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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...