Philosophia

DOI 10.1007/s11406-014-9539-5

The Needlessness of Adverbialism, Attributeism

and its Compatibilty with Cognitive Science

Hilla Jacobson & Hilary Putnam

Received: 21 May 2014 / Accepted: 28 May 2014

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of

phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representation-
alist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’
conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and
criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s
ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which we dub
“attributeism”. We then show that there is no incompatibility between the ontology of
attributeism and the postulation of pictorial representations in the brain.

Keywords Adverbialism . Attributeism . Phenomenal character . Pictorial representations

Introduction

In an important paper 1 published in 1984 Michael Tye showed that certain familiar
logical objections to adverbialism2 could be met, and, in the process, provided the first

1
Tye 1984a. Tye published a number of other “adverbialist” papers that we know of, namely his 1975, 1984b,
1984c, and Horgan and Tye 1985.
2
Many of these objections are due to Frank Jackson’s 1975 and his 1977. For a detailed presentation of these
objections, see Jackson 1977, pp. 65–66.
H. Jacobson (*)
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
e-mail: hillaj@bgu.ac.il

H. Putnam
Harvard University, Boston, USA
 Philosophia

adequate (albeit intricate) formalization of the adverbialist approach. Although (about a

decade later) Tye moved from adverbialism to a representationalist account,3
adverbialism remains of interest to philosophers who, like ourselves, reject representa-
tionalism. While we applaud this accomplishment, we shall argue that Michael Tye’s
ontological purposes could have been met without resorting to adverbialism, and that a
more minimal view—“attributeism”—suffices for those purposes.
But first, let us say a little more about those purposes, their relevance to the current
debate regarding phenomenal consciousness, and the reason why, as opponents of
representationalism, we find special interest in the adverbialist view. Historically,
adverbialists’ main objective was to oppose the act-object conception of experience,
according to which experiences are structured by an act of direct awareness towards a
mental object of awareness (or, at the very least, towards an object which is different
from the ordinary physical object of the experience)—in perceiving the world we stand
in relation to a mental object. More specifically, adverbialism was to do justice to the
phenomenology of experience, without commitment to what were considered to be the
metaphysical excesses of the sense-data theory. However, on some interpretations of the
contemporary “phenomenist” view—a view that objects to the representationalist idea
that phenomenal characters are exhausted by representational contents (or properties—
see note 3), this theory may seem to be committed to a picture that in an important sense
is similar to that of the sense-datum theory. Phenomenists often advocate the view
known as “qualia realism”, namely the view that experiences have intrinsic (non-
intentional) features of which we are directly aware via introspection. And this latter
view, in turn, seems to suggest the idea that although perceiving the world does not
involve standing in a relation of direct awareness toward some mental objects, it does
involve standing in that relation toward some mental properties (or, at the very least
towards properties which are different from the ordinary physical properties of the object
of the experience).4 When we perceive a red object, there is a property of the experi-
ence—a quale—which is some sort of mental counterpart of external, physical redness,
and it is (at least also) this mental property of which we are directly aware.
This picture, however, faces various problems. One such problem arises from the
phenomenological observation of transparency—the claim that when we attempt to
introspect our experiences, the only properties we appear to “find”, and so the only
properties we seem to be aware of, are the familiar properties of external objects. We
simply do not seem to be aware of any intrinsic features of experiences, such as the
elusive mental counterpart of external redness. And another problem is just where,
ontologically speaking, are properties such as the mental counterpart of redness
located?5 Is it that alongside the redness that is instanced by the tomato, there is another

3
With the publication of Ten Problems of Consciousness in 1995 and his subsequent Color, Content and
Consciousness in 2000, Tye abandoned the adverbialist account of subjective qualities for a “representation-
alist” account. In these books he defended a version of strong content representationalism, according to which
the phenomenal character of a mental state is one and the same as its poised, nonconceptual, existential
content. In his recent Consciousness Revisited (2009), Tye has endorsed a version of strong property
representationalism, according to which the phenomenal character of an experience is one and the same as
the complex of properties represented by the experience. What is retained from adverbialism is the rejection of
the idea that in experience subjects are related to mental entities. Instead, on Tye’s representationalists
accounts, subjects are intentionally related to clusters of physical properties.
4
Although instructive for some purposes, Block’s “mental paint” metaphor encourages this interpretation.
5
See, e.g., Lycan (2008).
Philosophia

property—redness*—that is instanced by the brain state with which the experience is

