The phenomenal character of experience is fixed internally and has no necessary relation to the nature of particular substances in one's external environment or to one's linguistic community
Externalist arguments (of the sort mentioned in Section 4) have also been taken to support the separation of the “qualitative” from meaning and content (hence the separation of consciousness from intentionality). For it has been sometimes assumed that the phenomenal character of one’s experience is “fixed internally”—i.e., it has no necessary relation to the nature of particular substances in one’s external environment or to one’s linguistic community. Thus if externalist arguments (like those o