The Roles of Sensory Modalities and Content in the Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience

Rose Stamp (University of London)

Abstract: There are two main views of the respective roles of content and sensory modalities in the phenomenology of perceptual experience. The first view, which I label "pure relationalism," is that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is fully determined by its content. The second view, impure relationalism, is that the phenomenal character of an experience is determined partly by its content and partly by its sensory modality. In this paper I argue that only pure relationalism can account for cases of multi-modal experiences, i.e. experiences which unify sensory experiences in different modalities.