scholarly journals Corrigendum to: ‘More of me! Less of me!: Reflexive Imperativism about Affective Phenomenal Character’ by Luca Barlassina and Max Khan Hayward. MIND, Volume 128, Issue 512, October 2019, Pages 1013-1044, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzz035.

Mind ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character

Dual Aspect Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Normal Variation ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Order Representation ◽  
Management Conflicts ◽  
Higher Order Theory

Carruthers proposes a subtle dispositionalist rendition of higher order theory regarding phenomenal character. The theory would distinguish unconscious movement management from conscious attitude management as perceptual processes. Each process takes perceptual representations as inputs. A representation subject to attitude management is apt to induce a higher order representation of itself that secures a self-referential aspect of its content supposedly determinative of phenomenal character. Unfortunately, the account requires a problematic cognitive ambiguity while failing to explain why attitude, but not movement, management, determines character. Moreover, normal variation in attitudinal management conflicts with the constancy typical of phenomenal character. And although an agent denied perceptual access to a scene about which she is otherwise well informed would suffer no phenomenal character, dispositionalist theory entails otherwise. Such problems, together with the results of the previous chapters, suggest that, whether cloaked under intentionalism or higher order theory, representationalism mistakes content for character.

Higher Order Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Unconscious Perception ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
Order State

Rosenthal's rendition of representationalism denies intentionalism. His higher order theory instead asserts that a perceptual state's phenomenal character is set by that state's being related to, because represented by, another, but higher order, cognitive state. The theory arises from the doubtful supposition of unconscious perception and mistakenly construes intrinsic phenomenal character extrinsically, as one state's serving as the content of another. Yet it remains mysterious how and why a higher order state might be so potent as to determine phenomenal character at all. Better to resist higher order theory’s embrace of dubious unconscious perceptual states and account for states so-called simply in terms of humdrum mnemonic malfeasance. Moreover, since the suspect theory allows higher order misrepresentation, it implies sufferance of impossible phenomenal character. Equally problematic, representationalism pitched at the higher order entails the existence of bogus phenomenal character when upstairs states represent downstairs nonperceptual states.

Intentionalism, Cognition, and Representation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Perceptual State ◽  
Content Of Experience

This chapter continues consideration of reductive intentionalism without embracing the doctrine, framing it in the context of cognitive science. Cognition, including perception, is representation. An agent’s cognitive, perhaps perceptual, state is a relation binding the agent to a proposition by means of her mental representation. Intentionalism would explicate the phenomenal character of a perceiver's experience in terms of the content of her prevailing perceptual representation. While minimal intentionalism maintains that the phenomenal character of the perceiver's experience merely supervenes on her representation's content, maximal intentionalism would reduce character to content. For maximal intentionalism maintains that phenomenal character is simply what introspection finds. Yet, according to maximal intentionalism, introspection, when tuned to conscious perception, detects only the content of experience. Hence, the maximalist identifies phenomenal character with the content carried by perceptual representation.

Perceptual Attention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonardon Ganeri
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Perceptual Attention ◽  
Conscious Attention

Conscious attention performs two distinct roles in experience, a role of placing and a role of focusing, roles which match a distinction between selection and access endorsed in recent theories of attention. The intentionality of conscious experience consists in two sorts of attentional action, a focusing at and a placing on, the first lending to experience a perspectival categorical content and the second structuring its phenomenal character. Placing should be thought of more like opening a window for consciousness than as shining a spotlight, and focusing has to do with accessing the properties of whatever the window opens onto. A window is an aperture whose boundaries are defined by what is excluded—in this case, distractors.

