The Contents of Visual Experience Susanna Siegel Chapter 2: The Content View If you want to know whether there is any mustard in the refrigerator, it is a good idea to open the door and look. If you see the mustard, you can end up knowing its whereabouts: it's in the fridge. If instead of looking for the mustard, you pictured the fridge interior in a daydream, and then relied on your daydream to confirm whether the fridge contained mustard or not, you wouldn't end up knowing anything about the mustard or the fridge, but you might nevertheless end up with a true or false belief. As the mustard example illustrates, it is common to regard perception as a special kind of input to belief that allows us to compare hypotheses with the world, so that we may assess whether those hypotheses are true. Even philosophers who were cautious about assigning perception more than a causal role in relation to knowledge regard perception as involving a special sort of input to the mind, different in kind from belief and judgment. Hume distinguished impressions from ideas, while Locke found special inputs in the vicinity of perceptual experience, distinguishing ideas of sensations from ideas of reflection. Both in common practice and in philosophy, perception is regarded as a distinctive kind of mental state that serves as an input to belief, and is distinct from it. Despite the differences between perception and belief, perception involves states that are importantly similar to beliefs: visual experiences, where these include visual hallucinations of ordinary objects and scenes. This chapter interprets, develops and defends an important thesis about visual perceptual experiences: The Content View: All visual perceptual experiences have contents. The Content View will serve as a framework within which we will assess the Rich Content View. This chapter explains what the Content View says, and argues that its commitments are shared across a wide range of philosophical theories of perception. I'll sometimes use "experience" without the modifiers "visual perceptual" as a shorthand. The kind of content at issue in the Content View meets two constraints. Contents are true or false and contents of experience are conveyed to the subject by her experience.1 The sense in which experiences have contents (according to the Content View) thus picks up the strand of ordinary usage that takes contents to be things conveyed by sources of information (as when we speak of the contents of a newspaper story). Experience contents need not individuate experiences. And we can, apparently, ostend experiences by using introspection or by describing the circumstances in which the experience is had, without first settling whether experiences have any contents at all, let alone which contents (if any) they have. In contemporary discussions, the Content View is widely held and is even presupposed in many debates about perceptual experience.2 But some philosophers have objected to it on the 1 A third constraint will be introduced shortly: contents are accuracy conditions. 2 The Content View has the status of an undefended presupposition in Evans 1982 and Peacocke 1992, as well as in debates about whether phenomenal character supervenes on representational basis of Naïve Realism, claiming that Naïve Realism is the more commonsensical view, and in one case finding precedent for it in Berkeley.3 Naïve Realism comes in a variety of forms, but the main idea (to be qualified later) is that some phenomenal states are identical with certain states of seeing, and so involve relations to objects in the environment. One might think that this view is incompatible with the Content View, perhaps on the grounds that if experiences involve relations to the objects in an environment, they do not involve relations to contents. I will argue that standard versions of Naïve Realism are compatible with the Content View. To oppose the Content View, Naïve Realism would have to take a radical form that leaves out reference to properties. The resulting versions of Naïve Realism, I'll argue, are implausible. More generally, I'll argue that once the role of properties in phenomenal character is acknowledged, the Content View is unavoidable. The Content View can be distinguished from a thesis with stronger commitments, the Strong Content View, which is discussed toward the end of the chapter. Unlike the Strong Content View, which says that visual experience consists in fundamentally in propositional attitude, the Content View gives us a relatively neutral framework within which the Rich Content View can be assessed. After developing the Content View and discussing the notion of accuracy in section 2.1, I will present an argument that apparently supports the Content View in section 2.2: the Argument from Accuracy. In section 2.3, I identify a flaw with this argument. In section 2.4, I present an argument for the Content View that corrects the flaw: the Argument from Appearing. In section 2.5, I consider two objections, each suggested by Charles Travis, concerning uses of 'looks' and its cognates. These objections target the Argument from Accuracy, the Argument from Appearing, and the Content View itself. Finally, in 2.6 I discuss the significance of the Content View and its status vis à vis Naïve Realism. 2.1. Contents as Accuracy Conditions It is common for philosophers to distinguish between veridical and non-veridical experiences. Descartes's evil demon scenario is often described as a scenario in which our experiences are not veridical. One might think that the Content View follows easily from the very idea that we sort experiences into the veridical and the non-veridical. If experiences can be veridical, it might be thought, then they have veridicality conditions, and if they have veridicality conditions, then they have contents, so the Content View is true. This argument does not sufficiently constrain what contents may be. For all the argument says, veridicality conditions may be like blueness-conditions. A blueness-condition is a condition that obtains exactly when something is blue. All blue things satisfy the same blueness condition: they are blue. If veridicality-conditions are like blueness-conditions, then all veridical experiences satisfy the same veridicality condition: they are veridical. If all there was to an experience's veridicality condition was being veridical, then veridicality conditions would not be features, such as having content (e.g., Block 1990 and 1996, Chalmers 2004, Egan 2006, Kind 2007, Levine 2003, Pace 2007, Rey 1998, Speaks 2009, Tye 2003, Wright 2003, Thompson 2009, and others). 3 Martin 2002 and 2004, Campbell 2002, Johnston 2006, and Brewer 2006 claim that Naïve Realism is incompatible with the Content View. Brewer argues that Berkeley would have opposed it too. very useful for defining contents, since all veridical experiences would have the same contents. A version of the Content View that entails that no two veridical experiences differ in their contents would not be worth defending. What's needed is a way to avoid this result. This result is avoided if contents are a kind of accuracy condition. To develop this idea, the Content View can be refined into a proposal that finds the following similarity between visual experiences and beliefs: like beliefs, maps, and newspapers, visual experiences have contents, and just as the contents of beliefs are conditions under which the belief state is true, so the contents of experiences are conditions under which the experience is accurate. According to this proposal, experiences are the kinds of states that can be accurate, and their contents are conditions under which they have this status. Just which accuracy conditions are contents of experience will be discussed in detail in the sections that follow. We can begin by focusing on accuracy itself. If something is accurate, then there is something else in relation to which it is accurate.4 If a map is accurate, then there is some spatial area in relation to which it is accurate. If a story about Simone is accurate in some respects but not others, then Simone has some of the features attributed to her by the story but not others. When a map, a story, a mental state, or anything else is accurate, there is a situation of which it is accurate. Attributing accuracy to something thus involves assessing it with respect to something else. Let us focus on the case of episodic experiences (though the following points hold for maps, stories, and anything else that can be accurate or inaccurate as well). If an experience is inaccurate, then there is some mismatch between the experience and a situation. If