identified by the physicalist phenomenist?
These problems seem to be related to the idea that the phenomenist is committed to a
picture on which perceiving the world involves our standing in a relation—other than
that of intentionality—to mental properties (which are the counterparts of the experi-
enced, external properties), an idea that as we have noted above, is reminiscent of the
idea that experience is constituted by our standing in a relation to mental objects. Thus,
there are similarities between the old act-object conception of experience, and what we
may call the act-property conception. And to the extent that adverbialism (or the more
minimal view we shall call “attributeism”) provides an alternative to the former
conception (which no longer has many adherents), it may also provide an alternative
to the latter conception. Thus, the significance of the question concerning the validity
and explanatory force of adverbialism (or attributeism) transcends that of the fate of the
sense datum theory.
One final point should be noted. The suggestion that adverbialism (or attributeism)
may allow the phenomenists to develop their view so that it would not be susceptible to
various objections, should not be taken to mean that adverbialism (or attributeism) is
incompatible with representationalism. 6 Thus, Siegel (2013) writes that “[s]trictly
speaking, it should be noted that so long as the core thesis of adverbialism is that
experiences are modifications or properties of the subject, adverbialism leaves open
whether experiences are assessable for accuracy or not. For all that core thesis says,
being appeared-to F-ly could be a way of representing that something is F”. And in the
same spirit we may add that for all that the core thesis says, being appeared-to F-ly
could consist in representing that something is F. If adverbialism (or attributeism) are
defendable, this does not vindicate phenomenism, but it may help to show that it can be
developed in defensible ways.
The structure of the present paper is as follows: section I explains the ontology that
Tye endorsed in his adverbialist period, and points out that Reichenbach’s claim in
Experience and Prediction (1938) that “impressions” are states of organisms and not
objects to which organisms stand in a perceiving relation anticipates Tye (and Sellars,
whom Tye cites). Yet Reichenbach, who pioneered the analysis of the logic of adverbs
in his Elements of Symbolic Logic (1947), does not mention them at all in connection
with impression statements. Did he overlook something? Or can impressions (Tye’s
“sensing properties” or “sensory properties”) be described without involving oneself in
the complexities of adverbialism? In section II, we go into a few of the formal details of
Tye’s adverbialism, and explain the semantics that Tye proposes for his adverbialist
formalism in “The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience”. In section III, we
discuss a serious problem that we see with that semantics (as well as with some similar
ideas of Reichenbach’s in Experience and Prediction), and show that, if we are willing
to accept attributeism, then neither the complicated (if ingenious) adverbialist machin-
ery nor the doubtful semantics are needed. Lastly, in section IV, we argue that, contrary
to Tye’s view in The Imagery Debate (1991), there is no incompatibility between the
sensing property (or sensing state) ontology of attributeism and Kosslyn’s postulation
of pictorial representations in the brain.

6
Actually, Tye seems to think that the views are incompatible. In his (2013), Tye says that adverbialism is a
form of qualia realism. Also, he now thinks that adverbialism is incompatible with transparency.
 Philosophia

In “The Subjective Qualities of Experience” (1986), Tye wrote, “I am presently

inclined to favor the view that qualia are physico-chemical properties…I have repeat-
edly spoken as if qualia are properties of experiences. I do not, in fact, accept this
manner of speaking. I have argued elsewhere that ordinary talk that appears to refer to
or quantify over experiences can be analyzed in a way which avoids that reference or
quantification…Within the adverbial account of experience which emerges from these
papers, qualia are best seen as properties of persons.”(p. 17, n. 21) 7 In “An Inquiry
Concerning Impressions,” Chapter III of Experience and Prediction (1938),
Reichenbach wrote, “There is no direct awareness of impressions or representations;
we must learn to infer whether the things we observe are ‘real’ or if they are only
‘apparent’, this term meaning that there are processes in my body alone which are not
accompanied in the usual fashion by physical things”,8 and further, “the impression is
my own internal state”. 9 Although he does not use the term, Reichenbach clearly
claims that sensory experiences are “transparent”: “I cannot admit that impressions
have the character of observable facts. What I observe are things, not impressions. I see
tables, and houses, and thermometers, and trees, and men, and the sun, and many other
things in the sphere of crude physical objects; but I have never seen my impressions of
these things. I hear tones, and melodies, and speeches, but I do not hear my hearing
them.”10 Tye too did not use the term “transparent” in 1984–1986 when his adverbialist
publications appeared, but some of his arguments presupposed it (as we shall see in
section III), and today, as a “representationalist”, he places great stress upon it: “[S]ense
datum theorists claimed that the facing surfaces of the objects are themselves seen by
seeing further immaterial surfaces or sense-data. The sense-datum theory is unacceptable,
however, for a whole host of familiar reasons. Intuitively, the surfaces you directly see are
publicly observable physical surfaces. They are at varying angles to the line of sight and
varying distances away. They can be photographed. In seeing these surfaces, you are
immediately and directly aware of a whole host of qualities. You may not be able to name
or describe these qualities but they look to you to qualify the surfaces. You experience
them as being qualities of the surfaces. None of the qualities of which you are directly
aware in seeing the various surfaces look to you to be qualities of your experience.”11
Thus Reichenbach in 1938 and Tye in the 1980’s shared an ontology. What shall we
call that ontology? We cannot call it “adverbialism”, for as already mentioned, although
Reichenbach’s Elements of Symbolic Logic contained the first formal account of
adverbs, he does not introduce adverbial constructions in Experience and Prediction.
(The earliest adverbialist that we have been able to find is Ducasse in 1942.) We
propose to refer to it as “attributeism”, because the key thesis is the claim that subjective
experiences are attributes of organisms and not objects or properties to which those
organisms stand in some relation similar to perceiving, say, “sensing”.

