Representationalism about qualia

Abstract

This thesis aims to challenge a variety of representationalist theory of mind – what may be called reductive wide representationalism or externalist representationalism – which asserts that phenomenal characters (or qualia) of perceptual experiences are completely determined by representational contents assuming that since representational contents, like all other propositional contents, are externally determined, so are phenomenal characters. The principal claim of this paper is that there is a gap between phenomenal characters of an experience and its representational content: even if all representational facts were given, we would not have a complete explanation about relevant phenomenal facts. In my view, no matter how much the theories of representational content can be refined, there is always going to be phenomenal residue. Furthermore, this version of representationalism cannot explain why certain phenomenal characters co-occur with certain representational contents since the link between them seems contingent. That is, representationalism is not immune to the typical explanatory gap problem. While most contemporary discussions about representationalism have focused extensively on vision and visual qualities, I focus particularly on audition and its distinctive features. I think that audition-centred examples can help to build a strong case against reductive wide representationalism by revealing what might have been overlooked in the vision-centred examples.