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Locating projectivism in intentionalism debates

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Notes

  1. These debates are also called ‘representationalism’ debates, among other names. For consistency I will employ the term ‘intentionalism’ throughout.

  2. See, e.g., Boghossian and Velleman (1989), McGilvray (1994), Wright (2003), and Averill (2005).

  3. There are of course various other ways to demarcate between perceptual theories, and various theories that will be left out of the discussion.

  4. I am thinking for example of Russell (1912, 1913). Strictly speaking sense-data can be merely mind-dependent, a subtlety that does not affect our discussion.

  5. I will suppress this qualification throughout.

  6. In virtue of sense-data regularly accurately representing the mind-independent external world in perception, the perceived parts of that world are thus also intentional objects of the relevant perceptual states. This is thus a two-factor view of content in that there is a subjective or narrow content and an objective or wide one. However, standard two-factor views (e.g., Block 1986) situate the narrow content either within a conceptual role semantics or a functional one. By contrast, sense-data have intrinsic features (e.g., phenomenal features) and thus cannot be constrained in these ways.

  7. DR thus includes both intentionalist (e.g., Harman 1990) and disjunctivist (e.g., Martin 2004) approaches to perception. While these two views have substantive differences (e.g., different accounts of what constitutes a veridical perception, and what constitutes abnormal experiences such as illusions and hallucinations), they both agree that the phenomenal character of everyday perceptions is in the external world, and this is the relevant point for our discussion. That said, the reader may find it helpful to keep the intentionalist DR in mind throughout, for she is my primary target.

  8. QR was largely motivated by a distaste that emerged for SDT, the result of which was that it became out of fashion to hold that we directly perceive an inner world of ideas or sense-data, but remained in fashion to some to hold that there are subjective qualitative aspects of experience that we are aware of in perception. The reasons for this distaste are not obvious, it is certainly not in my judgement because decisive or even convincing arguments against the view were given. Three of the more influential attacks on SDT are Armstrong (1961), Austin (1964), and Pitcher (1971).

  9. The idea that in experience we might be nonintentionally aware of items is familiar from Shoemaker (1981) and numerous contributions that followed. To take a recent example, Stoljar describes what he takes to be the “dominant” contemporary anti-intentionalist view as a view on which “[qualia] are not themselves properties of the objects that one is related to in having the experience” (2004, p. 351). On this view qualia are not features of objects of perception, but we are still directly aware of them in perception. It immediately follows that we must be aware of them in some other way, other than as objects of perception. But this other way is not given a positive explication, only the negative ‘nonintentional’ or ‘nonrepresentational’ way. E.g., Nida-Rümelin (2007) has made some progress on this issue.

  10. In the context of intentionalism debates the terms ‘intentional content’, ‘representational content’ and ‘propositional content’ are often taken to be interchangeable. I believe this is a mistake and state why in the full version of this piece.

  11. The consequence of particular importance is that a change in phenomenal character necessitates a change in intentional content, but not vice versa. The relevant notion of supervenience is strong enough to garner an existential dependence of the former on the latter. The implied sense of ‘necessity’ is strong enough to apply to possibilities that are not actual (e.g., perhaps spectrum inversion), yet weak enough to permit the possibility that empirical evidence to the contrary of this thesis might arise at some point. A more precise conception of ‘necessity’ would be helpful but is not essential for our discussion. See, e.g., Byrne (2001, pp. 204–206) for corroboration and many supporting references. For a somewhat different conception see for example Kalerdon (2008) and Pautz (2008).

  12. Harman’s explicit target is sense-datum theory and early Shoemaker (1981). Shoemaker there argues for qualitative aspects of experience that are subjective, although he regrettably calls them nonintentional, terminology I argue against in the full version of this article.

  13. I discuss this argument briefly in the full article. In detail elsewhere (Brown under review-b) I argue that it does not pose much of a threat to indirect realism, but does threaten the kind of qualia realism Stoljar (2004) seeks to defend against Harman’s argument.

