And they ain't outside the head either

According to a classical view in the philosophy of language, the reference of a term is determined by a property of the term which supervenes on the history of its use. A contrasting view is that a term's reference is determined by how it is properly interpreted, in accordance with certain constraints or conditions of adequacy on interpretations. Causal theories of reference of the sort associated with Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke and Michael Devitt are versions of the first view, while defenders of determination by interpretation theories include Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett and John Haugeland. I use a variant of Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment to argue against the first view generally, and causal theories of reference in particular, then go on to argue that a properly-formulated version of the principle of charity can account for the intuitions that seem to support causal theories. Finally, I apply my version of interpretationism to the problem of reference to abstract objects and compare it with some of Wittgenstein's and Quine's views about language.     

Qualia Realism

Philosophical Studies -     

Qualia and the Senses

In his paper 'Some Remarks about the Senses' H.P. Grice argues that our distinction among perceptual modalities requires that the modalities must be characterized in terms of the introspectable character of experience. I first show that Grice's argument provides support for the claim that perceptual experiences have qualia , namely, mental qualitative properties of experience which are what it is like to be conscious of perceived properties such as colour. I then defend intentionalism about experience, which rejects qualia , by showing that we need not appeal to differences in qualia in order to distinguish the senses. Rather I claim that we can appeal to, among other factors, differences in the physical properties of physical objects which experience represents.     

Qualia Compression

Color qualia inversion scenarios have played a key role in various philosophical debates. Most notably perhaps, they have figured in skeptical arguments for the fundamental unknowability of other persons’ color experiences. For these arguments to succeed, it must be assumed that a person's having inverted color qualia may go forever unnoticed. This assumption is now generally deemed to be implausible. The present paper defines a variant of color qualia inversion—termed ‘‘color qualia compression’’—and argues that the possibility of undetectable color qualia compression is immune to the objections that have been levelled against color qualia inversion arguments, and that color qualia compression scenarios support full‐blown skepticism regarding other people's color experiences.     

Vindicating the Absent Qualia Objection

Metaphysical functionalism holds that the nature of the mental is its functional role. Proponents of the absent qualia objection to functionalism assert that mental states with essential phenomenal qualities might have had functional duplicates without qualia. Michael Tye has argued that this purported possibility is incoherent. Robert van Gulick has criticized Tye's argument. It is contended here that although van Gulick's criticism does not refute the argument, Tye's argument is unsuccessful. It is also contended that our evidence very strongly supports the possibility of absent qualia.     

Qualia and vagueness

In this paper I present two arguments against the thesis that we experience qualia. I argue that if we experienced qualia then these qualia would have to be essentially vague entities. And I then offer two arguments, one a reworking of Gareth Evans' argument against the possibility of vague objects, the other a reworking of the Sorites argument, to show that no such essentially vague entities can exist. I consider various objections but argue that ultimately they all fail. In particular I claim that the stock responses to the Sorites argument fail against my reworking of the argument because they require us to make a distinction between a determinate reality and how that reality appears to us, whereas in the case of qualia we can make no such distinction. I conclude that there can be no such things as qualia.I would like to thank the referees and Leopold Stubenberg for their help and comments.     

Generalizing Qualia Inversion

Philosophers who advocate the possibility of spectrum inversionoften conclude that the qualitative content of experiential states pose aserious problem for functionalism. I argue that in order for the inversion hypothesis to supportthis conclusion one needs to show that it generalizes to all species of qualia. By examiningfeatures of touch, taste, and olfactory sensations, I show there is good reason to resistthis generalization, in which case appeals to the possibility of spectral inversion areconsiderably less effective than they may initially appear     

Qualifying Qualia Through the Skyhook Test

If we are to preserve qualia, one possibility is to take the current academic, philosophical, and theoretical notion less seriously and current natural science and some pre-theoretical intuitions about qualia more seriously. Dennett (1997) is instrumental in showing how ideas of the intrinsicalness and privacy of qualia are misguided and those of ineffability and immediacy misinterpreted. However, by combining ideas of non-mechanicalness used in contemporary natural science with the pre-theoretical idea that qualia are special because they are unique, we get a notion of qualia that is acceptable to naturalistic philosophy. The notion of unique qualia is not opposed to the idea that some of the characterizations of qualia have to be qualified. It is the folk-philosophical, academic, notions of theoreticity and conceptuality that have to be modified.     

Physical Constituents of Qualia

In this paper I propose a defense of a posteriori materialism.Problems with a posteriori identity materialism are identified,and a materialism based on composition, not identity, is proposed.The main task for such a proposal is to account for the relationbetween physical and phenomenal properties. Composition does notseem to be fit as a relation between properties, but I offer apeculiar way to understand property-composition, based on somerecent ideas in the literature on ontology. Finally, I propose amaterialist model for the mind-body relation that is able to resistthe attack from conceivability arguments.     

Absent Qualia and Categorical Properties

Qualia have proved difficult to integrate into a broadly physicalistic worldview. In this paper, I argue that despite popular wisdom in the philosophy of mind, qualia’s intrinsicality is not sufficient for their non-reducibility. Second, I diagnose why philosophers mistakenly focused on intrinsicality. I then proceed to argue that qualia are categorical and end with some reflections on how the conceptual territory looks when we keep our focus on categoricity.     

Experiences,Thoughts, and Qualia

Philosophical Studies -     

Still Epiphenomenal Qualia: Response to Muller

Hans Muller has recently attempted to show that Frank Jackson cannot assert the existence of qualia without thereby falsifying himself on the matter of such mental states being epiphenomenal with respect to the physical world. I argue that Muller misunderstands the commitments of qualia epiphenomenalism and that, as a result, his arguments against Jackson do not go through.

Physicalism,Qualia Inversion,And Affective States

I argue that the inverted spectrum hypothesis is nota possibility we should take seriously. The principlereason is that if someone's qualia were inverted inthe specified manner there is reason to believe thephenomenal difference would manifest itself inbehaviour. This is so for two reasons. First, Isuggest that qualia, including phenomenal colours, arepartly constituted by an affective component whichwould be inverted along with the connected qualia. Theresulting affective inversions will, given theintimate connections that exist between emotions andbehaviour, likely manifest themselves in behaviour, inwhich case the underlying phenomenal differences canbe functionally captured. Second, I argue that othersense modalities lack the structural featuresnecessary for undetectable inversion which, because oftheir analogy with colour qualia, weakens theplausibility of such an inversion in the original caseof vision.