Phenomenal objects

pp. 329-347

in: Joseph Mendola, Human thought, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstrakt

In the last part, we sketched a coherently conceivable account, in fact a number of somewhat different coherently conceivable accounts, of the realization of our experience. But while those models met some weak plausibility constraints, they aren't fully plausible when all things are considered. We turn now to a complete survey of the range of ways in which our experience might be realized, in pursuit of an account which is at once fully plausible when all things are considered and coherently conceivable. Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen will concern phenomenal experience, and in particular the characteristic intrinsic phenomenal properties. Chapters Sixteen through Eighteen consider causal experience and spatio-temporality. But this part also traces an historical route. We will replay the development of our science after Galileo, as it progressed from early worries about the reality of phenomenal properties like color to later worries about the reality of even traditional galilean properties, of even spatio-temporal and causal properties. We will see that difficulties which first troubled accounts of our experience of intrinsic phenomenal properties now also threaten accounts of our experience of spatio-temporal structure and causal powers.