Can an Externalist about Content Be
an Internalist about Phenomenal Character?

Abstract

Jonathan Ellis

Many philosophers today believe that what an individual is thinking does not depend entirely on the individual’s physical constitution: physically identical subjects could have different thoughts.  However, most philosophers find quite implausible a similar thesis as applied to the phenomenal character of experience.  Even if physically identical individuals could have different thoughts, it is said, if one of them has a headache, or a tingly sensation, so must the other.  Not everyone finds this implausible, but those that don’t (e.g., some representationalists about perception) are said to have “too much respect for philosophical theory and not enough common sense.” 

But there’s a problem.  These two views--externalism about content and internalism about phenomenal character--are in substantial tension.  Of course it has been acknowledged that they are in tension on one model of perception, that of representationalism.  If an experience’s phenomenal character is exhausted by its representational content (as the representationalist claims) and its representational content is externally individuated (as the content externalist claims), then so will its phenomenal character be externally individuated.  Indeed, some philosophers reject representationalism precisely because of this consequence.  What has crucially gone unnoticed, however, is that the conjunction of content externalism and phenomenal internalism is untenable even on the traditional, “qualia realist” model of perception (according to which there are "intrinsic," introspectively accessible features of experience).  This is what I show in the paper.  Content externalism and phenomenal internalism are in tension whether one is a representationalist or not.  This should be surprising, and it has wide ramifications for the philosophy of mind.  Just to mention two: (1) We must either be externalist about both content and phenomenal character, or be externalist about neither; (2) representationalism's incompability with the conjunction of content externalism and phenomenal internalism can no longer be considered a serious objection to it.

What explains the tension between the two views, on the qualia realist model of perception, is recent work on the nature of phenomenal concepts.  Phenomenal concepts are concepts we employ in our judgments about the phenomenal character of our own experience, concepts like tingly and painful.  Phenomenal concepts constitute an interesting juncture at which content and the phenomenal intersect.

I myself am an externalist about content.  The arguments I provide in this paper thus convince me that I must also endorse externalism about phenomenal character.  I think this is a good thing.  In this paper, though, I do not argue at all for content externalism.  And so for everything I say here, my arguments could just as easily be adopted by an internalist about content and employed in a reductio against externalism about content.  My arguments should thus be of interest to content externalists and internalists alike.