Abstract
I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the second but not the first desideratum. I argue that to satisfy both desiderata perceptual experience is best conceived of as fundamentally both relational and representational. I develop a view of perceptual experience that synthesizes the virtues of relationalism and representationalism, by arguing that perceptual content is constituted by potentially gappy de re modes of presentation.
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Notes
For recent articulations of this view, see Campbell 2002.
In the interest of generality, I will talk of the content of experience as having accuracy conditions rather than truth conditions. Only if the content of experience is understood as having a propositional structure, will it have truth conditions.
I will elaborate on different metaphysical implications of this thesis shortly.
Siegel (2006) distinguishes between simple and complex phenomenology. Phenomenology is simple if it reveals only the objects and properties that the subject is aware of. Phenomenology is complex if it reveals also to the subject that she is perceptually (or causally) related to these objects and properties. Searle (1983) and Siegel (2006) argue that the phenomenology of experience is complex. Chalmers (2006a, p. 76) argues that although introspection may exhibit complex phenomenology, perceptual experience itself exhibits only simple phenomenology (at least in the case of perception of colors). My argument is neutral on whether phenomenology is simple or complex. For the sake of definiteness, I will use “phenomenological particularity” in a way that is committed to simple phenomenology. If phenomenology is complex, then the specification of phenomenological particularity must be reformulated as follows: a mental state instantiates phenomenological particularity if and only if it seems to the subject that she is perceptually (or causally) related to a particular object or a particular instance of a property. As on the simple view, the particularity is in the scope of how things seem to the subject.
For a defense of situation-dependent properties, see my 2008.
McGinn (1982) and Millar (1991) argue for a similar thesis. This view is subject to well-known counterexamples, which I will not rehearse here. They have been discussed in detail by Soteriou (2000) and Tye (2007) by expanding on Grice’s (1961) discussion of so-called “veridical hallucinations”. Searle (1983) aims to account for particularity within the framework of existentially quantified contents by building causal conditions into the existential contents. In short, the idea is that a descriptive condition picks out an object as the cause of the experience. By doing so, Searle builds the causal relation to particular objects into the phenomenology of the experience. Thereby, he combines the phenomenological and content versions of the metaphysical thesis that the object is a constituent of the experience. However, this solution arguably does not solve the problem and is at odds with the phenomenology of experience. As I will discuss in §2, arguing that the particular object to which the subject is causally related is reflected in the phenomenology has the counterintuitive consequence that perceptual experiences of numerically distinct but qualitatively indistinguishable objects differ with regard to their phenomenology.
Campbell (2002) calls his view the “relational view”, Martin (2002) calls his “naïve realism”, while Brewer (2007) calls his the “object view”. I will refer to the view as “austere relationalism” since the most distinctive features of the view are arguably the central role of relations between perceiving subjects and the world as well as its austerity: the view is austere insofar as it denies that experience has any substantive representational component.
This summary does not do justice to the subtleties of austere relationalism. For a detailed discussion of the view, see my forthcoming-a. Naturally, different austere relationalists emphasize different ones of these four objections. Brewer emphasizes the first objection, Campbell emphasizes the second and third objection, Martin emphasizes the third objection, and Travis emphasizes the fourth objection.
The view could also be formulated as a matter of a subject standing in an awareness relation to a property-instance, a scene, an event, or alternatively an event in which such a relation obtains. As stated earlier, I will focus on the case of perceiving objects.
The metaphysical thesis that perception and hallucination share no common element was first articulated by McDowell (1982).
For discussion, see my forthcoming-b.
Assuming that there is such an unrepeatable aspect of phenomenology, it is not obvious why it must be due to the particular object, rather than the particular event in which the particular object is perceived. On a sufficiently holistic view of experience, every experience may be understood as necessarily phenomenally distinct insofar as it is a distinct and unique event of experiencing. On such a holistic view of experience, one could say that the phenomenology of every experience is distinct regardless of the relation to objects. So one could hold that an aspect of phenomenology is unrepeatable while rejecting the thesis that phenomenology instantiates relational particularity.
