Max Emil Deutsch

Representationalist theories of the phenomenal character of conscious experience are attractive because they promise a simpler 'naturalization' of the mind. However, I argue that representationalists cannot endorse an otherwise attractive externalist theory of the representational contents of conscious experiences. The combination of representationalism and externalism conflicts with a true principle linking phenomenal character to perceptual indistinguishability.

It is argued on a variety of grounds that recent results in 'experimental philosophy of language', which appear to show that there are significant cross-cultural differences in intuitions about the reference of proper names, do not pose a threat to a more traditional mode of philosophizing about reference. Some of these same grounds justify a complaint about experimental philosophy as a whole.