The overall aim of this two-part article is to provide a supplement to ability theories of practice in terms of a defense of the following thesis: In situations of social interaction, individuals’ ability to act appropriately sometimes depends on their exercise of the ability directly to perceive normative states. In this Part I, I introduce ability theories of practice and motivate my thesis. Furthermore, I offer an analysis of normative states as response-dependent properties. Last, I work out and defend an (...) account of direct perception that is compatible with individuals being able directly to perceive various everyday phenomena. Drawing on this account, I show in part II, that normative states are sometimes directly perceptible too. (shrink)

It is an apparent truism about visual perception that we can see only what is visible to us. It is also frequently accepted that visual perception is dynamic: our visual experiences are extended through, and can evolve over time. I argue that taking the dynamism of visual experience seriously renders certain simplistic interpretations of the first claim, that a subject at a given time can see only what is visible to her at that time, false: we can be meaningfully said (...) to see invisible objects. This counterintuitive result in turn focuses our attention on the relationship between perception and memory. I show that it is difficult to draw a clear or simple distinction between the two. Memory and perception rely on, and blend with, one another. Together, these claims point us away from understanding visual perception as a simple reflection of the environment, and instead as closer to a process of dynamic modelling that draws together occurrent stimulation and stored information. (shrink)

It seems possible to see a star that no longer exists. Yet it also seems right to say that what no longer exists cannot be seen. We therefore face a puzzle, the traditional answer to which involves abandoning naïve realism in favour of a sense datum view. In this article, however, I offer a novel exploration of the puzzle within a naïve realist framework. As will emerge, the best option for naïve realists is to embrace an eternalist view of time, (...) and claim that in the relevant case, one sees a still existent star‐stage located somewhere in the distant past. (shrink)

Relationalists about episodic memory must endorse a disjunctivist theory of memory-experience according to which cases of genuine memory and cases of total confabulation involve distinct kinds of mental event with different natures. This paper is concerned with a pair of arguments against this view, which are analogues of the ‘causal argument’ and the ‘screening off argument’ that have been pressed in recent literature against relationalist (and hence disjunctivist) theories of perception. The central claim to be advanced is that to deal (...) with these two arguments, memory disjunctivists both can and should draw on resources that are standardly appealed to by rival common factor theories of episodic memory, and, in particular, to the idea that genuine memories and merely apparent ones are to be distinguished, at least in part, in terms of the distinctive ways in which they are caused. On the proposed view, there are substantive causal constraints associated both with cases of genuine memory and with cases of mere confabulation. The resulting theory thus tells us something important about the nature both of genuine memories and of mere confabulations, namely, that such experiences must be caused in certain distinctive ways and cannot occur except as the result of a distinctive sort of causal process. In addition, the theory enables the disjunctivist to offer a unified response to an important pair of arguments against her view. (shrink)

Disjunctivists maintain that perceptual experiences and hallucinatory experiences are distinct kinds of event with different metaphysical natures. Moreover, given their view about the nature of perceptual cases, disjunctivists must deny that the perceptual kind of experience can occur during hallucination. However, it is widely held that disjunctivists must grant the converse claim, to the effect that the hallucinatory kind of experience occurs even during perception. This paper challenges that thought. As we will see, the argument for thinking that the hallucinatory (...) kind of experience is present even in cases of perception depends on prior acceptance of a ‘non-demanding’ conception of hallucination, on which all it takes to produce an hallucinatory experience is to induce in the subject the right kind of neurological condition. On the view developed here, by contrast, there are substantive causal conditions, going beyond the mere occurrence of the right kind of neurological state, that must be met if an experience of the hallucinatory kind is to occur. By drawing on this view, I argue, disjunctivists can deny that the kind of experience involved in hallucination ever occurs during perception. This then allows disjunctivists to avoid certain important problems they would otherwise face. It also leaves them with considerably more freedom when it comes to theorising about the nature of hallucinatory experience. (shrink)

Alan Millar; V*—The Idea of Experience, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 75–90, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

