Representationalism, perceptual distortion and the limits of phenomenal concepts

Abstract

This paper replies to objections from perceptual distortion (blur, perspective, double vision, etc.) against the representationalist thesis that the phenomenal characters of experiences supervene on their intentional contents. It has been argued that some pairs of distorted and undistorted experiences share contents without sharing phenomenal characters, which is incompatible with the supervenience thesis. In reply, I suggest that such cases are not counterexamples to the representationalist thesis because the contents of distorted experiences are always impoverished in some way compared to those of normal experiences. This can be shown by considering limit cases of perceptual distortion, for example, maximally blurry experiences, which manifestly lack details present in clear experiences. I argue that since there is no reasonable way to draw the line between distorted experiences that have degraded content and distorted experiences that do not, we should allow that an increase in distortion is always accompanied by a degradation in content. I also discuss the prospects for a positive account of the contents specific to distorted experiences. I argue that the prospects for such an account are dim, but that this is due to limitations of our phenomenal concepts, not to the falsity of the representationalist thesis.

Consciousness and Intentionality

“…Intramodal representationalism, in contrast, is a version of impure representationalism that takes the extra ingredients to help determine not only whether a phenomenal state arises given the presence of a particular intentional state, but also which phenomenal state it is that arises (see Lycan 1987). Bourget (2010aBourget ( , 2010bBourget ( , 2015Bourget ( , 2017bBourget ( and 2017d argues for intermodal representationalism and against intramodal representationalism.…”

“…It is also unclear how they might be related to consciousness at all, which makes them problematic for moderate PIT. 29 See Block 1996and Kind 2003 for worries with representationalism based on the cases of moods, pain, and other such cases, and Harman 1990, Tye 1995, Dretske 1995, Byrne 2001, Crane 2003, Bain 2003, Seager and Bourget 2007, Mendelovici 2013a, Bourget 2015, 2017b, and Smithies forthcoming for defenses of representationalist treatments of such cases. See Mendelovici 2018, Appendix B for further discussion of the relevance of such cases to PIT.…”

“…One of us (DB) has tended to prefer a different definition of "intentionality" as a non-factive relation to propositions, which may or may not pick out the same thing as our present definition. DB's more theoretically-loaded definition is suitable for his project inBourget 2010aBourget , 2010bBourget , 2015Bourget , 2017aBourget , 2017cBourget , 2017dBourget , 2017b, forthcoming a, and forthcoming b, where his aim is to shed light on consciousness in terms of non-factive relations to propositions. Part of our aim here, however, is to discover the nature of a phenomenon that we can introspectively observe in ourselves, so employing DB's definition, or any other definition making substantive commitments with respect to the nature of intentionality, would beg the question in favor of certain views of the introspectively observed phenomenon.…”

Some reflections on Husserlian intentionality, intentionalism, and non-propositional contents

“…There are a number of views today that go by the name intentionalism, including Byrne (2001), Crane (1998Crane ( , 2003Crane ( , 2009, Marcus (2006), and Stoljar (2007). Quite often, these theories are taken to belong to the broader class of representationalist theories of mind, which includes Harman (1990), Dretske (1995) Tye (1995Tye ( , 2002, Shoemaker (1998Shoemaker ( , 2000, Lycan (2001Lycan ( , 2015, Schellenberg (2011), Seager and Bourget (2007), and Bourget (2015). At least most intentionalists accept that intentionalism and representationalism are virtually identical concepts.…”

Husserl, impure intentionalism, and sensory awareness

“…Crane, for instance, suggests that 'intentional content is representational content' and denies that there is a substantial difference between both terms (Crane 2009, 477). I follow Crane on this point, which means the class of intentionalist theories of mind can likewise be taken to include the representationalist theories of Harman (1990), Dretske (1995), Tye (1995Tye ( , 2002, Shoemaker (1998Shoemaker ( , 2000, Bain (2003), Lycan (2001Lycan ( , 2015, Schellenberg (2011), andBourget (2015), among others.…”