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Hill's Representationalism: Qualia’s Appearance and Reality
Qualia as Represented Appearances, Not Self-Revealing Essences
Christopher S. Hill holds that all awareness is representational: to be aware of something is to be in a state that represents it, and phenomenal experience is a rich, mostly nonconceptual form of such representation. Because representations can misrepresent, he applies the appearance/reality distinction to qualia themselves, so introspection need not reveal what qualia really are, which removes the evidential base of arguments for property dualism.
Christopher S. Hill
What consciousness is
Phenomenal consciousness is experiential representation: a fine-grained, typically nonconceptual presentation of colors, sounds, bodily conditions, and emotions. Qualia are ways things look, feel, or otherwise appear.
Mind and body
Hill defends materialism by denying that introspection reveals the intrinsic nature of qualia, not by identifying qualia with brain states as his earlier type materialism did. McLaughlin argues the two positions are compatible.
Mechanism
The appearance/reality distinction applied to qualia: because awareness of qualia is representational, the way qualia appear in introspection need not be the way they are.
Core claims
- If an agent is aware of X, the agent is in a mental state that represents X.
- Experience is more fine-grained than available concepts, so phenomenal awareness is typically nonconceptual.
- Since representations can misrepresent, the way qualia appear need not reveal their intrinsic nature.
- The knowledge, conceivability, and modal arguments against physicalism all assume introspection reveals phenomenal properties as they are, an assumption Hill rejects.
Criticisms
Locating visual qualia in relational properties of external objects runs into trouble with hallucination and illusion, where those objects are absent (Bernier). Byrne questions whether the perceptual account of pain covers cases where pain seems to outrun any represented bodily disturbance. Denying that introspection is accurate about qualia deflates the very datum most theories of consciousness try to explain.
Implications
- AI consciousness: Uncertain
- Hill’s early type materialism held that silicon androids cannot have sensations, but he has since moved to representationalism and its verdict on machines is not settled.
- Survival beyond death: No
- Since Hill’s view is physicalist, conscious representation depends on a functioning physical system and does not outlast it.
- Meaning and purpose: Humanistic only
- The view is naturalistic and gives consciousness no cosmic role.
Related theories
- Dretske’s Information and Representationalism (Overlap)
- McLaughlin's Neurobiologicalism (Compatible)
- Armstrong’s Causal-Role Central-State Materialism (Influence)
- Chalmers’s Naturalistic Dualism (Critique)
Sources
- Consciousness, Christopher S. Hill (2009)
- Perceptual Experience, Christopher S. Hill (2022)
- Sensations: A Defense of Type Materialism, Christopher S. Hill (1991)
- Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge, Christopher S. Hill (2014)
- Locating Qualia: Do They Reside in the Brain or in the Body and the World?, Christopher S. Hill (2012)
- Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies, Christopher S. Hill (2016)
- Unity of Consciousness, Christopher S. Hill (2018)
- Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness, Christopher S. Hill and D. J. Bennett (eds.) (2014)
- Hill on Phenomenal Consciousness, B. P. McLaughlin (2016)
- Christopher Hill: Consciousness, A. Byrne (2011)
- Hill's Representationalism: Qualia’s Appearance and Reality, Landscape of Consciousness, Robert Lawrence Kuhn