Quality and Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Levine
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Cognitive Phenomenology ◽  
Modal Argument ◽  
Demonstrative Thought ◽  
Naturalistic Theory ◽  
Phenomenal Concept Strategy ◽  
The One

The papers presented in this volume cover topics, such as the “phenomenal concept strategy,” to defend materialism from anti-materialist intuitions, the doctrine of representationalism about phenomenal character, the modal argument against materialism, the nature of demonstrative thought, and cognitive phenomenology. On the one hand, I argue that the phenomenal concept strategy cannot work and that representationalism has certain fatal flaws, at least if it’s to be joined to a materialist metaphysics. On the other, I defend materialism from the modal argument, arguing that it relies on a questionable conflation of semantic and metaphysical issues. I also provide a naturalistic theory of demonstrative thought, criticizing certain philosophical arguments involving that notion in the process. I argue as well that the peculiarly subjective nature of secondary qualities provides a window into the nature of the relation between phenomenal character and intentional content, and conclude that relation involves a robust notion of acquaintance.

scholarly journals Contents of Unconscious Color Perception

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Błażej Skrzypulec
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Color Perception ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Unconscious Perception ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
Significant Support

AbstractIn the contemporary discussions concerning unconscious perception it is not uncommon to postulate that content and phenomenal character are ‘orthogonal’, i.e., there is no type of content which is essentially conscious, but instead, every representational content can be either conscious or not. Furthermore, this is not merely treated as a thesis justified by theoretical investigations, but as supported by empirical considerations concerning the actual functioning of the human cognition. In this paper, I address unconscious color perception and argue for a negative thesis—that the main experimental paradigms used in studying unconscious color perception do not provide support for the position that conscious and unconscious color representations have the same type of content. More specifically, I claim that there is no significant support for the claim that unconscious vision categorically represents surface colors.

scholarly journals Relational Imperativism about Affective Valence

2021 ◽  
pp. 341-370
Author(s):  
Antti Kauppinen
Keyword(s):  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Affective Valence ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
In Virtue Of

Affective experiences motivate and rationalize behaviour in virtue of feeling good or bad, or their valence. It has become popular to explain such phenomenal character with intentional content. Rejecting evaluativism and extending earlier imperativist accounts of pain, I argue that when experiences feel bad, they both represent things as being in a certain way and tell us to see to it that they will no longer be that way. Such commands have subjective authority by virtue of linking up with a relevant background concern. The imperative content explains but doesn’t constitute world-directed motivation. It also rationalizes action indirectly, by giving rise to an affective seeming that represents the situation as calling for the authoritatively commanded behaviour. One experience feels worse than another if its content tells us to bear a higher opportunity cost to comply with the command. Finally, experience-directed motivation is contingent on our being attitudinally (dis)pleased with the character of our experience.

scholarly journals For Better And Worse: Taking phenomenalist accounts of intuition seriously

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Egler
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Perceptual Presence

The historically-influential perceptual analogy states that intuitions and perceptual experiences are alike in many important respects. Phenomenalists defend a particular reading of this analogy according to which intuitions and perceptual experiences share a common phenomenal character. The phenomenalist thesis has proven highly influential in recent years. However, insufficient attention has been given to the challenges that the phenomenalist thesis raises for theories of intuitions. In this paper, I first develop one such challenge. I argue that if we take seriously the idea that intuitions and perceptual experiences have a common phenomenal character, then an analogous version of the familiar problem of perceptual presence arises for intuitions. I call this the 'problem of intuitive presence'. In the second part of the paper I sketch a novel enactivist solution to this problem.

scholarly journals Shoemaker’s moderate qualia realism and the transparency of qualia

Disputatio ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (22) ◽  
pp. 101-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renée J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Sydney Shoemaker ◽  
Representational Property

Abstract Qualia realists hold that experience’s phenomenal character is a non-representational property of experience, what they call qualia. Representationalists hold that phenomenal character is a representational property of experience — there are no qualia (in this particular sense of the word). The transparency of qualia to introspection would seem to count as reason for rejecting qualia realism and favouring representationalism. Sydney Shoemaker defends a middle ground, call it moderate qualia realism, which seems to provide a response to the problem of transparency that in consistent with qualia realism. According to this view, while phenomenal character is a representational property of experience, it is determined by certain non-representational properties of experience, namely qualia. Shoemaker explains the apparent transparency of qualia by claiming that, while qualia are not directly introspectible, they are indirectly introspectible. I argue that neither Shoemaker’s moderate qualia realism nor his account of indirect introspection provide the qualia realist with a plausible solution to the problem of transparency.

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