Shoemaker on Phenomenal Content

Abstract

Sydney Shoemaker has given a sophisticated theory of phenomenal content, motivated by the transparency of experience and by the possibility of spectrum inversion without illusion (

The Representational Character of Experience

“…I think the account can be generalized to other visual experiences, though some tricky issues arise. Thompson (2003) argues that one can handle spatial experiences in a similar way: these function by attributing properties (or relations) to objects, where these properties are picked out under a mode of presentation that characterized them as being those properties that stand in the relevant causal relation to spatial phenomenal properties. Other aspects of visual experience might be handled in a similar way.…”

Exploring Subjective Representationalism

“…Thompson (, fn. 28) worries that de se involving cannot concern any specific way things are, and thus can't accommodate the determinacy phenomenon.…”

Senses for senses

“…His attraction to a dual content view is motivated largely by phenomenological considerations like the ones discussed below in section VI. 7 For discussion of inverted spectra without illusion, see Shoemaker [2001Shoemaker [ , 2002Shoemaker [ , 2006, Tye [2000], and Thompson [2007Thompson [ , 2008. For colour constancy, see Thompson [2006a].…”

“…Shoemaker [2001] seeks, as a candidate for what is represented by both Jack and Jill, a dispositional property of causing green experiences under certain circumstances in some sort or other of observer. But as I argue elsewhere, there is no satisfactory way to specify the relevant observers [Thompson 2007]. If Jack represents the object as being disposed to cause a green experience in observers like him, and unlike Jill, then his experience does not share content with Jill's experience.…”