Abstract
Alva Noë’s strategy to solve the puzzle of perceptual presence entirely relies on the principle of presence as access. Unaccessed or unattended parts or details of objects are perceptually present insofar as they are accessible, and they are accessible insofar as one possesses sensorimotor skills that can secure their access. In this paper, I consider several arguments that can be opposed to this claim and that are chiefly related to the modal status of action, i.e. the fact that the action that would secure access to the absent aspects is a possibility, something that can (or maybe could) be done. The main difficulty Noë’s account must face is –as several situations demonstrate– that the action that should be performed for the absent aspects to be actually accessed does not have to be itself available for these aspects to be perceptually present. What matters for the absent aspects to be present is not their de facto (i.e. effective) accessibility, but their de jure accessibility. To overcome those difficulties, I propose to rely on a ternary model of the role of action possibilities in perceptual awareness. This model builds on Husserl’s analysis of the role of perceptual circumstances in perception and connection between sense (Sinn) registering and horizontal intentionality.
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Notes
It is important to keep in mind that the term ‘aspect’ can be understood in different ways. When one speaks of the ‘aspect’ of something, one can refer to (a) how an object (or its properties) looks at a given instant, how it appears. In visual experience, the shape of an object has various aspects (or presents itself under various aspects) depending on how it is oriented with respect to one’s body. Husserl’s notion of profile (Abschattung) corresponds to this meaning of ‘aspect’. But the ‘aspects’ of something can also refer to (b) its properties, how it is made, e.g. having a back surface or being rigid. The same aspect (in this second sense) of something can look different, i.e. present different aspects (in the first sense), depending on the perceptual circumstances. When seeing the top of the stool from different points of view, this is the same aspect of the stool that I perceive, namely its top surface, but this aspect presents different aspects depending on the angle and distance.
I prefer to leave aside Noë’s claim about perceptual constancy (see e.g. Noë 2012, pp.17-18), to focus exclusively on the presence of unaccessed elements. In my opinion, there is a big difference between being aware that the same property (or part) can look different under different circumstances, and being aware that other properties (or parts) of the same object can be accessed. In the first case, you see the same thing under different aspects; in the second case, you see different aspects of the same thing. See Trigg (2013, p.309) and Drummond (The Enactive Approach and Perceptual Sense, http://faculty.fordham.edu/drummond/, pp.21-22) for pointing the same difficulty.
Note that Noë sometimes expresses this same idea in mereological terms, claiming that objects are perceived as wholes despite only a part of them is accessed at a given moment. See e.g. Noë (2004), p.60.
See Noë (2004), p.17 and p.86 for a similar claim.
This account of the paralytic’s visual experience putatively applies to cases of incomplete state locked-in syndrome (global paralysis except for head and sometimes finger movements) and classical state locked-in syndrome (only the capacity for vertical eye movements and blinking remains). Indeed, one can doubt that a structured visual experience is preserved in the case of complete state locked-in syndrome, where the paralysis is absolute and not even eye movements are possible. See Bauer et al. (1979) and Kyselo & Di Paolo (2015).
Note that this claim concerns more the ‘aspects’ understood as husserlian profiles (Abchattungen) than as properties of objects (see the first footnote for this distinction): I perceive the sound of engine as something that would sound louder and maybe a bit differently if I were nearer to the vehicle it comes from, but I do not really perceive this sound as something that possesses currently inaudible properties (i.e. inaudible from here). There are, however, other situations where one is aware that a sound has absent aspects in this latter sense. Let’s imagine that I play a Rolling Stones album on the record player, then go in the bathroom from where the sound is very muffled: I only hear the general melodic line, I cannot distinguish Mick Jagger’s voice, or perceive the different instruments. Yet I know that Mick Jagger is singing, and that I would hear clearly his voice if I were in the living room. These aspects of the sound are there, they currently exist, and they would be perceived if the perceptual conditions were different. My wife, who is right beside the record player, is currently hearing them.
“It is possible to see flashes of light in small units of time in which movements would be impossible.” (Noë, 2010)
The exact nature of what Husserl calls the ‘sense’ (Sinn) in his analysis of perceptual acts is a matter of debate but corresponds, broadly, to the ‘meaning’ with which is perceived that which is perceived, which includes above all, what it is that is perceived: what the object is presumptively taken to be when one experiences it. See Moran and Cohen (2012), p.233 and p.295 sqq. Note that in Husserl this operation of identification (i.e. ‘sense-giving’) can hardly be subordinated to the exercising of conceptual skills, at least if concepts are understood as representations of common traits shared by a given set of particulars (e.g. ‘chairs’) with an inherently linguistic character. Husserl generally makes a sharp distinction between sense (Sinn) and concept, even though senses can certainly be understood as proto-concepts. On this issue, see especially Moran (2012), p.50 sqq. and Van Mazijk (2014), p.108 sqq.
