I don’t say that we can talk about every experience, only that if we do talk about it, then the basic words/concepts we use are about things that influence our talk. Also, the causal chain can be as indirect as you like: A causes B causes C … causes T, where T is the talk; the talk can still be about A. It just can’t be about Z, where Z is something which never appears in any chain leading to T.
I just now added the caveat “basic” because you have a good point about free will. (I assume you mean contracausal “free will”. I think calling that “free will” is a misnomer, but that’s off topic.) Using the basic concepts “cause”, “me”, “action”, and “thing” and combining these with logical connectives, someone can say “I caused my action and nothing caused me to cause my action” and they can label this complex concept “free will”. And that may have no referent, so such “free will” never causes anything. But the basic words that were used to define that term, do have referents, and do cause the basic words to be spoken. Similarly with “unicorn”, which is shorthand for (roughly) a “single horned horse-like animal”.
An eliminativist could hold that mental terms like “qualia” are referentless complex concepts, but an epiphenomenalist can’t.
I don’t say that we can talk about every experience, only that if we do talk about it, then the basic words/concepts we use are about things that influence our talk. Also, the causal chain can be as indirect as you like: A causes B causes C … causes T, where T is the talk; the talk can still be about A. It just can’t be about Z, where Z is something which never appears in any chain leading to T.
I just now added the caveat “basic” because you have a good point about free will. (I assume you mean contracausal “free will”. I think calling that “free will” is a misnomer, but that’s off topic.) Using the basic concepts “cause”, “me”, “action”, and “thing” and combining these with logical connectives, someone can say “I caused my action and nothing caused me to cause my action” and they can label this complex concept “free will”. And that may have no referent, so such “free will” never causes anything. But the basic words that were used to define that term, do have referents, and do cause the basic words to be spoken. Similarly with “unicorn”, which is shorthand for (roughly) a “single horned horse-like animal”.
An eliminativist could hold that mental terms like “qualia” are referentless complex concepts, but an epiphenomenalist can’t.