Contribution
It recasts the qualia debate as a debate about representation: not whether phenomenal character goes beyond function, but whether it goes beyond what experience represents. It gives the debate a vocabulary (mental paint, mental oil, phenomenism, quasi-representationism), turns Inverted Earth against representationism, and adds an argument from colour science, not thought experiment, that representationism makes normal colour vision non-veridical for large groups of people.
Key insight
For appearance properties like colour there is nothing left over for the representationist to point to. When a Twin Earth emigrant’s water content changes, sameness of experience is explained by shared represented appearances (colour, sheen, flow). When an Inverted Earth emigrant’s colour content changes, there is no further represented appearance that stayed the same. What stays the same must then be a feature of the experience itself: paint, not what is painted.
Assumptions
- Definitions. A quale is “a phenomenal property of an experience that eludes the intentional, the functional, and the purely cognitive”; Block prefers to define it as not conceptually reducible to these (n. 1). Representationists hold phenomenal character “is or at least is determined by” representational content; supervenience is too weak a statement of their view (n. 3).
- Supervenience of phenomenal character on the brain, defended partly by the arguments that follow (pp. 170–171).
- Externalist shift of content after long residence, now with a deliberate change of allegiance (p. 185); recognitional capacities can be “swamped” by a new causal source, as with Block’s dog (pp. 184–185).
- Objective colour: Munsell chips, Benjamin Moore paints and Crayola names show minimal shades are objective (pp. 193–194).
Key results
- Erisa (pp. 166–168). Raised among surfaces that change colour every few minutes, with no colour words or standing colour beliefs. Her red and blue experiences differ vividly; nothing functional could constitute the difference. Stimulus differences cause, not constitute, it; innate colour preferences are speculation. Given the necessity of identity, internal functional identity rules out even possible creatures with different phenomenal characters and no functional difference (p. 168).
- Water emigrant (pp. 168–170). Representational change with phenomenal sameness is explained by two kinds of represented content, one of which is appearance properties. The representationist wins this round.
- Swampman (pp. 170–171). Same phenomenal character, null content, so phenomenal character is not content; two swampmen with different phenomenal characters and the same null content show it does not even supervene on content. Representationists who deny brain supervenience (Dretske, Lycan, McDowell) take “a desperate maneuver”.
- What is the issue (pp. 171–174). Attention is not awareness; Harman’s transparency is right about the first only. Closing your eyes in daylight or focusing past a finger shows attention to experience. Shoemaker’s view makes mental paint “a theoretical entity”, which is paradoxical. Lycan lets us be aware that an experience represents, but a child without the concept of representation can be aware of what two experiences share.
- Bodily sensations, phosphenes, Bach-y-Rita (pp. 175–179). Tye’s and Lycan’s representational contents for orgasm leave “Everything that matters (phenomenally speaking)” over; “The representationists should put up or shut up.” Pain twinges recognised only as “that one again” suggest inward-directed recognition is “a capitulation to phenomenism”.
- Quasi-representationism (pp. 179–180). Plugging modality differences with functional role invites the question why not functionalism outright; a peripheral-vision and an auditory experience of the same location differ phenomenally.
- Marvin (pp. 180–183). Lycan’s answer, that Marvin’s two recognitional concepts represent objective red and blue, “eases the way” for thought experiments; Rey’s syntactic answer collapses into eliminativism. Block accepts Loar’s reply to Jackson’s Mary: the case works better against representationism than against physicalism.
- Inverted Earth and memory (pp. 183–188). Lycan’s gradual-shift reply ignores long-term memory (“I remember the stars from my childhood!”); externalism about phenomenal memory is “an error theory” with “nothing to recommend it” beyond saving representationism. If the subject’s content never shifts, he is inverted relative to the natives, which also defeats representationism (p. 188).
- Shifted spectra (pp. 188–194). Cone peak sensitivities vary (standard deviation 1–2 nm; long-wave cones split 51.5% / 48.5% in men, differing by 5–7 nm); unique green across 50 normal subjects runs from 490 to 517 nm. For a minimal shade (co-opted “aquamarine”) learned from a standard chip, representational content is the same and phenomenal character probably differs. Relativising colour to groups fails because minimal shades are objective. Representationism is “empirically false” (p. 194).
- Burge’s suggestion (p. 195). If phenomenal character individuates the sense of colour concepts, representationism wins only a “Pickwickian victory”, because the representationists in question construe phenomenal character referentially.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Internalist representationism cannot constitute colour differences for a subject without abiding functional colour differences | moderate | Erisa, pp. 166–168; a conceptual-possibility claim |
| C2 | Transparency is false as a claim about awareness | moderate | everyday cases, pp. 171–172 |
| C3 | Representationists have not said what the content of orgasm or pain experience is | burden of proof | pp. 175–179 |
| C4 | On Inverted Earth what stays the same is not representational | moderate | pp. 183–188, given externalist content shift and reliable memory |
| C5 | Normal variation in colour vision makes representationism imply non-veridical colour experience for whole groups | moderate; empirical premises cited | pp. 188–194; Neitz & Neitz, Hurvich et al. via Hardin |
| C6 | Phenomenal character is physical but not representational | assertion of position | p. 182 |
Concepts
- Mental paint — mental properties of experience that represent, e.g. the phenomenal character that represents the tomato as red (p. 173).
- Mental oil — mental properties of experience that represent nothing (p. 174); the property of having an intentional content is excluded (n. 2).
- Phenomenism / representationism / quasi-representationism — phenomenal character outruns representational content / is exhausted by it / is exhausted by it within a modality (pp. 165, 179).
- Shifted spectrum — a small systematic difference, e.g. orange to you looks as reddish orange looks to me (p. 188).
Connections
- Inverted Earth (LIT-634) is restated and strengthened; n. 10 shows both inversion cases give counterexamples in both directions.
- Harman, Tye, Lycan, Dretske, Rey, Shoemaker and McDowell are the representationists engaged; none of their works is in the record.
- Loar’s phenomenal concepts answer Jackson (p. 183).
- “Troubles with Functionalism” (LIT-407): Block allows phenomenal natures might even be psychofunctional, in that paper’s term (p. 182), but not representational.
Bearing on the record
- Metzinger’s representational and functional account of phenomenal content (LIT-568, NOTE-460; LIT-450, NOTE-372) is an internalist representationism of the kind the Erisa case targets. A THEORY that relies on Metzinger’s identification of phenomenal with representational content should cite this chapter as the standing objection. That pairing is mine.
- THEORY-063 uses Metzinger’s world-model for the unity of experience; its unity claim does not depend on representationism about phenomenal character, so the chapter does not bear on it directly.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice.
Limitations
- Several sections are, by Block’s own account, appeals to introspection meant to “have an impact on the noncommitted”, not proofs (pp. 172, 177).
- The shifted-spectrum argument depends on how fine representational colour categories are; Block defers that to Block (1999), not in the record.
- Mental oil is claimed for bodily sensations without an argument that representationists cannot meet once they specify contents.
Open questions
- Could a representationist accept minimal-shade content that differs between perceivers without making colour relative?
- Is the long-term-memory reply to Lycan decisive, or does it need the amnesia device of Block (1990) after all?