there were no mismatch, the experience would be accurate. The conditions in which there is no mismatch are accuracy conditions. Analogous points hold for maps, stories, and other mental states besides experiences that can be accurate or inaccurate. When we categorize token experiences as veridical (or veridical in certain respects), we are in the simplest case assessing them with respect to the situation in which they are had. If these classifications involve accuracy, then when we categorize an experience as veridical, we are saying that it is accurate with respect to this situation. The Content View construes accuracy as freedom from error. When accuracy is construed in this way, the idea that accuracy comes in degrees can be understood by considering separate respects (such as location, color, or shape) in which an experience is or is not accurate, and then breaking accuracy conditions down into separable contents. The Content View can thus respect the observation that accuracy comes in degrees. Completely accurate experiences would be ones in which all contents are true. Partly accurate experiences would be ones in which only some contents are true. For example, suppose experiences have contents, and consider an experience with the contents that there is a red cube in front of you, and a blue ball off to the left. If there really is a red cube in front of you and a ball off to the left, but the ball is black rather than blue, then your experience would be accurate with respect to the location of the ball, but inaccurate with respect to its color. It would be partly accurate, but inaccurate overall.5 4 This claim is compatible with deflationism about accuracy, where this is analogous to deflationism about truth. Even the deflationist about truth agrees that truth-apt sentences have truth conditions. Likewise even the deflationst about accuracy can agree that if experiences can be accurate or inaccurate, then they have accuracy conditions. 5 When accuracy is construed as freedom from error, merely omitting truths about a situation will not by itself result in an inaccurate experience. A different notion of accuracy construes it as In the case of belief, there are two things that can be true or false: the belief state, and the belief contents. Contrast the case of hope. If you hope that winter ends soon, your hope itself is neither true nor false, but the content that winter ends soon is. (Here the notion of content is not tied to accuracy conditions of a state, but simply to something that can be true or false). According to the Content View, experiences are more like beliefs than hopes, in that they involve two things that can be free of error: the experience itself, and its content. Given the construal of contents as accuracy conditions, we can distinguish between two aspects of experience that mirror the Fregean distinction between the force and sense of a sentence, and well as an analogous distinction for mental states between their function and content drawn by the 19th century German psychologists Carl Stümpf and Oswald Külpe in their discussions of perception and imagery.6 To argue for the Content View, one has to show both that experiences (like hopes) involve relations to a relatum that can in turn be true or false, and also that experiences (unlike hopes) can themselves be accurate or inaccurate. 2.2. The Argument from Accuracy We can now examine the first argument aimed at supporting the Content View. It resembles the argument with which we began in 2.1. But now we are armed with two additional ideas: contents are a kind of accuracy conditions; and due to the nature of accuracy, accuracy conditions differ from blueness conditions, in that two experiences can be accurate yet differ in their accuracy conditions. The Argument from Accuracy acuity, where greater acuity involves a higher degree of resolution. When accuracy is construed as acuity, the greater the degree to which an experience is accurate, the greater acuity the perceiver has, so that having microscopic eyes of the sort Locke and Leibniz discussed would yield relatively more accurate experiences, whereas having normal human eyes would yield relatively less accurate experiences. (Locke 1689, Book 2, Chapter 12, section 14. Cf Leibniz: "If our eyes became better equipped or more penetrating, so that some colors or other qualities disappeared from our view, others would appear to arise out of them, and we should need a further increase in acuity to make them disappear too; and since matter is actually divided to infinity, this process could go on to infinity also." (NE II.xxiii.12/Remmnant-Bennett trans. p. 219) . In contrast to this notion of acuity, visual acuity is operationally defined in terms of ability to identify letters on a Snellen chart. At some levels of visual acuity, one might not reliably identify a Q (for instance, one might mistake it for an O), and that would be a misrepresentation at the level of belief or if one is guessing, an erroneous guess. The standard notion of visual acuity does not take a stand on whether the errors that operationally define such low levels of acuity also occur at the level of experience. For all the operational definition says, experience may be neutral on the exact configuration of the letter's limbs (assuming that an individual letter can be made out at all), or it may misrepresent them. 6 Dummett 1981. Unlike Frege's notion of sense, Stümpf and Külpe's notion of content does not build in that contents are truth-evaluable. For discussion, see Boring 1929. P1: All experiences are accurate or inaccurate. P2: If all experiences are accurate or inaccurate, then all experiences have accuracy conditions. Conclusion: All experiences have accuracy conditions. Let us examine each premise. The case for P1 Accuracy and inaccuracy are properties a token experience would have relative to a situation: most naturally, the situation in which the experience is had. Later on, we will consider whether token experiences might be accurate or inaccurate with respect to other situations. For now we can take P1 to say that for all token experiences, there are some respects in which the experience is accurate or inaccurate relative to the situation in which it is had. We can easily distinguish hallucinations and illusions from completely successful perceptions. Here are some examples: Airport hallucination: You are at home, but hallucinate being in an airport. Fishtank: The fish you are seeing is blue and it looks blue. It is at location L, but looks to be at location L*, which is a bit to the right of L. Lunchtime: Behold your sandwich, cut in half on plate. It is as it looks. Although experiences like Airport hallucination probably never occur, we still find it easy to distinguish them from illusions and completely successful perceptions such as Fishtank and Lunchtime, which occur frequently. In hallucination, perceptual contact is missing; illusions are misleading guides to what is in the environment. In contrast, completely successful perceptions typically lead to knowledge.7 Experiences in this last group are often called "veridical." This distinction suggests the following defense of P1. When given certain descriptions pairing token experiences with situations in which they are had, we easily classify them into these categories. The best explanation of these classifications is that the experiences classified as veridical are accurate (at least so far as the descriptions specify – further specification of the same experience in its situation could introduce inaccuracies), and experiences classified as illusions are inaccurate. I will argue that this defense of P1 is basically correct. One might think that the argument is too simple, in light of further complications that arise once we distinguish between further varieties of veridicality. After drawing these further distinctions, I will defend P1 in a way that takes them into account. Varieties of Veridicality 7 The stronger claim that completely successful perceptions always lead to knowledge seems false. There may be cases in which the cube's greenness plays the right role in producing the experience of seeing the cube, yet which do not lead to knowledge because the transition from experience to belief is corrupted. In addition to the distinction between Fishtank, Lunchtime, and Airport Hallucination, a related distinction between kinds of experiences is also natural for us to draw, even if we don't have labels in ordinary language that mark this difference. In that sense the distinction is pretheoretical. It is illustrated by contrasting Fishtank with another experience, Fishtank2: