Does the Phenomenality of Perceptual Experience Present an Obstacle to Phenomenal Externalism?

Philosophical Papers 38 (1):93-110 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

: Although Externalism is widely accepted as a thesis about belief, as a thesis about experience it is both controversial and unpopular. One potential explanation of this difference involves the phenomenality of perceptual experience—perhaps there is something about how perceptual experiences seem that straightforwardly speaks against Externalist accounts of their individuation conditions. In this paper, I investigate this idea by exploring the role that the phenomenality of color experience plays in a prominent argument against Phenomenal Externalism: Ned Block’s Inverted Earth Argument. In the course of carrying out this investigation, I will show that challenging Phenomenal Externalism on phenomenological grounds is not as straightforward a task as it is commonly assumed to be.

Similar books and articles

Colour inversion problems for representationalism.Fiona Macpherson - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1):127-152.
Externalism and experience.Martin Davies - 1997 - In Ned Block & Owen J. Flanagan (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. MIT Press. pp. 244-250.
Aims and claims of externalist arguments.Martin Davies - 1993 - Philosophical Issues 4:227-249.
Externalism and experience.Gregory McCulloch - 1990 - Analysis 50 (4):244-50.
Why externalism is not a problem for ethical intuitionists.Philip Stratton-Lake - 1999 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1):77–90.
Phenomenal character, phenomenal concepts, and externalism.Jonathan Ellis - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 147 (2):273 - 299.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-02-06

Downloads
174 (#103,538)

6 months
8 (#158,054)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Robert Schroer
University of Minnesota, Duluth

Citations of this work

Which Moral Properties Are Eligible for Perceptual Awareness?Preston J. Werner - 2020 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (3):290-319.
Phenomenal Externalism's Explanatory Power.Peter W. Ross - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (3):613-630.
The Goldilocks Problem of the specificity of visual phenomenal content.Robert Schroer - 2014 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4):476-495.
Crane and the mark of the mental.Andrea Raimondi - 2022 - Analysis 81 (4):683-693.

Add more citations

References found in this work

What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1974 - Philosophical Review 83 (October):435-50.
The representational character of experience.David J. Chalmers - 2004 - In Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 153--181.
Consciousness and Experience.William G. Lycan - 1996 - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
The intrinsic quality of experience.Gilbert Harman - 1990 - Philosophical Perspectives 4:31-52.

View all 29 references / Add more references