Recent criticisms of epiphenomenalism include a meaning objection. This is a self-stultification objection according to which epiphenomenalism is incoherent, because phenomenal terms could not mean what epiphenomenalists say they mean if epiphenomenalism were true. This paper seeks to remove the sting of this objection by showing that one can construct a coherent epiphenomenalist theory of meaning from any coherent account that may be offered by a phenomenal realist physicalist. This argument bears adversely on an important argument offered by (...) Balog , and some arguments given in support of her view can be re-targeted as arguments against my conclusion. These arguments are reviewed and answered. (shrink)

The irreducibility thesis of phenomenal consciousness can only succeed against the sceptical attack and avoid solipsism iff it can coherently establish the transition from subjective certainty to the objectivity of knowledge. The sceptical attack on the relationship between the phenomenal qualitative character of experience about the subjects own mental fact and the awareness of the qualitative properties of the phenomenal object can be avoided through establishing the immediacy of experience. The phenomenal realist become successful in establishing (...) the subjective certainty about the knowledge of phenomenal consciousness, however, has been failed in establishing objective certainty of knowledge, which leads to several epistemological problems (i.e., scepticism about the independent existence of external world, knowledge about the external reality and the existence of other mind; popularly known as the harder problem of consciousness) in philosophy of mind. In this paper, my objective is to reveal the undesirable consequences of representationalism. Representationalism is not an ideal option for responding to the sceptical attack against the other minds and the reality of the external world. It always leaves an open question for us about the relation between the representation of the object of experience and consciousness. Representationalistic theories of experience violates the principles of phenomenality by rejecting the immediacy of experience and has been committing the pragmatic contradiction by reducing the phenomenal properties to representational properties. The categorization of knowledge about phenomenality as inferential knowledge by representationalist leave no room for foundational knowledge about phenomenality. (shrink)

widely held commitments: to phenomenal realism and to naturalism. Phenomenal realism is the view that we are phenomenally consciousness, and that there is no a priori or armchair sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness that can be stated in nonphenomenal terms . 1,2 Block points out that while phenomenal realists reject.

Illusionism about phenomenal properties has the potential to leave us with all the benefit of taking consciousness seriously and far fewer problems than those accompanying phenomenal realism. The particular problem I explore here is an epistemological puzzle that leaves the phenomenal realist with a dilemma but causes no trouble for the illusionist: how can we account for false beliefs about our own phenomenal properties? If realism is true, facts about our phenomenal properties must (...) hold independent of our beliefs about those properties, so mistaken phenomenal beliefs must always remain an open possibility. But there is no way to identify the phenomenal facts that make these beliefs false other than by mere stipulation. If illusionism is true, then the state of affairs regarding what a subject's experience seems like is just the illusion itself; there are no further facts of the matter about which the subject might have mistaken beliefs, so the problem does not arise. (shrink)

This paper argues for the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experiences. Naïve realism holds that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is constituted by environmental objects that the subject perceives. Phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experience states that perceptual experience has intentionality in virtue of its phenomenology. I first argue that naïve realism is not incompatible with phenomenal intentionalism. I then argue that phenomenal intentionalists can handle two objections to (...) it by adopting naïve realism: the first objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a veridical perceptual experience is directed at a particular object rather than any other object of the same kind. The second objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a perceptual experience is directed at a type of external object rather than other types of objects without appealing to a resemblance relation between a perceptual experience and an external object, which is considered to be problematic. (shrink)

It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve (...) class='Hi'>realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make phenomenological predictions of the required sort. So, as a result, opponents must resign themselves to attacking specific incarnations of naïve realism, or approach matters quite differently. (shrink)

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)

In this paper, I outline a disjunctivist proposal for understanding the intentionality of perceptions and hallucinations within a naïve realist framework. For the case of genuine perceptual experience, naïve realists can endorse a version of the view that their intentionality is phenomenally-grounded: perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of being relations of conscious acquaintance to aspects of the mind-independent environment. By contrast, hallucinations have intentionality dependently or derivatively, in virtue of their indiscriminability from, or similarity with respect to, perceptual experiences. (...) Within this proposal, naïve realists can allow that perceptions and hallucinations have a property in common – that of being intentionally directed at apparently mind-independent entities – whilst having wholly different metaphysical natures. (shrink)

