The Relational and Representational Character of Perceptual Experience

July 17 & 18, 2008

Philosophy Program, RSSS, ANU

The workshop will be held at the Law Link Lecture Theatre on the ANU Campus.

Thursday, July 17

11:15-1:00 William Fish (Massey): “Representationalism and Psychosemantics”

Abstract

For reductive representationalism to get off the ground (at least) two things must be shown:
(a) That phenomenal character and representational content show appropriate patterns of covariation.
(b) That a suitably naturalistic theory of content can be provided.
Thus far, a lot of work has gone into showing (a) and the results look good. Less work has gone into (b). In this talk I will develop prominent naturalistic theories of content qua potential supplements to representationalism and shall argue that none of them can support representationalism in its most familiar form. If time permits, I will go on to look at ways in which a suitable theory of content might be developed.

The workshop is sponsored by the Centre for Consciousness.

The workshop is open to all who are interested. No registration is required.