Phenomenal internalists

I shall call those philosophers who hold that phenomenal character supervenes on internal constitution (where the term phenomenal character is understood as explained earlier) phenomenal internalists. On this view, it is metaphysically impossible for intrinsic duplicates to differ with respect to the phenomenal character of their internal states. Until recently, phenomenal internalism was almost universally accepted in the philosophy of mind. With the rise of representationalism, however, the view has begun to feel some pressure (Byrne, 2001 Dretske, 1995 Jackson, 2002b Lycan, 1996 Tye, 1995, 2000). For if the phenomenal character of a state is (or supervenes on) its representational content (or a representational content the state has that meets certain further conditions, e.g., with respect to the functional role it plays) and content brings in external factors, then prima facie it is metaphysically possible for intrinsic duplicates to differ phenomenally. 

One reaction the phenomenal internalist might have to my argument is to say so much the worse for physicalism. As will become clear later, this reaction requires the phenomenal internalist to be a dualist not only about phenomenal character but also about the representational properties of mental states. Dualism of any sort is problematic dualism this broad, doubly so. In the present context, however, my aim is not to refute the dualist. I am content to show here that a choice needs to be made either give up phenomenal internalism or give up physicalism. 

This might be the reaction of Jaegwon Kim. Although Kim does not take up the issue of internalism versus externalism directly in his 2005, it is clear from his remarks (pp. 172-5) that he remains a phenomenal internalist. It is also clear that he rejects physicalism for individual qualia or phenomenal characters. However, my argument creates trouble for Kim, since he is not a dualist about the representational properties of mental states. 

So, why be a phenomenal internalist To this question, 1 maintain, there... 

A final reason that might be offered for being an internalist about phenomenal character is that the phenomenal character of an experience is an intrinsic property of it. Given that this is so, of course intrinsic duplicates... 

Too fast, 1 respond. How should we understand the term intrinsic in the premise here The term intrinsic sometimes means essential. Take the visual experience I am undergoing now, as 1 view the page before me. It is not implausible to hold that this experience could not have had a different phenomenal character. If I had been having a visual experience with a different phenomenal character, then it would not have been this very experience. If the phenomenal character of my experience is essential to it, then its phenomenal character is intrinsic to it in the preceding sense. If this is how we understand what it is for a property to be intrinsic, then the argument of the qualia internalist is straightforwardly invalid. 

Instead of holding that intrinsic duplicates cannot differ phenomenally and thus that microphysical duplicates cannot differ phenomenally, if physicalism is true, the internalist might now propose the following ... 

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