Many arguments against naïve realism are arguments against its corollary: disjunctivism. But there is a simpler argument—due to Mehta —that targets naïve realism directly. In broad strokes, the argument is the following. There are certain experiences that are, allegedly, in no way phenomenally similar. Nevertheless, naïve realism predicts that they are phenomenally similar. Hence, naïve realism is false. Mehta and Ganson successfully defend this argument from an objection raised by French and Gomes :451–460, 2016). However, all (...) parties to this dispute have missed the real problem with Mehta’s argument. As I see it, the real problem is twofold. First, despite his claims to the contrary, the experiences Mehta cites are phenomenally similar. Moreover, finding experiences that are in no way phenomenally similar turns out to be a difficult task. Second, there are motivated versions of naïve realism that are immune to Mehta’s argument. The upshot is that even if Mehta’s argument is sound, the most that it can show is that one version of naïve realism is false. (shrink)

This study focuses on a particular type of Naïve Realism known as objectivism, which suggests that the explanation of perceptual phenomenology is based on environmental things that the subject becomes acquainted with. Section 2 introduces a subtype of objectivism, “selectivism”, which aims to overcome a traditional kind of objection. However, this section highlights that the cases these objections invoke may still posit challenges (demands for explanations) to selectivism. Section 3 discusses a recent objection to objectivism and demonstrates how it (...) can be addressed by selectivism so becomes only a challenge of this kind. However, it is important to note that, despite not providing positive refutations, these challenges are still significant. Sections 4 and 5 present the main contribution of this study, as they provide novel arguments that conclusively refute objectivism. Section 4 presents an argument that shows the falsity of objectivism as it has been presented in the literature. Nevertheless, a modified version of objectivism is proposed that could address it, although it still faces some non-definitive challenges. This reformulated theory is a novel type within the realm of Naïve Realism as a whole, as it posits that perceptions involve acquaintance with facts relative to sense organs. In contrast, Section 5 proposes an argument that positively refutes objectivism, which cannot be salvaged by any modification. Section 6 raises objections to an alternative option of Naïve Realism and, also based on the issues raised earlier in the article regarding objectivism, concludes that Naïve Realism must be subjectivist. (shrink)

Scientific realism was famously proclaimed dead back in the early 1980s (Fine 1984). Michela Massimi’s exciting new book says otherwise. For Massimi, realism is alive and well, only we need to reconsider what we take to be the defining question of scientific realism, which, to her, is best construed not along ontological lines, i.e., whether entity X exists, but along epistemological lines, i.e., how we come to reliably know nature. Put more explicitly, for Massimi, to be a (...) realist is to be able to explain “how historically and culturally situated epistemic communities have over time come to reliably advance claims of scientific knowledge” (4). -/- The role of reliability in science has been long recognized, for example, by Kitcher (1993), Oreskes (2019), and most recently Cartwright et al. (2022). What is new about Massimi’s proposal is her emphasis on the role played by scientific perspectives in assessing reliability. Particularly, her social and cooperative construal of science makes assessing the reliability of knowledge claims not the prerogative of a single epistemic community but the collective task of multiple epistemic communities, across a plurality of scientific perspectives (5). Hence, hers is a form of ‘perspectival realism.’ -/- . (shrink)

