Abstract
What is the metaphysical nature of perceptual experience? What evidence does experience provide us with? These questions are typically addressed in isolation. In order to make progress in answering both questions, perceptual experience needs to be studied in an integrated manner. I develop a unified account of the phenomenological and epistemological role of perceptual experience, by arguing that sensory states provide perceptual evidence due to their metaphysical structure. More specifically, I argue that sensory states are individuated by the perceptual capacities employed and that there is an asymmetric dependence between their employment in perception and their employment in hallucination and illusion. Due to this asymmetric dependence, sensory states provide us with evidence.
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Notes
For recent accounts that are sensitive to both the nature of phenomenal character and the structure of perceptual justification, see Hellie (forthcoming) and Silins (forthcoming).
For views according to which hallucinating subjects stand in awareness or acquaintance relations to property-clusters, see Johnston (2004); for intentional objects, see Harman (1990), Lycan (1996); for propositions, see Russell (1913); for sense-data, see Robinson (1994); for qualia, see Block (2003); for Meinongian objects, see Parsons (1980).
I developed this view in my 2011.
The notion of property-instances in play is best illustrated with an example: when one sees two qualitatively identical white cups, the cups instantiate the same property, but the instances are distinct. When one suffers a hallucination as of a white cup, it seems to one that there is a white cup present, but since one is not perceptually related to the object that it seems to one is present, one is not perceptually related to any instance of whiteness.
The notion of capacity in play can but need not be understood in a teleological, phylogenetic, virtue epistemological, or ontogenetic manner. For such accounts, see Millikan (1989), Neander (1996), Sosa (1991, 2007), Zagzebski (1996), Greco (2001, 2010), and Burge (2003, 2010). As I will argue in the rest of this section, a sensory state provides phenomenal evidence insofar as it is individuated by capacities that are metaphysically and explanatorily dependent on the good case. As I will show, accepting this idea is compatible with accepting that such capacities may more often than not be used in a way that fails to produce accurate representations of the environment.
The inference from a claim about perceptual capacities to a counterfactual fails in finking, masking and similarly exotic cases. However, all the standard ways of fixing the disposition-to-counterfactual inference can be exploited for the capacity-to-counterfactual inference. See in particular Lewis (1997). Finding a formulation of the capacity-to-counterfactual inference that is indefeasible in light of all possible finking, masking, and similarly exotic cases would be a project of its own. Therefore, I will here work on the assumption that no such exotic cases obtain. This assumption is independently plausible.
For a detailed analysis of how this view can account for hallucinations of uninstantiated properties, the difference between the sensory character of perceptual experience and thought, phenomena such as blurriness and after-images, and other difficult cases, see my 2011.
Now, does the existence of a perceptual capacity require the existence of at least one successful employment of that capacity? While it is possible to possess such a capacity without having been perceptually related to any particulars of the type that the capacity singles out in the good case, it is plausible that any such perceptual capacity is grounded in perception insofar as the existence of the capacity depends on perceptions of the particulars that the capacity singles out. If this is right, then it follows that there cannot exist any such perceptual capacity that is not grounded in perception. However, it does not follow from this that an individual subject must have had perceptions of the particulars that the capacity singles out to possess the relevant capacity. It follows only that there can exist a perceptual capacity that functions to single out a type of particular, only if a particular of that type has been perceived by someone, somewhere. The argument for the metaphysical priority of the good over the bad case does not depend on resolving the question of whether the existence of a perceptual capacity requires the existence of at least one successful application by someone, somewhere. However, depending on what stance one takes on this issue one must either reject or accept the metaphysical possibility of the scenario of a world of brains in a vat that can hallucinate. Regardless of what stance one takes on this issue, the suggested view allows that a brain in a vat in our world could have hallucinations and so phenomenal evidence.
Can Swampman possess perceptual capacities? Swampman is a being that came into existence through a bolt of lightning and so has no causal history (Davidson 1987). If perceptual capacities are understood in an evolutionary way, then Swampman could not possess the capacities in play. However, if they are understood in a non-evolutionary way, then Swampman could possess the relevant capacities. After all, no past experiences are necessary to possess such capacities. The condition for their possession is understood counterfactually: if one possess the capacity to single out red, then one would be able to single out an instance of red, were on related to such an instance. For present purposes, we can remain neutral on whether capacities are understood in an evolutionary or a non-evolutionary sense.
See Ayer (1972), Kelly (2003, 2007), Neta (2003, 2008), Weatherson (2005), and Pryor (forthcoming) for discussions of this property of evidence. An interesting question is what the connection is between the strength of the evidence we have for a proposition and our confidence in that proposition. For discussion of the relation between having evidence for p and having confidence in p, see Neta (2003, 2008) and Silins (2005). Since our concern here is restricted to the questions of what evidence perceptual experience provides us with and why it is rational to heed it, we can bracket this issue for the purposes of this paper. I reserve a detailed discussion of how the account developed here connects to questions about confidence for a future paper.
This objection is due to Alex Byrne.
Now, what if we assume for the sake of argument both that beliefs are a kind of sensory state and that the capacities that determine beliefs are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case? On these two controversial assumptions, it is plausible that beliefs provide us with evidence. So on these assumptions, the argument provided for why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses generalizes to beliefs. It does not however over-generalize and so would not be a problem for the developed view, since beliefs are now understood to have many of the fundamental properties of perceptual states.
For a defense of the view that perception provides us with both phenomenal and factive evidence, see my forthcoming.
See Pryor (2001, pp. 105–108) for useful distinctions between ways of understanding the access requirement on our evidence and more generally different forms of epistemic internalism.
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Schellenberg, S. The epistemic force of perceptual experience. Philos Stud 170, 87–100 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0167-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0167-x