Abstract
According to the Matching Thesis (MT), the temporal structure of experience in time matches the apparent temporal structure of the objects and events represented in the content of perceptual experience. In this paper I critically address attempts to show the MT on the grounds that perceptual experience is transparent: that experiences themselves possess no introspectively discernible temporal structure apart from that of the apparent objects perceived. Pace such a Transparency Argument for the MT, I argue that considerations of perceptual transparency can in fact ground no view about the relationship between the temporal structure of perceptual experiences and the apparent temporal structure of objects and events that experience represents. I defend this outcome against a line of objection having to do with self-knowledge.
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Notes
The MT will be denied by any theorist who claims that the central problem confronting philosophical accounts of temporal experience is to explain how experience at a moment can represent temporal duration. This is the traditional view of Husserl (1905) and James (1890). More recently, the MT is denied by Grush (2007), Watzl (2013) and Lee (2014a).
Lee (2014b) considers but rejects a similar line of criticism of the Transparency Argument, deeming it too strong to say that we have no introspective access to the temporal structure of experience itself. I will attempt to answer this worry by designating an alternative object of introspective judgment. See Sect. 4 for discussion.
The transparency claim is frequently traced back to Moore (1903).
It is not necessary to consider whether all of experience is transparent in the indicated sense. For the purposes of the Transparency Argument, it is only necessary that some phenomenal properties are transparent. For this reason, much-discussed alleged counterexamples to the transparency claim (e.g. blurry vision) needn’t detain us.
Phillips seems to envision the Transparency Argument as a kind of ur-argument that points up the core problem with one anti-Matching view, the Specious Present Theory (SPT) (2010: 185). Here I will read it, hopefully without doing injustice to Phillips’ intentions, as a self-standing argument for the Matching Thesis.
My discussion will center on the Temporal Transparency claim. But one might ask about the plausibility of this Seems → Is claim. Is it really possible that introspective judgments about the temporal layout of experience cannot be systematically mistaken? I do not take a stand on this issue since I deem Seems → Is plausible once we designate an appropriate object of our experience-based introspective judgments. See Sect. 4 for discussion.
Of course, depending on her own views regarding introspection, the atomist may have independent reasons for rejecting Seems → Is. Still, if the atomist accepts my proposal in this section, she may not have to.
Two clarifications: (1) Temporal Diaphaneity is compatible with the Matching Thesis. By itself, Temporal Diaphaneity does nothing to preclude the possibility that the apparent temporal properties represented in the content of experience depend upon experience itself being temporally structured in a matching way. So, even if Temporal Diaphaneity is the correct characterization of introspection upon temporal experience, the Matching Theorist is not thereby defeated. The truth of the Temporal Diaphaneity thesis is problematic only for the Access Thesis and the Transparency Argument that relies on that thesis. (2) Second, Temporal Diaphaneity should be understood as neutral with respect to the substantial theories of perceptual phenomenal character in support of which transparency claims are typically leveraged. (I do not mean to suggest that Temporal Diaphaneity is not itself such a substantial claim.) To endorse Temporal Diaphaneity is not thereby to endorse intentionalism, naive realism, or even to disqualify qualia realism.
In particular, it should not be thought that Phillips and I disagree about what is available to be seen by the ‘inner eye.’ No such commitment to an ‘inner eye’ model of introspective sensory awareness is at issue. The issue is whether temporal experience of worldly temporal properties positions a thinker to render introspection-based judgments about the temporal layout of experience itself. Temporal Transparency returns a positive while Temporal Diaphaneity a negative answer to this question. I thank a reviewer for pointing out the need to clarify this.
Here is Tye’s statement of the strain I am discussing: “None of the qualities of which you are directly aware in seeing the various surfaces look to you to be qualities of your experience. You do not experience any of these qualities as qualities of your experience. For example, if blueness is one of the qualities and roundness another, you do not experience your experience as blue or round” (Tye 2002: 138). And here is Harman on the same point: “When Eloise sees a tree before her, the colors she experiences are all experienced as features of the tree and its surroundings. None of them are experienced as intrinsic features of her experience. Nor does she experience any features of anything as intrinsic features of her experience…When you see a tree, you do not experience any features as intrinsic features of your experience” Harman 1990: 39).
I do not think it matters for the argument whether introspection grants us access to discrete experiential episodes or instead continuous stretches of experience. Whichever interpretation we prefer, the proponent of the Matching Thesis will claim that there is structural matching between experience and the objects of experience. I thank a reviewer for bringing this to my attention.
For a view that rejects this distinction, see Dainton (2002). I thank a reviewer for bringing this to my attention.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for clarification here.
For instance, Hoerl (2018) also recognizes the main point that I have pressed here, viz. that Temporal Diaphaneity respects the leading phenomenological observation but lends no support for an introspection-based argument for the Matching Thesis. Hoerl suggests that the asymmetry between temporal and spatial experience is best explained by noticing that transparency claims are strongest when applied to temporal experience. He recommends we explain the asymmetry not because temporal experience flouts transparency, but because perceptual experience is not characterized by what he calls a ‘temporal viewpoint.’
This and the previous paragraph were helped by comments from two anonymous reviewers.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Carlos Montemayor and Geoffrey Lee for comments on this paper long ago. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for Philosophical Studies, whose comments greatly improved the paper.
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Heeney, M. Perceptual transparency and the temporal structure of experience. Philos Stud 178, 1829–1844 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01511-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01511-1