Recent discussions in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind have defended a theory according to which we live in a virtual world akin to a computer simulation, generated by our brain. It is argued that our brain creates a model world from a variety of stimuli; this model is perceived as if it was external and perception-independent, even though it is neither of the two. The view of the mind, brain, and world, entailed by this theory has some peculiar (...) consequences which have rarely been explored in detail. This paper sets out virtual world theory and relates it to various central philosophical problems, the role of the perceiver and the problem of the existence of the external world ). The second part suggests three interpretations of virtual world theory, two familiar ones and a somewhat less familiar one. The remainder of the paper argues that the irrealist interpretation is the one we should adopt. (shrink)

Traditionally, the “Imagery Debate” has opposed two main camps: depictivism and descriptivism. This debate has essentially focused on the nature of the internal representations thought to be involved in imagery, without addressing at all the question of action. More recently, a third, “embodied” view is moving the debate into a new phase. The embodied approach focuses on the interdependence of perception, cognition and action, and in its more radical line this approach promotes the idea that perception is not a process (...) involving internal world-models. The anti-representationalist version of the embodied paradigm covers, among others that we shall not discuss here, two quite different positions, namely the enactive approach and sensorimotor theory. Up to now these two anti-representationalist accounts have generally been confounded. In this paper we will argue that despite some important commonalities, enactive and sensorimotor accounts come with distinctive theoretical traits with regard to their approach to imagery. These become manifest when critically examining the role they assign to sensorimotor engagements with the world. We shall argue that enactive and sensorimotor approaches are different in their understanding of the role of embodied action, and these different notions of embodiment lead to different explanatory accounts of perception and imagery. We propose that, due to existing ambiguities in enactivism, the sensorimotor theory is a better framework for a skill-based approach to imagery. (shrink)

Justin Fisher (2007) has presented a novel argument designed to prove that all forms of mental internalism are false. I aim to show that the argument fails with regard to internalism about phenomenal experiences. The argument tacitly assumes a certain view about the ontology of phenomenal experience, which (inspired by Alva Noe) I call the “snapshot conception of phenomenal experience.” After clarifying what the snapshot conception involves, I present Fisher with a dilemma. If he rejects the snapshot conception, then his (...) argument against phenomenal internalism collapses. But if he embraces the snapshot conception, then internalists may argue that in light of the snapshot conception, their view is not so implausible—and that if Fisher still disagrees, he owes us an argument that shows why phenomenal internalism is false even given the snapshot conception. I conclude the paper by showing that Fisher cannot escape my criticism by adjusting his argument so that it no longer depends on the snapshot conception. (shrink)

Intuitively, we often see absences. For example, if someone steals your laptop at a café, you may see its absence from your table. However, absence perception presents a paradox. On prevailing models of perception, we see only present objects and scenes (Marr, Gibson, Dretske). So, we cannot literally see something that is not present. This suggests that we never literally perceive absences; instead, we come to believe that something is absent cognitively on the basis of what we perceive. But this (...) cognitive explanation does not do justice to the phenomenology. Many experiences of absence possess immediate, perceptual qualities. One may further argue that the ability to detect certain absences confers strong adaptive advantage and therefore must be as primitive and fundamental to humans as seeing positive things. I argue that we can literally see absences; in addition to representing objects, perception represents absences of objects. I present a model of seeing absence based on visual expectations and a visual matching process. The phenomenon of seeing absence can thus serve as an adequacy-test for a theory of perceptual content. If experiences of absence are possible, then we have another reason (following Siegel) to reject the view that perceptual content is restricted to colors and shapes. Furthermore, if the proposed account is correct, then we have grounds for dissociating seeing absence from other imagery-based phenomena termed “perceptual presence-in-absence” (Noë, Macpherson). (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that non-sentential representations that are the close kin of scale models can be, and often are, realized by computational processes. I will attempt here to weaken any resistance to this claim that happens to issue from those who favor an across-the-board computational theory of cognitive activity. I will argue that embracing the idea that certain computers harbor nonsentential models gives proponents of the computational theory of cognition the means to resolve the conspicuous disconnect between the sentential (...) character of the data structures they posit and the nonsentential qualitative character of our perceptual experiences of corporeal (i.e., spatial, kinematic, and dynamic) properties. Along the way, I will question the viability of some externalist remedies for this disconnect, and I will explain why the computational theory put forward here falls quite clearly beyond the useful bounds of the Chinese-Room argument. (shrink)