Fishtank: The fish you are seeing is blue and it looks blue. It is at location L, but looks to be at location L*, which is a bit to the right of L. Fishtank 2: The fish you are seeing is blue and at location L, and it looks blue and looks to be at L. In Fishtank, there need be no illusion with respect to the fish's color or shape, but there is an illusion with respect to location. The experience is veridical with respect to color and shape, but not veridical with respect to location. It is thus partly but not completely veridical. In contrast, Fishtank 2 is completely veridical, so far as this experience is described. Interestingly, hallucinations too can be veridical in some respects, and can differ from one another in their degree of veridicality: Airport: You are at home, but hallucinate being in an airport. Amazing Coincidence: Your experience is just as it is now, from your point of view, but you are hallucinating, and the scene before your eyes is nonetheless exactly as presented in your hallucination. In one sense, Airport is less veridical than Amazing Coincidence. But this sense differs from the sense of 'veridical' used to label completely successful perceptions, as distinct from hallucinations and illusions, since Airport and Amazing Coincidence are both hallucinations. We can label the two uses of 'veridical' as follows. Sometimes it is used to denote experiences that are veridical of the things seen. Call these experiences 'strongly veridical.' Hallucinations cannot be strongly veridical. Other times, 'veridical' is used to describe experiences that are veridical without being veridical of any object that is seen. For instance, through an amazing coincidence, a hallucination could occur in the presence of exactly the sort of scene that is hallucinated. Call 'weakly veridical experience' experiences that are veridical, whether or not they are strongly veridical. Strongly veridical experiences may fall short of being completely successful. Completely successful experiences are best thought of as experiences in which the subject perceives both an object and its properties. Consider Simone, who systematically misperceives green things, so that to her green things look yellow. Suppose that by stimulating Simone's brain area V1 while she looks at a green cube, you accidentally induced in her an experience as of seeing a green cube, when otherwise she would have an experience as of seeing a yellow cube. The intervention does not correct Simone's systematic error. But on the basis of the experience that the intervention helps produce, it would be natural for Simone to form the true belief that there is a green cube before her. Intuitively, Simone's experience is not completely successful, because the greenness of the cube does not play the right role in producing the experience. Simone perceives the cube, and it looks green to her, but she does not perceive its greenness.8 Cases like this one are called 'veridical illusion'.9 They suggest that leading to true belief does not seem to be enough for complete success. In general, an experience will be completely successful if it is a case of seeing o when o looks F, o is F, and o's looking F is due to o's F-ness, i.e., not to any irregular intervention. These experiences are not just strongly veridical, they are superstrongly veridical. They are cases of optimal perceptual contact with an object and select properties. The case of Simone illustrates how an experience could be accurate of an object the perceiver sees (and so strongly veridical) even if there is intuitively something missing from their perceptual contact with what they see. With the distinction between strong and weak veridicality in hand, we can see that the pre-theoretical distinction that was illustrated earlier between degrees of veridicality is not sensitive to whether experiences are strongly veridical (let alone superstrongly veridical). It is a distinction between degrees of weak veridicality. According to the straightforward account of what underlies our classification of experiences into partial and complete veridicality, weak veridicality is accuracy, and degrees of weak veridicality are degrees of accuracy. Amazing Coincidence is accurate with respect to the situation that the hallucinator is actually in, even though the hallucinator is not perceiving anything in that situation. If Amazing Coincidence represented that you were in a room containing yellow chairs, when in fact you were hallucinating while standing in a room containing red chairs, it would not be completely weakly veridical, but it could still be weakly veridical to a high degree. How does the abductive defense of P1 fare in light of the complications introduced by veridical hallucinations and veridical illusions? Using the notion of weak veridicality, we can refine the defense as follows. When given certain descriptions pairing token experiences with situations in which they are had, such as Fishtank, Fishtank2, Lunchtime, Airport, and Amazing Coincidence, we easily classify them into completely falsidical, partly veridical, or completely veridical (at least, completely veridical, for all the descriptions specify), where veridicality is weak veridicality. The best explanation of these classifications is that the experiences classified as completely veridical are completely accurate (so far as the descriptions specify), and experiences classified as partly veridical are only partly accurate. What else might explain our classifications? 8 For a similar case, see Johnston's discussion of the twins in the Ames room in his 2006. 9 We can distinguish between two kinds of veridical illusion. The case of Simone illustrates predicative veridical illusions, which are strongly veridical even though intuitively, the experience is not completely successful. (For discussion of other cases in which something similar goes wrong, see Johnston 2006 and Smith forthcoming). What seems to go wrong is that perceiver's contact with the object's properties is suboptimal. In contrast to predicative visual illusions, objectual veridical illusions are veridical of an object distinct from the object that is seen, and so are weakly veridical without being strongly veridical. For instance, a red cube at location L* looks orange and looks to be at location L, while hidden behind a mirror at location L there is an orange cube that otherwise looks exactly the way the red cube looks. So the experience is veridical of an orange cube, which is not seen by the perceiver, but is falsidical of the red cube, which the perceiver does see. A case with this structure is discussed by Grice 1961. The abductive defense of P1 just described will not succeed if there are alternative, superior explanations of what underlies comparative classifications of Fishtank and Fishtank 2, Airport and Amazing Coincidence, and our classification of some of these (Fishtank) as partly veridical, others (Lunchtime, Fishtank 2, and Amazing Coincidence) as completely veridical, and still others (Airport) as completely falsidical. The straightforward account has simplicity on its side. But let us consider the alternatives. One might try to argue that the only classifications of accuracy in the vicinity are classifications of judgments downstream of experiences. This alternative will bring us straight to the heart of the controversy over the Content View, and it will be useful to have the second argument for the Content View on the table before exploring it. That argument – the Argument from Appearing – will be presented in section 2.4, and we'll return to the alternative explanation of our comparative classifications of experiences in section 2.5. Another alternative is in the spirit of Naïve Realism, in that it attempts to define weak veridicality in terms of strong veridicality, or more generally in terms of the 'good' case of experience. According to this alternative, the classifications are sensitive to a notion of weak veridicality that does not involve the notion of accuracy, but instead involves the notion of indiscriminability from strongly veridical experiences. Such a notion of weak veridicality might be defined as follows: An experience is weakly veridical iff it is indiscriminable from a good case of perceiving something that has a cluster of properties F, and the experience is had by someone in the presence of something that has that cluster of properties.10 If properties are in a cluster, then if they are instantiated, they are all instantiated by the same thing. The cluster of properties F would have to be such that any two experiences that presented something as having F would be indistinguishable