Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T05:23:07.473Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Microstructure of Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2019

Abstract

I argue that experiences can have microphenomenal structures, where the macrophenomenal properties we introspect are realized by non-introspectible microphenomenal properties. After explaining what it means to ascribe a microstructure to experience, I defend the thesis against its principal philosophical challenge, discuss how the thesis interacts with other philosophical issues about experience, and consider our prospects for investigating the microphenomenal realm.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am very grateful to David Chalmers for comments and discussions across numerous drafts of this paper. I have also benefited from comments and discussions with Ned Block, Kyle Blumberg, Philip Goff, Hedda Hassel-Mørch, Grace Helton, Daniel Hoek, Ben Holguín, Pierre Jacob, Arden Koehler, Uriah Kriegel, Harvey Lederman, Geoffrey Lee, Robert Long, Daniel Muñoz, Thomas Nagel, Luke Roelofs, Peter Unger, James Walsh, two anonymous referees, and audiences at the City University of New York, Institut Jean Nicod, and New York University.

References

Auvray, M., and Spence, C.. (2008) ‘The Multisensory Perception of Flavor’. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1016–31.Google Scholar
Byrne, Alex. (2009) ‘Experience and Content’. Philosophical Quarterly, 59, 429–51.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2003) ‘The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief’. In Smith, Quentin and Jokic, Aleksandar (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 220–72.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2013) ‘Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism’. The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy, 8, 135. Available at: http://www.amherstlecture.org/chalmers2013/.Google Scholar
Dainton, Barry F. (2000) Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1978) ‘Why You Can't Make a Computer that Feels Pain’. Synthese, 38, 415.Google Scholar
Goff, Philip. (2017) Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grahek, Nikola. (2007) Feeling Pain and Being in Pain. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hardcastle, Valerie Gray. (1997) ‘What a Pain is Not’. The Journal of Philosophy, 94, 381409.Google Scholar
Jackson, Frank. (1982) ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’. Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 127–36.Google Scholar
Klein, Colin. (2015) ‘What Pain Asymbolia Really Shows’. Mind, 124, 493516.Google Scholar
Kupers, R. C., Konings, H., Adriaensen, H., and Gybels, J. M.. (1991) ‘Morphine Differentially Affects the Sensory and Affective Pain Ratings in Neurogenic and Idiopathic Forms of Pain’. Pain, 47, 512.Google Scholar
Lee, Andrew. (manuscript under review) ‘First-Person Technology’. New York University.Google Scholar
Lee, Geoffrey. (2015) ‘Experiences and their Parts’. In Hill, Bennett (ed.), Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 287322.Google Scholar
Lockwood, Michael. (1993) ‘The Grain Problem’. In Robinson, Howard M. (ed.), Objections to Physicalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 271–91.Google Scholar
Marks, L. E. (1987) ‘On Cross-modal Similarity: Auditory–visual Interactions in Speeded Discrimination’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 384–94.Google Scholar
McGinn, Colin. (2006) ‘Hard Questions: Comments on Galen Strawson’. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13, 9099.Google Scholar
Nida-Rümelin, Martine. (2018) ‘The Experience Property Framework: A Misleading Paradigm’. Synthese, 195, 3361–87.Google Scholar
Parise, Cesare V. (2016) ‘Crossmodal Correspondences: Standing Issues and Experimental Guidelines’. Multisensory Research, 29, 728. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134808-00002502.Google Scholar
Ploner, M., Freund, H. K., and Schnitzler, A.. (1999) ‘Pain Affect Without Pain Sensation in a Patient with a Postcentral Lesion’. Pain, 81, 211–14.Google Scholar
Price, Donald. (2000) ‘Psychological and Neural Mechanisms of the Affective Dimension of Pain’. Science, 288, 1769–72.Google Scholar
Roelofs, Luke. (2014) ‘Phenomenal Blending and the Palette Problem’. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 3, 5970.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2010) ‘Monism: The Priority of the Whole’. Philosophical Review, 119, 3176.Google Scholar
Sibley, Frank, Benson, J., Redfern, B., and Roxbee Cox, J., eds. (2006) Approaches to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Barry. (2013) ‘The Nature of Sensory Experience: The Case of Taste and Tasting’. Phenomenology and Mind Online Journal, 292313.Google Scholar
Spence, C. (2011) ‘Crossmodal Correspondences: A Tutorial Review’. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 73, 971–95. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-010-0073-7.Google Scholar
Spence, C., Auvray, M., and Smith, B.. (2015) ‘Confusing Tastes with Flavours’. In Stokes, D., Fullford, M., and Matthen, M. (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities (New York: Oxford University Press), 247–74.Google Scholar
Strawson, Galen. (2006) ‘Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism’. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 331.Google Scholar
Williamson, Timothy. (2000) Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar