The failure to resolve satisfactorily epistemological issues surrounding the identification of different senses has led to questions being asked of the nature of the senses. This issue has been thrown into sharp focus by two starkly contrasting positions. The first is a realist position that draws on science and is based on the application of criteria. The second is an anti-realist position that adheres to commonsense conceptions and is partly motivated by the apparent failure of criterial approaches. In this paper (...) I attempt to mediate between the two views. (shrink)

Keeley has recently argued that the philosophical issue of how to analyse the concept of a sense can usefully be addressed by considering how scientists, and more specifically neuroethologists, classify the senses. After briefly outlining his proposal, which is based on the application of an ordered set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for modality differentiation, I argue, by way of two complementary counterexamples, that it fails to account fully for the way the senses are in fact individuated in (...) neuroethology and other relevant sciences. I suggest substantial modifications to Keeley. (shrink)

I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of (...) the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be. (shrink)

In this paper I am going to argue that two commonly held views about perceptual experience are incompatible and that one must be given up. The first is the view that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kind of experiences involved in perception; the second is the view.

The distinction we make between five different senses is a universal one.¹ Rather than speaking of generically perceiving something, we talk of perceiving in one of five determinate ways: we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste things. In distinguishing determinate ways of perceiving things what are we distinguishing between? What, in other words, is a sense modality?² An answer to this question must tell us what constitutes a sense modality and so needs to do more than simply describe differences in (...) virtue of which we can distinguish the perceptions of different senses. There are many such differences. (shrink)

Standard accounts of the senses attempt to answer the question how and why we count ?ve senses (the counting question); none of the standard accounts is satisfactory. Any adequate account of the senses must explain the signi?cance of the senses, that is, why distinguishing different senses matters. I provide such an explanation, and then use it as the basis for providing an account of the senses and answering the counting question.

We enjoy modes of sensory imagining corresponding to our five modes of perception - seeing, touching, hearing, smelling and tasting. An account of what constitutes these different modes of perseption needs also to explain what constitutes the corresponding modes of sensory perception. In this paper I argue that we can explain what distinguishes the different modes of sensory imagination in terms of their characteristic experiences without supposing that we must distinguish the senses in terms of the kinds of experience involved. (...) thus the fact that we enjoy different modes of sensory imagining poses no threat to someone who thinks that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kinds of mechanism or psychological capacities their exercise involves, and not by appeal to experience. (shrink)

Representationalist theories of sensory experience are often thought to be vulnerable to the existence of apparently non-representational differences between experiences in different sensory modalities. Seeing and hearing seem to differ in their qualia, quite apart from what they represent. The origin of this idea is perhaps Grice’s argument, in “Some Remarks on the Senses,” that the senses are distinguished by “introspectible character.” In this chapter I take the Representationalist side by putting forward an account of sense modalities which is consistent (...) with that view and yet pays due regard to the intuition behind Grice’s argument. Employing J.J. Gibson’s distinction between exploratory and performatory behaviour, I point to a proprioceptive element in perceptual experience, and identify this as crucial in any account of what makes a particular way of perceiving a sense modality. (shrink)

In chapter 7 of the third book of De anima Aristotle is concerned with the activity of the intellect (nous), which, here as elsewhere in the work, he explores by developing parallels with his account of sense-perception. In this chapter his principal interest appears to be the notion of judgement, and in particular intellectual judgements about the value of some item on a scale of good and bad. In this paper I shall argue, firstly that there is in fact a (...) coherent structure and focus to this chapter, which has therefore unjustly been criticized as disorganized or corrupt; and secondly that, in the light of such a coherent understanding of the chapter as a whole, we can resolve the difficulties in interpreting the central passage concerned with cross-modal perceptual judgements, and thereby also throw some further light on the related passages in the second chapter of De anima 3, which had been directly concerned with that topic. (shrink)

The second chapter of book three of the De anima marks the end of Aristotle's discussion of sense-perception. The chapter is a long one and apparently rambling in subject matter. It begins with a passage that is usually taken as a discussion of some sort of self-awareness, particularly awareness that one is perceiving, although such an interpretation raises some difficulties. This paper reconsiders the problems raised by supposing that the question discussed in the first paragraph is ‘how do we perceive (...) that we perceive?’, and suggests an alternative interpretation which would solve many of the difficulties and have the additional merit of restoring unity to the sequence of notes which go to make up the whole chapter. (shrink)

In his classic paper, "Some Remarks about the Senses," H. P. Grice argues that our intuitive distinction among perceptual modalities requires that the modalities be characterized in terms of the introspectible character of experience. I first show that Grice's argument provides support for the claim that perceptual experiences have qualia, namely, mental qualitative properties of experience which are what it's like to be conscious of perceived properties such as color. I then defend intentionalism about experience, which rejects qualia, by showing (...) that we need not appeal to differences in qualia in order to distinguish the senses. Rather, I claim that we can appeal to, among other factors, differences in the physical properties of physical objects which experience represents. (shrink)

There has been some recent optimism that addressing the question of how we distinguish sensory modalities will help us consider whether there are limits on a scientific understanding of perceptual states. For example, Block has suggested that the way we distinguish sensory modalities indicates that perceptual states have qualia which at least resist scientific characterization. At another extreme, Keeley argues that our common-sense way of distinguishing the senses in terms of qualitative properties is misguided, and offers a scientific eliminativism about (...) common-sense modalities which avoids appeal to qualitative properties altogether. I’ll argue contrary to Keeley that qualitative properties are necessary for distinguishing senses, and contrary to Block that our common-sense distinction doesn’t indicate that perceptual states have qualia. A non-qualitative characterization of perceptual states isn’t needed to avoid the potential limit on scientific understanding imposed by qualia. (shrink)

Seeing, hearing and touching are phenomenally different, even if we are detecting the same spatial properties with each sense. This presents a prima facie problem for intentionalism, the theory that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. The paper reviews some attempts to resolve this problem, and then looks in detail at Peter Carruthers' recent proposal that the senses can be individuated by the way in which they represent spatial properties and incorporate time. This proposal is shown to be ineffective in (...) distinguishing auditory from either visual or tactual perception, and substantial classes of visual and tactual perceptions are found that the posited spatial and temporal features fail to individuate. (shrink)