7
As mentioned above (see fn. 3), in Ten Problems of Consciousness (1995), and subsequently in
Consciousness, Color, and Content (2000), Tye abandoned the “psysico-chemical property” account of qualia
for a representationalist account.
8
Reichenbach (1938), p. 165.
9
Ibid, p. 172.
10
Ibid, p. 164.
11
Tye (2002), p. 138.
Philosophia

The question that motivates this paper is, as we said earlier, does “attributeism”
require adverbialism? Or was Tye’s adverbialism an unnecessary complication?

II

In its simplest form, adverbialism is the view that instead of saying “I experience a red
sense datum (or some other sort of mental entity)”, a form of words that treats the
“sense datum” as if it were an entity I perceive, we ought to say “I experience redly”,
which treats the whole experience as a state of a person, but does not presuppose that
the state depends on a range of entities called “sense data” (or qualia12) to which the
subject stands in a perceiver-percipient relation. A typical objection to adverbialism,
that many consider fatal, goes as follows; both of the following inferences are valid in
first order logic:

(1) Jones perceives a red circular sense datum./(therefore:) Jones perceives a red sense
datum.
(2) Jones perceives a red circular sense datum./(therefore:) Jones perceives a circular
sense datum.

—but the two following inferences are not valid—not as a matter of first order
logic, anyway:

(3) Jones senses redly-circularly./(therefore:) Jones senses redly.

(4) Jones senses redly-circularly./(therefore:) Jones senses circularly.

and if we say that we can add “meaning postulates” to the effect that sensing red-
circularly implies sensing redly, sensing red-circularly implies sensing circularly, etc.,
won’t we need a practically infinite number of such postulates? What sort of theory will
justify them?
The sense-datum theory doesn’t face this problem because sense data are conceived
of as objects that have shape, size, color, and spatial relations to other such objects,
though not, of course, in the senses of “color”, “size”, “shape”, and “spatial” in which
physical objects have color, size, shape, and spatial relations. But attributes of persons
(which is what “sensing redly” and the like are) do not have color, size and shape,
which is one reason why “sensing-redly-circularly” can’t be just the conjunction of
“sensing circularly” and “sensing redly”. How could such higher-order objects have
anything analogous to color and shape and conjunctions of a color and a shape?
As we shall see, at the ontological level, Reichenbach and Tye (once again) have the
same answer to this question. But before we return to that answer, let us look at Tye’s
adverbialist analysis of inferences (3) and (4). According to Tye, (3) and (4) would
indeed require an appeal to “a meaning-rule” if “senses redly-circularly”, “senses
redly”, and “senses circularly” were unstructured predicates. 13 But they are not

12
The term “qualia” was first used in its modern sense by C.I. Lewis, in his (1929) Mind and the World Order.
13
Tye (1984a), p.199. Tye does not think the need for “meaning-rules” is a fatal defect of the unstructured
predicate version of adverbialism, but he does think that it does have other logical defects which his
“structured predicate” theory resolves.
 Philosophia

unstructured predicates, and when we symbolize (3) and (4) in a way that reveals the
structure of the predicates, we can see that (3) and (4) are logically valid inferences,
albeit in what Tye describes as a “nonstandard” 14 higher-order logic, not first-order
predicate logic.
Here are (3) and (4) in Tye’s symbolism:

(3)Tye RCoinC(Sj)/(therefore:) R(Sj)

(4)Tye RCoinC(Sj)/(therefore:) C(Sj)

Explanation
(i) In Tye’s notation, the adverbs “redly” and “circularly” are represented by opera-
tors (function signs) that are interpreted as standing for functions that carry
properties onto properties. The function corresponding to the operator “R” carries
the property S (“sensing”) onto the property of “sensing redly” and the function
corresponding to the operator “C” carries the property “sensing” onto the property
of “sensing circularly.” Thus R(Sj) symbolizes the statement that Jones (“j”) has
the property which is the image of the property S under the first function, that is,
the property of sensing redly,15 and C(Sj) symbolizes the statement that Jones has
the property which is the image of the property S under the second function, that
is, the property of sensing circularly.16
(ii) If F and G are operators representing adverbs of this kind, then Coin is an operator
on operators that carries the ordered pair F, G onto a new operator, which Tye
explains thus17:

