Perceptual experience seems to involve distinct intentional and qualitative features. Inasmuch as one can visually perceive that there is a Coke can in front of one, perceptual experience must be intentional. But such experiences seem to differ from paradigmatic intentional states in having introspectible qualitative character. Peacocke argues that a perceptual experience’s qualitative character is determined by intrinsic, nonrepresentational properties. But and also argues that perceptual experiences have nonconceptual representational content in addition to conceptual content and nonrepresentational sensational properties. He (...) thus distinguishes between conceptual, nonrepresentational, and nonconceptual but representational aspects of perceptual experience. I will argue that Peacocke posits too much. Contrary to his arguments, the sensational properties Peacocke claims are nonrepresentational are best construed as representational; they are best explained in terms of their relation to the perceptible properties they enable us to perceive. Since sensational properties are arguably nonconceptual, they are best construed as nonconceptual representational properties. I offer the Homomorphism View of sensory qualities, pioneered by Sellars , as a unified account of qualitative character and nonconceptual sensory representation. According to this view, a sensory quality represents a perceptible stimulus property in virtue of resembling and differing from other sensory qualities in ways parallel to the ways the stimulus property resembles and differs from other perceptible properties. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the relationship between the spatial properties of visual perceptual experience and the sense-datum inference. I argue that the sense datum inference should be accepted if spatial properties are not merely intentionally present in such experiences. This result serves to underline the seriousness of the difficulties that are presented to direct realism by a particular class of illusory spatial experiences based on the geometry of visual perceptual experience. In light of these considerations I argue that it (...) is a constraint on direct realism that the underlying spatial character of visual perceptual experiences must be the same as that of the physical world. (shrink)

David Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory is one of the most widely argued for of the higher-order accounts of consciousness. I argue that Rosenthal vacillates between two models of the HOT theory. First, I argue that these models employ different concepts of 'state consciousness'; the two concepts each refer to mental state tokens, but in virtue of different properties. In one model, the concept of 'state consciousness' is more consistent with how the term is typically used, both by philosophers and scientists, (...) and in commonsense usage. This model, however, also has its problems. In the second part of the paper, I develop a modified version of Rosenthal's transitivity principle, thereby avoiding some complications that stem from the original transitivity principle. I suggest that Rosenthal occasionally employs this modified model himself, and that the inconsistency identified in the first section of this paper might really reflect Rosenthal's vacillation between these two versions of the transitivity principle. I offer one explanation for how this equivocation may have occurred. These two versions would result if articulations of the transitivity principle employed the term 'mental state' inconsistently, to refer on some occasions merely to mental state types, and on others, to tokened mental states. I conclude by arguing, contrary to Rosenthal and others, that the theory is not incompatible with view that conscious states are uniquely casual efficacious. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a quality space model as an account of the intelligibility of explanation. I argue that descriptions of causal or functional roles (Chalmers Levine, 2001) are not the only basis for intelligible explanations. If we accept that phenomenal concepts refer directly, not via descriptions of causal or functional roles, then it is difficult to find role fillers for the described causal roles. This constitutes a vagueness constraint on the intelligibility of explanation. Thus, I propose to use (...) quality space models to develop a systematic way of studying different modalities of perception and feelings, e.g., visual and auditory perception, pain, and emotion, that can reveal some structural relations among these modalities. It might turn out that topological explanation can be more intelligible than causal explanation in this case. I discuss two accounts of a quality space for color vision (Clark, 2000; Rosenthal, 2010) and propose how to construct a quality space for pain. Daniel Kostic is Associated Researcher at Berlin School of Mind and Brain. (shrink)

This paper surveys some of the grounding literature searching for points of contact between theories of ground and science. I find that there are some places where a would-be naturalistic grounding theorist can draw inspiration. I synthesize a list of recommendations for how science may be put to use in theories of ground. I conclude that the prospects for naturalizing the metaphysics of ground are bright.

I motivate and defend a previously underdeveloped functionalist account of the metaphysics of color, a view that I call ‘quality-space functionalism’ about color. Although other theorists have proposed varieties of color functionalism, this view differs from such accounts insofar as it identifies and individuates colors by their relative locations within a particular kind of so-called ‘quality space’ that reflects creatures’ capacities to discriminate visually among stimuli. My arguments for this view of color are abductive: I propose that quality-space functionalism best (...) captures our commonsense conception of color, fits with many experimental findings, coheres with the phenomenology of color experience, and avoids many issues for standard theories of color such as color physicalism and color relationalism. (shrink)

Representationalism holds that a perceptual experience's qualitative character is identical with certain of its representational properties. To date, most representationalists endorse atomistic theories of perceptual content, according to which an experience's content, and thus character, does not depend on its relations to other experiences. David Rosenthal, by contrast, proposes a view that is naturally construed as a version of representationalism on which experiences’ relations to one another determine their contents and characters. I offer here a new defense of this holistic (...) representationalism, arguing that some objections to atomistic views are best interpreted as supporting it. (shrink)

Quality-space theory (QST) explains the nature of the mental qualities distinctive of perceptual states by appeal to their role in perceiving. QST is typically described in terms of the mental qualities that pertain to color. Here we apply QST to the olfactory modalities. Olfaction is in various respects more complex than vision, and so provides a useful test case for QST. To determine whether QST can deal with the challenges olfaction presents, we show how a quality space (QS) could be (...) constructed relying on olfactory perceptible properties and the olfactory mental qualities then defined by appeal to that QS of olfactory perceptible properties. We also consider how to delimit the olfactory QS from other modalities. We further apply QST to the role that experience plays in refining our olfactory discriminative abilities and the occurrence of olfactory mental qualities in non-conscious olfactory states. QST is shown to be fully applicable to and useful for understanding the complex domain of olfaction. (shrink)