Does what we experience depend on the world, the brain, or both?
The authors argue that what our experiences feel like is fixed partly by what our brain states track in the world and partly by the internal structure of those brain states.
Source
Internal constraints for phenomenal externalists: a structure matching theory
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Conceptual argument: derives constraints from thought-experiment cases plus empirical observations, then tests rival theories against them.
- N
- No participants or data; this is a theoretical argument.
- Population
- Naturalistic intentionalist theories of what fixes the character of sensory experience, especially tracking theories.
- Outcome
- Thesis that phenomenal character is fixed jointly by tracked external determinables and by internal state structure (structure matching tracking intentionalism).
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
The authors start from ordinary seeing, hallucination and a brain-in-a-vat 'Swampy' case to motivate three constraints: experience depends on our relations to qualities, on what we represent, and on external factors. These constraints favour 'simple tracking theories', on which you experience whatever your brain state tracks. They then build a thought experiment in which Mabel, a creature with different post-receptoral wiring, enters the neural state a human uses for a pure (unitary) red while tracking the property humans track when seeing a mixed (binary) orange, and ask what she experiences.
What they found
They argue that because the structure of colour experience normally matches the structure of colour judgement, behaviour and neural processing, Mabel should experience a unitary colour like the matching human, not the binary colour simple tracking theories predict. From this they draw two new constraints: internal structure helps fix experienced structure, and certain external structural differences do not. Their proposal says brain states track a broad determinable (such as having colour) and internal structure selects which specific shade is presented. They add that this view also explains 'missing shades' such as impossible colours, which nothing in the environment has.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The argument relies on verdicts about imagined creatures and on the assumption that structural matches between experience, cognition and neural processing hold in unexceptional cases; someone who rejects that explanatory link can resist the conclusion. The key notions of 'structure' and 'structure matching' are left intuitive, with several precisifications sketched but none defended. The authors concede the view may give wrong verdicts in possible tie cases where two shades match equally well, and they stay neutral on whether neural, cognitive or behavioural structure is the relevant kind. No new empirical data are presented.
Key terms
- Phenomenal character
- What it is like for a subject to have an experience, such as the felt blueness of seeing a blueberry.
- Intentionalism
- The view that the character of an experience is fixed by what the experience represents.
- Tracking
- A naturalistic representation relation: a state tracks a property if it would respond to that property under optimal conditions.
- Unitary vs binary colour
- Unitary hues such as red or blue look like a single colour; binary hues such as orange or purple look like mixtures of two.
- Determinable and determinate
- A general property (having colour) and its specific versions (a particular shade of blue).
- SIDE and DISE cases
- Contrast cases holding internal states the same while external features differ (SIDE), or varying internal structure while tracked features stay the same (DISE).
Flashcards
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Quiz yourself
On simple tracking theories, what makes two internal duplicates differ in experience?
Common questions
Why not just say experience depends only on the brain?
The authors think isolation cases like Swampy, a brain duplicate with no connections to colours or shapes, make it implausible that it experiences blueness, so something external must matter.
What exactly goes wrong for simple tracking theories?
They let the structure of experience float free of the structure of judgement, behaviour and neural processing, so they predict Mabel experiences a mixed colour even though everything about her mind and brain is organised like someone seeing a pure one.
How does the new theory explain seeing colours that do not exist in the environment?
A brain state can track a general determinable such as blueness while its internal structure matches a shade no object has, so that shade is what gets experienced.
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