Many viewers presented with a round plate tilted to their line of sight will report that they see a round plate that looks elliptical from their perspective. Alva Noë thinks that we should take reports of this kind as adequate descriptions of the phenomenology of spatial experiences. He argues that his so‐called enactive or sensorimotor account of spatial perceptual content explains why both the plate's circularity and its elliptical appearance are phenomenal aspects of experience. In this paper, I critique the (...) phenomenal adequacy of Noë's sensorimotor account of spatial perceptual content. I begin by showing that some of its central claims are in conflict with the phenomenology of perceptual experience. I then argue that shape appearances have no phenomenal reality, thus undermining this central motivation for his account. (shrink)

A celebrated problem for representationalist theories of phenomenal character is that, given externalism about content, these theories lead to externalism about phenomenal character. While externalism about content is widely accepted, externalism about phenomenal character strikes many philosophers as wildly implausible. Even if internally identical individuals could have different thoughts, it is said, if one of them has a headache, or a tingly sensation, so must the other. In this paper, I argue that recent work on phenomenal concepts reveals that, contrary (...) to appearances, this standard conjunction of externalism about content and internalism about phenomenal character is ultimately untenable on other models of phenomenal character as well, including even “qualia realism.” This would be significant for a number of reasons. The first is patent: it would undermine a primary objection to representationalism. The fact that representationalism is incompatible with the conjunction would be no serious problem for representationalism if no other plausible model of phenomenal character is compatible with it. The second is that the many philosophers who embrace the conjunction would be forced to abandon one of the two views; externalism would be true either of both content and phenomenal character, or of neither. Likewise, those philosophers who have taken a stance on only one of the two internalism/externalism debates would have to be seen as thereby committed to a particular stance on the other. The third reason stems from the fact that qualia realism typically goes hand in hand with internalism about phenomenal character. To the extent that it does, my argument would reveal that qualia realism is itself in tension with externalism about content. This would perhaps be the most surprising result of all. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a representationalist account of the phenomenal character of color experiences. Representationalism, the thesis that phenomenal character supervenes on a certain kind of representational content, so-called phenomenal content, has been developed primarily in two different ways, as Russellian and Fregean representationalism. While the proponents of Russellian and Fregean representationalism differ with respect to what they take the contents of color experiences to be, they typically agree that colors are exhaustively characterized by the three dimensions of the (...) color solid: hue, saturation, and lightness. I argue that a viable version of representationalism needs to renounce this restriction to three dimensions and consider illumination to be a genuine phenomenal dimension of color. My argument for this thesis falls into two parts. I first consider the phenomenon of color constancy in order to show that neither Russellian nor Fregean representationalism can do justice to the phenomenal significance of local illumination. I subsequently formulate a version of representationalism that accounts for illumination by taking it as a phenomenal dimension of color. (shrink)

In recent publications, Michael Tye and Alva Noë have claimed that there is a sense in which a tilted plate looks round and another sense in which it looks elliptical. This paper argues that their proposal faces decisive objections. On Tye and Noë's account of ordinary, veridical perception, appearances are in constant conflict. As a characterization of ordinary visual experience, this cannot be correct. I examine various responses to this criticism, and conclude that they all fail. I then argue that (...) Noë's account has the further, unintended and undesirable consequence of promoting a version of the sense-datum theory. (shrink)