Let us introduce, then, a new two-place operator called ‘coincidence’ or ‘Coin’

for short. This operator stands for a function which, in the above case, maps redly
and circularly onto the compound function redly-coincidental with-circularly.
This latter function, which, in turn, maps the property of sensing onto the
property of sensing redly-coincidental with-circularly, may be explained by
saying that it is the function which is typically operative in cases of sensation
involving normal perceivers as a result of those perceivers viewing, in standard
circumstances, a real physical object which is both red and circular. The operation
of coincidence itself, therefore, may be thought of as mapping any two given
sensory modes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which, in turn, maps
the property of sensing onto a further sensing property which is usually instan-
tiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their viewing a physical object which is
both F and G in standard circumstances.

14
“The adverbial analysis we have presented…is hardly a straightforward theory. After all, it has a nonstan-
dard logic and a metaphysics which requires persons, properties, and functions” (Tye 1984a, p. 224).
15
Otherwise put, R carries the proposition Sj (“Jones senses”) onto the proposition R(Sj), “Jones senses
redly”.
16
“Syntactically, these operators precede well-formed formulas thereby forming more complicated well-
formed formulas. Semantically, they can be viewed as functions which take the properties expressed by the
well-formed formulas they modify onto new properties.” Ibid, p. 210.
17
Ibid, p.218.
Philosophia

(iii) Finally both (3)Tye and (4) Tye are justified by two rules18 which are supposedly
semantically valid in Tye’s higher order logic: if Om and On are operators of the
kind Tye considers (“standard adverbial operators”19), then

(Rule 1) OmCoinOn(Sx) ⊃ Om(Sx)

(Rule 2) OmCoinOn(Px) ⊃ On(Px) Other formal objections to adverbialism are
handled by introducing a further operator Sep to express spatial separa-
tion, 20 together with rules for that operator, but the foregoing should
suffice to give the general idea of Tye’s “structured predicate” approach.

We regard this as a talented and original vindication of adverbialism in the face of

well-known formal objections. Our question here is not whether one can formalize
sensing statements in Tye’s way, but whether it is necessary. We recall first that, in
1938, Reichenbach explained the meaning of the “basic statement,” “I have the
impression of a1” as “There is an impression of the type produced by the thing a1”
(emphasis added).21 One of his examples was “I have the impression of a red square”.22
The way in which Tye explains his key concepts, e.g. “sensing F-ly”, “coincidence”
and “spatial separation” in “The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience” 23 is not
dissimilar.
Here they are (all page numbers refer to that paper). We add the emphasis in each
case:

(i) Sensing F-ly [pp.204–205]: “Here the account I favor (in first approximation24) is
as follows: an event e is a sensing having the qualitative character of sensings
which are typically brought about in normal perceivers by their viewing F objects
in standard circumstances. On this view, the predicate ‘is a sensing redly’, for
example, really means ‘is a sensing with the red qualitative character’ where ‘red’
is a concealed description with a comparative normal cause connotation…[This
approach] explains how there can be a connection between the redness of an after-
image and the redness of a physical object without violating the intuitive claim that

18
The same two rules apply to an operator “Conj” which takes the pair < redly, circularly > onto redly &
circularly. After a long disuscussion, Tye concludes (ibid, p. 217) that RconjC doesn’t capture the “certain
way” in which redly and circularly are “united” when one has a visual experience which is qualitatively
identical with that of seeing a red circular object, and accordingly introduces the notion of “coincidence”, and
the operator corresponding to that notion. That RConjC and RCoinC both satisfy (Rule 1) and (Rule 2) as well
as a further “modifier detachment rule” is stated by Tye on p. 218 (ibid).
19
Ibid, p. 211, n.21.
20
“This latter operator [“Sep”] stands for a function whose character may be explained by saying that it maps
sensory modes or functions, such as redly, onto further functions which themselves map the property of
sensing onto sensing properties of a kind typically instantiated in normal perceivers as a result of their viewing,
in standard circumstances, real physical objects which are spatially separated from one another.” (Ibid, p. 222)
21
Reichenbach, op. cit. p. 174. Reichenbach has already said that impressions are states of organisms and not
mental objects two pages earlier.
22
Reichenbach, op. cit., p. 169.
23
Some of these ways have already been quoted in these notes, but we repeat them at greater length above to
bring out their common element, the “comparative normal cause” account of sensory properties and operators
to which Tye was committed in the eighties.
24
Tye writes “in first approximation”, because he goes on to reformulate his view in a way that avoids the
event ontology – see below.
 Philosophia

