Cross-Modal Experiences and the Problem of Phenomenal Overlap

Mehta’s (2014) phenomenal overlap argument claims that successful cross-modal perception of one and the same object can, from the subject’s point of view, lack any shared element that presents that object, thereby challenging naïve realism’s prediction that the same object should give rise to non-trivial phenomenal overlap. Morgan (2017) replies by appealing to spatiality, arguing that vision and touch are at least alike in how they locate objects in space. This paper distinguishes an object’s intrinsic spatial properties from its relational spatial properties that obtain between object and subject, and argues that the similarity Morgan invokes concerns, at best, the latter. It is too thin and too abstract to meet naïve realism’s demand for relevant phenomenal overlap. More broadly, despite the range of proposals considered, cross-modal experience is systematically heterogeneous, and current forms of naïve realism lack a clear account of how the same object could ground such pervasive intermodal differences.