ABSTRACT
Brian Loar, in “Phenomenal States”, presents a compelling account of how bodily sensations and perceptual experiences could be identical with physical properties, while explaining why dualism may nonetheless exert an intuitive pull. However, while many physicalists embrace this account—now commonly called the “Phenomenal Concepts Strategy”—anti-physicalists retain worries about it that are difficult to put to rest. In the beginning sections of this paper, I attempt to identify the source of these worries and argue that they do not threaten Loar’s project. In later sections, however, I discuss Loar’s attempt to extend this “strategy” to explain other phenomena such as “subjective intentionality” and the subjective determinacy of reference, and I argue that these extensions may be less likely to succeed.
