then we cannot be conceptualising the latter in terms of functions. Rather
our concepts, here, are presumably barerecognitionalones, consisting in
our possession of immediate recognitional capacities for phenomenal
states of various kinds. It is this which sets up the explanatory gap
between neurological or cognitive functions, on the one hand, and phe-
nomenal consciousness on the other. Chalmers claims, indeed, that we can
see in advance that any proposed reductive explanation of phenomenal
consciousness into neurological or cognitive terms is doomed to failure.
For what such ‘explanations’ provide are mechanisms for instantiating
certainfunctions, which must fall short of thefeelpossessed by many types
of conscious state. Since we do not conceptualise our conscious states in
terms of function, but rather in terms of feel, no explanations of function
can explain them. Hence the existence of the ‘hard problem’ of phenom-
enal consciousness.
Now, much of this is roughly correct. We agree that reductive ex-
planations normally work by specifying lower-level mechanisms for fulWl-
ment of some higher-level function. And we agree that we have available
to us purely recognitional concepts of phenomenally conscious states. But
we disagree with the conclusions Chalmers draws from these facts. His
mistake is to assume that a given property or state can only be success-
fully reductively explained if the proposed mechanisms are what we might
call ‘immediately cognitively satisfying’, in the sense that they mesh with
the manner in which those states are conceptualised. While the ‘explana-
tory gap’ is of some cognitive signiWcance, revealing something about the
manner in which we conceptualise our experiences, it shows nothing
about the nature of those experiences themselves. Or so, at any rate, we
maintain.
A good reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness (of the sort
oVered by higher-order thought theories, for example – see section 3.3
below) can explain a variety of features of our conscious experiences, while
also explaining the nature and existence of our recognitional concepts
themselves. And a good cognitive architecture can explain why subjects
instantiating it should have a natural tendency to make many of the claims
traditionally made by philosophers concerningqualia– that qualia are
non-relationally deWned, ineVable, private, and known with certainty by
the subject, for example. Admittedly, it will still remain possible, by
employingour recognitional concepts of experience, to imagine zombie
versions of just such an architecture. But that will be revealed asnotposing
any additional explanatory problem. It is not something about the nature
of conscious experience which makes such zombie architectures conceiv-
able, but merely something about the way in which we (can)conceptualise
those experiences. In fact there is no worldly property or phenomenon
Mysterianism 241