Fiona Macpherson

Fiona Macpherson Representational Theories of Phenomenal Character Ph.D. Thesis Department of Philosophy, University of Stirling 31 August 2000 i Contents Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Chapter 1 - Realism and Naturalism in Philosophy of Mind 1 1 - Introduction 1 2 - The First Stages of Describing the Mind 3 3 - Realism, Naturalism and Methodology 6 3.1 - Realism 6 3.2 - Non-Realist Alternatives 11 3.3 - Naturalism 12 3.3.1 - Epistemological Naturalism 14 3.3.2 - Metaphysical Naturalism 15 3.3.3 - Methodological Naturalism 18 3.4 - Some Reflections on Naturalism and Realism 19 3.5 - Naturalist Methodologies in Recent Philosophy of Mind 21 3.5.1 - Identification 21 3.5.2 - Functionalism 23 3.5.3 - Supervenience 26 3.5.4 - The Causal, Explanatory or Law-Like Methodology 31 Chapter 2 - Phenomenal Character and Content 35 1 - Introduction 35 2 - General Overview 36 3 - Distinguishing Experiences from Propositional Attitudes 39 4 - The Phenomenal Character of Experiences and Sensations 45 5 - Ascribing Content to Experiences and Sensations 57 5.1 - The Non-Intentionality of Experiences 58 5.2 - The Intentionality of Experiences 65 5.2.1 - Ascribing Conceptual Content to Perceptual Experiences 68 5.2.2 - Ascribing Non-Conceptual Content to Perceptual Experiences 71 5.2.3 - An Objection to Nonconceptual Content 81 Chapter 3 - Further Representationalist Claims 92 1 - Identifying Phenomenal Character and the Content of Experience 92 2 - Differentiating Experiences from other Representational States 101 ii 3 - Knowing about Experiences 107 4 - Experiences, Animals and Oblivion 114 5 - Representationalism and Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness 121 6 - The Problem of Mechanism and the Status of the Representational Theory 126 7 - Assessment of Representationalism 130 Chapter 4 - Cross-Modal Perception and Experiences of Pitch 134 1 - Introduction 134 2 - Cross-Modal Perception 134 2.1 - Content and Sensory Modalities 135 2.2 - Prosthetic Vision 140 3 - Experiences of Pitch 143 3.1 - What is Perfect Pitch? 143 3.2 - Perfect Pitch, Experiences and Theories of Content 145 3.3 - The Implicit/Explicit Distinction in Computational Systems 150 3.4 - Implicit and Explicit Content in Experience 155 3.5 - The Implicit/Explicit Distinction Applied to Perfect 162 and Relative Pitch and the Theories of Content 3.6 - The Phenomenology of Experience 165 3.7 - Conclusion 172 Chapter 5 - Ambiguous Figures 174 1 - Introduction 174 2 - Representationalism and Content 174 3 - Ambiguous Figures: Introduction 175 4 - Ambiguous Figures and Changes in Phenomenal Character 180 5 - Ambiguous Figures: A Preliminary Challenge 183 6 - Ambiguous Figures: The Second Challenge 189 7 - Scenario Content and Protopropositional Content 196 8 - Conclusion 203 Chapter 6 - Inverted Spectra 205 1 - Introduction 205 2 - The Basic Inversion and the Representationalist Response 207 3 - Inverted Earth and Problems for Representationalism 213 3.1 - Description of Inverted Earth and Block's Construal of the Problem 213 3.2 - The Teleological Response 216 3.3 - The Causal Covariation Response 221 3.3.1 - Initial Moves 221 iii 3.3.2 - Defending Content Changes 223 3.3.3 - Arguments Against Tye's Conception of Phenomenal Memory 229 3.3.4 - The Counter-Factual Response 236 4 - Conclusion 243 Chapter 7 - Novel Colours 245 1 - Introduction 245 2 - After-images, Phosphenes and Swirling Visual Experiences 245 3 - Pain and Orgasm 247 4 - Experiences of Novel Colours 252 4.1 - The Representational Account of Colour Experiences 252 4.2 - Experiences of Novel Colours 256 4.3 - Why Reddish-Green is a Counter-Example to Representationalism 262 4.4 - 1st Reply - There is a Reddish-Green Objective Property 263 4.5 - Are Reddish-Green Objects Possible Objects? 267 4.6 - Reddish-Green Experiences as Representations of Red and Green 268 4.7 - Considerations Regarding the Experiment and Possibilities 272 Chapter 8 - Phenomenal Character, Content and Consciousness 278 1 - Introduction 278 2 - The Relationship Between Content and Phenomenology 278 2.1 - Initial Considerations: Inversions and Experiences that Lack Content 279 2.2 - Further Considerations: Ambiguous Figures 285 3 - Consciousness 287 3.1 - The Problem 287 3.2 - The Representationalist Solution 292 3.3 - Experiences and the Cognitive System: Dissociation Phenomena 294 3.4 - Appropriate Explanations 306 3.4.1 - Tye's Explanation 306 3.4.2 - Dretske's Explanation 308 4 - Summary of Results 313 5 - Concluding Reflections 314 Bibliography 322 iv Acknowledgements I would like to express my utmost gratitude to Professor Alan Millar who was my principal supervisor. He has been patient, kind, critical and, above all, encouraging. His own writings on the mind and on perception were an influential starting point for me. His philosophical