to the subject. Veridicality would then be partial if something is present with only some of the properties in the cluster; it would be complete if something is present with all the properties in the cluster. On this proposal, a good case of perceiving something that has the cluster of properties F could be a strongly veridical experience as defined earlier (a case of perceiving the object and its properties), or it could be more strongly an experience that provides a basis for knowing that the object has those properties, or more strongly still, it could be a case of knowing that the object has those properties. No matter how the good case is defined, weak veridicality is derivative on the notion of the good case, which will be something like strong veridicality. By itself, the status of weak veridicality as less fundamental than strong veridicality does not preclude experiences from being assessable for accuracy. Ultimately, this proposal does not seem to succeed in avoiding the notion of accuracy. Its right-hand-side relies on the idea that there is a cluster or properties that an experience can either match or mismatch. According to the proposal, the status of an experience as weakly veridical depends on whether the cluster of properties that figures in the indiscriminability property is instantiated. An experience will be weakly veridical if and only if a cluster of properties is instantiated that matches the properties in 10 Thanks to Adam Pautz for suggesting this proposal. In his 2009 Pautz considers the right-hand side of this proposal in a different dialectical context. He uses it to formulate a disjunctivist account of accuracy, which he draws on to argue that Naïve Realists can respect the standard classifications of experiences as accurate or inaccurate. the indiscriminability. Little daylight can be found between this kind of matching and accuracy. Through the dependence of weak veridicality on this kind of match, the proposal reintroduces the notion of accuracy, rather than providing an alternative to it.11 And from this fact we can draw an important moral: the claim that experiences can be accurate or inaccurate can be true, even if the assessability of an experience for accuracy is less fundamental than its status as a 'good' case of perception. The case for P2 So far, we have defended the first premise in the Argument from Accuracy. The second premise is P2: P2: If all experiences are accurate or inaccurate, then all experiences have accuracy conditions. There are two routes to P2. First, P2 is true on the simple grounds that accuracy (like blueness) is a property, and so if all experiences are the kinds of things that can be accurate or inaccurate, then there will be conditions under which experiences are accurate. From P1 and P2, it follows that all experiences have accuracy conditions. The first route to P1 yields only accuracy conditions that obtain when the experience occurs. In contrast, the second route to P2 that yields accuracy conditions that may obtain even when the experience does not occur. P2 is true if experiences can be assessed for accuracy with respect to situations other than those in which they are had. And it is plausible to think that they can be so assessed. Recall the cases described earlier: Fully Falsidical Hallucination: You are at home, but are hallucinating being in an airport. Fully Amazing Coincidence: You hallucinate being in an airport, and you are in an airport. The scene before your eyes is exactly as presented in your hallucination. Less Amazing (but still pretty amazing) Coincidence: You hallucinate being in an airport, and you are in an airport that is exactly like the one you're hallucinating in all some but not all respects. These cases describe pairs of hallucinations and situations in which they are had. But we can also fix on the first hallucination (Fully Falsidical Hallucination) as an anchor point, and think of the 11 The proposal faces another objection as well. Since weak veridicality is defined in terms of indiscriminability, which is in turn standardly defined in terms of knowledge (Williamson 1990, Martin 2004 and 2006), it appears that cognitively unsophisticated creatures cannot count as having strongly veridical experiences. (More specifically, if a mental state cannot provide a basis for knowledge in a creature that isn't capable of knowledge, then it seems that such creatures can't have strongly veridical experiences.) This objection is developed in Siegel 2004. See also Byrne and Logue 2008, Farkas 2006, Hawthorne and Kovakovich 2006, Pautz 2010, Sturgeon 2006. other cases as counterfactual situations relative to which we can evaluate the original hallucination. For the purposes of evaluating the original hallucination in this way, we can just ignore the experiences that occur in the two Amazing Coincidences, and consider the extent to which they are situations that match the original hallucination. Relative to the Less but Still Pretty Amazing situation, the original hallucination would be more veridical than it is in the original case (when you are at home). Relative to the Fully Amazing situation, the original hallucination would be even more veridical. We reach these verdicts concerning veridicality on the basis of information about what conditions obtain in the counterfactual situation. In general, suppose we evaluate an experience (such as Fully Falsidical Hallucination) with respect to a situation other than the one in which it is had. Call this situation world w. We will count the experience as veridical with respect to w only when properties are instantiated in w that are presented in the experience.12 This kind of assessment does not trivially require the presence of an experience. The conditions are veridicality conditions that can be satisfied in worlds where the experience does not occur. 2.3. A flaw in the Argument from Accuracy Considered as a defense of the Content View, the Argument from Accuracy is not good enough. Nothing in the argument tells us that the accuracy conditions are fit to be contents. This flaw is especially vivid on the first route to P2. If I see a red cube and my experience of seeing it is accurate, one of the conditions that obtains exactly when my experience is accurate is the condition that my experience is accurate. For all the Argument from Accuracy says, this condition is included in the accuracy conditions had by experiences. But it may be implausible to suppose that this accuracy condition is a content, depending on the conception of contents. If contents are sets of possible worlds, then this accuracy condition may be equivalent to more substantive ones, but on other conceptions it would be distinct. If it is distinct, it is intuitively not conveyed to the subject. This potentially silly kind of accuracy condition is in some ways analogous to a blueness condition, in that it is shared by all accurate experiences just as the blueness-condition (bluenesss) is shared by all blue objects. Yet nothing in the argument from accuracy rules it out as a content of experience. In reply, one might point out that the potentially silly kind of accuracy condition is avoided by the second route to P2, on which experiences can be assessed for accuracy with respect to situations other than those in which they are had. Accuracy conditions that can be satisfied in worlds where the experience does not occur will not include the condition that the experience is accurate, as they do not require the presence of the experience at all. But even this defense of P2 leaves the Argument from Accuracy with the same general flaw. The flaw is that the argument does not tell us whether the accuracy conditions had by experiences are suitable for being contents of experience, given the constraint that contents are conveyed to the subject by her experience. What needs support is not just the generic conclusion that experiences have any old accuracy conditions, but the more robust conclusion that they have accuracy conditions that are conveyed to the subject. The mere fact that accuracy conditions we get from the second route to P2 (i.e., those defined over worlds in which the experience does not occur) avoid the potentially silly accuracy condition does not by itself ensure that the rest of the 12 On the plausible assumption that visual phenomenology presents spatial features such as being nearby the perceiver (considered as the center), we will count an experience as veridical with respect to a centered world only when such features are instantiated in it. accuracy conditions are conveyed. And it could turn out that some accuracy conditions defined only over worlds where the experience does occur are conveyed (the potentially silly accuracy condition mentioned earlier – the condition that the experience is accurate is not the only condition that can be so defined). So drawing the distinction between the two routes to P2 brings us no closer to the heart of the matter.13 The general flaw with the Argument from Accuracy is that it is not an argument for the Content View as contents have been defined here. A good argument for the Content View should tie together accuracy conditions and contents, elucidating why experiences are assessable for accuracy in the first place, and how they could convey their accuracy conditions to the subject. 