See especially Husserl (1900/1901 vol.2), LI n°6, §8 and Husserl (1954a), §8; on this issue, see also Mulligan (1995), chap. 5.2, p.186 sqq.
This claim of Husserl should not be misunderstood. As stressed above, profile (Abschattung) and aspect, in the sense of ‘property’, must be sharply distinguished. What is intended as existing now are objective moments of the object (‘aspects’ in the sense of properties), that can themselves be perceived in profiles, i.e. under certain ‘aspects’, provided certain perceptual conditions come to be fulfilled. It makes sense to say that other properties than the ones I perceive when I access the object from a given perspective now exist (the back side of the armchair is there when I see the armchair’s front side); but it doesn’t make sense to say that the aspects that would present these properties if they were perceived are something that currently exist: one can probably say that these aspects are actualizable, and that they would be actualized if the appropriate conditions of perception were fulfilled; but claiming that they currently exist is a misuse of language.
Husserl (1973b), <Empathy. Texts from 1909>, [pp.50-51]. Personal translation from the French edition (2001, pp.58-59).
Noë for instance explains: “it certainly seems reasonable to say that an absent friend can show up in one’s thoughts in very much the same way that the occluded portions of things we see can show up in perceptual consciousness.” (Noë, 2012, p.27) I am grateful to an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this point.
Doyon (2013) makes a similar point with the case of objects that no longer exist.
Noë’s position in Action in perception is not totally clear, however, for he claims at the same time that perceptual presence is maintained in –and despite of– paralysis because (i) the paralytic still has pertinent sensorimotor skills, i.e. he still can perform some movements (Noë 2004, p.12); and because (ii) the paralytic still has sensorimotor knowledge, i.e. knowledge of how sensory input would change if this movement were produced (Ibid.). Adams and Aizawa (2008) make a similar point against Noë (see chap. 9.3).
This model also shares several claims with the proposal of Schellenberg (2007, 2008), especially the claim that perceptual access to objects presupposes some knowledge of the dependency of the objects’ perceived features upon situational characteristics, but contrary to Schellenberg’s it has a phenomenological scope (it is merely accounting for what appears to the subject) and aims primarily to give action its due place in perception considering its counterfactual properties.
It is an open question whether this requirement should only apply to the perception of spatial objects, or whether it applies to any type of objects, including e.g. smells and flavours (see Gray and Tanesini 2010). One can certainly defend that smells and flavours present themselves with absent profiles, but it does not imply that this presentation is related to the exercise of one’s ability to move.
The term ‘functional dependencies’ is used by Husserl to refer to the if-then laws specifying the changes in the perceptual appearance of the object (e.g. its visual aspect) that should follow from our movements or from changes in the circumstances of perception (e.g. one’s distance to the object). They refer, broadly, to relations of covariation. See e.g. Smith (2003), p.216.
The content of these expectations depends on the conditions under which one has been used to access the object in the past (Husserl 1954a, §25, pp.122-123 [pp.137-138]). Some conditions also enjoy some sort of priority, in the sense that they ensure an ‘optimal’ perceptual access to the object (Husserl 1952, §18.b, pp.64-65 [pp.59-60]). I expect that this printed paper text will present the clearest and most readable visual aspect when hold at this particular distance before my eyes and in clear daylight. These optimal conditions are part of the expectations included in the inner horizon of objects. On this issue, see also Drummond (The Enactive Approach and Perceptual Sense, http://faculty.fordham.edu/drummond/, p.23).
These elements, which are also part of the inner horizon, enjoy exactly the same counterfactual status as action: in case they happen to be unavailable, it does not discard the possibility for the perceptual circumstances they would have realized to obtain; whether they are in fact available is beside the point.
Note that a different analysis of floaters could however be defended. It could be claimed that floaters are experienced as tridimensional objects –are not seen as mere ‘pictures’. In this scenario, one expects that floaters can rotate (this is a de jure possibility) and thus turn a different side to us.
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Declerck, G. What could have been done (but wasn’t). On the counterfactual status of action in Alva Noë’s theory of perception. Phenom Cogn Sci 16, 765–784 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-016-9474-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-016-9474-y