  14. There are no doubt more than these two varieties of intentionalism debates. My aim is not to give an exhaustive reconstruction of these debates, but to give a reconstruction that articulates enough conceptual space to (1) discuss key phenomena to these debates (e.g., spectrum inversion), and (2) display the significance of a projectivist variety of indirect realism for these debates. Sample relevant claims I will not directly discuss are: the claim, endorsed by some qualia realists, that some experiences have qualitative items that we are not aware of; and the claim, endorsed by some intentionalists, that some perceptions are about qualitative items that do not exist. To my mind, although each of these claims may be fruitful to their respective advocates, neither is essential to their views.

  15. However, in a section of this paper removed due to length constraints I argue that Byrne’s own justification for this compatibility is suspect.

  16. To express QAI and DRI in terms of the intentionalist thesis—phenomenal character supervenes on intentional content—we need to delve into the ideas of intentionality and content in ways we have yet to consider. See the full version of this paper.

  17. It is worth making explicit that projectivism is a thesis about those sense-data peculiar to perception and arguably bodily sensation. In the former sense-data are experienced as being in the world outside the perceiver’s body, and in the latter as being in areas of the body outside the perceiver’s mind. Projectivism is committed to no claims about those sense-data peculiar to or involved in memories or other thoughts.

  18. We can set aside whether or not the projectivist should regard all phenomenal character as projected. As an opponent of DRI it is sufficient, for example, for the projectivist to hold that the phenomenal characters of sense-data involved in routine everyday perceptions are projected.

  19. The projectivist can offer various means by which sense-data are experienced as projected. E.g., the projection might be learned and thus inessential to how sense-data are experienced, or the projection might be essential to our experiencing sense-data. Interestingly, how this issue is resolved may impact whether or not phenomenal character supervenes on nonrepresentational or representational content for the projectivist. Unfortunately, space prevents me from discussing the matter, but I wish to thank Brad Thompson (2009) for making me consider the matter more closely.

  20. If we observe that the relevant phenomenal character is first-and-foremost the reddishness of the sense-datum, we are (without further argument) under no pressure to associate any phenomenal character with the red SSR class. This is as it should be: there is nothing in the idea or explication of an SSR that requires appeal to ideas of qualia, sense-data, phenomenal character, et cetera.

  21. This terminology has been present at least since Shoemaker (1981, see esp. Sect. II). A promising colour axis is the red-green one (see, e.g., Palmer 1999).

  22. It was one of the key sticking points of Harman’s analysis of intentionalism debates, and remains so in Byrne’s, Tye’s (1995, 2002), and others. Even for Shoemaker, when reading his work it is undeniable that he regards it as very difficult to reconcile spectrum inversion with intentionalism.

  23. See Essay, bk. 11, ch. 32, Sect. xv.

  24. One might plausibly take this to mean that the these inverted qualities are named neither by ‘greenishness’ nor by ‘reddishness’ and in fact have no names in our language (e.g., Shoemaker 1994, Thau 2002).

  25. Byrne maintains that QAI is consistent with sense-datum theory. The latter is straightforwardly consistent with spectrum inversion hypotheses. Thus QAI is consistent with those hypotheses, a claim Byrne routinely (2001; with Hilbert 1997, 2003), and thus inconsistently, denies.

  26. Shoemaker (1994, 2002) acknowledges projectivism but does not tackle the view head-on. He ends with a view he concedes “I am not at all sure…is correct” (2002, p. 471). According to Block, Shoemaker’s view “would be less paradoxical if Shoemaker’s ‘phenomenal properties’ of objects were really just phenomenal characters of experiences projected onto objects” (2003, p. 172). An attractive suggestion indeed!

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Acknowledgements

For helpful questions and stimulating discussion I wish to thank Phillipe Chuard, Peter Ross, and audiences at the University of Manitoba, the 2009 Pacific APA meetings and the 2009 SEP meetings. A special debt is owed to Brad Thompson (my commentator at the Pacific APA) and Adam Morton.

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Correspondence to Derek H. Brown.

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A fuller version of this article is under review elsewhere (Brown under review-a).

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Brown, D.H. Locating projectivism in intentionalism debates. Philos Stud 148, 69–78 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9509-0

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