2.4. The Argument from Appearing We can find such elucidation in the Argument from Appearing. It attempts to unearth the idea that experiences are assessable for accuracy, aiming to explain what gives them accuracy conditions that are suitable for being contents, thereby bridging the gap between accuracy conditions and contents. It does this by starting with something that is conveyed to the subject, out of which accuracy conditions fit to be contents can be built. The Argument from Appearing proceeds from premises about the phenomenal character of visual perceptual experience. The accuracy conditions that figure in its conclusion derive from the properties that are presented in visual phenomenology. Premise (i) claims that properties are presented in visual phenomenology, premise (ii) links these properties to instantiation at a world, which is in turn linked to accuracy conditions in premises (iii) and (iv). The Argument from Appearing Premise (i) All visual perceptual experiences present clusters of properties as being instantiated. Premise (ii) If an experience E presents a cluster of properties F as being instantiated, then: Necessarily: things are the way E presents them only if property-cluster F is instantiated. Premise (iii) If necessarily: things are the way E presents them only if property-cluster F is instantiated, then: E has a set of accuracy conditions C, conveyed to the subject of E, such that: C is satisfied in a world only if there is something that has F in that world. Premise (iv) If E has a set of accuracy conditions C, conveyed to the subject of E, such that E is accurate only if C, then: 13 At least, it doesn't bring us any closer, absent a good account of why accuracy conditions defined over worlds where the experience does not occur always are conveyed. If there were such an account, the Argument from Appearing would not be needed. E has a set of accuracy conditions C*, conveyed to the subject of E, such that E is accurate iff C*. Conclusion: All visual perceptual experiences have contents. The general strategy of the argument is to reason about an arbitrary visual perceptual experience, E, and then draw a conclusion about all visual perceptual experiences. Premise (i) According to Premise (i), all visual perceptual experiences present clusters of properties as being instantiated. Is this description of experiences phenomenologically apt? Typically, our visual perceptual experiences are cases of seeing objects, where the category of objects includes the sky as well as ordinary objects such as cars, cups, and pencils.14 Why think that properties are presented in such experiences? Consider the claim (made sometimes in discussions of metaphysics) that there is no such thing as a 'bare particular', that is, an object shorn of all of its properties.15 Premise (i) is motivated by the idea that it is not possible for us to represent objects as so shorn in our visual experience. When we see (or even when we merely seem to see) ordinary objects, such as a cube, bare particulars do not figure in visual phenomenology in any way. Properties enter the picture as well. For you to see a cube at all, it must be part of your visual phenomenology that the cube has certain properties: as it might be, having a certain number of facing edges and surfaces, having a certain color, location, and so on. Most of the time, visual phenomenology takes a stand on which objects instantiate clusters of properties, both at a time and over time.16 For instance, when you see a bird flying by, 14 The category should also be taken to include "Spelke-objects", roughly things that can survive radical changes in kind but are bounded, capable of continuous motion (and not of discontinuous motion), and are not parts of other objects. There is debate among psychologists concerning what principles of individuation govern perceptual representations of objects. (For discussion, see essays in Scholl 2002 and Dickie ms-a). A similar question could be raised specifically about visual phenomenology. Does visual phenomenology ever attribute properties to Spelke-objects, or is it neutral on the status of objects as Spelke-objects or ordinary objects? (The answer will probably vary between infants and adults.) It won't matter for the Argument from Appearing how this question about visual phenomenology is answered, as accuracy conditions of the sort described in (iii) can be defined on any of these construals of objects. But the answer will bear on which accuracy conditions experiences have. 15 As bare particulars are defined here, they are objects without properties. Bare particulars thus should not be identified with the substrata recognized by opponents of the bundle theory. Substrata are not meant to be (even potentially) bare particulars in the present sense. The debate between proponents of substrata and proponents of the bundle theory concerns whether denying the bundle theory forces you into saying that there are bare particulars in the present sense. For discussion, see Locke 1689, Martin 1980, Sider 2006. 16 Clark 2000 suggests that visual phenomenology presents us only with properties instantiated at locations ('feature-placing'), without taking a stand on which objects are instantiating the properties. The objection that this is phenomenally inadequate in cases of perceived motion can it looks as if a single object is moving. Your experience does not remain neutral on whether it is the same object at various points along the trajectory. But in some cases, an experience may present the perceiver with a property without specifying what is instantiating it. For instance, Dretske 1999 discusses the case in which you can't tell whether the moving train is the one you're seeing or the one you're sitting in. Even here, though, this is part of a visual experience that does attribute properties to objects.17 We thus see objects, and we can't seem to see them without our experience presenting them as having certain properties. It should be noted that premise (i) can be read de dicto or de re, depending on the relative scope of "presentation" and "properties". I've been assuming the de re reading, on which for each visual perceptual experience, there are some properties (color, relative location, etc) such that the experience presents those properties as instantiated. On the de dicto reading, in contrast, each visual perceptual experience presents that some properties are instantiated, but given an experience E, there need be no specific properties such that E presents them as instantiated. At first glance it might be hard to see how the de dicto reading could be phenomenologically apt, given the main idea the properties characterize how things look to the perceiver. But if one adds another moving part to the equation, such as a mode of presentation of a property, the de dicto reading can begin to look more plausible. Modes of presentation will be discussed in connection with premise (iv), by which time it will be easier to assess their impact on the Argument from Appearing. For now, more can be said about how properties figure in experience, whether we read premise (i) de dicto or de re. Suppose you see a cube, and it looks red and cubical. Here your experience presents it as being the case that there is a red cube before you. Contrast a hope that there is a red cube in front of you. The properties of being red and cubical figure in the content of the hope. But in hoping that there is a red cube in front of you, it need not be presented to you as being the case that there is a red cube in front of you. To make this vivid, suppose your eyes are closed, you're not holding onto anything, and you're not engaging in any visual imagination. Under such circumstances you could still hope that when you open your eyes there will be a red cube in front of you. In contrast, when such a property cluster (redness, cubicality, and being nearby) figures in visual perceptual experience, the experience presents it as being the case that a red cube is nearby. It is the fact that properties figure in this way that will eventually allow us to draw the link to accuracy conditions of the state, rather than merely the contents. These considerations about the kind of visual phenomenology involved in seeing ordinary objects support premise (i), and they apply equally to cases of merely seeming to see objects.18 The same considerations also suggest that a sense of 'looks' and 'appears' can be defined in which when you see an object, it looks (appears) to you to have properties. (We will revisit this suggestion for defining a sense of 'looks' in section 2.5). It should be taken as analytic that if an experience presents a property as being instantiated, then it presents the property as being instantiated by something other than the experience itself. For all premise (i) says (and indeed for all the Content View says), there may be found in Siegel 2002. In his 2004, Clark makes explicit that visual phenomenology is not limited to feature-placing. 