Visual qualia

In order to charactetize this third category of qualia adequately, it is necessary to distinguish between two senses of the terms that we use to describe appearances. I focus here on looks since I am concerned primarily with visual qualia in the present chapter, but my remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to seems, appears, and a number of other appearance words. 

Putting the distinction between these two senses of looks to use, we can define visual qualia as characteristics that we are aware of in virtue of the ways that objects lookp to us. (Here and hereafter, I use looksp to represent the phenomenological sense of looks. ) In general, perceptual qualia can be defined as the characteristics we are aware of in virtue of the ways in which objects appear to us, where appear is used in its phenomenological sense. 

Now if there were an appearance/ reality distinction associated with visual qualia, we could simply say that we have trouble locating C in the physical world because the appearance it presents to us fails to reveal its true nature. That is, we could explain away the apparent difference between C and all physical characteristics. Unfortunately, however, it seems inappropriate to distinguish between C as it appears to us and C as it is in itself. C is the ostensibly qualitative characteristic that is affiliated with facts of the form V looksp yellow to y. Since there is no appearance/reality distinction that is associated with these facts, how could there be an appearance/reality distinction that is associated with C ... 

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. 

Much more important, in addition to this explanation of why visual qualia can seem simple and primitive, there is a representationalist explanation of why there seems to be an unbridgeable gulf between the property we are aware of when something looksp yellow to us and the properties that are revealed by the scientific investigation of vision. 

This is not to deny that it is independently desirable to understand the nature of qualia. It is clear that this is an important goal. I turn now to the task of constmcting such an account. Thus far, all that has been said about visual qualia is that they are appearance properties — or in other words, that they are the properties we are aware of in virtue of participating in facts of the form x looksp F to y. The goal now is to consider the issues that arise when one attempts to go beyond this starting point. 

I am concerned here only to evaluate these traditionally important views. 1 will not go on to present and defend a fifth view. The task of finding an appropriate account of appearance properties seems to me to be one of the hardest, and also one of the most important, of the problems facing the philosophy of perception. My goal in this paper is just to explain some of the issues that must be addressed in any search for a satisfactory view. 1 put forward a positive account of visual qualia in other writings. ... 

To summarize there are problems facing the main traditional views concerning the nature of appearance properties. At present, there is no clear answer to questions about the metaphysical nature of these properties — or, by the same token, to questions about the metaphysical nature of visual qualia. 

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. 

Could the first view be correct That is, could appearance properties be properties of internal, mental entities of some sort 1 think we can see that the answer is no by reflecting on the transparency of visual awareness. Visual awareness is transparent in the sense that the only objects that are presented to us in visual awareness are external, physical objects. We are not aware of internal objects of any kind. Now, this implies that any properties we are aware of in visual experience must be properties of external objects. Since we are not aware of any internal objects, we could not be aware of any properties of internal objects unless we were aware of them without being aware of them as characterizing objects, that is, as instantiated. It seems absurd to say that visual experience presents us with properties that are floating free of all objects, as mere possibilities of instantiation. Thus, transparency provides us with a reason to say that appearance properties, and therefore qualia, are properties of external objects. 

I think Tye s theory of representation has some important virtues, but I prefer views like those of Millikan (1984) and Dretske (1986), according to which the contents of visual representations are part of our biological endowment, having been fixed by evolutionary processes in the remote past. So, 1 wish to ask if this is indeed the right way to think about visual contents, is Swampman a counterexample to representational theories of qualitative visual awareness It is clear that if a biological of visual content is correct, and we accept a representational theory of qualitative awareness, then Swampman cannot be said to be aware of qualia. It is also clear that this result conflicts with an intuition we can clearly and distinctly conceive of Swampman, and because of this, we have a vivid impression that Swampman is objectively possible. Should this conflict lead us to reject representational theories ... 

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. 

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