Sector Textil

As described above, externalist representationalism is committed to two fundamentally incorrect claims about sensory representation: (i) Russellianism about phenomenal content, and (ii) the Tracking Thesis. According to the former claim, phenomenal

contents are singular contents and constitutively include the referent of the representation, such that phenomenal qualities are identified with represented physical properties of external objects. According to the latter claim, the phenomenal contents of sensory representations are determined by the causal-informational covariance relations that would obtain between external physical properties and internal states in certain individuals under certain conditions. Moreover, these tracking relations ‘ground the intentionality’ of sensory states.

Above, I argued that both claims are vulnerable to two different sides of the same problem, which I called bad structural correlation (i.e., the bad correlation between the structure of phenomenal qualities and the structure of physical properties “tracked” by our sensory systems). More specifically, the central problem for Russellianism about phenomenal content is that it cannot provide a sufficiently response-independent

explanation for the structure of phenomenal qualities (section 2.2). On the other hand, the central problem for the ‘tracking’ view of sensory intentionality is that it delivers the

wrong verdict about the phenomenology of certain sensory experiences, such that the representational predictions don’t match the behavioral ones (section 2.3). In the next two sections, I will briefly recap these arguments.

7.1.1 The Problem with Russellianism (about Phenomenal Content)

As noted in chapter 2, the central problem for physicalist (i.e., reductive) Russellianism is that the structure of similarity and difference relations that hold between phenomenal qualities in a given sensory modality does not match the structure of similarity and difference relations that hold between the physical properties ‘tracked’ by that modality. The existence of “metamers” (described in section 2.2.1) demonstrates that properties which are physically very different can produce exactly the same phenomenal experience, but the problem of bad structural correlation goes beyond mere metatmerism: given the identification of phenomenal qualities with external physical properties, externalist representationalism requires that the relational structure of phenomenal qualities must be reductively explained by the relational structure of the domain of physical properties. However, externalist representationalism can only individuate external physical

properties by reference to their effects on subjects’ sensory systems, thereby undercutting both the supposed response-independence of the physical properties as well as their explanatory potential (section 2.3.2).

In response to this challenge, externalist representationalists turn to what Pautz (2013) calls the “unnatural-relations account”, which holds that there is some relation R* that holds between physical properties which explains the relative similarities and differences of their effects on sensory systems, but which does not make essential reference to perceivers (section 2.2.1). Of course, no such relation has ever been discovered. Moreover, Pautz (2013) presents two arguments (the “metasemantic” and “radical indeterminacy” arguments) that demonstrate that even if such a relation did in fact exist, it seems nearly impossible that our judgements or statements about relative similarity could manage to refer to R*.

Finally, even if these problems could be overcome, externalist representationalism still faces the other half of the problem of bad structural correlation. That is, whereas the

problem for Russellianism is that very different physical properties can cause identical phenomenal experiences, it is also the case that the identical physical properties can cause very different phenomenal experiences under different conditions and in different

individuals. This is the problem which faces the Tracking Thesis.

7.1.2 The Problem with the Tracking Thesis

It’s important to note (as described above in section 2.3) that the Tracking Thesis plays two roles in externalist representationalism. First, it determines the

phenomenal/representational content of a sensory state. Second, it grounds the

intentionality of sensory states. In this section, I will deal only with the first role. I will address the inadequacy of tracking as a theory of sensory intentionality below in section 7.2.3.2.

According to the Tracking Thesis, the representational content of a sensory state is determined by the causal-informational covariance relation that would obtain between that state and external properties in certain subjects under a counterfactually-specified set of “optimal conditions”. Both the relevant subjects and the optimality of perceptual conditions are typically understood in teleological terms, such that members of the same species are subject to the same veridicality conditions (section 2.3). However, this leads externalist representationalism to deny the possibility of phenomenal variation without misrepresentation—the possibility that two conspecifics could be veridically representing the same property while having phenomenally different experiences. Thus, the Tracking Thesis can be falsified by the existence of a case in which two phenomenally different experiences track—and veridically represent—the same external property.

Pautz (2006a) provides such an example with his “Maxwell & Twin-Maxwell” thought experiment (section 2.3.1) In this empirically-based example, Pautz demonstrates that it is possible for two individuals to be visually tracking the same physical property (due to the sameness in their retinal photoreceptors) under teleologically optimal conditions while nevertheless having different phenomenal experience (due to differences in their post-receptoral neural wiring). What’s more, the externalist representationalist’s best response to this problem is either (i) to retreat to a circular argument regarding optimality

that threatens their reductive characterization of phenomenal qualities by making them explicable in only phenomenal terms, or (ii) to claim that the two individuals are actually tracking different properties, thereby giving up on the reductive, response-independent conception of the tracked properties (section 2.3.2).

Thus, externalist representationalism ultimately fails to provide an account of the structure of phenomenal qualities. Not only do the properties that they specify fail to be response-or perceiver- independent (thereby violating their own criterion of

acceptability), but what’s more, externalist representationalism fails to provide a reductive explanation for the structure of phenomenal qualities. Consequently,

phenomenal qualities cannot be reductively explained by identifying them with external physical properties. Nor can it be the case that phenomenal contents are determined by the existence of certain tracking relations that would obtain under certain conditions. In short, externalist representationalism fails to provide a plausible account of sensory phenomenology. In the next section, I describe my reductive internalist alternative.