Deconstructing New Wave Materialism

Abstract

The authors examine “new wave materialism”, which explains the a posteriori character of mind–brain identities on the side of the mind – by appeal to the difference between experiential (phenomenal) and theoretical concepts that allegedly refer to the same property. They argue that this strategy is self-defeating: the conceptual differences it relies on lead to distinct properties on the side of the world, and new wave materialists offer no account of the intentionality of concepts that would avoid this consequence. The problem is illustrated with Loar’s version of the approach, and the authors conclude that new wave materialism fails to explain how the principle could be false that a property directly grasped by a concept is as that concept presents it.