Against Pure Representationalism about Qualia: The Case of Intransitive Bodily Sensations

Pure qualia representationalism, as I construe it in this paper, is the view that all qualia can be accounted for in terms of the representational content of sensations. This view is motivated by naturalism about qualia. I argue against this thesis by showing that so-called intransitive bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, itches, orgasms, etc., are intransitive precisely because their qualitative character is not entirely representational. But once we see the reason why, and review common representationalist attempts to rebut this criticism, a proper response to the problem will emerge, which suggests supplementing representationalism with psychofunctionalism about qualia. Thus, I will be arguing not against representationalist attempts to naturalize qualia per se, but for a better way of doing it. Every non-controversial case of perception is marked with an act-object distinction of a certain sort; that is, in every genuine case of perception (in any sense modality), there are at least three components: (a) the object of the perception, (b) the act of perceiving it, and (c) the experience implicated in this act. 1 ‘Object’ in the broadest sense of whatever it is that we perceive, be it an event or a state of affairs, or (bodily) condition. 2 The perceiver is said to perceive the object by having the experience that (re)presents the object and its qualities to the perceiver. In this paper I will assume, along with pure representationalists, a common sense direct realism about perception, according to which we don’t perceive our experiences or their qualities in the perception of external conditions. (Representationalism will be construed as externalist/broad.) Accordingly, I will assume that sense-datum theories of perception are wrong. These theories analyze perception as involving an act-object distinction of a different sort, where the direct and immediate object of perception