Qualia, Space, and Control

Author: Mandik P.

Source: Philosophical Psychology, Volume 12, Number 1, 1 March 1999 , pp. 47-60(14)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

According to representionalists, qualia-the introspectible properties of sensory experience-are exhausted by the representational contents of experience. Representationalists typically advocate an informational psychosemantics whereby a brain state represents one of its causal antecedents in evolutionarily determined optimal circumstances. I argue that such a psychosemantics may not apply to certain aspects of our experience, namely, our experience of space in vision, hearing, and touch. I offer that these cases can be handled by supplementing informational psychosemantics with a procedural psychosemantics whereby a representation is about its effects instead of its causes. I discuss conceptual and empirical points that favor a procedural representationalism for our experience of space.

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

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