Sensory Awareness Is not a Wide Physical Relation: An Empirical Argument Against Externalist Intentionalism 1

Intentionalism is very popular. Here I will work with a simple form for convenience. On this form of Intentionalism, to have an experience is to stand in the sensory representation relation or, as I shall say, the property-awareness relation to a cluster of properties (Dretske 1999). The properties we are aware of are the ostensible properties of external objects or parts of one’s body. In veridical experience these properties are instantiated in one’s environment or body, while in non-veridical experience they are not. In hallucination, for instance, one is aware of properties but not anything that instantiates the properties; one is aware of a cluster of free-floating properties (Dretske 1995, 1999, 2003; Tye 2000). Finally, the qualitative character of experience is determined by the totality of properties one is aware of (the totality of properties one sensorily represents). Roughly speaking, necessarily, if two people are aware of the same properties, then they have the same experience-type. Of course, we are not only aware of properties; in veridical experience, we are also aware of objects and facts. But object-awareness and fact-awareness do not determine qualitative character (Dretske 1999). It is what properties things seem to have which determines qualitative character. Here I will simply speak of the ‘‘awareness relation’’. But it is to be understood that I am exclusively interested in the nature of the property-awareness relation. There is much to recommend Intentionalism. Unlike Disjunctivism, Intentionalism is a common factor theory. The common factor between