when we say that an after-image is red we are not attributing to it the very property
we attribute to a physical object when we say that it is red.”
(ii) Coincidence. [p. 218, quoted at greater length above:] “[R]edly-coincidental with-
circularly may be explained by saying that it is the function which is typically
operative in cases of sensation involving normal perceivers as a result of those
perceivers viewing, in standard circumstances, a real physical object which is
both red and circular.”
(iii) Spatial separation [p.222:] “‘RsepR’ is a compound adverbial operator which
consists of two occurrences of the adverbial operator ‘R’ modified by the spatial
separation operator ‘Sep’. This latter operator stands for a function whose
character may be explained by saying that it maps sensory modes or functions,
such as redly, onto further functions which themselves map the property of
sensing onto sensing properties of a kind typically instantiated in normal per-
ceivers as a result of their viewing, in standard circumstances, real physical
objects which are spatially separated from one another.”

III

Unfortunately, although the inferences (1) and (2) (or (3) and (4), in the adverbialist
reformulation) are obviously valid, Tye’s “comparative common cause” semantics does
not succeed in showing that they are. In fact, the notions of “typicality”, “normal
viewers” and “standard circumstances” are all, we believe, deeply problematic.25

The problem with “typically” and “in standard circumstances”:

Consider the following inferences, which have the same form as (1), and which are
likewise clearly valid:

(1)MG Jones perceives an orange square against a medium gray background sense
datum/(therefore) Jones perceives an orange sense datum.

[or in adverbialist language (which avoids the assumption that the parts of a sense
datum are also sense data)

(3)MG Jones senses orange-squarely-against a medium gray background-ly/

(therefore) Jones senses orange-ly.]

and

(2)W Jones perceives a brown square against a white background sense datum/
(therefore) Jones perceives a brown sense datum.
[we skip the adverbialist reformulations].

25
We are indebted to Ori Beck for pointing out to us just how problematic they actually are.
Philosophia

On the “comparative common cause semantics” (CCC semantics), (1)MG

becomes:

(1)CCCMG Jones has a sensory property that is typically instantiated in normal

viewers as a result of their viewing in standard circumstances objects that are
orange and square against a medium gray background/(therefore) Jones has a
sensory property that is typically instantiated in normal viewers as a result of their
viewing in standard circumstances objects that are orange.

—and similarly (2)W becomes:

(2)CCCW Jones has a sensory property that is typically instantiated in normal

viewers as a result of their viewing in standard circumstances objects that are
brown and square against a white background/(therefore) Jones has a sensory
property that is typically instantiated in normal viewers as a result of their
viewing in standard circumstances objects that are brown.

—it is known to be the case, however, that for certain shades, viewing a square of
that shade against a medium gray background will result in an orange square
against a medium gray background sense datum, and viewing the same square
(identical pixel for pixel) against a white background will result in a brown square
against a white background sense datum!26 If both circumstances count as
“standard” for viewing squares of this shade, then the assumption that there is
such a thing as the way objects of a given color “typically” look to normal
viewers in “standard” circumstances (on which CCC semantics is obviously
based) is wrong. If, in the case of secondary colors like orange and brown, there
is no fixed set of “standard” circumstances (which seems plausible, since there is
no obvious reason to regard being viewed against a white background as more or
less “standard” than being viewed against a medium gray background), then CCC
semantics does not apply to secondary colors.

The problem with “normal viewers” and “typically”:

When Tye speaks of “sensory properties” (he uses “F” and “G” as variables for them
in his formulas), he clearly supposes that if something looks red (or circular, or
whatever F or G may stand for) to Jones, then it causes Jones to have a particular
sensory property, the same sensory property that it causes in all “normal” human
subjects. (Standard representationalists, including Tye, believe that this is the case to
the present day.) But Ned Block27 and others, including ourselves,28 have argued that
there is powerful empirical evidence that this is not the case. Something, say a
particular tomato, may well look “pure red” to jones, “orange-red” to Smith and
“violet-red” to Brown, even though Jones, Smith and Brown are all “normal”. The
same object is likely to “look” (in the phenomenal, rather than the intentional sense of

26
See Andrew T. Young, “Introduction to Color,” http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/optics/color/intro.html.
27
See, e.g., Block 1999 and Block 2007a.
28
Putnam 2013.
 Philosophia

