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I Feel Like I Am Unable to Talk-Is Phenomenal Concept Effeable?

Rituparna Roy

University of Porto

DOI : https://doi.org/10.51583/IJLTEMAS.2025.1412000074

Received: 13 December 2025; Accepted: 19 December 2025; Published: 06 January 2026

ABSTRACT:

This paper is developed to shed light on the old perspective that language is never enough to grasp the feeling,

and no matter how much we express, there is always something ineffable about it. A concept is an umbrella

term that can be described in a number of ways. In section 1, I discussed different notions of concepts. Section

2 will address the ineffability of the phenomenal mental states, specifically focusing on Wittgenstein’s

(1953/2009) notion of the use of words and private language. In section 3, I will shed light on pure

phenomenal concepts (Chalmers 2010). Finally, I will show why the language categories cannot adequately

capture the phenomenal concepts. I will conclude that language is never enough to grasp what one feels.

Keywords: concept, phenomenal state, private language, language-game.

INTRODUCTION

Justin Timberlake¹sang, “I got this feelin' inside my bones It goes electric, wavy when I turn it on.” He

probably could not express how he felt in words or lyrics, so he resolved it with “I can't stop the feelin'. So just

dance, dance, dance.” Well, this is almost universal, and most of the time I feel like I am unable to talk. It is

generally said that no matter how you feel, delighted or dejected, putting feelings into words somehow helps.

What does language have to do with our feelings? Anthropological findings suggest that the relationship

between language and feelings is so profound and fundamental that it is linked with the origin of our species.

However, in recent times, a variety of interdisciplinary research has been conducted regarding language and

feeling (phenomenal states of mind, including emotion, sensation, and others) within the discourses of

philosophy, science, linguistics, and various domains. Linguistics investigations illustrate that almost all

aspects of human spoken language communicate or at least try to communicate feelings. Algorithms that are

applied to natural human language disclose that affective meanings envisage consequences in social-political

behaviours. Anthropological and linguistic research proves that the meaning of sensation words is diverse

around the world. More precisely, the denotation of the feeling terms is culture-specific. Phenomenal

expressions have the propensity to be devised as a tool for cross-cultural communication.

Can we express exactly the way we feel? Are those phenomenal concepts of experience potentially effable? It

is often said that before you express a feeling, you need to know what it is. Once we resonate with those

phenomenal aspects of consciousness, we generally adduce specific terms to annotate exactly how we feel.

However, the question remains the same: am I able to talk about my feelings? In section 1, I will discuss

different notions of concepts. Section 2 will address the ineffability of the phenomenal mental states,

specifically focusing on Wittgenstein’s notion of the use of words and private language. In section 3, I will

shed light on pure phenomenal concepts. Finally, I will conclude that language is never enough to grasp what

one feels.

Reference and Phenomenal Concept

‘Concept’ is a layered term that can be characterised in several ways. Discussions regarding the notion of

concept typically blur the boundaries of semantics and philosophy of mind. Largely, concepts are mental

Justin R. Timberlake, “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group. 2016

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representations of things, properties, states of affairs, etc. In classical thinking, concepts were perceived as

definitions celebrated by competent users. However, it is almost unambiguous that a single definition cannot

survive forever. Hence, it cannot provide a justifiable ground for concepts. Sometimes, they are taken as

mental representations, or they are even characterised as abstract objects. Some philosophers tied them with

Fregean senses, while others fancy it as a recognitional term. Wittgenstein²suggested that concept formation is

not about knowing the definition but acknowledging the function of a concept in thought and practice.

Moreover, in his view, the identifier of a concept is not some closed set of attributes typically tokened by a

definition, but rather it is the ‘family resemblances³’ among the things that contribute to the theory of concepts.

In the latest philosophical developments, concepts are not recognised as internal realities, but they are facts

about the outside milieu. In the philosophy of mind, concepts are seen as units of thought. There are mental

states that include beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and others that involve a proposition. A propositional attitude

of the form ‘R thinks that S’ has two parts. While the first part ‘R thinks’ denotes the subject’s conscious

mental state, the latter ‘that S' unveils what that given mental state is about or the proposition (following

Russell⁴). Concepts are supposed to be the constituents of the propositions articulated by conscious mental

states. However, when we reflect upon conscious mental states, it seems that mental states are not always

about something, but there are mental states that they feel in a certain way. There is “something like to be” in

those states, and these states are coined as phenomenal mental states of consciousness.⁵