For a detailed recent discussion, see Haddock and Macpherson 2008.
For a classical elaboration of this worry, see Williams 1953.
For a detailed discussion of the problems of sensory or cognitive awareness relations to (uninstantiated) properties and more generally the controversial metaphysical and phenomenological commitments of Russellianism about perceptual content, see my forthcoming-b.
Depending on how one understands the nature of properties that subjects experience, one might argue alternatively that the content of hallucination is
$$ \left({{\text{e}}_{\text{h}}} \right)^{\prime} < {\text{MOP}}(\_\_),{\text{MOP}}\left({\text{P}} \right)> $$For the purposes of this paper, we can remain neutral on these two options. As I argue in my forthcoming-b, (eh) is plausible on the assumption that perceiving subjects are related to property-instances, while hallucinating subjects are not related to property-instances since they are not related to the relevant object that could be instantiating the properties.
Peacocke (1981), Bach (1987/1994), and Recanati (1993) develop different ways of understanding de re modes of presentation that are not fully object-dependent. The understanding of perceptual content developed here builds on their work as well as the work of so-called latitudinarians, according to which de re attitudes (or contents) are a special case of de dicto attitudes (or contents); see in particular Sosa 1970, 1995 and Jeshion 2002.
For an earlier version of this view, see my 2006. Strictly speaking the view should be called the Fregean potentially gappy content view or the Fregean potentially gappy object-related de re mode of presentation view. However for reasons of elegance, I will use the shorter label. Burge has been read as defending a gappy content view. However, as Burge writes of his view “I have heard interpretations … according to which there is a ‘hole’ in the representational aspects of the proposition, where the hole corresponds to the object (which completes the proposition). I regard these interpretations as rather silly” (1977/2007, p. 75). Burge argues that there are demonstrative elements in the content of experience that are in place regardless of whether they refer to the object of experience. As he puts it “I do not think that a physical re in the empirical world … is itself ‘part of’ the belief. … In my view, the Intentional side of a belief is its only side. In many cases, in my view, a belief that is in fact de re might not have been successfully referential (could have failed to be de re) and still would have remained the same belief. Moreover, the belief itself can always be individuated, or completely characterized, in terms of the Intentional content” (1991, p. 209). The way I am using the terms, what Burge refers to as de re would be more aptly labeled de dicto. More importantly, insofar as on Burge’s view the intentional content of two experiences can be the very same regardless of the environment, the content does not reflect relational particularity.
As noted above, the content of hallucination could alternatively be understood as having the following content:
$$ \left({{\text{g}}_{\text{h}}} \right)^{\prime} < {\text{MOP}}_{\text{r}} (\_\_),{\text{MOP}}_{\text{r}} \left({\text{P}} \right)> $$For a developed view of concepts as analyzed in terms of their possession conditions that in turn are analyzed in terms of grounding abilities, see Peacocke 1992 and Sosa 1993. To avoid terminological confusion, any such notion of concepts must be distinguished from any notion on which concepts are mental representations (e.g. Fodor 1975, 1998; Jackendoff 1987; Laurence and Margolis 1999; Carruthers 2000; Prinz 2002) or prototypes (e.g. Rosch 1978; Smith and Medin 1981).
In the context of this paper, I will assume that perceptual content is at least in part conceptually structured. The view of content I defend can be modified to include nonconceptual content while leaving the basic structure intact. Showing just how this can be done will require a paper of its own. Even if content is conceptually structured, the state of experience can be understood to be nonconceptual insofar as it is possible to be in the state with content C without having the ability to articulate the concepts that constitute C. So on the defended view, perceptual experience can be understood to be nonconceptual on one common understanding of the notion. For a defense of the (non)conceptual state/(non)conceptual content distinction, see Heck 2000, 484f. For a critical discussion of the thesis that perceptual content is conceptually structured, see Peacocke 1994.
