with consciousness? One possible approach suggests explaining such intuitions in terms of behavioral dispositions. There is some universal, cognitive mechanism that generates dispositions to make judgments that express puzzlement about consciousness. However, problem intuitions depend on theoretical concepts (such as physical explanation), and do not arise spontaneously and widely—they arise in contexts of reflection. Thus, the given view faces a challenge: how to explain the dependence of intuitions on theoretical frameworks. I argue that the dispositional account of problem intuitions fails to explain this because cognitive mechanisms such as introspection do not, by themselves, provide the complex meanings that are essential to problem intuitions. I therefore propose an alternative, non-dispositional account of problem intuitions. I argue that the intuitions require two conditions: (1) the internalization of certain theoretical concepts (which are non-dispositional in nature), and (2) the emergence of an appropriate cognitive context in which it is possible to use the concepts in the correct sense. This account has a direct epistemological implication: if problem intuitions depend on conceptual learning and the context of reflection, they cannot function as epistemically privileged data about the nature of consciousness, because they do not result from direct insight into the ontological and epistemological properties of consciousness. Instead, they express the tension within the conceptual framework, i.e., what categories we use to conceptualize consciousness and the physical world. As a result, the problem intuitions do not straightforwardly support antiphysicalist arguments such as Mary, the zombie, or the explanatory gap, because the intuitions are derived from epistemically irrelevant factors.
Chair: Raffaele Giovanni Caravella
Time: 05 September, 10:40 – 11:10
Location: SR 1.007
SOPhiA 2026 