In this paper, I am trying to find out what sorts of concepts (if at all) may be involved in a mental state, so that

the given mental state can grace the particular mental state it is. Feelings and beliefs are certainly different

kinds of mental states. Experiences are purely phenomenal as they are characterized by what it is like to have

them. As Nagal⁶had put that, there is something it is like to be a particular organism. Phenomenal Concepts

are those one gets acquainted with by undergoing the relevant experience. One of the main reasons behind the

popularity of the phenomenal concept is Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument⁷. We are all familiar with the

story of neuroscientist Mary, who has been kept locked in a black-and-white room since her birth. She has

complete knowledge of seeing the colour red, though she has never actually seen red. Here, knowledge refers

to the physical property or the neurological/physiological process regarding colour vision. Now, one day, she

comes out of her room and encounters a red tomato in front of her. Thus, she realizes that it is what it is like to

see something red. The conclusion is that Mary learns something new and that newness cannot be a physical

property. She comes to know what it is like to experience red, or more precisely, she acquires the phenomenal

concept of seeing red. No doubt Mary’s discovery is a platform for many debates. But for the sake of this

paper, I am bracketing them and considering that it is also exhausted with fine-grained phenomenal properties.

The obvious question then occurs: what is a phenomenal concept? Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to pin

down a single, unanimous response in the given framework. There is no straightforward answer to this.

Philosophers like Brian Loar describe phenomenal concepts as direct recognitional concepts⁸. What he seems

See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed.

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), §§43, 138–142, 2009.

³See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§65–67, 2009.

⁴See Bertrand Russell, “Vagueness,” The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy 1, no. 2 (1923): 84–92, 1923.

⁵Following Montague, I believe that all mental states are phenomenal in their potential, be it belief state or feeling. The difference

between them is phenomenological. The bipartite notion of intentional and phenomenal states of mind does not exist because

consciousness typically involves phenomenology. But in the short term of this paper, I am bracketing that discussion.

⁶Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 435–50.

https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914 .

⁷Jackson, Frank. “What Mary Didn’t Know.” The Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 5 (1986): 291–95. https://doi.org/10.2307/2026143.

⁸Loar, B. 1990/97. “Phenomenal states.” Philosophical Perspectives 4: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, ed. J. Tomberlin: 81-

108. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. Revised version in The Nature of Consciousness, eds. N. Block, O. Flanagan, and G. Güzeldere.

Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997, pp. 597-616.

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to have in mind is that when a person is having a particular experience, s/he can dispose of a concept that

refers directly to that experience. Loar also suggests that the mode of presentation of a phenomenal concept

encompasses the experience itself. Unlike theoretical concepts, it is applied directly based on perceptual

experience with the object. For example, in a new place, we can easily spot a new fashion statement that we

have never seen before and pick out among others. We can even identify them in the future in the absence of

the current instance. Because here the concept is linked with the capacity to form the image. Here, we are not

depending upon any theoretical or background knowledge.

According to another trend, phenomenal concepts are indexical concepts that pick out brain states in indexical

modes of presentation. So, they are thought of as indexical demonstratives that pick out phenomenal characters

in the same manner demonstratives pick out objects in space. In this view, phenomenal concepts are concepts

pointing to the experience itself in the context in which it occurs

Another way of explaining phenomenal concepts is in terms of their conceptual role. The typicality of a

phenomenal concept lies in a distinct mode of reasoning. For them, Mary comes to know a new way of

conceiving something that was already known to her. Some believe that phenomenal concepts are explained as

quotational concepts. These are the concepts that contain the very mental state (phenomenal state) to which

they refer. We can only acquire these concepts by employing the experience and then using them to

introspectively pick out the phenomenal character of our experience.

Michael Tye identified Phenomenal Concepts with Causal-recognitional interpretations⁹. Tye claims that they

are an unusual kind of recognitional concepts that refer directly. They are not accompanied by any such

reference-fixing metaphors. Hence, their mode of presentation is empty. It denotes the causal connection they

hold with their referents. Suppose there is a phenomenal concept P which refers to a phenomenal quality Q via

P’s being the concept that is exercised in introspection by the subject S if, and only if, under normal

circumstances of introspection, Q is tokened in S’s current experience and because Q is tokened. But how is it

possible to recognise someone else’s phenomenal state? There is no plausible response for this because

phenomenal states necessarily involve subjective awareness, which presupposes the authority of the first

person only. Tye thinks that to be a phenomenal concept, it is also supposed to undertake some kind of

functional role to be public in the required sense. However, that cannot be defined a priori by disdaining

phenomenal language.