The idea that one can fail to be able to articulate the content of one’s experience despite possessing the concepts that constitute this content is best explained by example. Given the notion of concept in play it is unproblematic to attribute basic spatial concepts to cats insofar as cats have the ability to distinguish for instance between one object being above rather than below a second object or one object being to one rather than the other side of a second object. If this is right, then it is plausible to say that cats possess such basic spatial concepts despite the fact that they do not have the tools to articulate the content of their perceptions. Similarly, it is plausible that we possess perceptual demonstrative concepts that ground our ability to pick out features of our environment, such as the particular vivid and varied color play of a lush forest, without having the tools to fully articulate the content of our perception when we see such a lush forest.
It will be helpful to distinguish this way of thinking about perceptual content from Peacocke’s early view of content (1981, in particular p. 189f. and p. 197). According to Peacocke, there is no token mode of presentation if there is no reference: token modes of presentation are fully object-dependent. So on his view, hallucinatory mental states would be characterized only by a content type, not by a content token. In contrast, I have argued that hallucinating subjects are in mental states with a token content, but this token content is defective insofar as it is gappy. So on my view, token contents are not necessarily object-dependent. Only a part of the token content of a successful perceptual experience is object-dependent.
For a dissenting view of the truth-value of gappy propositions, see Everett 2003.
For a detailed discussion of this set of issues, see my forthcoming-b. An alternative way to account for a hallucination of supersaturated red within the framework provided is to analyze it as a result of employing the concept of red, while extrapolating from perceptions of red with regular levels of saturatedness.
For a recent discussion, see Loar 2003. Loar argues that a view on which perception is construed as a relation to an intentional object is phenomenally implausible. For a discussion of the skeptical problems that ensue if the content of mental states is understood as constituted by intentional objects or relations to intentional objects, see for instance Brewer 1999.
To deny that the content can be identified with such an ordered pair is not to deny that the content can be analyzed into two layers: one of which is object-dependent, the other of which is object-independent. However, the ability to analyze A in terms of B, does not imply that A is identified with B. It would lead well beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this set of issues in detail here. For a defense of the thesis that de re contents cannot be reduced to de dicto contents and referents, see Evans 1981. For a recent critical discussion of two-dimensional semantics, see for instance Speaks 2009.
It should be noted that a defender of the multiple contents view could understand one of the layers of content as potentially gappy and thus synthesize the gappy content view with the multiple contents view. Arguably, a gappy multiple contents view (that is, a view on which one layer of content is potentially gappy) would face the very same problems as a simple multiple contents view (that is, a view on which no layer of content is gappy).
Alternatively, one could argue that only part of phenomenology is identified with employing concepts in a sensory mode so as to leave room for aspects of phenomenology—such as blurriness and afterimages—that do not supervene on content. For a recent defense of the view that such aspects of phenomenology are best not understood as supervening on content, see Peacocke 2008.
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Acknowledgements
This article has a long history and so I am indebted to an unusual amount of people. I thank Keith Allen, Kent Bach, Alex Byrne, Herman Cappelen, David Chalmers, Bill Fish, Jim John, Heather Logue, Gurpreet Rattan, Jonathan Schaffer, Susanna Siegel, Daniel Stoljar, Crispin Wright, and Wayne Wu for discussions and comments on a draft of this paper. Particular thanks are due to John Campbell and Terry Horgan who both commented on this paper at a refereed symposium at the APA Pacific Division meeting 2008. I am grateful to the audience at that event for suggestions and questions as well as audiences at the Arché Research Centre at the University of St. Andrews, NYU, Rutgers University, UC Riverside, University of Leeds, Monash University, Université de Fribourg, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, and Yale as well as audiences at the Australasian Association for Philosophy Meeting 2007, the Bled Epistemology Conference, the Russell IV Conference, the Tucson Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference 2008, and the ANU workshop on the Relational and Representational Character of Perceptual Experience. The early versions of this paper were presented under the title “Perceptual Content, Representations, Relations”. This paper is a development of the central chapter of my dissertation. I thank Robert Brandom, Anil Gupta, John McDowell, and Stephen Engstrom for their help with that project.
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Schellenberg, S. The particularity and phenomenology of perceptual experience. Philos Stud 149, 19–48 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9540-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9540-1