: Phenomenal knowledge usually comes from experience. But it need not. For example, one could know what it’s like to see red without seeing red—indeed, without having any color experiences. Daniel Dennett (2007) and Pete Mandik (forthcoming) argue that this and related considerations undermine the knowledge argument against physicalism. If they are right, then this is not only a problem for anti‐physicalists. Their argument threatens to undermine any version of phenomenal realism— the view that there are (...) class='Hi'>phenomenal properties, or qualia, that are not conceptually reducible to physical or functional properties. I will argue that this threat is illusory. Explaining why will clarify what is and is not at issue in discussions of the knowledge argument and phenomenal realism. This will strengthen the case for physically and functionally irreducible qualia. 2 Phenomenal knowledge usually comes from experience. For example, I know what it’s like to see red because I have done so. Does knowing what it’s like to have an experience with phenomenal character X require having an experience with X? No. A famous counterexample is Hume’s missing shade of blue, in which one can extrapolate from phenomenally similar experiences (A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Pt. I, Sec. I).1 One might think that a weaker version of the no‐phenomenal‐knowledge‐without‐experience thesis remains tenable, e.g., that knowing what it’s like to see in color requires having or having had color experiences. But this thesis also seems doubtful. Peter Unger (1966) devised plausible counterexamples over four decades ago, and since then others (e.g., Lewis 1988, Alter 1998, Stoljar 2005) have done the same. One could have phenomenal knowledge of color experiences without having such experiences. Indeed, one could have such knowledge without having experiences that are remotely like color experiences. What is the significance of this observation for contemporary debates about consciousness and physicalism? Daniel Dennett (2007) and Pete Mandik (forthcoming) suggest that it undermines the knowledge argument against physicalism.2 That is because they take the claim that someone who has never seen in color could not know what it’s like to see in color to be the basis of the knowledge argument’s main epistemic premise: the premise that (roughly put) 3 no amount of physical knowledge is sufficient for phenomenal knowledge of color experiences. If they are right, then this is not only a problem for anti‐ physicalists. Many physicalists (e.g., Loar 1990/97, Papineau 2002, 2007) accept the knowledge argument’s epistemic premise. Dennett’s and Mandik’s arguments threaten all versions of what David Chalmers (2003) calls phenomenal realism, the view that there are phenomenal properties, or qualia, that are not conceptually reducible to physical or functional properties.3 I will argue that this threat is illusory. Explaining why will clarify what is and is not at issue in discussions of the knowledge argument and phenomenal realism. The net result will be to strengthen the case for physically inexplicable qualia. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of demystifying and mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several (...) arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness; this paper will focus on the inverted spectrum argument, knowledge argument, and the conceivability argument. (shrink)

Thought, including conscious perception, is representation. But perceptual representation is uniquely direct, permitting immediate acquaintance with the world and ensuring perception's distinctive phenomenal character. The perceptive mind is extended. It recruits the very objects perceived to constitute self-referential representations determinative of what it is like to perceive.

Phenomenal consciousness can be conceptualized innocently enough that its existence should be accepted even by philosophers who wish to avoid dubious epistemic and metaphysical commitments such as dualism, infallibilism, privacy, inexplicability, or intrinsic simplicity. Definition by example allows us this innocence. Positive examples include sensory experiences, imagery experiences, vivid emotions, and dreams. Negative examples include growth hormone release, dispositional knowledge, standing intentions, and sensory reactivity to masked visual displays. Phenomenal consciousness is the most folk-psychologically obvious thing or feature (...) that the positive examples possess and that the negative examples lack, and which preserves our ability to wonder, at least temporarily, about antecedently unclear issues such as consciousness without attention and consciousness in simpler animals. As long as this concept is not empty, or broken, or a hodgepodge, we can be phenomenal realists without committing to dubious philosophical positions. (shrink)

What are phenomenal qualities, the qualities of conscious experiences? Are phenomenal qualities subjective, belonging to inner mental episodes of some kind, or should they be seen as objective, belonging in some way to the physical things in the world around us? Are they physical properties at all? And to what extent do experiences represent the things around us, or the states of our own bodies? Fourteen original papers, written by a team of distinguished philosophers and psychologists, explore the (...) ways in which phenomenal qualities fit in with our understanding of mind and reality. This volume offers an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to understand the nature of conscious experience. (shrink)

Unconscious perceptions have recently become a focal point in the debate for and against naive realism. In this paper I defend the naive realist side. More specifically, I use an idea of Martin’s to develop a new version of naive realism—neuro-computational naive realism. I argue that neuro-computational naive realism offers a uniform treatment of both conscious and unconscious perceptions. I also argue that it accommodates the possibility of phenomenally different conscious perceptions of the same items, and (...) that it can answer a further challenge to naive realism raised by Berger and Nanay. (shrink)

The meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why we have the intuition that there is a hard problem of consciousness. David Chalmers briefly notes that my phenomenal powers view may be able to answer to this challenge in a way that avoids problems (having to do with avoiding coincidence) facing other realist views. In this response, I will briefly outline the phenomenal powers view and my main arguments for it and—drawing in part on a similar view (...) developed by Harold Langsam—discuss how more precisely its answer to the challenge would go. (shrink)

The naive realist takes a veridical visual experience to be an immediate relation to external entities. Is this how such an experience is phenomenally, by its phenomenal character? Only if there can be phenomenal error, since a hallucinatory experience phenomenally matching such a veridical experience would then be phenomenally but not in fact such a relation. Fortunately, such phenomenal error can be avoided: the phenomenal character of a visual experience involves immediate awareness of a sort of (...) picture of external entities, as on a representative theory of perception. The attraction of naive realism results from an erroneous projection of the immediacy of the subject's awareness of this picture onto the external entities pictured. (shrink)