Other philosophers have tried to explain the directedness of the reference of phenomenal concepts via

demonstration. According to them, PCs are a sort of demonstrative. Perry¹⁰suggested that phenomenal

concepts correspond to something like ‘this qualitative character’, where the demonstrative is guided by a

perceptual state to its referent. Meanwhile, Levin¹¹advocates that PCs are type demonstratives without any

mode of presentation at all.

Carruthers, one of the exponents of the recognitional account of phenomenal concepts, suggests that

phenomenal concepts are pure recognitional concepts. They don’t retain any descriptive modes of presentation.

Carruthers notices that it’s our introspective judgments by which we get acquainted with our experiences. To

validate that acquaintance, it is necessary to apply to the higher-order consciousness, that is, experiences of

experiences, to guide our phenomenal concepts to their referents. On this account, a phenomenal concept

should be able to embrace our direct awareness of the grounds for the application of a phenomenal concept, in

such a way that it should not encompass any a priori connections with non-phenomenal concepts¹².

⁹Tye, Michael. “Representationalism and the Transparency of Experience.” Noûs 36, no. 1 (March 2002): 137–51.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0068.00365 .

¹⁰See John Perry, Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), esp. chap. 4, 2001.

¹¹See Joseph Levine, Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press), esp. chap. 3, 2001.

⁷Carruthers, Peter. “Phenomenal Concepts and Higher‐Order Experiences.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68, no. 2

(March 2004): 316–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00343.x .

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Again, there are philosophers like Aydede and Guzeldere, who have propounded an information-theoretic

analysis¹³of the typical relation that phenomenal concepts hold with sensory concepts. Here, it is believed that

we are bound to obtain sensory concepts from our experiences. These sensory concepts have a dual identity,

and they emanate into existence as phenomenal concepts when we exercise the same cognitive constructions in

introspection.

One thing that must be acknowledged here is that all of those perspectives are intended to endorse some kind

of physicalism. But that is not my purpose here. However, a successful account of the phenomenal concept

must theorise an intimate connection between phenomenal states and the concepts that can be formulated out

of them.

Phenomenal States and Communication

What does it mean by private language? Frankly speaking, private language often gets associated with emotion

and sensation. But in what sense are phenomenal states private? According to Wittgenstein, only the subject of

experience can be aware that s/ he is really in pain; others can only infer. These feelings cannot be expressed in

ordinary language because words that the speaker refers subjected to his/her immediate private sensations

only. Wittgenstein’s private language argument¹⁴rejects the possibility of a language whose terms refer to

inner experiences solely by means of private introspective acts, since such a language would lack criteria for

correct application. Sensations and emotions are not denied reality; rather, the grammar of phenomenal

concepts is grounded in public practices, expressive behaviour, and shared forms of life. First-person avowals

of phenomenal states function expressively rather than as inner observational reports. Consequently,

phenomenal concepts are not inner names of private qualia but acquire their meaning through their role in

communal linguistic and practical activities. Hence, it is not conceivable to postulate the meaning. According

to the conceivability principle, if something is not conceivable, then it is not logically possible. As we cannot

adduce any objectively available meaning, it would be justified to claim such language is not possible.

However, Wittgenstein settles down with the claim that private language is nothing more than gibberish. What

makes private language incommunicable is that the connection between sensation words and whatever is going

on outside the mind is contingent. The paradigm of private experience is not that each individual possesses his

exemplar, but that nobody knows whether further subjects can also feel the same or not. Wittgenstein puts

forward his disagreement largely through the consideration of "pain" as the subject’s feeling or intrinsic

experience. It is indisputable that every person has inner experience, but how do we convey our inner

sensations or inner feelings? How can that sensation be revealed through something similar to language that is

at the same time exclusively clutched by the language user himself, rather than through the public language?