“look”) different to different people, especially, as Block argues, to those who differ in
sex, race or age—a fact which seems to reinforce the claim that privileging some of
those people and taking them to be the normal perceivers is arbitrary, and probably
unwarranted. 29 And so, there is no such thing as the sensory property (or “the
qualitative character of the experience”) that Jones, Smith and Brown all have when
they “sense redly”; there may well be three different sensory properties (or qualitatively
different experiences) in these three cases, none of which has an ordinary language
description, although it is true enough that Jones, Smith and Brown all “have an
impression of red” (to use Reichenbach’s language) or “sense redly” (to use Tye’s).
In Block’s language, the precise phenomenal character is “ineffable”.30

An alternative to “comparative common cause semantics”:

We have referred to CCC as a “semantics” because Tye claims that it tells us what
“sensing redly” (and, presumably, the corresponding locutions in ordinary language)
‘really means’.31 We do not believe that any philosophical theses are true by virtue of
the “meaning” of our words. So we shall simply present our alternative as what it is –
namely, a theoretical proposal. It involves relativizing our descriptions of “sensing”
properties to persons (strictly speaking, to persons at a certain point in their lives, and in
relevant physical conditions). But if, as the evidence indicates, different people do
enjoy different “qualia”, and the precise qualia are age-and-physical-condition depen-
dent, then such relativization is unavoidable. Thus, we propose:
X senses F-ly (senses redly, for example) if and only if X’s perceptual state is one
that is phenomenally similar to a perceptual state that would be caused by X’s viewing
objects that are F and would be perceived by X to be F.
This proposal may itself have to be further modified.32 But at least it describes the
relation between sensing F-ly (sensing redly or orange-ly, or brown-ly) and being F
(red, or orange or brown) without assuming that red or orange or brown objects cause
different persons to be in qualitatively identical perceptual states, and without assuming
the problematic notions of “standard” circumstances and “normal” viewers who “typ-
ically” enjoy the same sensory states. Moreover, the inference (1)MG is trivially valid on
this proposal (as it should be), because circumstances in which X perceives orange
square objects on a medium gray background that are perceived by X as orange and
square are circumstances in which X perceives objects that are orange and perceived by
X as orange [logical implication!]; and such validation of inferences of this kind does
not depend on the inference being cast in an adverbialist notation, or require the rules
for the use of that notation, but it is perfectly compatible with attributeism.

29
See Block 1999, and Hardin 1988.
30
See, e.g., Block 2007a. It should be emphasized that Block’s “ineffability” is only a contingent ineffability,
which further knowledge of the neural basis of our phenomental states could remove.
31
In a passage we have already quoted, Tye wrote that “On this view, the predicate ‘is a sensing redly’, for
example, really means ‘is a sensing with the red qualitative character’ where ‘red’ is a concealed description
with a comparative normal cause connotation…” (Tye 1984a, pp. 204–205).
32
Plausibly, one should allow that a human being—a baby, for example—may be able to have what another
speaker, Jones, would call red sense data (“sense redly”) without being able to perceive things to be red. Thus
one could modify our proposal to read: Definition: X senses F-lyJones (senses redlyJones, for example) if and
only if X’s perceptual state is one that would be caused by Jones’s viewing objects that are F and that would be
perceived by Jones to be F on the relevant occasions of Jones’ viewing them.
Philosophia

IV

So far we have focused exclusively on Tye’s formal constructions and the accompa-
nying analyses in his “The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience.” In this section
we examine Tye’s claim, in a paper published the same year,33 that adverbialism (whose
ontological content, as we have seen, is simply attributeism), is incompatible with
Stephen Kosslyn’s (1980) theory that the brain performs rotations and other operations
on mental images (which, Kosslyn identifies with spatiotopic mappings in the posterior
parietal lobe). Both Tye and Kosslyn are well-known physicalists, and, as remarked
above, 34 in the 1980s Tye was inclined “to favor the view that qualia are physico-
chemical properties”,35 so the disagreement between them is not over physicalism per
se.
(For the record, the authors of the present paper favor the view that Tye favored then
with respect to qualia, but not with respect to intentional states, such as believing that or
thinking that, with respect to which we are “liberal functionalists”.36)
To understand why they disagree, it is useful to go back to an excellent paper on the
subject by Ned Block,37 published just a year before the two papers mentioned in the
preceding paragraph. In that paper, Block explains that Kosslyn’s “mental images” are,
properly speaking, mental representations, and that Kosslyn and other “pictorialists”
can explain that they are not saying that when we have a mental image of something
orange, part of the brain is literally orange. The pictorialist can allow that “mental
images in his sense are not orange, vivid, etc., explaining away our temptation to
ascribe colors, shapes, etc., to our mental images by noting that when we say a mental
image is orange, what is really the case is that it represents something as orange.
Having the mental image is phenomenally similar to seeing an orange thing. And this is
presumably because the neural entity (with which the materialist pictorialist identifies
the mental image) has physiological properties of the sort typically produced by seeing
an orange thing.”38
Tye’s (1984c) “The Debate about Mental Imagery,” begins thus: “There has been
much debate recently among cognitive psychologists about the nature of mental
images. Some psychologists, notably Stephen Kosslyn, maintain that mental images
represent in the manner of pictures, and others, notably Zenon Pylyshyn, maintain that
mental images represent in the manner of language. Philosophers have entered the
debate with arguments on both sides. My purpose, in this paper, is to challenge one of
the foundations of this debate.”39 The “foundation” he refers to is the “basic assumption
that there are, in the brain, mental images that persons have when they undergo image
experiences. And his argument is that since it is not necessary to posit mental images,
Ockham’s razor reuqires us to eliminate them from our ontology. His strategy has two
parts: first, he argues,40 in a fashion similar to the way he argued for the needlessness of