William S. Robinson has for many years written insightfully about the mind-body problem. In Understanding Phenomenal Consciousness he focuses on sensory experience and perception qualities such as colours, sounds and odours to present a dualistic view of the mind, called Qualitative Event Realism, that goes against the dominant materialist views. This theory is relevant to the development of a science of consciousness which is now being pursued not only by philosophers but by researchers in psychology and the brain (...) sciences. This provocative book will interest students and professionals who work in the philosophy of mind and will also have cross-disciplinary appeal in cognitive psychology and the brain sciences. (shrink)

Naïve Realism claims that the Phenomenal Character of perception is constituted by the mind-independent objects one perceives. According to this view, the Phenomenal Character of perception is object-dependent: experiences of different objects have different Phenomenal Characters, even if those objects are qualitatively identical. Proponents of Naïve Realism often defend this conception by arguing that it is necessary to accommodate the cognitive role of perceptual experience. John Campbell has presented the most influential version of this argument, (...) according to which only an object-dependent conception of the Phenomenal Character of experience can explain its epistemic role—how (conscious) perception ‘justifies’ the patterns of inference that reflect our conception of mind-independence. In this paper, I argue that Campbell’s argument is unsound. First, I reconstruct the relevant patterns and argue that, independently of one’s conception of Phenomenal Character, perceptual experience does not ‘justify’ them in the way Campbell intends—by making their validity transparent to the subject. Second, I suggest that perception justifies those patterns by justifying their premises. I argue that a Representationalist, object-independent conception of its Phenomenal Character is at least as well suited as an object-dependent one to explain how this is possible. This undermines one of the main motivations to endorse a Naïve Realist, object-dependent account of the Phenomenal Character of perception. (shrink)

A celebrated problem for representationalist theories of phenomenal character is that, given externalism about content, these theories lead to externalism about phenomenal character. While externalism about content is widely accepted, externalism about phenomenal character strikes many philosophers as wildly implausible. Even if internally identical individuals could have different thoughts, it is said, if one of them has a headache, or a tingly sensation, so must the other. In this paper, I argue that recent work on phenomenal (...) concepts reveals that, contrary to appearances, this standard conjunction of externalism about content and internalism about phenomenal character is ultimately untenable on other models of phenomenal character as well, including even “qualia realism.” This would be significant for a number of reasons. The first is patent: it would undermine a primary objection to representationalism. The fact that representationalism is incompatible with the conjunction would be no serious problem for representationalism if no other plausible model of phenomenal character is compatible with it. The second is that the many philosophers who embrace the conjunction would be forced to abandon one of the two views; externalism would be true either of both content and phenomenal character, or of neither. Likewise, those philosophers who have taken a stance on only one of the two internalism/externalism debates would have to be seen as thereby committed to a particular stance on the other. The third reason stems from the fact that qualia realism typically goes hand in hand with internalism about phenomenal character. To the extent that it does, my argument would reveal that qualia realism is itself in tension with externalism about content. This would perhaps be the most surprising result of all. (shrink)

This dissertation develops and defends a detailed realist, internalist account of qualia which is consistent with physicalism and which does not resurrect the epistemological 'myth of the Given.' In doing so it stakes out a position in the sparsely populated middle ground between the two major opposing factions on the problem of phenomenal consciousness: between those who think we have a priori reasons to believe that qualia are irreducible to the physical , and those who implicitly or explicitly treat (...) qualia as contentful but non-phenomenal physical properties . ;I present a minimal, non-question-begging definition of "qualia" and then use this definition in a reformulation of the argument from perceiver relativity which shows that qualia must, at least in humans, be properties of states of the central nervous system. That is, brain states do not simply indicate the colours of external objects---they instantiate phenomenal colours. Since brain states are not coloured in the same way as are external objects, I argue that to token phenomenal property F must be to be the first-person phenomenal sensation of F. I build on this position to argue that the phenomenal apprehension of qualia, is "given"---immediate, certain and private---but that qualia nevertheless do not provide an absolutely certain epistemological foundation since they do not constitute a set of indisputable propositions about facts. I then define what it would be for physicalism to be true of qualia, but argue that the main a priori arguments for and against qualia physicalism---including the logical possibility of zombies and the impossibility of epiphenomenalism---fail. Whether qualia are consistent with physicalism, I claim, is still an open question, answerable only when we discover in more detail how qualia depend upon the brain. ;Although strongly in sympathy with many commonsensical intuitions about qualia, this account stands in contrast to most influential extant theories of qualia, such as eliminativism , externalism , or property-dualism : I conclude the dissertation by using its results to argue explicitly against these three positions. (shrink)