Wittgenstein invites us to envisage a child who intends to describe his/her feeling of a toothache and desires to

name such a personal feeling, but without the usual vocabulary. for example. Unfortunately, the word that the

child uses to designate the toothache cannot be apprehended by anyone else. One might think that when the

child clarifies to others about his/her utterance, then others must comprehend the meaning of the new name for

the toothache. But that is also contingent, and nothing could be ascertained in the given panorama. Therefore,

naming is not fundamentally accomplishable in the sphere of private language, even if we agree to the prospect

of the existence of private language for the sake of the given discussion. When one makes an effort to name a

sensation, one just overlooks the fact that naming is just not labeling, but it is a matter of epithet. Naming

necessarily presupposes the premise that the act of naming makes sense objectively. When we talk about

naming, we also presume the existence of grammar. Imagine a situation where the subject term S designates an

inner sensation that frequently repeats itself. S/He decides to put a mark in their phone calendar whenever it

occurs. On closer scrutiny, it could be realised that formulation of any term is taking place in this scenario,

rather than one can only stretch to a kind of ostensive definition. Therefore, Wittgenstein believes that we

cannot name the sensation in the ordinary sense if we cannot give a clear definition referring to its use.

¹³See Murat Aydede and Güven Güzeldere, “Cognitive Architecture, Concepts, and Introspection: An Information-Theoretic

Account of Phenomenal Concepts,” Noûs 39, no. 2 (2005): 197–255, 2005.

¹⁴See, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed.

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), §§243–271, 2009.

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However, we are left with the reality check that when we speak or write the term, we at the same time

quintessence our attention on the sensation. I can make a connection between the term and the intrinsic feeling.

But still, one cannot guarantee about measure of correctness in the context. Again, visualize someone who has

felt a particular sensation for the first time and names it “Ah”. In the future, when he is again acquainted with

such a sensation, he will be using the same word. According to Wittgenstein, the whole process is

meaningless.

Wittgenstein excluded the view that words possess special meanings that define how the world is. Instead, he

propounds that words earn their meaning from how they are used in public discourse for given determinations.

His employment of grammar depicts the specific rules that regulate the use of the given term. For him,

sensations are not merely behaviours; rather, they are contingently related to a separate world of private

experience. He summoned the concept of language games to authenticate the idea that words are always used

within the panorama of social performances with a particular motivation. A similar word can be used in

different ways in some other language games. In his own words,

The meaning of the utterance ‘‘Slab!’’ depends upon whether one is involved in the language game of naming

an object (i.e., ‘‘that is a ‘slab’’’) or making a request (i.e., ‘‘bring me the slab’’).

Wittgenstein emphasized that individual subjects of experience do not have any privilege in expressing internal

states. He asserts that phenomenological terms do not necessarily assign to internal private mental states that

are devoid of the perspectives of others. People do not learn to identify their feelings or emotions only by

introspecting and then stipulating identifiers to their experience. However, without public standards, where

people can refer to and confirm the accuracy of a given term, there would be no way to deduce whether or not

the term has been employed appropriately. The celebrated illustration of a beetle in a box is a depiction of the

above scenario:

Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a ‘beetle’. No one can look into anyone else’s box,

and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. – Here it would be quite possible

for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.

– But suppose the word ‘beetle’ had a use in these people’s language? – If so, it would not be used as the name

of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something: for the box

might even be empty.¹⁶

Wittgenstein successfully figures out that natural phenomenological expressions (sensations, emotions, etc.)

yield public standards for forming rules governing the use of phenomenological concepts in everyday speech.

When a child knocks his/her feet at the corner of the table, s/he starts to scream or cry out and probably rubs

the affected area. This public expression provides the standards for the construction of a grammar for the

concept of pain. Thereupon, when a child exhibits pain behaviour, adults teach the child the particular

language games that reveal the meaning of the term pain. In the above situation, the child might, instead of

crying, say ‘Ouch’, or ‘I am in pain’. In this way, phenomenological terms gain their meaning through public

discourse and not through private introspection. According to Wittgenstein, once accomplished, expressions

such as ‘ouch’ or ‘I am in pain’ function as substitutions for natural sensation responses. For Wittgenstein,

phenomenological experience is immediate and interpretation of phenomenological experience in language

also is possible, but only as a form of reflective activity and not as a course of private introspection.

What he denied is the possibility of private language only. For him, phenomenal states are available for

interpersonal communication. Following Papineau, it can be said that we first name a sensation by turning our

gaze inside. Then we observe the outside world what causes that sensation or the behaviour the sensation

¹⁵See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed.

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), §§2–7, 2009.

¹⁶See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed.

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), §293, 2009.

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causes. Using analogy, we communicate with language about what we feel. We learn from the community.

