James John

The following theses form an inconsistent triad. REPRESENTATIONISM: The phenomenal properties of a perceptual experience are identical to (some of) the experience’s representational properties. PHENOMENAL INTERNALISM: The phenomenal properties of a perceptual experience supervene on the intrinsic properties of the experience’s subject. STRONG EXTERNALISM: None of the representational properties of a perceptual experience is fixed by the intrinsic properties of the experience’s subject. The fact that these three theses are jointly inconsistent is one of the emerging problems in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception and consciousness. It’s a problem because the theses are all quite attractive. Our aim here is to make the problem explicit and survey the options for resolving it.

Representational theorists identify experiences’ phenomenal properties with their representational properties. Qualia theorists reject this identity, insisting that experiences’ phenomenal properties can come apart from and completely outrun their representational properties. Qualia theorists account for phenomenal properties in terms of “qualia,” intrinsic mental properties they allege experiences to instantiate. The debate between representational theorists and qualia theorists has focused on whether phenomenal properties really can come apart from and completely outrun representational properties. As a result, qualia theorists have failed (1) to explain how experiences owe their phenomenal properties to their instantiation of qualia and (2) to clarify the nature of subjects’ epistemic access to qualia. I survey qualia theorists’ options for dealing with each issue and find them all wanting.

The qualia theory (QT) says that experiences’ phenomenal properties can come apart from and completely outrun their representational properties and that phenomenal properties are to be accounted for in terms of “qualia,” intrinsic nonrepresentational mental properties of experience. In Consciousness and Cognition Michael Thau argues that QT is incoherent. Thau’s argument fails. It rests on an illegitimate assimilation of phenomenal differences to differences in “the way things seem.” It begs the question by assuming that representational content can suffice for phenomenal character. And it overlooks a crucial difference between two very different versions of QT. The upshot is that QT is much more plausible than representationalist critics like Thau have supposed.