Phenomenal character sameness

The challenge for Campbell, then, is to make premises (i) and (2) simultaneously plausible. He must secure both transitions in the sequence sameness of object sameness of phenomenal character sameness manifest... 

State that occupies the characteristic causal role of pain for the appropriate population. This account leads to problems of a very weird technical sort — for example, what to say about someone who is Mad, Martian, and different from others in the population. But there is no need to go into these issues here. Lewis says that maybe the Madman is in pain in one sense of the term pain, whereas the Martian is in pain in another sense of the term, but he also states unequivocally that the theory is meant to be a theory of the phenomenal character of experience. It is unclear whether what it is like to be the Madman is the same as what it is like to be the Martian. Perhaps Lewis would have rejected interpersonal comparisons of this sort (Stalnaker, 1999). 

Another way to help explain the notion of phenomenal character is to reflect on the famous inverted spectrum hypothesis — that is, what it is like for you when you see red things is the same as what it is like for me when I... 

Here is another way to make the point. Suppose I feel a pain in a finger, and I move my finger to a different location relative to my torso. Then my pain feels to be in a different location, and this entails that there is a difference in phenomenal character before and after the movement. By contraposition, then, sameness in phenomenal character entails sameness in felt torso-relative location. Since sameness in felt location necessitates... 

In making these remarks, 1 am not assuming the truth of representation-alism with respect to phenomenal character either generally or more narrowly with respect to the phenomenal character that attaches to the experience of bodily location. According to representationalism in its weakest form, necessarily experiences that have the same representational content have the same phenomenal character. This is not assumed previously even for the special case of bodily location phenomenal character, nor is it a consequence of what I say." As just noted, what my comments entail is only that bodily sensations that feel alike with respect to bodily location (and thus have the same locational phenomenal character) must represent the same torso-relative bodily location. ... 

I shall not press the point here since it is not needed for present purposes, but, in my view, our experiences generally have what might be called a presentational phenomenology. For the appropriate external aspects, experiences with the same phenomenal character present the same aspects of the world to us or the same aspects of our bodies (or sometimes both). I focus on the case of phenomenal location, since it seems especially clear-cut and compelling. 

A fourth reason (suggested to me by Cory Juhl) appeals to causal considerations. Consider a microphysical duplicate of the present time slice of our world (call it MD) that (a) is governed by the same physical laws as our world and (b) is the initial slice of a world, W, with no history prior to the present time. If the physical world is causally closed, then W will unfold physically just as the actual world will. So, future behavior in W will be the same as in our world. Now, given that phenomenal externalism imposes some sort of backward-looking tracking requirement on phenomenal character, since MD is the first time slice of I, there is no phenomenal character tokened in Wat the present time. MD, then, is a zombie replica of the current time slice of the actual world. But if this is the case, then... 

What, then, is radical externalism It is the view that experiences are to be sorted into phenomenal types depending on what objects or properties in the environment they are experiences of. It may be boiled down to the following principle of type-individuation ifei and ex are shape experiences, then ei is of the same type or phenomenal character as if and only if the object of ei (i.e., the shape apprehended by ei) has the same geometrical properties as the object of ex. ... 

I think we are to take it that the object of a shape-experience is the apprehended shape rather than the object possessing the shape. Otherwise, CampbelFs principle of type-individuation would imply that seeing a spear point first has the same phenomenal character as seeing a spear presented sideways. 

For the radical externalist... there is no difference in the phenomenal character of shape experience in sight and in touch. The sameness of property perceived in sight and touch is transparent to the subject, and cross-modal transfer is a rational phenomenon.. 

I. If radical externalism is correct, seeing a cube and touching a cube are the same in phenomenal character. 

If seeing a square and touching a square are the same in phenomenal character, then (a) the sameness of the properties perceived will be transparent (obvious) to the subject, (b) cross-modal transfer will occur,... 

Two ordinary observers standing in roughly the same place, looking at the same scene, are bound to have experiences with the same phenomenal character. For the phenomenal charactet of the experience is constituted by the layout and characteristics of the vety same external objects. ... 

Now let us turn to consider the special case of the characteristic phenomenal yellow. Is it possible to identify phenomenal yellow with some other characteristic, say, C If we are to do so, there must be a way of explaining how it is possible to grasp phenomenal yellow experientially without appreciating its identity with C. This means that we must invoke an appearance/reality distinction of some sort. But folk psychology does not recognize a distinction between appearance and reality in this case. It fails to register the representational character of our awareness of phenomenal yellow, and by the same token, it fails to support any ambitions that we might have to identify phenomenal yellow with another characteristic. 

On the radically externalist view of primitive consciousness of shape, the phenomenal experience of shape is the same in sight and in touch. It will be in consequence of this amodal character of shape perception that this cross-modal transfer occurs, and cross-modal transfer will be a rational phenomenon. ... 

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