17 Dretske 1999. Unlike Clark 2000, Dretske accepts that properties are sometimes attributed to objects in experience. 18 Hallucinations that are indiscriminable from perception are not cases of seeming to see a bare particular, nor of seeming to see properties that are not instantiated by anything. be more to the phenomenal character of an experience than what it presents. For instance, premise (i) allows that experiences present themselves as having non-relational properties such as being blurred. On some accounts of blurred vision (e.g., Smith 2008, Pace 2007), part of what is presented (in a broader sense than the one used here) to the subject by her blurred experience is that her vision is blurred. Our more restrictive notion is compatible with treatments of blurred vision such as Smith's, but it is better suited than the broader notion for being linked to accuracy conditions. 19 Premise (ii) (ii) If an experience E presents a cluster of properties F as being instantiated, then: Necessarily: things are the way E presents them only if property-cluster F is instantiated. Premise (ii) is an instance of a more general claim about presentation that is independently plausible: if a state presents such-and-such as being the case, then things are the way the state presents them only if such-and-such. The general claim seems plausible, no matter what presentation is. But to bring the general claim into focus, it may be useful to discuss the notion of presenting such-and-such as being the case a bit further.20 Other mental states besides experiences can present things as being the case, and some states can do this without involving any phenomenal character (though (ii) would be just as plausible, even if presentation were tied specifically to phenomenal character). For instance, belief and supposition are modes in which things may be presented as being the case. The kind of commitment involved in belief is a specific kind of presentation, but not the only kind, as it is missing in supposition and imagination. My supposition that it will not rain tomorrow presents it as being the case that it will not rain tomorrow, but my supposition does not involve the same kind of commitment as belief.21 19 Premise (i) is at odds with a view explored by Sturgeon 2006 and 2008 and defended by Fish 2008 and 2009, according to which hallucinations don't have any phenomenal character at all. If hallucinations lack phenomenal character altogether, then (assuming they are nonetheless visual perceptual experiences), they will be counterexamples to (i). The idea that hallucinations lack phenomenal character is at odds with the crudest deliverances of introspection. Fish's proposal is discussed and criticized in Siegel 2008. 20 Searle 1983 discusses a closely related category of mental states, called 'Bel-states', of which belief is supposed to be a paradigm. For Searle the defining feature of Bel-states is their mind-toworld direction of fit, which is in turn illustrated using the metaphor that it is the 'fault' of the world, not the mind, if the Bel-state is not satisfied (op cit p. 7). Once we stop relying on the metaphor, the notion of mind-to-world direction of fit seems best understood as a norm to the effect that beliefs should be adjusted to fit the evidence, and evidence should not be gerrymandered to match antecedently formed beliefs. But this understanding of mind-to-world direction of fit is not useful to delimiting any class of mental states that includes experiences, since unlike beliefs, experiences are not the kinds of states that can be supported by evidence. 21 What about states of visual imagination: do they present things as being the case? This is a matter of controversy. Imagining that there is a red cube in my house, or that your uncle is Premises (iii) and (iv) Like premise (ii), premises (iii) and (iv) are closely related to more general claims. Without the conveying constraint, these premises follow from more general claims, and these claims are independent of any claims about phenomenology. Consider premise (iii) without the conveying constraint: (iii-minus-conveying-constraint) If necessarily: things are the way E presents them only if property-cluster F is instantiated, then: E has a set of accuracy conditions C such that: C is satisfied in a world only if there is something that has F in that world. This claim follows from an independently plausible more general thesis: If things are the way that a state X presents them as being only if conditions C obtain, then X has accuracy conditions that are satisfied in a world only if C obtains. Given that premise (iii) without the conveying constraint follows from this independently plausible thesis, our question should be whether once we add the conveying constraint, we end up with accuracy conditions that meet this constraint. Are accuracy conditions that derive from properties presented experience conveyed to the subject? We can distinguish between three ways in which a content can be conveyed to the subject by her experience. First, a content is conveyed by experience if it would be a content of explicit beliefs that are natural to form on the basis of visual experience.22 Second, a content is conveyed to the subject by her experience if it enables the experience to guide bodily actions. For instance, suppose you see the door but don't form any explicit beliefs about the shape of its doorknob, yet you adjust your grip in advance of touching the doorknob as you reach for it. This could be a standing on his head, seems to be as presentational as supposing the same things. There may also be a simpler kind of imagery that is not presentational, as when I just imagine a red cube. According to Martin's Dependency Thesis (Martin 2002), every case of imagining a red cube is a case of imagining that I am seeing a red cube. If something like the Dependency thesis is true, then visual imagery would seem to be thoroughly presentational. 22 According to some philosophers, potential contents of visual experience are so fundamentally different from potential contents of beliefs that it is impossible to believe exactly what you experience, and so the contents of experiences could not be conveyed to the subject in this first sense. They could, however, be conveyed in a similar sense, if there was a systematic relationship between experience contents and belief contents. Providing such an account would need to be done anyway in order to describe the differences between beliefs that are closer to the deliverances of perception and those that are farther removed from it. For discussion, see Heck 2007. case of visual experience guiding action. Finally, a content is conveyed to the subject by her experience if it is manifest to introspection that it is a content of experience. If there are properties presented in visual phenomenology, this opens the possibility that since those properties are conveyed to the subject, the accuracy conditions they directly determine are also so conveyed. What would it be for a property presented in experience to be conveyed to the subject by her experience? In cases of seeing objects, properties that are presented in visual phenomenology are properties that objects look to the perceiver to have when she sees them. Such properties can be conveyed to the subject, in the same ways that the contents of an experience can be conveyed to a subject. And there is good reason to think that such properties are conveyed in these ways. For instance, upon seeing the banana, it is natural to believe that it is yellow and bent, and this is arguably because those properties (being yellow, being bent) are presented in visual phenomenology.23 Similarly, upon seeing the doorknob, it is natural for one's active movements to adjust to what one sees, as when you automatically adjust your grip to match its shape.24 Finally, it seems manifest to introspection that visual phenomenology presents spatial properties (such as being nearby or in front of the perceiver), color properties (or properties closely related to colors), shape and luminance properties though it is doubtful that for every property presented in visual phenomenology, it is manifest to introspection that it is so represented.25 Supposing that properties presented in experience are conveyed to the subject, does this support the idea that accuracy conditions that derive directly from those properties are so conveyed? It is hard to see how such accuracy conditions could fail to be conveyed to the subject in whatever way the properties they derive from are. If it is natural to believe that the banana is yellow when it looks yellow because the property of yellowness is conveyed to the subject by her experience, then the content that something is yellow will be conveyed as well. Likewise, if the property F-ness is presented in experience guides one's action, then this seems enough for the content that something is F to guide one's action. Premise (iv) also follows from an independently plausible general thesis, when divorced from the conveying constraint. 23 Cf. Logue 2009. Since we bring plenty of standing representations to bear on perceptual beliefs, one can't infer from the fact that one believes that (say) somebody is Franco that the property of being Franco is presented in visual phenomenology. But what is at issue here are inferences in the other direction: if a property is presented in visual phenomenology, then it is natural to attribute that property to something one sees. 24 The Ebbinghaus illusion suggests that action is also guided by visual representations of properties that do not figure in visual phenomenology. The claim of interest here is not that if action is guided by a visual representation of some properties, then those properties figure in visual phenomenology. Rather the claim is that if properties are presented in visual phenomenology, then they may be fit to guide action. 25 Discovering which properties figure in experience is difficult, and in many cases introspectively reflecting on an experience provides little help in deciding whether a property is presented in visual phenomenology, or farther downstream. For example, introspection alone does not seem to tell us whether visual phenomenology presents an object as Franco (and so not as his twin), or as someone with certain facial features that Franco's twin could equally share, or as merely as a human-shaped entity that a non-human alien could equally share. (iv-minus-conveying-constraint): If there are some conditions C such that E is accurate only if C, then: there are some conditions C* such that E is accurate iff C*. In general, is plausible that whenever there are some conditions C such that X is accurate only if C (where X is any kind of mental state), there are some (perhaps stronger) conditions C* such that X is accurate iff C*. Once the conveying constraint is added in, is the resulting premise true? In effect, our question is whether E has 'iff'-accuracy conditions that are conveyed to the subject. Can the 'only-if' conditions of premise (iii) be turned into 'iff'-contents? Premise (iii) remains plausible once 'only if' is replaced by 'iff'. But for this replacement to preserve the argument's force, 'only if' would have to be replaced by 'iff' in premise (ii) as well. A version of premise (ii) with 'iff' would be true only given the assumption that what an experience E presents as being the case is exhausted by E's presenting certain properties as instantiated. And here two complications arise that could raise the suspicion that iff-accuracy conditions for experience cannot be derived from the only-if accuracy condition stated in premise (iii). The first complication concerns the role of objects that we see in accuracy conditions, and the second concerns whether there are conditions on accuracy other than properties. To quell the suspicion, what's needed are reasons to think that these complications present no bar to defining full iff-accuracy conditions that are fit to be contents. What about objects? Suppose you see Franco, and your experience represents him as sitting down. In order for the experience to be accurate with respect to a world, does Franco himself have to be sitting down in that world, or is it enough for accuracy if a qualitative duplicate of Franco is sitting down in that situation? For instance, is your experience veridical with respect to a world where Franco's twin is sitting down but Franco is standing up? As they stand, the 'only-if' versions of (ii) and (iii) leave unsettled whether accuracy conditions track objects seen across worlds, since they do not specify which object has to instantiate the cluster of properties F, in order for the experience of seeing that object to be accurate. To get a full definition of accuracy conditions, this issue must be settled. But whichever way the issue is settled, the resulting accuracy conditions are fit to be contents of experience. If you see Franco and your experience represents him as sitting down, it is natural to believe on the basis of your experience that Franco is sitting down. It is also natural to believe that someone with a certain appearance is sitting down. These are both ways for contents to be conveyed to a subject. So both options result in accuracy conditions that have a good claim to being conveyed to the subject by her experience.26 Why properties? Fregean contents, centered worlds and tropes The assumption that what an experience E presents as being the case is exhausted by E's presenting certain properties as instantiated is called into question by scenarios in which it seems prima facie that two perceivers accurately represent different properties, yet have experiences that are phenomenally the same. Objects typically look to stand in certain spatial relations to the 26 In Chapter 6, the distinction between strong and weak veridicality will figure in an argument that an experience could have both kinds of accuracy conditions. perceiver, such as being nearby or within reach. On some views (e.g. Egan 2006 and 2010), this involves the presentation of 'centering features' defined in terms of evaluation in centered worlds, where these are not properties. For example, in contrast to being nearby Susanna, which is a property, the centering feature being nearby the center is not a property, since being a center is merely a formal feature of a centered world. The claim that centering features are presented in experience is motivated by the idea that pairs of veridical phenomenally identical experiences can nonetheless be associated with different locations, and thus convey different contents. Centering features provide a level at which such phenomenally identical experiences present the same thing. Fregean modes of presentation have been invoked to play a similar role in response to inversion scenarios. In spectral inversion, phenomenally identical pairs of veridical color experiences are associated with different color properties. In one such scenario, Invert's and Nonvert's color experiences are phenomenally the same, but Invert's experience presents red while Nonvert's experience presents green. Is the phenomenal similarity between Invert and Nonvert a mere 'raw feel', or does it have some other status? Chalmers (2004) argues that Invert and Nonvert's shared phenomenal character co-varies with a level of content that is composed of Fregean modes of presentation, where these are part of a two-dimensionalist theory of experience content. (Thompson (forthcoming) defends a similar two-dimensionalist theory on the basis of inversion scenarios involving spatial properties.)27 A version of premise (ii) with 'iff' would be true only given the assumption that what an experience E presents as being the case is exhausted by E's presenting certain properties as instantiated. But this assumption is false if experience presents centering features rather than properties, or in addition to them. A modified version of the argument could deal with this issue, however, by replacing references to properties by references to features (properties or centering features), and by replacing references to worlds by reference to centered worlds. So this obstacle to defining 'iff' accuracy conditions is easily overcome. A similar dialectic surrounds two-dimensionalist Fregean views. On these views, even if the contents of an experience E derive from what E presents as being the case, what experiences present as being the case is not exhausted by the instantiation of properties, because properties are presented under a mode of presentation that can pick out different properties in different worlds. For instance, according to Chalmers and Thompson, the mode of presentation for redness (roughly 'the property normally causing reddish experiences in me') picks out different properties in different worlds. These theories allow that two experiences could present redness as being instantiated, yet differ in the mode of presentation of redness, and hence in their accuracy conditions. 