Abstract
This paper presents an ‘over-representational’ account of blurred visual experiences. The basic idea is that blurred experiences provide too much, inconsistent, information about objects’ spatial boundaries, by representing them as simultaneously located at multiple locations. This account attempts to avoid problems with alternative accounts of blurred experience, according to which blur is a property of a visual field, a way of perceiving, a form of mis-representation, and a form of under-representation.
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Notes
See, for instance, Boghossian and Velleman (1989, pp. 92–93); Robinson (1994, p. 31); Bach (1997, p. 467); Crane (2006, pp. 130–131); (2007, p. 483); Pace (2007); Smith (2008). Boghossian and Velleman are the starting point for recent discussions of blurred vision, but the example was earlier used by Price (1932, p. 28) and Anscombe (1965, p. 169), amongst others.
For further discussion, see Harman (1990), Tye (2000), Martin (2002), Crane (2007), Smith (2008).
This appears to be how Boghossian and Velleman (1989) and Pace (2007, p. 343) think of it. Pace differs from Boghossian and Velleman in combining an appeal to a subjective visual field with an intentionalist theory of perception, arguing that intrinsic properties of the visual are amongst the intentional contents of experience. I will not consider this view directly. But whatever its other merits, it shares with non-intentionalist theories what I will argue is a problematic commitment to a subjective visual field with intrinsic properties.
As Smith notes, an indication that ‘the issue raised by blur is quite distinct from [the] general issue raised by qualia…is the fact that whereas we have no words for the peculiarly subjective sensory qualities postulated by the advocates of qualia, the everyday term ‘blurred’ does apply quite literally to experiences’ (2008, p. 202).
There might be independent reasons to reject the positive transparency thesis, such as the possibility of subjectively indistinguishable hallucination (e.g., Crane 2006). But this requires further argument, and besides, arguably favours intentionalism over views that appeal to a subjective visual field insofar as intentionalism offers a simple account of the apparent world-directedness of hallucinations in terms of their intentional content.
A further problem with impure intentionalism, stressed by Pace (2007), is that it is inconsistent with the transparency thesis often used to argue for intentionalism in the first place. For an argument for intentionalism that does appeal to the transparency of experience, see Crane (2007, pp. 484–486), drawing on Byrne (2001). The hope that intentionalism (either pure or impure) will provide a way of ‘naturalizing the mind’ (as in the title of Dretske 1995) also often provides a motivation (although not universally, e.g., Crane 2007, pp. 486–487).
Smith (2008, pp. 200–205) distinguishes ‘fuzzy’, which is a property objects can be represented as having, from ‘blurred’, which applies only to experiences and representations (like photographs or paintings), and suggests that ‘blurry’ is ambiguous between the two. I will follow Smith in this.
See, for instance, Dretske (2003) and Crane (2001, pp. 143–144). A slightly different way of developing this approach is suggested by Anscombe (1965, p. 169). Anscombe uses the example of blurred vision (‘I see the print very blurred: is it blurred, or is it my eyes?’), to argue for a distinction between the intentional and material objects of sight, and correlatively for a distinction between two senses of ‘see’, only the latter of which requires the existence of its object. Anscombe differs from Dretske and Crane because she is concerned with the intentionality of sensation considered only as a ‘grammatical feature’ of our concepts.
Consistent with the positive transparency thesis, differences of this kind can be explained in terms of relational properties of objects, such as ‘apparent sizes’, determined by real size and distance from the eye. For further discussion, see e.g., Harman (1990, p. 38).
Thanks to Tom Stoneham for suggesting this response.
The haloes around objects are a feature of blurred experiences noted by Smith (2008, p. 200, n. 7), although he offers no explanation of them.
Blurred experiences are intuitively thought of as vague experiences, and the similarity of under-representation to over-representation accounts of blur mirrors formal symmetries between truth-gap (e.g., supervaluatist) and truth-glut (e.g., dialetheist) accounts of vagueness. For instance, according to truth-gap theories, rejecting A does not entail accepting not-A, because A might be neither true nor false; according to truth-glut theories, accepting not-A does not entail rejecting A, because A might be both true and false (e.g., Parsons 1990). However, despite these formal symmetries, truth-gap and truth-glut theories are usually considered to be distinct theories.
These basic approaches can be combined. If boundaries are represented demonstratively and locations are represented descriptively, then the content will be: that boundary is at L1, L2, L3. Or, if boundaries are represented descriptively but locations are represented demonstratively, then the content will be: there is a single, determinate, boundary, and the single, determinate boundary is there, there’, there”….
Providing a more complex account of blurred experiences than one that simply focuses on the location of objects’ boundaries helps to account for another kind of problem case: blurred experiences of objects whose boundaries you cannot see because they occupy all of your visual field, and which themselves have no visible parts with boundaries the locations of which your experience might over-represented. Imagine, for instance, that you are seeing nothing but a large wall with no exposed brickwork. Seeing nothing but the wall doesn’t stop your experience of the wall from being blurred. The over-representationalist can allow that your experience is still blurred, even if you cannot see the edges of the wall, so long as there is some further intentional difference between the experience you have with your glasses on, and the experience you have without your glasses. Difference in the perceived texture of the wall provides one potential difference.
Though we can perhaps imagine cases in which we are deluded by double vision: for instance, if your eye muscles are anaesthetised during sleep and you wake up in an unfamiliar place with involuntary double vision.
For an account of double vision that is consistent with this, see Tye (2003, p. 25).
Smith considers the possibility that blurred vision is like the waterfall illusion, but dismisses it in a footnote: ‘the hesitancy [about an object, that is the instinctive response to blurred vision] is different from that which we find in a paradoxical percept, such as the waterfall illusion (which is, perhaps, more than merely an unusual phenomenon). In such cases, a phenomenon is, apparently, internally inconsistent. Whatever we may wish to say about blurred vision, it is not that.’ (2008, p. 211, n. 22). However, Smith’s reasons for dismissing this possibility are unclear; hopefully what I have said makes the possibility seem more attractive.
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Acknowledgments
A version of this paper was presented at a conference to celebrate Tim Crane’s time at UCL. I hope it is evident that I owe a special debt of thanks to Tim Crane. I would also like to thank the audience at UCL for their comments and questions, and particularly Colin Johnston, Gabriel Lakeman, Rory Madden, Michael Martin, and Matt Nudds. Thanks, too, to Bob Clark, Matthew Conduct, Tom Stoneham, and Rachael Wiseman.
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Allen, K. Blur. Philos Stud 162, 257–273 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9758-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9758-6