Naïve realism (also called ‘relationalism’ or ‘object view’) is becoming increasingly popular, but the specific outline of its commitments remains often underspecified by proponents and misunderstood by critics. Naïve realism is associated with two claims, both concerning genuine, veridical perceptual experience (where this excludes hallucinations). Constitutive Claim (CC): The phenomenal character of perception is (partly) constituted by the mind-independent objects in one’s surrounding and their properties. Relational Claim (RC): Perception is a relation to mind-independent objects in the environment and their (...) properties. Some philosophers use the two claims interchangeably while talking about naïve realism, while others use only one or the other, although they do not explicitly discuss if the other claim is also a core commitment of naïve realism, or if naïve realism can be held without the other claim. This raises the question of how RC and CC relate to one another, together with the most pressing question of what each claim ultimately commits one to. After discussing the shortcomings of alternative interpretations, I argue that naïve realism should be understood as committed to, first and foremost, RC. This should be understood as a claim about the phenomenal character of perception, rather than about its nature, structure or essence (whatever that means). CC, on the other hand, should be understood as a corollary of RC. This doesn’t only offer a better characterisation of how naïve realists understand phenomenal character: it also helps us understand how we can simultaneously claim that the object of perception is a constitutive element of perception, while also allowing for it to play a causal role in determining perception. (shrink)

Increasingly prominent in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception, Intentionalism holds that sensory experience is inherently intentional, where to be intentional is to be about, or directed on, something. This article explores Intentionalism's prospects as a viable ontological and epistemological alternative to the traditional trinity of theories of sensory experience: the Sense-Datum Theory, the Adverbial Theory, and the Theory of Appearing.

Perception is a central means by which we come to represent and be aware of particulars in the world. I argue that an adequate account of perception must distinguish between what one perceives and what one's perceptual experience is of or about. Through capacities for visual completion, one can be visually aware of particular parts of a scene that one nevertheless does not see. Seeing corresponds to a basic, but not exhaustive, way in which one can be visually aware of (...) an item. I discuss how the relation between seeing and visual awareness should be explicated within a representational account of the mind. Visual awareness of an item involves a primitive kind of reference: one is visually aware of an item when one's visual perceptual state succeeds in referring to that particular item and functions to represent it accurately. Seeing, by contrast, requires more than successful visual reference. Seeing depends additionally on meta-semantic facts about how visual reference happens to be fixed. The notions of seeing and of visual reference are both indispensable to an account of perception, but they are to be characterized at different levels of representational explanation. (shrink)

I argue that intentional psychology does not stand in need of vindication by a lower-level implementation theory from cognitive science, in particular the representational theory of mind (RTM), as most famously Jerry Fodor has argued. The stance of the paper is novel in that I claim this holds even if one, in line with Fodor, views intentional psychology as an empirical theory, and its theoretical posits as as real as those of other sciences. I consider four metaphysical arguments for the (...) idea that intentional psychological states, such as beliefs, must be seen as requiring in-the-head mental representations for us to be able to understand their characteristic causal powers and argue that none of them validly generate their desired conclusions. I go on to argue that RTM, or some computational version thereof, is not motivated by appeal to the nature of cognitive science research either. I conclude that intentional psychology, though an empirical theory, is autonomous from details of lower level mechanism in a way that renders RTM unwarranted. (shrink)

According to proponents of relational direct realism, veridical perceptual experiences are irreducibly relational mental states that include as constituents perceived physical objects or intrinsic aspects of them. One consequence of the theory is the rejection of the causal theory of perception. This paper defends the relational theory against several objections recently developed by Paul Coates. He argues that the required experiential relation is incoherent and unmotivated. The argument that it is incoherent commits a fallacy. In reply to the argument that (...) it is unmotivated, I suggest that the relational theorist's appeal to transparency provides sufficient motive and, when properly clarified, defeasibly justifies the theory as well. Coates also argues that rejection of the causal theory leaves relational theorists without any way of determining which object is perceived or of accommodating our scientific understanding of perceptual experiences as causally dependent on physical objects. I reply that relational theorists are able to provide the required explanations and discuss how the relational theory is consistent with this scientific understanding of perceptual experience. (shrink)

