On the Content of Experience

Bibliographic Data

ID10345532
AuthorsTimothy Schroeder (The Ohio State University), Ben Caplan (The Ohio State University)
Year2007
Volume75
Issue3
Pages590-611
Publication date2007-10-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8205 • E-ISSN: 1933-1592
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00094.x
OpenAlexW2045544349
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited12

The intentionalist about consciousness holds that the qualitative character of experience, “what it’s like,” is determined by the contents of a select group of special intentional states of the subject. Fred Dretske (1995) , Mike Thau (2002) , Michael Tye (1995) and many others have embraced intentionalism, but these philosophers have not generally appreciated that, since we are intimately familiar with the qualitative character of experience, we thereby have special access to the nature of these contents. In this paper, we take advantage of this fact to show that intentionalism is incompatible with the idea that these contents are singular or general propositions, and thus that intentionalism is incompatible with one dominant trend in thinking about contents in general. In particular, there appear to be insoluble difficulties in explaining how the phenomenology of place and time can be explained by any intentionalist theory appealing to singular or general propositions

Character (mathematics · Consciousness · Content (measure theory · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Phenomenology (philosophy · Philosophy of mind · Subject (documents · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Philosophy, Science, and History

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