Abstract
Reductive representationalism offers a promising route to an intelligible account of phenomenal consciousness. However, reductive representationalist accounts entail phenomenal externalism. Here I develop a new argument against phenomenal externalism and, by extension, standard reductive representationalism. I argue that the external determination of ‘here-and-now’ phenomenal properties entails an irreconcilable unintelligibility at the heart of reductive representationalist accounts. As reductive representationalism is motivated by the promise of rendering phenomenal experience intelligible, this criticism is fatal.
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Notes
‘Phenomenal properties’ is ambiguous. It might be read as referring to the property of having a particular phenomenal experience: e.g., if I undergo an experience of a post-box, I will have the phenomenal property of undergoing a phenomenally red experience. Alternatively, it could be read as referring to the properties that one is aware of whilst undergoing a phenomenal experience. E.g. the phenomenal redness one is aware of when one sees a post box. I will use ‘phenomenal property’ to refer to having a particular phenomenal experience rather than to the properties presented in that experience. One important difference between these two sets of properties is that the first are representational and the second are not; the properties we instantiate are representational while the properties represented are not—at least for the reductionist representationalist.
Among philosophers of mind, 63% lean towards or accept externalism about mental content and 51% lean towards or accept representationalism (Bourget and Chalmers, 2020).
It is not clear that internalist accounts of representation need be non-reductive. However, it has been argued that internalist reductive accounts are not possible (Pautz, 2019, 2020) and in practice internalist, representationalist accounts tend to be non-reductive. For example, Chalmers (2004, 2010), Kriegel (2002), Levine (2003), Shoemaker (1994) and Thompson (2009).
Branching out from representationalisms there are other options—some version of the biological theory of consciousness (Block, 1978; Crane, 2012), Integrated information theory (Tononi, 2004) or another (see Van Gulick, 2022 for overview). Our focus here will be on reductive representationalism and on whether it can do what it says on the tin.
I flip-flop between “phenomenal properties” and “phenomenal consciousness” because it sounds grammatically off to say that the properties of in individual are externally constituted. Both phrases are intended to mean the same thing for I take it that to be phenomenally conscious is to have phenomenal properties.
This is ‘representationalism’ as it is within the philosophy of mind. In the philosophy of cognitive science and indeed in cognitive science representationalism is taken to be about cognitive states in general rather than more specifically about conscious phenomenal experiences.
Most representationalists recognise that there might mental representation which does not constitute phenomenal experience. Thus, they add further conditions for a representation to be phenomenally conscious. e.g., that the representational state be ‘globally accessible’ (Tye, 1995, 2000) or be available for deliberation and decision making (Dretske, 1981, 2006).
These are all accounts of representation, not all of these philosophers are representationalists, nor are all the accounts all designed to be used by representationalists. However, representationalists must eventually ascribe to an account of representation and these are the prominent reductionist options.
My argument will also have the advantage that its applies to representational accounts which utilise forward-facing theories of function [e.g., Bigelow and Pargetter (1987) Accounts of function that leverage future facts are externalist—entailing that if the representationalist were to avail themselves of them, the result would be phenomenal externalism.
It is not necessarily the case that phenomenal experiences be observed: I don’t want to commit to a higher order theory here. Nor is it necessarily the case that the individual undergoing the phenomenal experience be able to introspect upon the experience; I intend to leave it open that a creature without the power of introspection might undergo a phenomenal experience. What is important is that the experience be, in principle, introspectable, in the sense that if one had the capacity for introspection and one exercised that capacity upon the experience in question there would be, as it were, something to see.
As we shall see, I think that the determination thesis is not a viable alternative although I am still persuaded by the pragmatic argument. That is, I am more confident that CONSTITUTION is false than I am that my argument against DETERMINATION is a good one.
If one is inclined to think that a full account of teleology would treat artificial information transfer (i.e., manual copying of the genetic information from original gametes into artificial ones) as equivalent to natural selection we can tweak the thought experiment to ensure that it is a matter of chance that Bill and Andy are identical, in a manner similar to the original Swamp-man example. If one is inclined to think strange examples like this are irrelevant see Block’s explanation as to why they are not (Block, 1998).
For direct verses indirect notions of etiological function see Allen and Neal (1996).
Whether an object has a particular wide property is something we might be interested in despite this anti-realism. A medic might be interested in whether a particular blemish is a ‘mosquito bite’ because this would indicate the presence of mosquitos. An identical blemish without that wide property would be less troubling. Here though what the medic is interested in is “that the blemish was caused by a mosquito” rather than, this blemish has the real property “caused by a mosquito”, whatever that might consist in.
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Blythe, J. Reductive Representationalism and the Determination of Phenomenal Properties. Erkenn (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00686-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00686-3