I-The Presidential Address: Sensory Experience and Representational Properties

Abstract

This paper is about the nature of conscious sensory properties. My initial thesis is that these properties should not be equated with representational properties. I argue that any such representationalist view is in danger of implying that conscious sensory properties are constituted by relations to propositions or other abstract objects outside space and time; and I add that, even if this implication can be avoided, the broadness of representational properties in any case renders them unsuitable to constitute conscious properties. In place of the representational account, I then defend an equation of conscious sensory properties with intrinsic non-relational properties of subjects, and I show how this view deals naturally with all the difficulties facing representationalism. I conclude by defending this non-relational account of conscious experience against arguments from the ‘transparency’ and the ‘intrinsic intentionality’ of experience.