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Premium Economy: A Transparency Account of Knowledge of Perception

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Abstract

Since the transparency approach to introspection need not posit a dedicated mechanism specialized for detecting one’s own mental states, its economy is often viewed as a major advantage by both proponents and opponents. But sometimes economy comes at the cost of relying on controversial views of the natures of mental states. Perceptual experience is a case in point. For example, Alex Byrne’s account relies on the view that experience constitutively involves belief, and Matthew Boyle’s account relies on the view that experience constitutively involves a form of implicit consciousness of experience. In this paper, I develop a transparency account of our access to our experiences that retains the benefit of economy while avoiding the cost of relying on controversial views of the nature of experience. I start by discussing Byrne’s and Boyle’s accounts. I focus on the problems that lead them to hold the controversial views they do, and raise some challenges to their solutions. I then develop my own account. I argue that when you attend to an object, your experience gives you justification to believe that you see the object (under some descriptions). I close by highlighting some advantages of my account. I argue that it (1) can solve the problems facing Byrne and Boyle without relying on controversial views of the nature of experience; (2) respects the idea that there is something special about our access to our minds; and (3) can be generalized to other cases of introspection.

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Notes

  1. The idea of transparency is often credited to Evans (1982), but it arguably traces back to Edgley (1969). There are many ways to cash out the idea of transparency. For a survey, see Gertler (2021).

  2. In fact, Boyle holds a more ambitious view, according to which all consciousness involves non-positional consciousness of consciousness (more on this below). On Peacocke’s (2008, ch. 6) view, one possesses the concept of experience only if one follows what he calls the “Core Rule” for experience, such as judging that one sees that p because one sees that p. As Peacocke notes, the way one self-ascribes experiences when one follows the Core Rule respects Evans’ outward-looking approach. But Peacocke’s central goal is to give an account of the possession-condition of the concept of experience, rather than an account of one’s access to one’s experiences.

  3. For discussion of the case of experiencing a property, see Hofmann (2019).

  4. There has been much debate about whether experiences only represent “thin” or “low-level” properties such as color, shape, and location, or whether they also represent “rich” or “high-level” properties such as being a person, being charming, and causing an ovation. Byrne sides with the thin view. For Byrne, a v-proposition that […x…]v is true only if x has certain “sensible qualities,” which include “shape, orientation, depth, color, shading, texture, movement, and so forth” (p. 197). For more on the thin vs. rich debate, see Siegel (2021). Byrne defends the thin view in Siegel and Byrne (2017).

  5. For more on belief-dependence, see Glüer (2009) and Byrne (2016).

  6. Byrne gives the example of seeing the lines of the Müller-Lyer illusion. On Byrne’s view, a v-proposition that […x…]v concerns a certain object (namely x). But Byrne’s example seems to concern a plurality of objects (i.e., the lines). To avoid confusion, I consider a case that concerns a certain object.

  7. Byrne argues that you know what you believe by following (or trying to follow) this rule:

    BEL: If p, believe that you believe that p (2005, p. 95).

    Presumably, Byrne also wants your belief that the stick is bent to enable you to try to follow BEL to know that you believe that the stick is bent. So another worry is that your belief that the stick is bent might be so suppressed that it does not even enable you to try to follow BEL.

  8. Boyle gives the example of perceiving a purring cat. As such, Boyle’s example involves both vision and audition. To simplify matters, I consider a case that only involves vision.

  9. Boyle mainly speaks of non-positional consciousness, but the term “pre-reflective (self-)consciousness” is more widely used. For more on Sartre on pre-reflective (self-)consciousness, see Miguens et al. (2016). For more on pre-reflective (self-)consciousness in general, see the papers in Borner et al. (2019), Gallagher and Zahavi (2021), and the papers in Lang and Viertbauer (2022).

  10. Kriegel (2019) and Giustina (2022) argue that you are in a conscious state only if you are aware of it. One might think that this view is very similar to NPC, but it is not. The sort of self-awareness Kriegel and Giustina have in mind is not non-positional in Boyle’s sense. Giustina says that the sort of self-awareness she is concerned with is “pre-reflective, where this implies its being non-attentive and non-conceptual (thus not thought-like)” (p. 342, emphasis original), but she does not say that it does not posit that of which it is aware as its intentional object. So even if Kriegel’s or Giustina’s argument succeeds, it does not support NPC. For criticism of Kriegel’s and Giustina’s line of thought, see Stoljar (2021). Giustina responds to Stoljar in her (2022).

