Does Synesthesia Undermine Representationalism?

Does synesthesia undermine representationalism?1

Torin Alter talter@ua.edu

[Draft: please treat as such. For Pysche symposium on Gregg Rosenberg’s A Place for

Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World (OUP, 2004)]

Does synesthesia undermine representationalism? Gregg Rosenberg (2004) argues that it

does. On his view, synesthesia illustrates how phenomenal properties can vary

independently of representational properties. So, for example, he argues that sound/color

synesthetic experiences show that visual experiences do not always represent spatial

properties. I will argue that the representationalist can plausibly answer Rosenberg’s

objections. On reflection, synesthesia poses no serious threat to representationalism.

Rosenberg’s argument from synesthesia resembles anti-representationalist arguments

advanced by Ned Block (1995, 1996), Christopher Peacocke (1983) and others (e.g.,

Boghossian and Velleman 1989). Like Rosenberg, these philosophers argue that

representationalism delivers implausible analyses of certain sorts of (actual) experiences.

Michael Tye (2000) provides plausible representationalist replies to those objections. In

particular, Tye shows how the objections often depend on oversimplified

characterizations of the relevant representational properties. Some of my arguments will

involve applying Tye’s reasoning to Rosenberg’s argument.

Rosenberg’s discussion of synesthesia and representationalism is a small part of his

defense of panexperientialism, “the view that experience exists throughout nature and

that mentality (i.e., a thing requiring cognition, functionally construed) is not essential to

it” (p. 91).2 His concern is that on panexperientialism there might be “protoconscious”

experiences that do not represent anything because they are not associated with any

cognitive system. However, I will argue, it is not so clear that, given panexperientialism,

association with a cognitive system is required for representation. Thus, I will argue that

the panexperientialist has no compelling reason to resist representationalism. But I will

put off discussion of panexperientialism until the end. I will concentrate mostly on

Rosenberg’s argument that synesthesia undermines representationalism, which does not

depend on panexperientialist assumptions and has independent interest.

Representationalism

Representationalism concerns the relationship between phenomenal and representational

properties. Phenomenal properties are, roughly, properties that constitute what it’s like to

have an experience, such as seeing red or feeling pain.3 Representational properties are

properties that represent things as being a certain way. For example, such a property

might represent that there is a red object in the vicinity. Representational properties can

be more or less accurate (Siewert 1998), depending on whether and to what extent the

world is as represented. In John Searle’s (1983) terminology, they have (or are)

conditions of satisfaction.

Representationalism is the view that phenomenal properties are representational

properties. On this view, for every phenomenal property P (in a given class of

phenomenal properties) there is some representational property R such that necessarily an

experience has P if and only if it has R (cf. Chalmers 2004, section 3). Many find

representationalism intuitive, especially when applied to the phenomenal properties

associated with perceptual experiences. But Rosenberg argues that the theory loses its

appeal when we consider synesthesia.

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is often described as a condition in which stimulation of one sensory

modality automatically triggers an experience in a second modality (Baron-Cohen and

Harrison 1997; Rosenberg 2004, p. 99). In the most prevalent type of synesthesia,

looking at numerals or hearing tones evokes colors (Ramachandran and Hubbard 2003).4

Consider two cases Rosenberg discusses. One is the case of Carol, a synesthete who

“experience[s] pain as orange” (p. 100): when Carol experiences pain, she sees orange.

Her dentist was unsure whether one of her teeth required a tooth canal. She told him,

“This tooth is orange; please do it,” and further investigation by her dentist confirmed

that she was right.5 The other is the case of MM, a sound/color synesthete. MM reports,

“the image intensity is directly proportional to the sound level. People laugh when I say,

вЂ?turn that down, I can’t see where I’m drivingвЂ™Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (Cytowic 1989, p. 51; quoted by

Rosenberg, p. 100).

A Challenge to Representationalism from the Carol