Erik Myin

Inverted sensation arguments such as the inverted spectrum thought experiment are often criticized for relying on an unconstrained notion of 'qualia'. In reply to this criticism, 'qualia-free' arguments for inversion have been proposed, in which only physical changes happen: inversions in the world, such as the replacement of surface colors by their complements, and a rewiring of peripheral input cables to more central areas in the nervous system. I show why such constrained inversion arguments won't work. The first problem is that the world lacks the symmetry required to invert physical properties in the way required. The second problem concerns 'rewiring'. Empirical evidence indicates that the rewirings are either impossible, or would not result in an inversion of sensation. I propose the deeper reason for the failure of constrained inversion arguments lies in the fact that sensations are not properties of brain states, but spread into the world and the body

There is a popular view on depiction which holds that convincingly realistic paintings depict their subjects through evoking in the spectator the illusion of seeing these very subjects face to face. There is, as it were, an exact 'match' between the visual experience of seeing something in a picture and the corresponding visual experience one would entertain if one were to stand in front of the real thing. This view, which we shall call 'illusionism', supports the widespread assumption that some kinds of pictures -- notably post-Renaissance perspective paintings -- provide the correct, 'natural' way to depict physical space because they capture the way the visual system enables one to see the world. The most notable defence of illusionism has been offered by Ernst Gombrich. In his Art and Illusion, Gombrich (1960) argues that the development of Western art consists in a series of discoveries about the nature of visual perception that eventually lead to pictorial techniques that are able to elicit illusionary visual experiences on part of the spectator and thus reach the perfection of naturalistic representation.

According to a standard representationalist view cognitive capacities depend on internal content-carrying states. Recent alternatives to this view have been met with the reaction that they have, at best, limited scope, because a large range of cognitive phenomena—those involving absent and abstract features—require representational explanations. Here we challenge the idea that the consideration of cognition regarding the absent and the abstract can move the debate about representationalism along. Whether or not cognition involving the absent and the abstract requires the positing of representations depends upon whether more basic forms of cognition require the positing of representations

We address the thesis recently proposed by Andy Clark, that skill-mediated access to modality implies phenomenal feel. We agree that a skill theory of perception does indeed offer the possibility of a satisfactory account of the feel of perception, but we claim that this is not only through explanation of access to modality but also because skill actually provides access to perceptual property in general. We illustrate and substantiate our claims by reference to the recently proposed 'sensorimotor contingency' theory of visual awareness. We discuss why this theory offers a distinctively attractive access-based approach to perceptual consciousness because it 'dereifies' experience and permits otherwise problematic aspects of phenomenal perceptual consciousness to be explained. We suggest our approach thus offers the prospect of 'naturalizing phenomenology'

Palmer's target article is surely one of the most scientifically detailed and knowledgeable treatments of spectrum inversion ever. Unfortunately, it is built on a very shaky philosophical foundation, the notion of the "intrinsic". In the article's ontology, there are two kinds of properties of mental states, intrinsic properties and relational properties. The whole point of the article is that these aspects of experience are mutually exclusive: the intrinsic is nonrelational and the relational is nonintrinsic

The target article appeals to recent empirical data to support the idea that there is more to phenomenality than is available to access consciousness. However, this claim is based on an unwarranted assumption, namely, that some kind of cortical processing must be phenomenal. The article also considerably weakens Block's original distinction between a truly nonfunctional phenomenal consciousness and a functional access consciousness. The new form of phenomenal consciousness seems to be a poor-man's cognitive access

How could neural processes be associated with phenomenal consciousness? We present a way to answer this question by taking the counterintuitive stance that the sensory feel of an experience is not a thing that happens to us, but a thing we do: a skill we exercise. By additionally noting that sensory systems possess two important, objectively measurable properties, corporality and alerting capacity, we are able to explain why sensory experience possesses a sensory feel, but thinking and other mental processes do not. We are additionally able to explain why different sensory feels differ in the way they do