Here, we need to separate two notions, though they appear similar yet, fundamentally they are different. The

subjective feeling of conscious experience is not identical to the expression of the subjective feeling of that

very experience. What the subject feels about the experiential given object is private, and Wittgenstein’s

argument is not intended to refute that. Rather, there is no dispute over the acceptance of intrinsic subjective

feeling and the authority of the subject over it. What he is categorically trying to defy is the ineffability of

phenomenological terms. His sense of phenomenological expression is not individualistic; rather, he

emphasises communal subjectivity. Wittgenstein is a firm believer in the consensual forms of life¹⁷of a

community of language users. At this point, there is a great enticement among philosophers to settle down with

a kind of deduction that phenomenological states are both epistemologically and metaphysically irrelevant and

void. They are kind of empty terms or no terms at all. This paper strongly declares that this temptation should

be repelled. The point I want to make is that Wittgenstein's negation of private language as the justification of

the meaning of subjective feeling does not entail that these phenomena lack other cognitive value and are

therefore irrelevant to philosophy.

Papineau¹⁸also claims that we must be able to introspectively focus on the experiences when we have them

and recreate them imaginatively at other times. So phenomenal concepts are demonstrative. We can form

sentences with them, and the structure will be like the experience. Now the gap can be filled either with an

occurrent token experience or the imaginative recreation of an experience. According to this demonstrative

structure, the essence of the phenomenal concept is mental images.

Pure Phenomenal Concept

But there is something more that makes this concept different from any other kind of concept, which is ‘pure

phenomenality¹⁹’. Mary looks at the red tomato and gets the experience (phenomenal) of colour. This

experience gives rise to a phenomenal property that, in turn, initiates the phenomenal concept of phenomenal

redness R. There is no doubt in the fact that her experience is not red in the same way the tomato is red, but

that does not mean there is nothing in the experience, and whatever you get through inward perception is the

external features only. Phenomenal redness (the feature of the subject’s experience) and external redness (the

feature of the external object) are different but both are respectable properties of their own. Consider the

public-language expression ‘red experience’. The reference of this term is connected via a relation to certain

red objects in the external world, which is ostended in learning the public language term ‘red’. A learner learns

to address the experience that is initiated by this object, ‘red’ (phenomenal sense), and to designate the object

that typically brings out this experience, ‘red’ (external sense). Here, the phenomenal concept is relational. The

relational phenomenal concept can be distinguished in two ways, depending on its way of reference fixation.

Either it can be determined by the whole community of the subjects, or it can be specified by the subject in

question. The first can be called the community relational concept or red_c, which is typically caused in normal

subjects within a community by red things only. The second can be regarded as the individual relational

concept or red_I, which is caused in an individual by the red things. At first sight, it is natural to postulate that

the two concepts red_Cand red_Iare identical, but this is only true for normal subjects. They may yield different

results for a contingent circumstance. For example, the inverted subject’s (red/green) concept of red_Crefers to

phenomenal redness (what the community calls), but its concept of red_Irefers to phenomenal greenness (what

the community calls). When seeing the tomato, Mary can refer to the associated experience by saying ‘that sort

of experience’, where the phenomenal concept gets expressed indexically as E. This demonstrative concept

functions by picking out the particular feature that the subject is currently ostending. Like all other

demonstratives, it fixes its reference by picking out the feature that is ostended. These three concepts red_C,

red_I,and E, typically cite the same phenomenal concept that is phenomenal redness in terms of its connection

¹⁷See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed.

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), §§19, 23, 241, 2009.

¹⁸See David Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press), chap. 4, 2002.

¹⁹See David J. Chalmers, The Character of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press), esp. chaps. 8–9, 2010.

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via the object of ostension. According to Chalmers, there is another phenomenal concept⁵which is neither

relational nor indexical, rather completely intrinsic, which can be called a pure phenomenal concept or R.

When Mary looks at the red for the first time, she gets to know what it is like to see red, and that is essentially

her subjective feeling. In a way that can be regarded as private, also. The concept R is all the way different

from red_C, red_I,and E. We form the belief that red_C= R, that is, this feature is caused in the community by red

things, and similarly, we are also inclined to postulate that red_I= R. However, we might also hold the belief

that E = R by the denotation of the object. The relation between red_C, red_I,and E on one hand and R on the

other is not a priori, because the pure phenomenal concept is independent of them. Here, one can reasonably

ask how the phenomenal concept can ever be independent as such when it is initiated by an external object (at

least in the case of Mary). To find out this answer, first we need to understand that what we feel is not

governed by the external world rigidly. My phenomenal concept of red is indeed about the external tomato, but

one can have the same experience in the absence of the object altogether. Even the same red can be felt

differently in two subjects, which yields two different phenomenal concepts for them. Hence, we must accept

that the pure phenomenal concept or R is strictly subject-specific.

