Representationalism

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I will argue for an account of awareness of qualia that promises to bring qualia into the physical fold. More particularly, I will present and defend a version of the view that has come to be called representationalism. 1 will focus on the task of developing a representationalist theory of visual awareness, but it will be evident, I think, that the theory can be generalized so as to apply to experiential awareness of other kinds as well. After explaining this theory of visual awareness, I will urge that it provides a satisfactory answer to the metaphysical problems that qualia pose. 1 will then discuss the question of where exactly qualia are to be located within our catalogue of physical properties. 

As far as I can tell, there is only one theory of experience that provides a satisfactory way of dealing with this problem - representationalism. Rep-resentationalism maintains that our awareness of the characteristics we call qualia essentially involves representations and that the representations in question are different in a variety of respects from the representations that are involved in other forms of cognition. Because of the distinctive features of these representations, it maintains, the properties they represent seem to us to have special features, such as intrinsicness and simplicity, and seem to us to have individual natures that are not captured by scientific accounts of experience. Despite our impressions to the contrary, representationalism asserts, our awareness of qualia is governed by an appearance/reality... 

Representationalism maintains, in other words, that the properties we call qualia do not really have the properties that we take to be constitutive of qualitative character. They only seem to us to have such features because of the peculiarities of the representations in virtue of which we are aware of them. Moreover, if they seem to us to have individual natures that are different from the natures of all physical characteristics, this is because, and only because, they are represented in a unique way. Representationalism adds that we are unable to see beyond these apparent differences, and to appreciate the ultimate identity of the properties we call qualia with certain physical properties, because it is not apparent to us, from the perspective of common sense, that our awareness of them involves representations. Folk psychology does not reveal that representations are constitutively involved in facts of the form x looksp F to y. Accordingly, it does not occur to us that our awareness of the properties we call qualia might be governed by an appearance/reality distinction. We think that it is necessary to take our experience of qualia at face value. 

I should add here that my use of the term representationalism differs from the use that one finds in such authors as Fred Dretske and Michael Tye. (See, e.g., Dretske, 1995, and Tye, 2000.) The main tenet of these authors is that the qualitative character of an experience supervenes on its representational content. I read this as committing them to the view that it is possible to explain all... 

Thus far we have been considering the general motivation for repre-sentationalism. 1 will try now to say a bit more about the relevance of representationalism to the metaphysical problem that arises when we suppose that there really are characteristics answering to our conception of qualia. In these remarks, and also in later parts of the discussion, I focus on visual qualia — that is, on the qualia we are aware of in virtue of participating in facts of the form x looksp F to y. I believe that what I say about visual qualia generalizes to qualia of other types, but I do not attempt to defend this belief here. 

Our awareness of visual qualia is experiential in nature. Now, as we saw a bit earlier, there is independent motivation for supposing that there is a distinctive system of representation that subserves experiential awareness. In view of this fact, representationalism contends, we have the right to assume that our awareness of visual qualia is essentially representational and that the representations involved in such awareness belong to a distinctive system. 

This completes my account of how representationalism explains our impression that phenomenal yellow is distinct from all other characteristics. Of course, in addition to explaining that impression, it offers a perspective from which it is appropriate to reject the impression as illusory. Unlike folk psychology, representationalism affirms the representational nature of our awareness of phenomenal yellow. 

In the present chapter I use representationalism as a name for the view that awareness of qualitative properties constitutively involves experiential or perceptual representations. But there is also a more inclusive sense of the term — a sense in which it is true to say that representationalism stands for any view that claims that awareness of qualitative properties involves representations. On this more inclusive sense, it is not required that the relevant representations be experiential in character. Now, beliefs and judgments are representational states, though the representations from which they are constructed are conceptual rather than experiential. Accordingly, since the third proposal claims that introspective awareness of qualitative states involves beliefs or judgments, it counts as a form of representationalism, when the term is used with its more inclusive sense. I emphasize, however, that it does not count as a form of representationalism when the term is used in the sense that is operative in the present paper. 

In this paper I have been concerned to effect a rapprochement between the realm of matter and the realm of mind. More particularly, I have tried to show that representationalism gives us reason to think that it is possible to bring qualia into the fold of physical properties. Representationalism promises to solve the metaphysical conundrum that Kim has called the... 

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. 

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. ... 

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