Abstract
Benj’s “There it is” is a characteristically original and wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between certain direct realist theories of perception and the nature of perceptual justification—with some formal semantics thrown in for good measure. Here I’ll focus on just one of the many topics about which Benj has something to say: his remarks on the topic of the relationship that must obtain between a perceptual state and a belief in order for the former to immediately justify the latter.
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Notes
- 1.
A previous draft of this paper was give in response to “There it is” at the 3rd annual Online Consciousness Conference. “There it is” is now published as Hellie (2011).
- 2.
See Hellie (2011), §3.
- 3.
Some initially plausible answers won’t work. For example, one might try to draw the distinction in terms of availability of the relevant properties for reasoning; the proposition that I am looking at the red color of a widget is immediately available to affect my beliefs and actions, whereas the proposition that I have gained 2 lbs might not be. But of course the proposition that I am looking at the red color of a widget might be similarly unavailable, as can be seen from cases in which I’m unsure whether I’m having a veridical or hallucinatory experience.
- 4.
See Hellie (2011), 138 and following. Strictly, what follows is just that the belief is true at the moment at which it is formed, presuming that this moment is the same as that at which the relevant experiential property is instantiated by the subject. The belief might quickly be falsified by a change in the veridicality of the subject’s experience. (Or, if we think of beliefs as having their truth-values eternally, ordinary mechanisms of ‘belief maintenance’ might quickly lead to a false belief if there’s a change in the veridicality of the subject’s experience).
- 5.
One might say: this is impossible because ‘regard as equivalent’ is sufficient for synonymy, which makes it impossible that a subject should ever regard as synonymous
δ and “I am looking at the red color of a widget.” But I think that this gets Benj’s preferred order of explanation backwards: “I am looking at the red color of a widget” and other sentences of the language of belief are supposed to get their contents from being regarded as equivalent to the relevant Lagadonian sentences; they don’t have meanings independently which are available to constrain the objects which the subject is able to regard as equivalent. Otherwise, I think, we’d lose Benj’s explanation of the truth of the beliefs formed in the ordinary veridical case. - 6.
Hellie (2011), 153.
- 7.
Hellie (2012), 132.
- 8.
I think that Benj makes these claim about Dreaming Sam in order to deny PI. But one could deny PI, and admit the existence of indiscriminable but genuinely distinct “what it’s likes”, without denying that there is anything that it’s like to be Dreaming Sam.
δ and “I am looking at the red color of a widget.” But I think that this gets Benj’s preferred order of explanation backwards: “I am looking at the red color of a widget” and other sentences of the language of belief are supposed to get their contents from being regarded as equivalent to the relevant Lagadonian sentences; they don’t have meanings independently which are available to constrain the objects which the subject is able to regard as equivalent. Otherwise, I think, we’d lose Benj’s explanation of the truth of the beliefs formed in the ordinary veridical case.References
Hellie, Benj. 2011. There it is. Philosophical Issues 21: 110–164.
Hellie, Benj. 2012. There it was. In Consciousness inside and out: Phenomenology, neuroscience, and the nature of experience, Studies in brain and mind, vol. 6, ed. R. Brown. Springer press.
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Speaks, J. (2014). Some Thoughts About Hallucination, Self-Representation, and “There It Is”. In: Brown, R. (eds) Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6001-1_13
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