Arnaud Dewalque

What is the phenomenal structure of our perceptual experiences? In this talk, I suggest that perceptual experiences – like consciousness in general – have a mereological structure, that is, a structure in which the most basic relation is that of parthood. I do not provide any definitive argument for this view. I just want to suggest (i) that the mereological approach is untouched by the usual objections coming from the proponents of the Unified Field Theory (James, Searle, Tye), (ii) that the Unified Field Theory faces some important difficulties of its own.

When you are in a joyful mood, how do you know that it is so? On a Cartesian picture, the answer is that you’ve got some immediate, noninferential apprehension of your being joyful, such as (i) this noninferential apprehension is analogous to sense perception (perceptual account), and (ii) unlike sense perception, it makes it unquestionable or evident to you that you presently are in a joyful mood (epistemic privilege). In this paper, I defend this view against some classical objections, arguing that pre-reflective self-consciousness actually is analogous to sense perception.