  11. Two quibbles. First, in this passage Boyle says that a self-ascription like (2) makes explicit a psychological state. But on another occasion Boyle says that it “[makes] explicit a mode of awareness that is already implicit in the corresponding outward-looking awareness of the world” (p. 1035, emphasis mine). This way of putting things is misleading. To make explicit one’s non-positional consciousness of one’s experience of the cat, one does not judge (2); instead, one judges, say, that one is conscious of one’s experience of the cat. Second, in the second sentence Boyle speaks of non-positional expression, saying something to the effect that one’s experience of the cat is expressed non-positionally in one’s thought that this cat is yellow. Again, this way of putting things is misleading. I take it that the relation of being conscious of differs from the relation of expressing. To avoid confusion, it is better to just speak of non-positional consciousness.

  12. In fact, I suspect that Boyle has the following in mind:

    CLAIM3: One’s thought that this cat is yellow is possible only in virtue of one’s non-positional consciousness of one’s experience of the cat.

    One problem is that CLAIM3 does not follow from the first two sentences of the passage (see my previous point). Another problem is that CLAIM3 is in tension with NPC, according to which “all positional consciousness of an object involves non-positional consciousness of that very state of consciousness” (p. 1029, emphasis mine).

  13. For more on unconscious attention, see Mole (2021).

  14. For accounts that emphasize the role of attention in introspection, see Chalmers (2003) and Gertler (2012).

  15. For example, one might think that we can give a similar treatment of inattentive experiences:

    TRANSPARENCY*: If you have an inattentive experience of x, then your experience gives you justification to believe that you see x (under some descriptions).

    I will leave open whether TRANSPARENCY* is true. For more on inattentive experiences and their potential roles, see Siegel and Silins (2014).

  16. For more on non-veridical attention, see Watzl (2017, pp. 236–239).

  17. One might object that in cases of hallucination your experience of x cannot give you justification to believe that you see x. I think this view is implausible, but I will not argue against it here.

  18. https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/b000444; accessed September 13, 2022.

  19. Note that I am concerned with a combination of two mental states: judging [I do not see x] and attending to x. I am not concerned with judging [I do not see x]. I am also not concerned with judging [I do not see x when I attend to x].

  20. One might think that inner sense can still play a role in belief-formation even if TRANSPARENCY is true. For example, one might accept TRANSPARENCY while holding that it is inner sense that takes an experience of x as input and produces a belief I see x as output. In principle, it is consistent to hold such a view. But there is little motivation to do so, given that an important motivation for the transparency approach is to explain our access to our minds without positing a dedicated mechanism like inner sense. It is more natural to simply say that one forms a belief I see x on the basis of an experience of x.

  21. Byrne offers a rich discussion of the metaphysics of experience, in particular of the content of experience. I do not. But this should not be turned into an objection. Both Byrne and I aim to give an account of our access to our mental states of seeing an object. It is just that we try to do so in different ways.

  22. For more on the relationship between judgment and belief, see Schwitzgebel (2010).

  23. One might think that I need NPC to give a full account of our access to our mental states of seeing an object. For example, a question I do not address is in virtue of what TRANSPARENCY obtains (if it obtains at all), and one might think that NPC could play a role here:

    CONSTITUTIVE TRANSPARENCY (CT): If you attend to x, then your experience gives you justification to believe that you see x (under some descriptions) because you are non-positionally conscious of your experience.

    CT could be true, but it needs to be fleshed out first. That will be left for another occasion.

  24. For other negative characterizations of asymmetry, see, e.g., Smithies and Stoljar (2012, p. 4), Gertler (2021), and my (2022, p. 3).

  25. On Byrne’s view, there are two central features that any theory of introspection needs to explain. One is our peculiar access to our mental states. The other is our “privileged” access to (some of) our mental states. Byrne (2005, p. 101, fn. 3) does not think that we have privileged access to object-entailing mental states such as that of seeing an object. Following Byrne, I will not discuss privileged access here.

  26. This way of distinguishing between perceptual and intellectual attention is due to Watzl (2017, pp. 39–41).

  27. PAIN is aligned with the perceptual theory of pain, according to which (very roughly) to feel a pain is to stand in a perceptual relation to a bodily disturbance. Opponents of the perceptual theory might therefore find PAIN unpalatable. The issue can only be mentioned but not addressed here. For defense of the perceptual theory, see, e.g., Armstrong (1962), Pitcher (1970), Tye (2005), and Byrne (2018). For criticism, see, e.g., Aydede (2009) and Corns (2014).

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Fei-Ting Chen, Szu-Ting Chen, Hsi-Heng Cheng, Wen-Hong Huang, Cheng-Hao Lin, Niccolò Aimone Pisano, Rur-Bin Yang, several anonymous referees, and audiences at the Australasian Postgraduate Philosophy Conference 2022, the 13th Arché Graduate Conference at University of St Andrews, and National Tsing Hua University. Special thanks to Nico Silins, Shaun Nichols, and Derk Pereboom for insightful discussion and for guidance at every stage of this project.

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    Shao-Pu Kang

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Kang, SP. Premium Economy: A Transparency Account of Knowledge of Perception. Erkenn (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00763-7

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