How are we to account for the epistemic contribution of our perceptual experiences to the reasonableness of our perceptual beliefs? It is well known that a conception heavily influenced by Cartesian thinking has it that experiences do not enable the experiencing subject to have direct epistemic contact with the external world; rather, they are regarded as openness to a kind of private inner realm that is interposed between the subject and the world. It turns out that if one wants to (...) insist that perceptual experiences provide epistemic reasons for perceptual beliefs about the external world as we pre-reflectively take it to be, then one should find a way of avoiding Cartesianism. Here are the two main aims of this paper: firstly, identify the premise that is doing the heavy-lifting work in the Cartesian thinking; and, secondly, formulate an adequate way of denying that premise. The adequacy I claim for my formulation of a way of denying the premise will roughly amount to this: the way I offer is not as susceptible to Cartesian traps as other apparently available ways of denying the premise are. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed new light on certain philosophical theories of perceptual experience by examining the semantics of perceptual ascriptions such as “Jones sees an apple.” I start with the assumption, recently defended elsewhere, that perceptual ascriptions lend themselves to intensional readings. In the first part of the paper, I defend three theses regarding such readings: I) intensional readings of perceptual ascriptions ascribe phenomenal properties, II) perceptual verbs are not ambiguous between intensional and extensional readings, and III) intensional perceptual (...) ascriptions have a relational form. The second part of the paper describes the implications of I-III for theories of perceptual experience. I argue that I-III support and reconcile the three main views of perceptual experience, relationalism, disjunctivism, and representationalism. However, I-III leave open at least one important point of contention: particularism, the view that we experience external objects. I conclude by exploring the implications of accepting or denying particularism given I-III. (shrink)

Naïve realists traditionally reject the time lag argument by replying that we can be in a direct visual perceptual relation to temporally distant facts or objects. I first show that this answer entails that some visual perceptions—i.e., those that are direct relation between us and an external material object that has visually changed, or ceased to exist, during the time lag—should also count as illusions and hallucinations, respectively. I then examine the possible attempts by the naïve realist to tell such (...) perceptions apart from illusions and hallucinations, and after showing the inadequacy of the answers relying on a mere counterfactual or causal criterion, I explain why the problem is solved by introducing a view of visual perception as temporally extended into the past of objects and, in particular, as consisting in the whole causal chain of events or states of affairs going from external material objectxto subjectS. But this solution is not immune from defects for the naïve realist. I show that this view of perception raises a number of significant concerns, hence leaving the issue of the time lag problem still open for naïve realism. (shrink)

The paper explicates and defends a direct realist view of episodic memory as pastperception, on the model of the more prominent direct realism about perception. First, a number of extant allegedly direct realist accounts are critically assessed, then the slogan that memory is past-perception is explained, defended against objections, and compared to extant rival views. Consequently, it is argued that direct realism about memory is a coherent and defensible view, and an attractive alternative to both the mainstream causal theories and (...) the post-causal and constructivist views. (shrink)

This text aims at presenting a general characterization of the act of perceiving a particular object, in a framework in which perception is conceived of as a mental and cognitive faculty having specific functions that other faculties such as imagination and memory do not possess. I introduce the problem of determining the occurrence of singular perception of a physical object, as opposed to the occurrence of other mental states or attitudes. I propose that clarifying this occurrence problem requires making explicit (...) the conditions of perceptual competence/faculty so as to explain the occurrence of each perceptual performance on the basis of the use of this competence. I argue then for a direct relational model according to which the singular perception of an object depends on a competence of connecting the perceiver directly with each target object. This model is compatible with a disjunctive approach to perception according to which each particular experience of an object corresponds either to a direct perceptual relation with this object or to the illusion of having the experience of this object. The arguments in favour of this relational model rest on the idea that the faculty of perception grounds the capacity to demonstratively identify physical objects. (shrink)

In this paper I will try to outline a Metaphysics of Perception that takes for granted one of the central thesis of the metaphysical doctrine called Indirect Realism. Firstly, I will introduce the central thesis of Indirect Realism and then a special version of the Causal Theory of Perception that modifies in some fundamental respect one of the most influential version of Causal Theory of Perception designed by William Child.

