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The Invalidity of the Argument from Illusion and the Argument from Appearance

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Abstract

One crucial premise in the argument from illusion is the Phenomenal Principle. It states that if there sensibly appears to be something that possesses a sensible quality, then there is something of which the subject is aware that has that sensible quality. The principle thus enables the inference from a mere appearance to an existence (usually a mental one). In the argument from appearance, a similar move is taken by some philosophers—they infer a content from a mere appearance. There are two kinds of defences for the Phenomenal Principle in the literature, namely, the epistemological one (e.g. H.H. Price) and the semantic one (e.g. Frank Jackson). I argue that neither consolidates the Phenomenal Principle. I particularly demonstrate that the appearance verb in premise 1 of the argument from illusion is not used in the phenomenal sense as it is used in the Phenomenal Principle, which renders the argument essentially invalid. To avoid invalidity, the proponents either give up the phenomenal use, which makes the argument unable to serve its original purpose, i.e. inferring an unusual existence, or they insist on the phenomenal use in all premises of the argument, which will trivialise the argument. I also demonstrate that a similar objection applies to the argument from appearance.

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Notes

  1. Chisholm (1957) and Jackson (1977) are early practitioners.

  2. See Brewer (2008), Phillips (2016), and French and Phillips (2020).

  3. See, for example, Dretske (1995), Tye (1995, 2007), Crane (2009), Pautz (2010). I lump them together under the heading representationalism. This is certainly imprecise but only serves for the current purpose. And for the criticism of representationalism see Langsam (2020), Robinson (2009).

  4. Naive realism, coming in many forms, mainly maintains that a (veridical) perceptual experience is constituted at least partly by the perceived worldly items, such as objects, sensible qualities, events and states, etc. See, for example, Campbell (2002), Martin (2004; 2006), Brewer (2011), Allen (2015), Moran (2018), Niikawa (2019), Ivanov (2022), Beck (2022).

  5. Robinson (1994), Foster (2000), Smith (2002), French and Walters (2018) are the exceptions.

  6. Jackson and Robinson are typical representatives, who support both the argument from illusion and the knowledge argument. See Jackson (1977, 1982), Robinson (1982, 1994).

  7. For the criticism of the abuse of illusion, see Austin (1962, p. 26).

  8. I follow the tradition that supposes that the argument from illusion promotes the sense-data theory. Representationalists, of course, can adapt it to favour their view.

  9. Similar arguments can be seen, for instance, in A.D. Smith (2002, pp. 21–28), Snowdon (1992), and French and Walters (2018).

  10. Snowdon (1992) and French and Walters (2018) also demonstrate that the argument from illusion is invalid. But their argument has nothing to do with the analysis of appearance verbs. See also Crane and French (2021).

  11. Byrne (2009), Siegel (2010), and Schellenberg (2011) further defend this line of thought.

  12. Prominently, see Travis (2004, 2013a, b). For further developments, see Wilson (2018), Raleigh (2015), Ivanov (2017), and Gu (2022).

  13. Briefly, Jackson argues that material things do not have colour properties because colour properties do not serve any scientific causal explanation of the interactions between objects, while sense-data as the immediate perceptual objects have colour properties. Hence, sense-data are not material but mental. See Jackson (Jackson, 1977, pp. 120–128).

  14. If Jackson’s argument works, then the phenomenal use should be applied to complex adjectives. This is because what the phrase “the look of…” refers to can be complex sensible qualities, such as “centaurian”.

  15. Jackson also shows that the phenomenal use is irreducible to the epistemic use, which I do not discuss here.

  16. The colour regarding afterimages is different. They are floating off objects.

  17. See Byrne (2009), Schellenberg (2011), and Brogaard (2017).

  18. For a more detailed analysis of Chisholm’s view on noncomparative use, see Gu (2022).

  19. According to Travis, “visual looks” are the visual effects an object has given a certain occasion, determined by environmental conditions, perspective, visual equipment, and the forth. He thinks that visual looks are “silent”, which do not make recognisable content. “Thinkable looks” can convey recognisable contents, but they are not perceptual. See Travis (2004, 2013a). For interpretations of Travis’s argument, see Wilson (2018).

  20. I thank the reviewer for bringing out this objection.

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Acknowledgements

I’m grateful to Hanoch Ben-Yami and Howard Robinson for helpful discussions about the argument from illusion. I would also like to thank the anonymous referee for insightful comments and questions that resulted in many improvements. This article was completed with the support of the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2023M730716).

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  1. School of Philosophy, Fudan University, 220 Handan Rd, Yang Pu Qu, Shang Hai Shi, China, Shanghai, 200437, China

    Zhiwei Gu

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Gu, Z. The Invalidity of the Argument from Illusion and the Argument from Appearance. Acta Anal 39, 273–294 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00570-3

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