A holistic approach to representationalism
Item
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Title
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A holistic approach to representationalism
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:2c8a0d4bafca:11870
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identifier
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12518
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Creator
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Berger, Jacob,
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Contributor
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Jesse Prinz
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Philosophy
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Abstract
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Perhaps the most promising account of the qualitative character of experience available is representationalism---the view that the qualitative character of a mental state is identical with (or supervenes on) that state's representational properties. According to representationalism, for example, the reddish qualitative character of a perception is (or is determined by) the property of the state's qualitatively representing red. But representationalism is incomplete without an account of how experiences represent what they do---that is, an account of the psychosemantics of qualitative content. To date, most representationalists have endorsed versions of so-called tracking theories of content, according to which a state represents a property just in case the state tracks that property. Such views are atomistic insofar as a state's content does not depend on its relations to other mental states. Versions of representationalism which depend upon such atomistic psychosemantics are, however, open to criticism. Some representationalists have therefore concluded that qualitative representation is primitive or resists reductive explanation. But this reaction may be too hasty. This dissertation develops a form of reductive representationalism according to which qualitative content is individuated in a holistic way.;To develop this view, Chapter 1 addresses introductory issues regarding qualitative character and representation. Chapter 2 argues that standard forms of representationalism of the sort defended by Fred Dretske, William Lycan, and Michael Tye fail primarily because of their atomistic approach to qualitative content. Recently, some representationalists have offered more sophisticated versions of the view, principally to accommodate phenomena such as undetectable quality inversion. Chapter 3 argues that these more complex accounts---including Sydney Shoemaker's dispositionalist representationalism and David Chalmers's Fregean representationalism---are unworkable. One might think that the failures of these views suggest that the chief rival to representationalism, the traditional qualia theory which holds that there are nonrepresentational qualitative aspects of perceptions, is correct. Chapter 4 argues that such a qualia theory is problematic because it cannot provide an account of our knowledge of qualia, even from the first-person perspective.;In light of these considerations, Chapter 5 proposes a version of representationalism wherein qualitative content is individuated in a holistic way. This holistic theory of qualitative content---what is dubbed here `perceptual-role semantics'---builds upon a burgeoning theory of qualitative character, versions of which have been defended by, among others, Austen Clark, David Lewis, David Rosenthal, and Shoemaker. On the view developed, a qualitative state's content is determined by its relative location in a space of states that matches the corresponding quality spaces of perceptible properties to which those qualitative states provide access. For example, an experience of red represents red because the experience occupies a location within a space of experiences of color that corresponds to the location occupied by red within the quality space of colors. The resultant holistic version of representationalism avoids the problems that plague other versions of it, resolves a host of philosophical puzzles about qualitative character, fits with a range of recent empirical findings about perception, and opens the phenomena up to fruitful further study.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Philosophy