Perceptions are externally-directed—they present us with a mind-independent reality, and thus contribute to our abilities to think about this reality, and to know what is objectively the case. But perceptions are also internally-dependent—their phenomenologies depend on the neuro-computational properties of the subject. A good theory of perception must account for both these facts. But naive realism has been criticized for failing to accommodate internal-dependence. This paper evaluates and responds to this criticism. It first argues that a certain version of (...) naive realism, often called “selectionism”, does indeed struggle with internal-dependence. It then develops an alternate version of naive realism which does not. This alternate version, inspired by an idea of Martin’s, accommodates the internal-dependence of perceptions by recognizing the role that the subject’s neuro-computational properties play in shaping perceptual phenomenology. At the same time, it retains the distinctive naive realist account of the external-directedness of perceptions. (shrink)

According to phenomenal functionalism, whether some object or event has a given property is determined by the kinds of sensory experiences such objects or events typically cause in normal perceivers in normal viewing conditions. This paper challenges this position and, more specifically, David Chalmers’s use of it in arguing for what he calls virtual realism.

I distinguish between two claims of transparency of experiences. One claim is weaker and supported by phenomenological evidence. This I call the transparency datum. Introspection of standard perceptual experiences as well as bodily sensations is consistent with, indeed supported by, the transparency datum. I formulate a stronger transparency thesis that is entailed by representationalism about experiential phenomenology. I point out some empirical consequences of strong transparency in the context of representationalism. I argue that pain experiences, as well as some other (...) similar experiences like itches, tickles, orgasms, hedonic valence, etc., are not transparent in this strong sense. Hence they constitute empirical counterexamples to representationalism. Given that representationalism is a general metaphysical doctrine about all experiential phenomenology for good reasons, I conclude that representationalism about phenomenal consciousness is false. Then, I outline a general framework about how the introspection of phenomenal qualities in perceptual experience works in light of the transparency datum, but consistent with the rejection of strong transparency. The result is a form of qualia realism that is naturalist and intentionalist, and has close affinities to the adverbialist views developed in the latter part of the last century. I then apply this framework to pain experiences and their bodily locations. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about sensory experience is frequently put forward in defence of a particular conception of perception and perceptual experience known as naïve realism. In this paper, I present an argument against naïve realism that proceeds through a rejection of disjunctivism. If the naïve realist must also be a disjunctivist about the phenomenal nature of experience, then naïve realism should be abandoned.

This paper reconsiders the challenge presented to scientific realism by the semantic incommensurability thesis. A twofold distinction is drawn between methodological and semantic incommensurability, and between semantic incommensurability due to variation of sense and due to discontinuity of reference. Only the latter presents a challenge to scientific realism. The realist may dispose of this challenge on the basis of a modified causal theory of reference, as argued in the author’s 1994 book, The incommensurability thesis. This referential response has (...) been the subject of a charge of meta-incommensurability by Hoyningen-Huene et al., who argue that the realist’s referential response begs the question against anti-realist advocates of incommensurability. In reply, it is noted that a tu quoque rejoinder is available to the realist. It is also argued that the dialectical situation favours the scientific realist, since the anti-realist defence of incommensurability depends on an incoherent distinction between phenomenal world and world-in-itself. In light of such incoherence, and a strong commonsense presumption in favour of realism, the referential response to semantic incommensurability may be justifiably based on realism. (shrink)

