teorema Vol. XXVIII/1, 2009, pp. 21-31 [BIBLID 0210-1602 (2009) 28:1; pp. 21-31] Varieties Of Phenomenal Externalism Johan Veldeman RESUMEN El externismo fenoménico es la tesis según la cual las experiencias no son estados internos que están en la cabeza, sino relaciones entre perceptores y su entorno. Se presta atención a tres tipos de externismo fenoménico: a saber, el externismo en cuanto al con- tenido, el externismo en cuanto a los vehículos del contenido, y el realismo directo. Se argumenta que los dos primeros tipos no dan cuenta de la conciencia, y que sólo el rea- lismo directo sustenta una forma robusta de externismo. PALABRAS CLAVE: conciencia fenoménica, externismo, percepción. ABSTRACT Phenomenal externalism is the view that experiences are not inner states in the head but relations between perceivers and the environment. Three different types of phenomenal externalism will be considered, that is, content externalism, vehicle exter- nalism, and direct realism. It will be argued that the first two types fail to accommodate consciousness, and that only direct realism supports a robust kind of externalism. KEYWORDS: phenomenal consciousness, externalism, perception. I. THREE ROUTES TO PHENOMENAL EXTERNALISM Phenomenal externalism is the view that the phenomenal properties of perceptual experiences, that is, the subjective ways things appear to us as con- scious agents, are ‘not in the head’. This should not be misunderstood as the absurd view that experiences are ‘out there’ in the world, having their own existence independently of the subjects who entertain these experiences. Phe- nomenal externalism says that perceptual experiences, their content and phe- nomenology, should not be understood in terms of inner states in the subject’s brain or mind but, rather, in terms of some relation between minded creatures and external objects and properties. Thus externalist views on phe- nomenal consciousness may be more accurately termed ‘relational’ views. If phenomenal externalism is true, then this has important consequences for the ongoing discussions about whether a physicalist, reductionist account of consciousness is possible. These discussions proceed on the basis of the 21 22 Johan Veldeman presupposition that phenomenal character is an intrinsic feature of a percep- tual state, directly accessible to introspection, and separable from its repre- sentational content in virtue of which it is related to the world. If phenomenal experiences are relations between subjects and external objects and proper- ties, then some central questions about the nature of phenomenal conscious- ness will turn out to be seriously misconceived. Phenomenal states may not be reducible in physical terms, not because naturalism is false, but because they are not inner qualities in the head. My aim in this paper is not to defend phenomenal externalism against persistent internalist intuitions. Rather, it is to elucidate the concept of phe- nomenal externalism and to consider what a plausible version of it may look like. I shall consider three independent routes that may be taken to lead to phe- nomenal externalism. The first is the route from ‘reference’ or ‘meaning’ to the phenomenal mind, which I shall call ‘content externalism’. The second route, which I shall call ‘vehicle externalism’, infers phenomenal externalism based on considerations about the active and extended nature of cognition. The third route, ‘direct realism’, takes the relation between the subject, rather than some of her mental states, and worldly items to be fundamental. I shall defend this third route as supplying the most robust type of externalism. I shall argue that the first two forms of externalism fail to properly accommodate consciousness and therefore fail to support phenomenal externalism. As a consequence, they need independent support from direct realism. II. FROM ‘MEANING’ TO MIND:CONTENT EXTERNALISM Content externalism is the most popular form of externalism. It derives from Hilary Putnam’s (1975) Twin-Earth intuitions that show that the refer- ence and truth conditions of mental-state ascriptions are externally deter- mined. Hilary Putnam’s so-called ‘Twin-Earth’ thought experiment is familiar: We are asked to imagine a planet that is just like earth except in one respect: H2O is replaced by a chemical substance with the molecular structure XYZ, which has all the observable characteristics of water. So whereas on earth lakes and rivers are filled with H2O, on Twin Earth they are filled with XYZ. English-speaking Twin-Earthians use their expression ‘water’ in ex- actly the way we use ‘water’. But our ‘water’ and Twin-Earthian ‘water’ have different extensions: the first refers to H2O, whereas the second refers to XYZ. So, when both my Twin-Earth counterpart and I use the expression ‘water’, our expressions differ in meaning, even if we might be in exactly the same brain state and if our speech behaviour might be undistinguishable. Putnam’s Twin-Earth has inspired many philosophers to explore the conse- quences of externalism about reference and meaning for the philosophy of mind. Philosophers like Tyler Burge (1979, 1986) and Colin McGinn (1982) Varieties Of Phenomenal Externalism 23 have proposed an extension of Putnam’s semantic externalism to the contents of propositional attitudes as well. The basic idea is that propositional atti- tudes are identified by way of their contents, that is, by their semantic prop- erties. For instance, what makes a belief into the belief that water is wet is its relation to its content, which is simply the proposition ‘water is wet’. And so, if linguistic meaning is necessarily bound up with one’s causal relations to certain natural substances, then the same holds for mental content. Today, content externalism is widely assumed to be applicable to mental representa- tions generally. Representationalists about phenomenal consciousness, such as Fred Dretske (1995a, 1995b) and Michael Tye (1995), argue that the scope of Put- namian externalism may be broadened to be applicable to the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. Representationalists identify the phe- nomenal character of a perceptual state with a particular content of a sensory representation. If phenomenal character can be reduced to a certain type of representational content, then the scope of externalism may extend to phe- nomenal character as well. Microphysically identical twins might differ not only psychologically but also phenomenologically. Thus, thinking about wa- ter is externally determined for it requires the existence of water in the envi- ronment of the thinker. Similarly, and by extension, a red experience is externally determined for it requires the existence of redness in the environ- ment of the perceiver. What makes a state of the brain into an experience of a certain type is some causal relation with an external phenomenon. A sensory representation represents red, for instance, if redness is its ‘normal cause’, which is determined by the evolutionary history of colour vision. Has representationalism successfully extended the scope of externalism to experience? In my view it has not. Representationalism attempts to explain perceptual content exclusively in terms of sensory information. As such, sense experience is taken to manifest a kind of intentionality that is distinct and more basic than that involved in propositional thought and conceptual understanding. Dretske and Tye defend broadly similar views that depend heavily on the idea that the content of perceptual experience is essentially nonconceptual, that is, independent of belief. Moreover, perceptual content is not taken to be object-involving: experiences represent basic visual properties such as size, shape, colour and motion, but they do not represent individuals. Phenomenally conscious states are distinguished partly by their possession of that special type of content. Thus when I look at an apple, for instance, my visual system represents some of the surface properties of its facing side, in- dependently of my belief that there is an apple in front of me. Whether or not a particular apple is present, or whether there is no apple at all, as in cases of hallucination, is not a part of the content of experience. The aspects of con- text which fix the reference of a perceptual experience are not themselves as- sumed to be available to the subject. Thus an experience represents things as 24 Johan Veldeman having properties but it does not by itself represent the object that has the properties. What makes a visual experience a representation of a particular thing is simply a contextual relation that is not represented in experience. This yields a context-free type of content shared by visual perceptions and hallucinations.1 A veridical visual experience and an undistinguishable hallu- cination share the representation of common properties. Thus understood, experience is essentially non-relational; it does not bring the subject into di- rect contact with external things. This view is problematic, for the reason that a type of content that can be common to veridical and hallucinatory cases fails to play its explanatory role: it makes it unintelligible how our experience puts us into a position to think about an objective, mind-independent world in the first place.2 Despite their radical externalist view on what determines the contents of experiences, representationalists turn out to provide a ‘non- relational’ account of content after all. Moreover, it is fairly uncontroversial