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Intentionalism and bodily sensations
phil 93507
Jeff Speaks
August 31, 2009
We turn now to a class of examples directed specifically at global rather than local in- tentionalism: examples of states which have a phenomenal character but seem to lack a content altogether. Attention here focuses on bodily sensations — like pains, itches, and orgasms — which, while not perceptual experiences, clearly have an associated phenom- enal character. Despite this, to many it seems obvious that pains, itches, and orgasms lack a content — it seems obvious that these states fail to represent the world as being any way at all. If this view is correct, then global intentionalism is false.
1 What could the content of a bodily sensation be?
Global intentionalism as such is not wedded to any particular view about what the contents of perceptual experiences are. But because many people have a hard time getting their mind around the idea that pains could have contents, it might be worth canvassing some things people have said about the contents of bodily sensations:
a feeling of pain in my toe: that there is some disorder/injury/bodily damage in my toe.
... that there is a mental particular, a pain, present to me. orgasm: that there is an orgasm. ... “that something very pleasing is happening down there. One also experi- ences the pleasingness alternately increasing and diminishing in its intensity.” (Tye)
2 The case against intentionalism about bodily sensations
2.1 The ‘tell me what the content is!’ argument
The principal argument against intentionalism about bodily sensations seems to be based on the view that the sorts of content-assignments sketched above are implausible. Thus Block:
“The representationist should put up or shut up. The burden of proof is on them to say what the representational content of experiences such as orgasm and pain are.”
The problem, Block thinks, is that the results when one tries to do this are not very promising:
“Is the experience of orgasm completely captured by a representational con- tent that there is an orgasm? Orgasm is phenomenally impressive and there is nothing very impressive about the representational content that there is an orgasm. I just expressed it and you just understood it, and nothing phenome- nally impressive happened (at least not on my end). I can have an experience whose content is that my partner is having an orgasm without my experience being phenomenally impressive. In response to my raising this issue... Tye
... says that the representational content of orgasm “in part, is that something very pleasing is happening down there. One also experiences the pleasingness alternately increasing and diminishing in its intensity.” But once again, I can have an experience whose representational content is that my partner is having a very pleasing experience down there that changes in intensity, and although that may be pleasurable for me, it is not pleasurable in the phenom- enally impressive way that that graces my own orgasms. I vastly prefer my own orgasms to those of others, and this preference is based on a major league phenomenal difference. The location of “down there” differs slightly between my perception of your orgasms and my own orgasms, but how can the rep- resentationist explain why a small difference in represented location should matter so much? Of course, which subject the orgasm is ascribed to is itself a representational matter. But is that the difference between my having the experience and my perceiving yours? Is the difference just that my experience ascribes the pleasure to you rather than to me (or to part of me)? Represen- tational content can go awry in the heat of the moment. What if in a heated state in which cognitive function is greatly reduced, I mistakenly ascribe your orgasm to me or mine to you? Would this difference in ascription really con- stitute the difference between the presence or absence of the phenomenally impressive quality?”
As Block notes, it is implausible to require that the intentionalist come up with a sentence or two which would fully capture the content of the relevant sensation — that would be impossible with vision, too.
How is Block’s objection best understood? To what standard is he holding the intention- alist’s theory about the content of bodily sensations?
Is the idea that if intentionalism is true, then a small difference in content can’t corre- spond to a big difference in phenomenology? Why should that be so? And why is the difference between self-attribution of a property and attribution of it to someone else a small difference?
