The Causal Argument Against Representationalism

The central argument against perceptual representationalism in my recent The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience was that representational states aren’t causally efficacious in the way that perceptual states are. In this talk I shall explore some further issues related to this argument, including the general question of the causal significance of representational states, and the prospects for holding that perceptual states metaphysically determine representational states while remaining distinct from them.