Figure 9.3 First-order representationalismexperience than having a certain sort of representational content poised
and accessible to concept-wielding thought (as represented inWgure 9.3).
Dretske and Tye diVer from one another mainly in the accounts which
they oVer of the representation-relation. For Dretske, the content of a
representational state is Wxed teleologically, in terms of the objects/
properties which that state issupposedto represent, given the organism’s
evolutionary and learning histories. For Tye, in contrast, the content of a
state is deWned in terms of causal co-variance in normal circumstances –
where the notion ofnormalcircumstances may or may not be deWned
teleologically, depending upon cases. But both are agreed that content is
to be individuatedexternally, in a way which embraces objects and prop-
erties in the organism’s environment. We shall begin our discussion by
suggesting that they have missed a trick in going for an externalist notion
of content, and that their position would be strengthened if they were to
endorse anarrow-content account instead.
We have already seen, in section 2.5 above, that it is legitimate to
respond to the Inverted Earth argument for qualia by invoking a narrowly
individuated notion of perceptual content. Externalists can respond rather
diVerently, however, by placing further (teleological) constraints on con-
tent-individuation. In fact, both Dretske and Tye are in a position to claim
that the content of the person’s experiences remains the same, uninverted,
on Inverted Earth. For the state the person is in when looking at the yellow
sky is the state which issupposedto represent blueness, or which would
normallyco-vary with blueness, given their Earthly evolutionary history.
However, there are cases which they cannot explain so easily.
Consider, again, Davidson’s (1987) example ofSwampman(discussed in
chapter 6 above), who is accidentally created by a bolt of lightning striking
a tree-stump in a swamp, in such a way as to be molecule-for-molecule
identical to an existing person. Dretske is forced to deny that Swampman
and that person are subject to the same colour experiences (and indeed, he
must deny that Swampman has any colour experiences at all), since his
states lackfunctions, either evolved or learned. As Dretske admits, this
consequence is highly counterintuitive; and the intuition is one which he
250 Consciousness: theWnal frontier?