33
Tye (1984c).
34
See the beginning of section I above.
35
He now believes that they are forms of “information”.
36
Putnam 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013; and forthcoming a; and forthcoming b.
37
Block 1983.
38
Ibid., p. 515.
39
Tye, op. cit., p. 678.
40
Ibid, 679.
 Philosophia

such entities as after-images and sense data in “The Adverbial Approach to Visual
Experience”, that the apparent ontological commitment to mental images in a sentence
like

(1) James has an image of a bald man.

—can be avoided without loss of empirical content by reformulating (1) as

(1a) James images a-bald-man-ly.

The details, including the explicit introduction of an ontology of properties (in this
case, imaging properties rather than sensing properties) plus “functions or operations”,
exactly parallels the formal details we saw in section II, and need not be repeated here.
In the second section of his paper (pp. 680–688), Tye gives an adverbialist reinter-
pretation of the experiments that supposedly support pictorialism, and gives an
adverbialist redescription. The following sentences (on p. 684) give the flavor. Tye is
discussing an experiment in which the subjects are supposed to “rotate an
image”. In that experiment, it is supposed to be the case (according to the “pictorialist”
experimenter) that:

(5) The typical participant rotates mental images of block figures at a single fixed
speed.

Tye first points out that this description, “as it is interpreted by the pictorialist”, must
be mistaken, because (on the adverbial view) “there are no images to rotate (in any
sense of the verb ‘rotate’)”. And he continues:

“The point here is that (5)….can be held by the adverbialist to have a misleading
grammatical form. From this perspective, (5) may be recast as

(5a) The typical participant images rotationally at fixed speed.

A more neutral interpretation of (5), which is consistent with (5a) but which does not
assume that the adverbial analysis is correct is

(5b) The typical participant undergoes experiences much like the experiences he
would undergo were he to see block figures rotated at a single fixed speed.”

We observe that (5b) explains (5) (and (5a) as well?) in terms of a sort of
comparative normal cause: the attribute ascribed to the subject in (5a)—“imaging
rotationally at fixed speed”—is appropriately so described because typical subjects
would “undergo”—i.e., be caused to undergo—very similar experiences by seeing the
block figures rotated at fixed speed.
But what are “experiences”? Tye certainly doesn’t want to suggest that subjects
literally stand in a two-term relation of “undergoing” to mental objects—it was
precisely the point of adverbialism (and indeed of attributeism) to show the needless-
ness of such problematic relations and objects. Tye’s sensing attributes are not supposed
Philosophia

to be universals to which we stand in a two-term relation of sensing; they are modes of

sensing, not entities we sense, and we are sure that Tye’s imaging properties are
likewise not supposed to be entities we sense, but modes of doing something similar
to sensing, namely imaging. And Tye also rejects talk of “events”.41 Moreover, talk of
“undergoing experiences” was introduced by Tye in (5b) as “a more neutral interpre-
tation”—i.e., as not presupposing adverbialism. So let us strip the cloak of neutrality
from (5b).
Since (5b) is an “interpretation” of the same sentence (namely (5)) as the adverbialist
(5a), the adverbialist counterpart of (5b) would seem to be:

(5c) The typical participant instantiates an imaging attribute very similar to the
sensory attribute (or “sensing property’) she instantiates when she sees block
figures rotated at a fixed speed.

—but what sort of “similarity” is involved here?

