Extensions of phenomenology in Timothy Bayne’s works as a project in philosophy of mind

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophy of mind about which mental states possess phenomenal character, and whether there are non-sensory and non-emotional phenomenal properties. One of the most famous experts on the questions of phenomenological rich­ness in analytic philosophy is British-Australian philosopher Timothy Bayne. In his works, T. Bayne considers several debatable domains of phenomenal states. These do­mains include cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of categorical perception, and the phenomenology of agency. However, the three domains are discussed in his works separately, so the relations between these domains within Bayne’s views on phe­nomenology are uncertain. In this study T. Bayne’s works on the debatable domains of phenomenology were analyzed, and the connections between the three domains were identified. This article shows that the matching content challenge put forward against the phenomenology of thought is equivalent to the impossibility of formulating a contrast argument for thought, and that in its turn formulating a contrast argument negates the matching content challenge. The study also found that in Bayne’s works the phe­nomenology of categorical perception and the phenomenology of agency are supported by varieties of contrast argument. The feature that makes these two domains of phe­nomenology different from sensory phenomenology and also makes them debatable is in­trospective elusiveness. Consequently, the article concludes that the states associated with categorical perception and manifestations of agency are extensions of the set of phenome­nal states, and not a basic part of it.