Abstract
Seeing one’s laptop to be missing, hearing silence and smelling fresh air; these are all examples of perceptual experiences of absences. In this paper I discuss an example of absence perception in the tactual sense modality, that of tactually perceiving a tooth to be absent in one’s mouth, following its extraction. Various features of the example challenge two recently-developed theories of absence perception: Farennikova’s memory-perception mismatch theory and Martin and Dockic’s meta-cognitive theory. I speculate that the mechanism underlying the experience is a body schema that has failed to update itself.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I am grateful to one of the journal’s anonymous referees for drawing my attention to Price’s discussion and for highlighting to me the possible connection between after-images and experiences of absence.
Of course, there might be other cases of perceiving the absence of one’s own body part that are explained by Farennikova’s model. One might see the absence of one’s middle finger, following its amputation, say. Such an experience is plausibly explained by the perception of a deviant pattern, whereas Dentist need not be. It would still remain open, however, whether this explanation is better than one which references a body schema.
I am grateful to one of the journal’s anonymous referees for prompting me to think about this matter.
Another anonymous referee for this journal asks whether my view entails that a brain in a vat could have an experience of absence. My answer is ‘yes.’ One might find this result odd. For a brain in a vat, all objects are absent. So do I (and others in the debate) commit to brains in vats as having veridical experiences? Again, my answer is ‘yes.’ But this result is not so odd if one keeps matters of perceptual veridicality distinct from matters of perceptual contact with one’s environment. On my view, the absence experiences of the brain in the vat are akin to veridical hallucination. The brain in the vat perceives objects to be absent which really are absent, hence such experiences are veridical. But the brain in the vat’s absence experiences fail to involve the world itself in the relevant way that should cause us concern. For instance, qua brain in a vat, it fails to be in perceptual contact with the region of space between two teeth. This is the result we should want.
For instance, suppose you reach into your bag to pull out your wallet (which you expected to be there), and you feel nothing but the inside of the bag.
References
Campbell, J. 2002. Reference and Consciousness. OUP.
Cavedon-Taylor, D. 2015. Kind properties and the metaphysics of perception: towards impure relationalism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96(4): 487–509.
Farennikova, A. 2013. Seeing absence. Philosophical Studies 166(3): 429–454.
Farennikova, A. 2015. Perception of absence and penetration from experience. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6(4): 621–640.
Holmes, N. & Spence, C. 2006. “Beyond the body schema: visual, prosthetic, and technological contributions to bodily perception and awareness.” In G. Knoblich, I. Thornton, M. Grosjean & M. Shiffrar (eds.), Human Body Perception From the Inside Out. Oxford University Press. 15–64.
Martin, M. 2004. The limits of self-Awareness. Philosophical Studies 120(1–3): 37–89.
Martin, J.-R., and J. Dokic. 2013. Seeing absence or absence of seeing? Thought 2(2): 117–125.
O’Shaughnessy, B. 2000. Consciousness and the World. OUP.
Phillips, I. 2013. Afterimages and sensation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87(2): 417–453.
Price, H.H. 1932. Perception. Methuen.
Siegel, S. 2006. “Which properties are represented in perception?” In T. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.
Travis, C. 2004. The silence of the senses. Mind 113(449): 57–94.
Turker, K., P. Yeo, and S. Gandevia. 2005. Perceptual distortion of face by local anaesthesia of the human lips and teeth. Experimental Brain Research 165(1): 37–43.
Acknowledgments
Parts of this paper were presented, in slightly different form, to an audience at the Institute of Philosophy in London. Thanks also to Roberto Casati, Jérôme Dokic, Roy Sorensen and Anna Farennikova for illuminating discussions of absence perception. Finally, this paper was improved by the written comments of Bence Nanay, Laura Gow and two of the journal’s anonymous referees. This research was funded by FWO Odysseus grant G.0020.12 N. The author declares that they have no further potential conflict of interest.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
This research is theoretical and involves no experiments or research on any kind of animal, human or non-human. No data have been collected by the author.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cavedon-Taylor, D. Touching Voids: On the Varieties of Absence Perception. Rev.Phil.Psych. 8, 355–366 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0302-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0302-7