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Naive Realism for Unconscious Perceptions

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Abstract

Unconscious perceptions (i.e., person-level perceptions that lack phenomenal character) have recently become a focal point in the debate for and against naive realism. In this paper I defend the naive realist side. More specifically, I use an idea of Martin’s to develop a new version of naive realism—neuro-computational naive realism. I argue that neuro-computational naive realism offers a uniform treatment of both conscious and unconscious perceptions. I also argue that it accommodates the possibility of phenomenally different conscious perceptions of the same items, and that it can answer a further challenge to naive realism raised by Berger and Nanay.

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Notes

  1. Block (in Phillips and Block 2017, p. 169) also argues for this.

  2. As will become clear later, neuro-computational naive realism extends and develops upon an idea of Martin’s (1998). I am indebted to his work.

  3. See Brewer (2011, p. 93), Campbell (2002, p. 117), Snowdon (1990, p. 124), and Martin (2006, p. 354; 2004, p. 39; 2002b, pp. 392–393).

  4. See Brewer (2011, p. 55), Campbell (2002, pp. 117–118), French (2014, p. 395) and Martin (2004, p. 39).

  5. As far as I know, Travis (2013, p. 31) comes closest to accepting the stronger thesis, as he holds that perceptions do not represent things as being thus and so to the subject. But even Travis allows perceptions to involve certain alternative kinds of representational properties.

  6. See fn. 4.

  7. The term “standpoint” is from Campbell (2009).

  8. On the extra-dermal conditions, see Campbell (2009, pp. 657–658) and Brewer (2011). On the conditions of the perceiver’s psychological apparatus, see Brewer (2011, chp. 5; 2013), Campbell (2002, pp. 118–119) and Fish (2009, chp. 3).

  9. The example is adapted from Logue (2012, p. 211).

  10. See, e.g., Weiskrantz (2009), Kouider and Dehaene (2007) or Lin and He (2009). For a general introduction, see Prinz (2015). For a review of experimental methods, see Breitmeyer (2015).

  11. Some may believe that selectionism can successfully resist Block (2007, 2010) and Pautz’s (2014, 2017) arguments. For a long argument that selectionism cannot do so, see my (2019).

  12. By “S is being appeared to in a greenish way” I roughly mean that S is appeared to in the way that I would be appeared to were I to now be confronted by a green thing under ideal conditions.

  13. My use of “appearance properties” is different from Genone (2014), Antony (2011), Kalderon (2011), Shoemaker (1994, 2000, 2006) and others’ use of “appearance properties”. On their use of the term, appearance properties are not properties that subjects can have, but properties that objects or scenes can have. More specifically, appearance properties are ways that objects or scenes appear simpliciter (as opposed to ways that they appear to a specific subject). This use of “appearance properties” should be carefully distinguished from my own.

  14. Martin discusses and defends this conception of phenomenology in his (1998, 2002a, b). Also see Campbell (2002) and Gomes and French (2016).

  15. To say that one set of properties is determined completely in virtue of another set of properties does not entail that each of the properties in the first set is identical to some property in the second set. One alternative possibility is that the properties in the second set ground the properties in the first. Therefore, my proposal is compatible with multiple views about the nature of appearance properties themselves.

  16. External events may, of course, cause you to have the neuro-computational properties that you have. In this way, external events may also play a causal role in the instantiation of appearance properties. This is perfectly consistent with the claim that you have the appearance properties that you do completely in virtue of your neuro-computational properties.

  17. My use of “neuro-computational properties” follows Pautz’s (2010, 2013, 2017). Like Pautz, I will not try to decide here between the various causal, semantic, syntactic or mechanistic accounts of what it takes to implement a computation or an algorithm. For a review of the different positions, see Piccinini (2017). Note that although the set of neuro-computational properties is broad enough so as not to pre-judge matters currently under empirical inquiry and dispute, it will also prove to be narrow enough to advance the purposes of the present paper.

  18. For correlations regarding taste, see e.g. Di Lorenzo et al. (2009). For those regarding smell, see e.g. Howard et al. (2009). For those regarding loudness, see e.g. Röhl et al. (2011). Finally, for those regarding color, see Brouwer and Heeger (2013).

  19. Although, cf. Logue (2017).

  20. See my (2019).

  21. It is noteworthy that naive realists can deny that neuro-computational properties are identical to, or ground, the S perceives x relation and still assert that neuro-computational properties are part of the supervenience base for the S perceives x relation.

  22. See, e.g., Brewer (2011, p. 55) and Campbell (2002, pp. 117–118).

  23. A related, though very different, concern is that (NR2) might be in tension with the possibility that neuro-computational properties are themselves being represented—e.g., by the subject, by some of the subject’s properties or states, or by some of the properties or states of the subject’s body. But this concern can also be put aside: That something or other represents neuro-computational properties implies nothing about the nature of the S perceives x relation. For example, nothing follows about the nature of the S perceives x relation from the possibility that a thought in the subject’s head, or a sentence the subject writes down on a piece of paper, represent (inter alia) neuro-computational properties.

  24. I follow Antony (2011), Brewer (2011), Campbell and Cassam (2014, chp. 4), Fish (2009), Genone (2014), Kalderon (2011), and Travis (2013) in taking illusions to be perceptions of some sort. So I accept that naive realists should account for illusions.

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted Jacob Berger, Bence Nanay, Adam Pautz, Henry Taylor, and to the participants of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Central APA, and The Science of Consciousness conferences for criticisms and good advice that helped in the writing of this paper. I am especially grateful to David Widerker and to two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions. My writing was aided by the generous support of the Department of Philosophy and Kreitman School of Advanced Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

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    Ori Beck

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Beck, O. Naive Realism for Unconscious Perceptions. Erkenn 87, 1175–1190 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00236-1

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