Inverted Mary

Consider Inverted Mary, who is a physical–functional twin of the famous scientist Mary, but the only

difference is that her colour spectrum is inverted. Like Mary, inverted Mary also gets aware of something new

when she encounters the tomato for the first time. But there are obvious differences. Where Mary learns that

tomato causes phenomenal redness or R (what we call), inverted Mary learns that tomato causes phenomenal

greenness or G (what we call), though she is uttering it red. Now, if we apply the previous concepts in this

context, then we will find out that for Mary red_C= R, red_I= R and E = R, but for Inverted Mary red_C= G, red_I

= G and E = G. Even if inverted, Mary says, “Ah! Now I know what it is like to see red.” She possesses the

concept of green, though her denotation is red. It all indicates one thing: we cannot grasp what is inside by

something that is quite external, such as the use of language. No matter how much effort we put into holding it,

there will always be something that will come out of the fist.

Final Remark

It is almost like a slogan that communication is the key to living in society, be it verbal or nonverbal

(behavioural). Apart from that, we all need to express ourselves. If our feelings get hidden inside and never

come to the surface, that may hinder our growth as human beings and, in turn, the whole species. Living in this

world, we get acquainted with so many experiences every time that make us realize the famous coinage “what

it is like to have a particular experience”. Philosophers, who have tried to refer to pure phenomenal concepts in

other terms (indexical, relational, etc.), are not always against the phenomenal state. Rather, what they want to

criticise is the private subjective existence of phenomenal concepts. For them, something to be subject-specific

does not mean that it is private. So, they have introduced the notion of interpersonal communication to grasp

the inner through the outer.

I am also not against the communication of what is in the mind, and I want to shout out loud in front of the

world what is inside, but unfortunately, I cannot. Because I do not feel that the linguistic concepts are enough

to do justice to the phenomenal concepts. First, in the case of inverted Mary, she does not even know she has a

radically different phenomenal concept compared to the community. Then how could it be registered by the

paradigms of language? Secondly, two subjects (normal) from the same community can have two different

phenomenal concepts regarding the same object. Imagine the typical taste of bourbon whiskey, which,

according to some subjects, is sweeter than regular whisky, while others find it completely normal, which

makes them form different concepts around it. This point can be countered by the claim of “form of life”, that

is, one is typically used to with a certain kind of taste, while the other is not. If we consider this claim, we

cannot rule out completely the probability of different phenomenal experiences of the same object. Thirdly, the

same subject may have different phenomenal experiences regarding an object with different intervals of time

or context. For example, the typical homemade rice and lentils give us a completely different experience when

it is consumed after a whole day of fasting, which in turn gives rise to a particular type of phenomenal concept.

But for some other day, it might be experienced not so differently. Finally, our linguistic vocabulary is too

short to grasp the phenomenal concepts. Imagine the use of the word ‘happy’, we refer to it to denote many

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different kinds of mental (phenomenal) states, hence concepts. Seeing the first rain we say “Ah! I am happy.”

We kind of express the same way with a good academic result or watching a favourite series or after having ice

cream and so on. So, all we can say is that “I am happy.” Does the linguistic concept ‘happy’ include all of

them? If the answer is yes, then it is an umbrella concept, whose members are infinite in number, which leads

to infinite regress, hence cannot be a satisfactory position. But if the answer is negative, then the next task is to

find out which phenomenal concepts subsume it and why. This position does not make any sense because it

looks like something is called by a name that is not that. Phenomenal concepts are so associated with our daily

lives that we all can introspectively conjecture that all those phenomenal experiences expressed by the word

‘happy’ are different from each other.

I am not insisting that we cannot ever express any phenomenal concepts by the medium of language. We can

convey some phenomenal concepts, but not all. There are some feelings (in turn concepts) that originated with

the social structure, for example, the feeling of shame. Still, it can get altered from person to person. It has a lot

to do with how the person has evolved, his/her lived experiences, and the perspectives s/he has embraced.

Sometimes phenomenal concepts can indeed be identified with interpersonal concepts, but not all. There will

always remain some phenomenal concepts that are extremely private and a matter of subjective identification

only.

AI USE: I have used Grammarly for proofreading.

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