Illusions and Phenomenal Qualities

I've nicked these garish swirls from the "Phenomenal Qualities Project" website. Now here's the cool part. These are the same swirls with a black background:

Crap! The green and blue swirls are actually the same color? How could that be?

Contrast effects can be pretty powerful!

In any case, here's the question: how should the Tye-style representationalist handle these cases? Do they pose a problem for the representationalist? That is, do they suggest the existence of aspects of phenomenal character that can't be identified with representational content?

[More such examples to come.]

Tye on Transparency

One of Tye's principal claims about perceptual experience is that it is transparent. Problem eight in Ten Problems of Consciousness (TPC) is "the problem of transparency," and it is discussed in some detail at the opening to chapter five, where Tye uses it to support his intentionalism (his identification of phenomenal character with phenomenal content). (He returns to the topic in much greater detail in sections 3.1 and 3.2 of Consciousnes, Color, and Content.)

In thinking about these topics, here are some questions you should try to answer:

1. What does it mean to say that experience is transparent, according to Tye?

2. How does the transparency of experience support Tye's intentionalism?

3. Is experience really transparent? Do phenomena such as your ability to blur your vision by squinting put transparency into question?

Tye's *Ten Problems of Consciousness*

Our first text for the course is Michael Tye's Ten Problems of Consciousness. Tye's views on perceptual phenomenology (AKA the phenomenal character of perceptual experience) have been extremely influential in recent discussions, so this book--which constitutes their first systematic presentation--is a great starting point for us. Later today, I'll make a couple of posts with some questions about material in the early chapters of Tye's book; making comments on these posts will be a good way to get the discussion going in advance of our first class meeting.

For the time being, it might be useful to have just a bit of guidance about what to focus on in reading the text.

To begin with, we will not be deeply concerned with physicalism, or with whether Tye succeeds in developing a genuinely physicalist theory of phenomenal consciousness. Tye's version of physicalism is introduced in chapter two and it is critical to generating what he calls the "paradox of phenomenal consciousness." It is important for us to understand this stuff, but mainly so that we have a grip on what motivates Tye's representationalist approach to the phenomenal character of experience. We won't have time to attend to many of the details.

Second, of the ten problems, we'll focus most closely on problems two, seven, and eight: the problem of perspectival subjectivity (1.3), the problem of the inverted spectrum (1.8), and the problem of transparency (1.9). Keep this in mind as you read. These issues will come up several times throughout the course.

Finally, the heart of the book is chapters four and five, where Tye presents and develops his representationalism (also called "intentionalism") about phenomenal character. You should focus your energies on these chapters, and particularly on those sections dealing with perception. You'll want to be able to answer two questions: (1) what is Tye's view? and (2) what evidence or reasons does he have for it? (Note: you'll encounter transparency again in the beginning of chapter five. For perspectival subjectivity and spectrum inversion, however, you'll have to move on to chapters six and seven.)

That's all for now. Happy reading.