Consciousness and Nonconceptual Content
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Consciousness, Color, and Content is a significant contribution to our understanding of consciousness, among other things. I have learned a lot from it, as well as Tye's other writings. What's more, I actually agree with much of it – fortunately for this symposium, not all of it. The book continues the defense of the " PANIC " theory of phenomenal consciousness that Tye began in Ten Problems of Consciousness (1995). A fair chunk of it, though, is largely independent of this theory: the discussion of the knowledge argument, the explanatory gap, and color. Tye says much of interest about these topics. But as most of my disagreement is with the PANIC theory, I shall concentrate on that. The PANIC theory is nothing short of ambitious. It is a reductive account of phenomenal consciousness in intentional/functional terms. Tye further gives, at least in outline, a broadly physicalistic account of intentionality (a " naturalized semantics "), in terms of causal covariation. Putting the PANIC theory and Tye's naturalized semantics together, the result is a physicalistically acceptable theory of phenomenal consciousness. The two parts of this package are independent. A naturalized semantics can be combined with dualism about consciousness (a position close to this is in Chalmers, 1996). And a PANIC theorist is at liberty to endorse a rival physicalistic theory of intentionality, or indeed could take intentionality to be entirely irreducible. The plan is this. Section 1 briefly airs a concern about Tye's naturalized semantics. The rest of the paper focuses on the PANIC theory, in particular the use it makes of " nonconceptual content ". 1 Tye's causal covariational account of intentionality is this: [Sensory state] S represents that P =df If optimal conditions were to obtain, S would be tokened in [creature] c if and only if P were the case; moreover, in these circumstances, S would be tokened in c because P is the case. (2000, p. 136, note omitted; cf. 1995, p. 101) 2 " Optimal conditions " are explained as follows: In the case of evolved creatures, it is natural to hold that such conditions for vision involve the various components of the visual system operating as they were designed to do in the sort of external environment in which they were designed to operate (p. 138). It seems to me that Tye himself has supplied compelling counterexamples against this proposal, namely various perceptual illusions, In the …
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Pii: S1053-8100(02)00016-8
Perceptual experience seems to involve distinct intentional and qualitative features. Inasmuch as one can visually perceive that there is a Coke can in front of one, perceptual experience must be intentional. But such experiences seem to differ from paradigmatic intentional states in having introspectible qualitative character. Peacocke (1983) argues that a perceptual experience s qualitative c...
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