Naïve realism, often overlooked among philosophical theories of perception, has in recent years attracted a surge of interest. Broadly speaking, the central commitment of naïve realism is that mind-independent objects are essential to the fundamental analysis of perceptual experience. Since the claims of naïve realism concern the essential metaphysical structure of conscious perception, its truth or falsity is of central importance to a wide range of topics, including the explanation of semantic reference and representational content, the nature (...) of phenomenal consciousness, and the basis of perceptual justification and knowledge. One of the greatest difficulties surrounding discussions of naïve realism, however, has been lack of clarity concerning exactly what affirming or denying it entails. In particular, it is sometimes unclear how naïve realism is related to the claim that perceptual experience is in some sense direct or unmediated, and also to what extent the view is compatible with another widely discussed thesis in the philosophy of perception, the claim that perceptual experiences are states with representational content. In this essay, I discuss how recent work on these issues helps to clarify both the central commitments of naïve realism, as well as its relation to representationalist theories of perception. Along the way, I will attempt to shed light on the different ways in which each approach tries to address the various theoretical challenges facing a philosophical theory of perception, and also to assess the prospects for views that attempts to combine features of each approach. (shrink)

Russellian physicalism is becoming increasingly popular because it promises to deliver what everybody wants, realism and physicalism about consciousness. But Russellian physicalists are not the first to swear on “the promise”, standard Type-B physicalism is a less fanciful view that also claims to give everything and take nothing. In this paper, I argue that our hopes should not be placed on Russellian physicalism because, unlike Type-B physicalism, it cannot explain how phenomenal concepts can reveal the nature of (...) class='Hi'>phenomenal properties without weakening its physicalist credentials. The revelation challenge shows that Russellian physicalism is either committed to an anti-realist and self-defeating view of phenomenal concepts or it is physically unacceptable. (shrink)

Naïve realism is the view according to which perception is a non-representational relation of conscious awareness to mind-independent objects and properties. According to this approach, the phenomenal character of experience is constituted by just the objects, properties, or facts presented to the senses. In this article, I argue that such a conception of the phenomenology of experience faces a clear counter-example, i.e., the experience of seeing aspects. The discussion suggests that, to accommodating such a kind of experience, it (...) must be acknowledged that perception is, at least in part, representational. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analyzed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates a general (...) notion of substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Sensorimotor Direct Realism: How We Enact Our World” by Michael Beaton. Upshot: Sensorimotor direct realism is too promiscuous in its account of sensation.

This paper defends the idea that phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness can enrich the current analytic philosophy of perception, by showing how phenomenological discussions of minimal self-consciousness can enhance our understanding of the phenomenology of conscious perceptual experiences. As a case study, I investigate the nature of the relationship between naïve realism, a contemporary Anglophone theory of perception, and experiential minimalism (or, the ‘minimal self’ view), a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness originated in the Phenomenological tradition. I argue that naïve (...) class='Hi'>realism is not only compatible with, but can be supplemented with experiential minimalism in a novel way. The suggestion is that there are reasons to combine naïve realism and experiential minimalism. My focus here will be on drawing a connection between the notion of minimal self and two core theoretical commitments of naïve realism, relationalism and transparency. (shrink)

We list, with discussions, various principles of scientific realism, in order to exhibit their diversity and to emphasize certain serious problems of formulation. Ontological and epistemological principles are distinguished. Within the former category, some framed in semantic terms (truth, reference) serve their purpose vis-a-vis instrumentalism (Part 1). They fail, however, to distinguish the realist from a wide variety of (constructional) empiricists. Part 2 seeks purely ontological formulations, so devised that the empiricist cannot reconstruct them from within. The main task (...) here is to characterize "independence of mind". A pair of notions, "physical invariance" and "anti-determination", seem to work. They enable us to assess anew "the problem of constructing the physical out of the phenomenal" (yielding certain clarifications demanded by Goodman). Modern cosmology, especially, is seen to present insuperable obstacles to such empiricist approaches to science. The final section on epistemological principles reveals a morass better avoided in favor of an elementary claim about perception, together with a rejection of any absolute observation/theory dichotomy. Finally, a positive, realist notion of "observable-in-principle" is sketched, and it is suggested that, from the perspective of relativistic cosmology, even this defines no boundary to potential knowledge. (shrink)

Visual experiences seem to exhibit phenomenological particularity: when you look at some object, it – that particular object – looks some way to you. But experiences exhibit generality too: when you look at a distinct but qualitatively identical object, things seem the same to you as they did in seeing the first object. Naïve realist accounts of visual experience have often been thought to have a problem with each of these observations. It has been claimed that naïve realist views cannot (...) account for the generality of visual experiences, and that the naïve realist explanation of particularity has unacceptable implications for self- knowledge: the knowledge we have of the character of our own experiences. We argue in this paper that neither claim is correct: naïve realism can explain the generality of experiences, and the naïve realist explanation of particularity raises no problems for our self-knowledge. (shrink)

Experiences and beliefs are different sorts of mental states, and are often taken to belong to very different domains. Experiences are paradigmatically phenomenal, characterized by what it is like to have them. Beliefs are paradigmatically intentional, characterized by their propositional content. But there are a number of crucial points where these domains intersect. One central locus of intersection arises from the existence of phenomenal beliefs: beliefs that are about experiences.

