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Abstract

Defending a form of naïve realism about visual experiences is quite popular these days. Those naïve realists who I will be concerned with in this paper make a central claim about the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences. They argue that how it is with the perceiver subjectively when she sees worldly objects is literally determined by those objects. This way of thinking leads them to endorse a form of disjunctivism, according to which the fundamental psychological nature of seeings and hallucinations is distinct. I will oppose their central claim by defending a version of the so-called ‘causal argument’, which dwells on ideas about causation and explanation in perception. The aim of this discussion is to highlight that the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences cannot be explained in naïve realist terms. Instead, it will be argued that one needs to appeal to a mental factor which does not involve worldly objects as constituents, and which is common to seeings and hallucinations.

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Notes

  1. Not all advocates of naïve realism promote their views under this heading. Brewer calls his position the ‘object view’, Campbell the ‘relational view’, while Fish and Martin label their positions ‘naïve realism’. I group them all together as naïve realists insofar as a) they claim that perception is fundamentally the standing in a primitive relation of awareness to mind-independent worldly entities, and b) they all deny that there is any substantive representational element involved in perceptual experiences.

  2. The hallucinatory experience may be metaphysically realised by the subject’s relation to sense-data, qualia, ways of sensing, general propositions, or what have you.

  3. For a discussion of the Causal Argument, see also Johnston (2004), Martin (2004), Robinson (1994: ch.6), and Sollberger (2008).

  4. Note that CPP does not presuppose a particular theory of causation. It assumes that certain types of causes can be minimally sufficient for bringing about certain types of effects. CPP (and with it CA) can remain neutral on how exactly this notion of ‘bringing about’ is to be understood. The same holds for the causal relata, i.e., CPP can remain agnostic about whether the causal relata are of the category of events, facts, properties, processes, situations, or what have you.

  5. This also shows that CPP and Burge’s (2005: 22) ‘Proximality Principle’ are distinct, since Burge’s principle states that the proximal input exhausts the nature of the upcoming mental state.

  6. In addition, it is generally accepted that the weaker the premises, the more powerful the argument. CPP is weaker than SC/SE insofar as it accommodates the naïve realist idea of non-causal conditions that are constitutive for the occurrence of certain types of perceptual experiences. So, if one can show that naïve realism is false by building one’s case on CPP, the argument will be more powerful than any argument built on SC/SE. From a dialectical point of view, this is one more reason why it is preferable to work with CPP and not with SC/SE.

  7. CA is compatible with treating occurrences of visual experiences, such as p and h, as events, properties, states of affairs, or what have you; no particular ontology needs to be presupposed here. Note also that naïve realists accept the possibility that a hallucination can be subjectively indiscriminable from its corresponding veridical seeing.

  8. Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the objection.

  9. More precisely, CA has shown that if p is epiphenomenal, the NR-property (i.e., the property of involving worldly objects as constituents) must be eschewed for the purposes of explaining how the conscious character of p is determined.

  10. Versions of this paper have been presented in Duisburg-Essen, Kraków, Fribourg, Lausanne, and Hertfordshire. I am grateful to the audiences on these occasions. Many thanks also to Tim Crane, Michael Esfeld, Andrea Giananti, Andy MacGregor, Mike Martin, Olivier Massin, Gianfranco Soldati, Tobias Wilsch, and two anonymous referees of this journal for helpful suggestions and criticisms on earlier drafts of this paper. The work on this paper has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), grant no. 100011-117611.

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Sollberger, M. Causation in Perception: A Challenge to Naïve Realism. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 581–595 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0116-1

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