Perhaps the most natural answer is that two mental attributes (e.g., sensing attributes
or imaging attributes) are similar in the relevant sense if it feels much the same to
instantiate them. But neither this answer, nor the normal cause story about why we use
words that apply to external things (words such as “red”, “block”, and “rotate”) to
describe what we undergo when we instantiate these attributes, says anything about the
nature of these attributes. Indeed, the normal cause story is perfectly acceptable to a
pictorialist as an explanation of why we use those words.42 Yet, as mentioned earlier,
Tye did have an ontological view on the nature of qualia in the 80s, when he wrote the
papers we are discussing, namely “the view that qualia are physico-chemical proper-
ties”, and it is reasonable to suppose that he thought sensory attributes and imaging
attributes 43 are likewise “physico-chemical properties”. But if this supposition is
correct, it is striking that Tye’s physicalism plays no role in his account of these
attributes or of their “similarities”. It is our contention that in fact Kosslyn’s hypotheses
constitute an empirical theory of the nature of imaging attributes, and that nothing in
the theory need conflict with “adverbialism”, even in Tye’s version of the latter.
This may seem plainly false, given that Kosslyn speaks of images in the brain, and
of “scanning” such images, but one thing needs to be remembered from the outset:
Much of cognitive science is based on a paradigm in which various subsystems in the
brain are described as if they were “homunculi”, that is, they are described as if they
perceived and acted, but no ontological or metaphysical commitment to the “intentional
states” of these “homunculi” is thereby genuinely intended. As Block puts it, “The
ultimate aim is to ‘discharge’ the homunculi, in Dennett’s apt phrase. The first step is to
give an account of an homunculus in terms of another network of homunculi and their
representations, if this can be done. But in the end, discharging depends on finding
homunculi that cannot be explained in this way, but only in a different way,
nomologically, that is, in terms of laws of nature and their consequences.” 44 When
41
See Tye 1984a.
42
For example, see Block 1983, p. 516.
43
It is not clear whether imaging attributes are supposed to be a subset of sensory attributes or a separate set of
attributes.
44
Block 1983, p. 523.
 Philosophia

Kosslyn speaks of scanning mental pictures, both the pictures and the “scanner” are
homunculi that are ultimately discharged by means of a neurophysiological story about
structures in the brain, in short, by a nomological story. Tye takes it that Kosslyn is
committed to the idea that persons view, or scan, structures in their own brains, but all
he need be committed to are the following claims: (1) the brain performs analog
computations (as opposed to the digital computations posited by Pylyshyn and other
classical cognitivists 45) which we describe, when we take the “intentional stance” 46
towards certain neural structures “employed” in those computations, as scanners and
images—so the statement that Jones scans an image, is itself intentional stance talk for
a scanner in Jones head scans an image; and (2) the image talk gets cashed out as talk of
spatiotopic mappings in the posterior parietal lobe, and the scanning talk gets cashed
out as talk of the processes in question in the posterior parietal lobe leading to
transmission of signals to other parts of the brain.
Still, a possible objection remains. Attributeism, the naturalist metaphysics or
ontology that motivates Tye’s adverbialism, and which we find reasonable, takes such
mental states as Tye’s sensing properties and imaging properties to be (non-relational)
attributes of persons, or, to be less anthropocentric, of organisms. Kosslyn’s neuro-
physiological account of imaging refers to properties of parts of the brain. Yet we said
above that Kosslyn’s hypotheses constitute an empirical theory of the nature of imaging
attributes.
But there is no real contradiction. In a well known paper47 Ned Block distinguishes
between the “total neural basis” of qualitative states and the “core neural basis” of those
states (he uses experiences of recognizing faces as his principle example): “No one
would suppose that the activation of the fusiform face area all by itself is sufficient for
face recognition. I have never heard anyone advocate the view that if a fusiform face
area were kept alive in a bottle, that activation of it would determine face experience—
or any experience at all. The total neural base of a state with character C is itself
sufficient for the instantiation of C. The core neural basis of a state with phenomenal
character C is the part of the total neural basis that differentiates states with C from
states with other phenomenal characters or phenomenal contents, for example the
experience of a face from the experience of a house”.48 In exactly the same way, we
believe that it would be ridiculous to suppose that Kosslyn thinks that if a spatiotopic
mapping in the posterior parietal lobe were kept alive in a bottle, the bottle would
contain a mental image. Kosslyn’s mental images and scanners are homunculi, and
spatiotopic mappings in the posterior parietal lobe are what the homunculi are
discharged in favor of. But enjoying a mental image requires an appropriate total
neural state, and not just the appropriate activity in the posterior parietal lobe. This
is, as we said, a theory of the physical nature of what both Tye and Kosslyn believe to
be physical properties, Kosslyn’s imaging properties. The fact that one can describe
Kosslyn’s experiments without saying anything about the nature of those properties
does nothing one way or the other to undermine or support Kosslyn’s hypothesis. The

45
See, e.g., Pylyshyn 1981a and Pylyshyn 1981b.
46
A term coined by Dennett. See, e.g., Dennett (1989).
47
Block (2007b).
48
Ibid, p. 482.
Philosophia

physical nature of physical properties is something that cannot be discovered by the

analysis of language.

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