-
1370Intentionalism and the Argument from No Common ContentPhilosophical Perspectives 21 (1): 589-613. 2007.Disjunctivists (Hinton 1973, Snowdon 1990, Martin 2002, 2006) often motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception, the subject is directly in contact with the perceived object. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I related to the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. I do not experience the tab…Read more
-
981What Acquaintance TeachesIn Thomas Raleigh & Jonathan Knowles (eds.), Acquaintance: New Essays, Oxford University Press. 2019.In her black and white room, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to see red. Only after undergoing an experience as of something red and hence acquainting herself with red can Mary learn what it is like. But learning what it is like to see red requires more than simply becoming acquainted with it. To be acquainted with something is to know it, but such knowledge, as we argue, is object-knowledge rather than propositional-knowledge. To know what it is like one must know an appropriate propositional…Read more
-
909Representationalism and the transparency of experienceNoûs 36 (1): 137-51. 2002.Representationalism is a thesis about the phenomenal character of experiences, about their immediate subjective ‘feel’.1 At a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character. So understood, the thesis is silent on the nature of phenomenal character. Strong or pure representationalism goes further. It aims to tell us what phenomenal character is. According to the theory developed in Tye…Read more
-
747Qualia ain't in the headNoûs 40 (2): 241-255. 2006.Qualia internalism is the thesis that qualia are intrinsic to their subjects: the experiences of intrinsic duplicates have the same qualia. Content externalism is the thesis that mental representation is an extrinsic matter, partly depending on what happens outside the head. 1 Intentionalism comes in strong and weak forms. In its weakest formulation, it is the thesis that representationally identical experiences of subjects have the same qualia. 2
-
651Knowing what it is like: The ability hypothesis and the knowledge argumentIn Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis, Rowman & Littlefield. 2000.
-
643Tye's book develops a persuasive and, in many respects, original argument for the view that the qualitative side of our mental life is representational in..
-
566Consciousness, Color, and ContentMIT Press. 2000.A further development of Tye's theory of phenomenal consciousness along with replies to common objections
-
468Absent qualia and the mind-body problemPhilosophical Review 115 (2): 139-168. 2006.At the very heart of the mind-body problem is the question of the nature of consciousness. It is consciousness, and in particular _phenomenal_ consciousness, that makes the mind-body relation so deeply perplexing. Many philosophers hold that no defi nition of phenomenal consciousness is possible: any such putative defi nition would automatically use the concept of phenomenal consciousness and thus render the defi nition circular. The usual view is that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is …Read more
-
415Transparency, qualia realism and representationalismPhilosophical Studies 170 (1): 39-57. 2014.In this essay, I want to take another look at the phenomenon of transparency and its relevance to qualia realism and representationalism. I don’t suppose that what I have to say will cause those who disagree with me to change their minds, but I hope not only to clarify my position and that of others who are on my side of the debate but also to respond to various criticisms and objections that have arisen over the last 10–15 years or so.The transparency thesisI begin with four quotations, two fro…Read more
-
401Consciousness Revisited: Materialism Without Phenomenal ConceptsMIT Press. 2008.We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. In Consciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenome…Read more
-
397A representational theory of pains and their phenomenal characterPhilosophical Perspectives 9 223-39. 1995.
-
367Why the vague need not be higher-order vagueMind 103 (409): 43-45. 1994.Is higher-order vagueness a real phenomenon? Dominic Hyde (1994) claims that it is, and that it is part and parcel of vagueness itself. According to Hyde, any genuinely vague predicate must also be higher-order vague. His argument for this view is unsound, however. The purpose of this note is to expose the fallacy, and to make some related observations on the vague, the higher-order vague, and the vaguely vague.
-
362Phenomenal consciousness: The explanatory gap as a cognitive illusionMind 108 (432): 705-25. 1999.The thesis that there is a troublesome explanatory gap between the phenomenal aspects of experiences and the underlying physical and functional states is given a number of different interpretations. It is shown that, on each of these interpretations, the thesis is false. In supposing otherwise, philosophers have fallen prey to a cognitive illusion, induced largely by a failure to recognize the special character of phenomenal concepts
-
326Tracking representationalism and the painfulness of painPhilosophical Issues 21 (1): 90-109. 2011.
-
312I—R. M. Sainsbury and Michael Tye: An Originalist Theory of ConceptsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1): 101-124. 2011.We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the…Read more
-
302A theory of phenomenal conceptsIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 91-105. 2003.1) There is widespread agreement that consciousness must be a physical phenomenon, even if it is one that we do not yet understand and perhaps may never do so fully. There is also widespread agreement that the way to defend physicalism about consciousness against a variety of well known objections is by appeal to phenomenal concepts (Loar 1990, Lycan 1996, Papineau 1993, Sturgeon 1994, Tye 1995, 2000, Perry 2001) . There is, alas, no agreement on the nature of phenomenal concepts.
-
260The admissible contents of visual experiencePhilosophical Quarterly 59 (236): 541-562. 2009.My purpose is to take a close look at the nature of visual content. I discuss the view that visual experiences have only existential contents, the view that visual experiences have either singular or gappy contents, and the view that visual experiences have multiple contents. I also consider a proposal about visual content inspired by Kaplan's well known theory of indexicals. I draw out some consequences of my discussion for the thesis of intentionalism with respect to the phenomenal character o…Read more
-
257What is the Content of a Hallucinatory Experience?In Berit Brogaard (ed.), Does Perception have Content?, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.Keith has just taken a hallucinogenic drug. A few minutes earlier, he was occupied with the beginning of H.H. Price's well-known book on perception. The combined effect of these activities is that Keith is now hallucinating a ripe tomato. This is not a de re hallucination. There is no particular tomato located elsewhere out of Keith's vision such that he is hallucinating that tomato as being before him. Keith is hallucinating a tomato without there being any particular tomato that he is hallucin…Read more
-
254A new look at the speckled henAnalysis 69 (2): 258-263. 2009.We owe the problem of the speckled hen to Gilbert Ryle. It was suggested to A.J. Ayer by Ryle in connection with Ayer’s account of seeing. Suppose that you are standing before a speckled hen with your eyes trained on it. You are in good light and nothing is obstructing your view. You see the hen in a single glance. The hen has 47 speckles on its facing side, let us say, and the hen ap pears speckled to you. On Ayer’s view, in seeing the hen, you directly see a speckled sense-datum or appearance…Read more
-
237Shoemaker’s The First-Person Perspective and Other EssaysPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2): 461-464. 2000.This excellent collection of essays by Sydney Shoemaker covers his work over the last ten years in the philosophy of mind. Shoemaker's overarching concern in the collection is to provide an account of the mind that does justice to the “first-person perspective.” The two main topics are the nature of self-knowledge and the nature of sensory experience. The essays are insightful, careful, and thought-provoking.
-
215The Experience of Emotion: An Intentionalist TheoryRevue Internationale de Philosophie 62 (1): 25--50. 2008.The experience of emotion is a fundamental part of human consciousness. Think, for example, of how different our conscious lives would be without such experiences as joy, anger, fear, disgust, pity, anxiety, and embarrassment. It is uncontroversial that these experiences typically have an intentional content. Anger, for example, is normally directed at someone or something. One may feel angry at one=s stock broker for provid- ing bad advice or angry with the cleaning lady for dropping the vase. …Read more
-
202Yes, Phenomenal Character Really Is Out There In The WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (2): 483-488. 2015.