This paper deals with the question of whether Kant's transcendental idealism allows for an explanation of the a posteriori aspects of mental content by the properties of empirical objects. I first show that a phenomenalist interpretation has severe problems with assuming that we perceive an object as being red or as being cubical partly because the perceived object is red and cubical, and then present an interpretation that allows us to save the realistic intuition behind these claims. According to this (...) interpretation, Kantian phenomenal properties are understood as response-dependent properties of extra-mental objects that also have to have some response-independent (in-itself-) properties. I show that this interpretation is well supported by Kant's remarks about the transcendental object in the A-edition of the first Critique and that it also makes intelligible why Kant took explanations of mental content by means of empirical properties to imply an explanation by means of noumenal properties without thereby violating his own doctrine of noumenal ignorance. This not only allows us to establish a realistic reading of Kant idealism but also to discern the true kernel in Adickes’ infamous talk about Kant's theory of double affection. (shrink)

Realism about consciousness conjoins a claim that consciousness exists with a claim that the existence is independent in some interesting sense. Consciousness realism so conceived may thus be opposed by a variety of anti-realisms, distinguished from each other by denying the first, the second, or both of the realist’s defining claims. I argue that Dennett’s view of consciousness is best read as an anti-realism that affirms the existence of consciousness while denying an important independence claim.

My paper has three parts. First I will outline the act/object theory of perceptual experience and its commitments to (a) a relational view of experience and (b) a view of phenomenal character according to which it is constituted by the character of the objects of experience. I present the traditional adverbial response to this, in which experience is not to be understood as a relation to some object, but as a way of sensing. In the second part I argue (...) that acceptance of (a) is independent of acceptance of (b). I then present a modified adverbialism that presents experience as relational in nature but whose character is nevertheless to be explained in terms of the way in which one senses an object. Finally, I will offer an explanation of how a naïve realist about experience can adopt this modified adverbialism and in so doing accommodate the possibility of perceptual error. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 209-231, January 2022.

Is materialism right to claim that the world of everyday-life experience – the phenomenal world – is nothing but an illusion produced in physical reality, notably in the brain? Or is Merleau-Ponty right when he defends the fundamental character of the phenomenal world while rejecting physical realism? I address these questions by exploring the nature of the body proper in Merleau-Ponty and Plessner, arguing that physical and phenomenal realism are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The (...) argument includes a close examination of the relationships between scientific and pre-scientific perspectives, between living and non-living things, and between humans and animals. (shrink)

In defence of naïve realism, Fish has advocated an eliminativist view of hallucination, according to which hallucinations lack visual phenomenology. Logue, and Dokic and Martin, respectively, have developed the eliminativist view in different manners. Logue claims that hallucination is a non-phenomenal, perceptual representational state. Dokic and Martin maintain that hallucinations consist in the confusion of monitoring mechanisms, which generates an affective feeling in the hallucinating subject. This paper aims to critically examine these views of hallucination. By doing so, (...) I shall point out what theoretical requirements are imposed on naïve realists who characterize hallucinations as non-visual-sensory phenomena. (shrink)

This paper presents a position called Scheme-based Alethic Realism, which reconciles a realist position on the nature of truth with a pluralistic Kantian perspective that allows for multiple environments in which truthmaking relationships are established. We argue that truthmaking functions are constrained by a stable phenomenal world and a stable cognitive architecture. This account takes truth as normatively distinct from epistemic justification while relativizing the truth conditions of our statements to what we call Frameworks. The pluralistic aspect allows (...) that these stable elements, while constraining representational and linguistic schemes, do not define a single framework for truthmaking relations. We strengthen this position by considering themes on situated rational agency from cognitive science and artificial intelligence, arguing that whatever enables or supports rational action within a particular environment must figure into some account of truth and truthmaking, and vice versa. (shrink)