What is phenomenal in different types of mental activity?
Such would be the case, for example, if one held that there are (or can be) differences in the phenomenal character of different sensory modalities (e.g., visual and tactile) even where they have just the same representational content.
An epistemological problem, however, may appear to remain: How can epiphenomenalists know that they experience different phenomenal qualities?
One class of these consists of cases in which, it is claimed, experiences have the same representational content but different phenomenal character.
Under the assumption that it is impossible to have two different phenomenal concepts of one and the same quale, the objection is met: As long as two qualia names Q and R refer to the same quale, replacing Q by R in an ascription of phenomenal belief cannot change the truth value of the belief ascription.
bThis distinction must be viewed in relation to an ordered typology of systems operating in different phenomenal realms (see e.g. Halliday and Matthiessen 2006; and, in relation to discourse analysis, Matthiessen, 2014): 4th-order systems: semiotic systems — 3rd-order systems: social systems — 2nd-order systems: biological systems — 1st-order systems: physical systems.
Our findings show that similar affective somatic changes can be associated with different phenomenal experiences of affect, depending on the depth of cortical processing.
Together, these findings show that similar somatic responses can be associated with different phenomenal experiences of affect, depending on the level of cortical stimulus processing.
The current study shows that in a rare neurological sample, processing of the same visual stimulus can be associated with different phenomenal experiences of affect despite similar somatic responses, and thereby provides important insights into human emotion.
In conclusion, the results showed for the first time unique neural signatures for both memory and future thinking even in the absence of differences in phenomenal properties and suggested different time courses of brain activation for episodic memory and future thinking.
