Tracking Intentionalism and Optimal Conditions: A Reply to Byrne and Tye

Like Alex Byrne and Michael Tye, I accept Intentionalism about visual experience. Therefore I agree with them that “qualia ain’t in the head”: roughly, to have a visual experience is to stand in a relation, the “awareness relation” or the “sensory representation relation”, to a cluster of properties outside the head (Pautz 2006, 27). My target in Pautz (2006) was the further claim, defended by Tye (2000), Dretske (2003) and Lycan (2001), that this relation is identical with a “wide physical relation” between people and such properties. I call this “Externalist Intentionalism”. My argument is founded on the claim that all versions deliver the wrong verdict in a case that I describe involving color vision, the case of Maxwell and Twin Maxwell. They also deliver the wrong verdict in cases I describe concerning pain and taste (Pautz 2005). Byrne and Tye (2006, sect. 2) object that Tye’s version of Externalist Intentionalism, at least, escapes the argument. Here I will argue that their objection fails to identify a fault with the argument. I begin by stating a “Circularity Constraint”: if a psychosemantics is to reductively explain sensory representation in terms of causal-covariation under optimal conditions, then the relevant notion of ‘optimal conditions’ must be non-representational. Otherwise the account will be circular (see Pautz 2005; Pautz 2006, note 5; Chalmers 2005). Then I describe my case and my argument. I note that the argument depends on the “Symmetry Thesis”: given the basic, non-representational facts of the case, optimal conditions obtain in both Maxwell’s situation and Twin Maxwell’s situation. Then I use the Circularity Constraint to show that Byrne and Tye’s objection fails. Given the Circularity Constraint, to provide a reason to reject this Symmetry Thesis, the Externalist Intentionalist must specify a non-representational fact X in the basic facts of the case and argue ‘X, therefore suboptimal’. This Byrne and Tye have not done. So they have not identified a fault with the argument.