When nothing looks blue
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When nothing looks blue Joseph Gottlieb1
· Ali Rezaei2
Received: 13 May 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Pitt (Analysis 77(4):735–741, 2017) has argued that reductive representationalism entails an absurdity akin to the “paramechanical hypothesis” Ryle (The concept of mind, Hutchinson, London, 1949) attributed to Descartes. This paper focuses on one version of reductive representationalism: the property-complex theory. We contend that at least insofar as the property-complex theory goes, Pitt is wrong. The result is not just a response to Pitt, but also a clarification of the aims and structure of the property-complex theory. Keywords Perception · Hallucination · Common kind claim · Tye · Property-complex theory · Phenomenal character Pitt (2017) has recently argued that reductive representationalism (RR) is committed to an absurd thesis about the nature of hallucination. The absurdity is akin to the ‘paramechanical hypothesis’ Ryle (1949) attributed to Descartes, according to which mental processes are just like physical processes, absent the matter.1 By contrast, Pitt sees the RR’ist as being committed to a paraphenomenal hypothesis (‘PH’), on which hallucinatory experiences are just like veridical experiences, except that, in a hallucinatory experience, there is nothing that (phenomenally) appears, or seems, any way to us. Hallucinating green grass is the same thing as seeing green grass—just without the grass. We have two aims, one smaller and one larger. Our smaller aim is polemical: we will contend that Pitt is mistaken. One of the more well-known forms of RR—the property-complex theory (Dretske 1995; Bengson et al. 2011; Tye 2014a, b, 2015)— is not committed to the PH. Our larger aim is clarificatory. Pitt’s argument, though 1 As Pitt notes, whether Descartes actually held this view is irrelevant. We take no stance on the historical question here.
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Joseph Gottlieb [email protected] Ali Rezaei [email protected]
1
Texas Tech University, Box 43092, Lubbock, TX 79409-3092, USA
2
Department of Philosophy, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA
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Synthese
flawed, is symptomatic of fairly common misconceptions of the aims and structure of the property-complex theory. A remedy is thus overdue. We begin with a brief description of RR and the property-complex theory, before turning to Pitt’s argument.
1 The property-complex theory Pitt describes RR as follows: These theorists hold that the phenomenology of perception…can be reduced to a kind of non-phenomenal intentionality, which in turn can be explained in naturalistic causal–informational–teleological terms. The qualitative features associated with an experience are properties, not of the experience, but of the worldly (or bodily) things it represents. The blue that characterizes what it’s like to see a clear sky at noon, for example, is a property, not of one’s experience of the sky, but of the sky. Its relevance to the characterization of the experience of a clear sky at noon
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