In this paper, I have outlined an original Metaphysics of Perception which takes into consideration some of the most common views about perception in the contemporary debate. Then I will look at the consequences of this metaphysics about our perception of others and what we know about them. In the third section, I suggest how to make sense of certain neuroscientific discoveries about social perception and social cognition. In the conclusion, I recap what has been done to say that others (...) are what we can know after all. (shrink)

Relationalism claims that the phenomenal character of perception is constituted by the obtaining of a non-representational psychological relation to mind-independent objects. Although relationalism provides what seems to be the most straightforward and intuitive account of how experience strikes us introspectively, it is very often believed that the argument from hallucination shows that the view is untenable. The aim of this thesis is to defend relationalism against the argument from hallucination. The argument claims that the phenomenal character of hallucination and perception (...) deserves the same account, and that relationalism cannot be true for hallucinations, therefore relationalism must be rejected. This argument relies on the Indiscriminability Principle, the claim that two experiences that are introspectively indiscriminable from each other have the same phenomenal character. Before assessing the plausibility of this principle, I first consider and dismiss versions of the argument which wouldn’t depend on IND. Although widely accepted, no satisfactory support for IND has been presented yet. In this thesis I argue that defending IND requires that we understand the notion of ‘indiscriminability’ employed in IND in an impersonal sense. I then identify what underwrites IND: the intuition that, in virtue of its superficiality, the nature of a phenomenal character must be accessible through introspection, together with the claim that it is not possible to deny IND without denying the superficiality of phenomenal characters too. I argue that the relationalist can deny IND while preserving the superficiality of phenomenal characters. This can be done by adopting a negative view of hallucination and an account of introspection whereby the phenomenal character doesn’t exist independently of one’s introspective awareness of it and where having introspective access to our experience depends on our perceptual access to the world. (shrink)

I offer a novel defence of radically externalist theories of perception, via a strikingly spare and broadly physicalist metaphysics. The core, motivating claim is what I call a natural view of perception, according to which perception involves direct awareness of our environment, such that the phenomenology of experience consists of the worldly things perceived, as they appear to the perspective of the subject. To underpin this natural view, I propose a simple metaphysical picture of perception, which identifies the perceptual experience (...) with the relation of awareness holding between subject and object, a relation that can be described in familiar physical terms as a causal process involving the thing perceived and the perceiver. Distinctively, the simple metaphysical picture has no place for the notion of ‘experiences’ understood as distinctively ‘mental’ states or events internal or otherwise belonging to the subject. Although there is some limited precedent for the simple metaphysical picture of perception, I offer the first detailed argument for its role in underpinning the natural view. The thesis offers new and detailed arguments to show that the simple metaphysical picture can not only account for normal perceptual experiences, but can also accommodate and explain other forms of sensory experience that have widely been considered to undermine the natural view of perception. These ‘problem’ cases include perceptual illusion, hallucination, and the role of memory and beliefs in influencing how things appear perceptually. In all of these cases, the simple metaphysical picture accounts for the phenomenology of the experience purely in terms of awareness of worldly objects, albeit in some cases objects that are not currently present in the subject’s environment. The simple metaphysical picture thus promises to explain not just perceptual experience but phenomenal consciousness more generally. The natural view is explicitly a commitment of some varieties of naïve realism, but I argue that the two theses come apart. For one thing, the simple metaphysical picture offers a solution to hallucination and other ‘problem’ cases quite different to the solutions offered by naïve realists. However, the most striking and novel claim advanced here is that the natural view can be defended without a commitment to realism. In this regard, I cite evidence for the subject-relativity or experience-dependence of certain perceived qualities, notably colour, and show the simple metaphysical picture allows us to square this with the natural view that colours are ‘out there’ in the environment. I discuss the metaphysical implications of rejecting realism while adhering to the simple metaphysical picture, and outline a radical – and radically simple – metaphysics of the world in general that might preserve the natural view and accommodate the simple metaphysical picture of phenomenal consciousness more generally. This metaphysics takes the form of a process monism in which the governing metaphysical structuring principle is one of top-down determination, such that whole processes determine the nature of their constituent parts. (shrink)