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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2333-9643

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Philosophy

Year Degree Awarded

2022

Month Degree Awarded

February

First Advisor

Joseph Levine

Second Advisor

Louise Antony

Third Advisor

Hilary Kornblith

Fourth Advisor

Lisa Sanders

Subject Categories

Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

I advance an account of quantitative character, a species of phenomenal character that presents as an intensity (cf. a quality) and includes experience dimensions such as loudness, pain intensity, and visual pop-out. I employ psychological and neuroscientific evidence to demonstrate that quantitative characters are best explained by attentional processing, and hence that they do not represent external qualities. Nonetheless, the proposed account of quantitative character is conceived as a compliment to the reductive intentionalist strategy toward qualitative states; I argue that an account of perceptual experience that combines a tracking account of qualitative character with my functionalist proposal of quantitative character permits replies to some notoriously difficult problems for tracking representationalism without sacrificing its chief virtues.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/26687339.0

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