The Content and Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience

Summary

The paper challenges strong, reductive representationalism, which tries to explain the felt quality of conscious experience solely in terms of what experiences represent, without appealing to intrinsic experiential properties. While this approach is attractive for avoiding irreducible mental qualities, the authors argue it risks failing: it may either misdescribe the phenomenology (what an experience feels like) or mischaracterize the representational content itself. The critique suggests that representationalism cannot fully capture both aspects simultaneously.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The paper’s main target is strong and reductive “representationalism”. What we claim is that even though this position looks very appealing in so far as it does not postulate intrinsic and irreducible experiential properties, the attempt it pursues of accounting for the phenomenology of experience in terms of representational content runs the risk of providing either an inadequate phenomenological account or an inadequate account of the content of the experience.