insight, comments on my work, and our long chats together have had a large influence on this work and have made it far better than it could have been otherwise. I hope he will forgive me for the nail-biting finish and remember my time at Stirling with fondness, as I will. I would also like to thank greatly my other supervisor Dr. José Luis Bermúdez. His work on nonconceptual content had a notable impact on my thinking. He helped with the preparation of the chapters of this thesis in their original form as papers. He read many versions before I was due to present them and I always felt that if I had got them past José I could face an audience with some confidence. In addition, he helped and encouraged me to give papers and to apply for grants. I also gained much practical and philosophical acumen working for him on the Consciousness in the Natural World Project. I would also like to thank the other members of the philosophy department at Stirling University. They made it a good place to be a graduate student. In particular, I would like to thank Peter Sullivan and Michael Brady for their philosophical comments and their many kindnesses. I would also like to mention Alex Byrne at MIT, with whom I had many interesting philosophical conversations during my year abroad as a Visiting Kennedy Scholar at Harvard. Last, but not least, thanks to my Mum for her unfailing support and all her love. v Abstract This thesis is an examination and critique of naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. Phenomenal character refers to the distinctive quality that perceptual and sensational experiences seem to have; it is identified with 'what it is like' to undergo experiences. The central claims of representationalism are that phenomenal character is identical with the content of experience and that all representational states, bearing appropriate relations to the cognitive system, are conscious experiences. These claims are taken to explain both how conscious experiential states arise and their nature. After examining the desiderata for naturalistic explanations, I argue that theories which ascribe nonconceptual content to experiences are the most plausible versions of representationalism. Further, causal covariation and teleological theories yield distinctive and interesting representationalist positions, hence, they become the focus of this study. To assess representationalism, I investigate whether all differences in phenomenal character can be correlated with differences in content. I claim that a useful distinction can be drawn between implicit and explicit content, which allows one to best describe the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. I then argue that ambiguous figures show that two experiences can have the same content but different phenomenal character. I explicate the Inverted Earth hypothesis and claim that to identify content and phenomenal character, representationalists either have to condone the possibility of philosophical zombies, or hold that people lack authoritative first-person knowledge of their current experiences. Both these positions are unpalatable. Finally, I argue that representationalists cannot ascribe contents to experiences of novel colours to account for their phenomenal character. I also question, in light of vi dissociation phenomena, whether there is one distinctive relationship that all experiences bear to the cognitive system. I conclude that phenomenal character cannot be identical with the type of content under investigation, and that naturalistic representationalist theories cannot fully explain conscious experience. Chapter 1 1 Chapter 1 - Realism and Naturalism in Philosophy of Mind 1 - Introduction A dominant concern of modern analytic philosophy of mind is the ontological and epistemological status of the mental states, properties and events that we purport to refer to in our common discourse describing ourselves, other humans and many animals. Mentalistic vocabulary and explanations pervade our language. We describe human beings and many kinds of animals as having minds. We claim that ourselves and others are the subjects of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, desires and emotions. We often explain and predict, with considerable success, the interactions that occur between a creature and its environment in terms of what the creature perceived, felt, believed and desired. Furthermore, our mental lives are considered to be important and even essential to who and what we are. In light of this, many philosophers have sought to give a realist theory of the mental states and events that we speak of every day and thus to give a place to the referents of folk psychology in their ontology. At the same time, many philosophers are concerned with whether the professed

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