27 Both the two-dimensionalist Fregean theory of experience content and the theory that experiences present centering features suggest an objection to premise (i): when you see objects, they look to have features that are not properties, such as centering features or modes of presentation. However, this objection to premise (i) can be met, since centering features and modes of presentation could be presented in experience along with the location and color properties with which they are associated. Indeed, each of these theoretical devices is invoked to explain the means by which such properties are presented in experience. Premise (i) does not entail that any pair of phenomenally identical experiences present exactly the same properties. In addition, both the view that experiences present centering features and the Fregean views about experience are versions of the Content View, and so do not ultimately challenge the conclusion of the Argument from Appearing. It is possible to formulate versions of (ii) and (iii) that would accommodate these twodimensionalist Fregean views, on which accuracy conditions are determined by modes of presentation of properties.28 In effect these theories posit two sets of accuracy conditions for experience: one set that co-varies with phenomenal character (found at the level of sense or modes of presentation), the other set that does not (found at the level of reference or properties presented in experience). When coupled with two-dimensional theories of belief, both sets of accuracy conditions in experience will be conveyed to the subject, to the extent that they each have an analog in the contents of beliefs formed on the basis of experience.29 Finally, one might think that it is tropes rather than universals that are presented in experiences, and that ultimately figure in their accuracy conditions. The Argument from Appearing could easily be reformulated to accommodate this position. In the reformulation, 'tropes' could be substituted for 'properties', except the consequent of premise (ii) would read 'things are the way E's visual phenomenology presents them only if a cluster of F tropes is instantiated.' For instance, F might be a cluster of red-cubical tropes, where type of trope is determined by a primitive resemblance relation between tropes.30 28Premises (ii) and (iii) might be reformulated to accommodate two-dimensionalist Fregean views as follows: 2D Fregean (ii) If an experience E presents a cluster of properties F as being instantiated, then: Necessarily: things in world w are the way E presents them only if something in w has a cluster of properties that meet the conditions on extension that F meets in the world where E occurs. 2D Fregean (iii) If necessarily: things in world w are the way E presents them only if something in w has a cluster of properties that meet the conditions on extension that F meets in the world where E occurs, then: E has a set of accuracy conditions C, conveyed to the subject of E, such that: C is satisfied in a world w only if something in w has a cluster of properties that meet the conditions on extension that F meets in the world E occurs. 29 A potential dialectical difficulty might remain. To defend a version of the Argument from Appearing that included 2D Fregean (ii) and (iii), what would be needed are reasons to accept these premises that do not antecedently assume the Content View. The defenses of Fregean contents given by Chalmers and Thompson take the Content View for granted. They argue that the Fregean contents are needed to make the right predictions about the veridicality of experiences involving inversion with respect to color and spatial features. (Thompson (2006) also argues that his contents are needed to make the right predictions about color constancy.) Perhaps related considerations about these phenomena could be used to support 2D Fregean (ii) and (iii) in footnote 44 without assuming the Content View. 30 A trope version of (iii) would look like this: 2.5 Two objections from "looks", "appears" and their cognates Premise (i) of the Argument from Appearing, like the descriptions given earlier of Airport, Fishtank, Fishtank 2, Lunchtime, etc., all use 'look,' 'present,' or cognates. Without relying on descriptions like these, the argument could not get off the ground. I will now consider a pair of objections to such uses of 'look' and its cognates. The second objection in the pair brings us to the heart of the controversy over the Content View. According to the first objection, there are no natural uses of English words 'look', 'visually present' or their cognates that pick out contents of experience exclusively. Call this the semantic objection: Semantic objection: No actual uses of 'looks' (or 'looks F') and its cognates in ordinary English exclusively track what is presented in experience. The discussion so far has relied on the idea that we can use ordinary English expressions (including such locutions as looks F) to identify visual perceptual experiences, as opposed to mental states further downstream of perception. According to a specific version of the semantic objection, the only mental states that can be picked out by ordinary English uses of 'looks F' and 'looks to be F' are judgments that it would be reasonable to make on the basis of experience. If that is true, then the putative descriptions of experiences used in arguing for P1 of the Argument from Accuracy and in discussing premise (iii) of the Argument from Appearing are defective. Similarly, the Argument from Appearing uses the phrase 'experience presents clusters of properties,' and in cases where the experience is a case of seeing an object, the properties presented are meant to be properties that the object looks to the perceiver to have. So the Argument from Appearing depends on the idea that objects look to have properties – and here again the English expressions 'looks F' and 'looks to be F' are indispensable. Something close to the semantic objection seems to be in play in Travis 2004. Travis raises doubts that any actual uses of 'looks' in English report contents of visual perceptual experience. His official target is the idea that "the representational content of an experience can be read off of the way, in it, things looked." He says he will "begin to examine that idea by distinguishing and exploring two different notions of looks," and that "[n]either...makes room for it." (69).31 If necessarily: things are the way E presents them only if a cluster of F-tropes is instantiated, then: E has a set of accuracy conditions C, conveyed to the subject of E, such that: C is satisfied in a world only if there is something that has a cluster of Ftropes in that world. 31 Although Travis sets out to attack the idea experiences have 'representational content,' the characterizations offered of the official target is more restricted than standard characterizations of the view. First, the target holds that contents can be 'read off' of the ways things look. The first notion of looks is characterized by Travis as follows: On the first notion, something looks thus-and-so, or like such-and-such, where it looks the way such-and-such....does (would, might look. On this notion, Pia may look...like...her sister....That man on the bench looks old. (He looks the way an old man would, or might).32 In a footnote, Travis makes explicit that public looks – which can be expressed by the locutions "looking like X" or "looking F" are supposed to contrast with looking like X or looking F to a perceiver.33 Travis sometimes calls looks on the first construal 'demonstrable looks.'34 His main criticism is that demonstrable looks don't fix on any single way the world has to be, in order for an experience to be accurate. Travis takes the question facing his opponent to be: what way does something have to be, in order to be the way that it demonstrably looks?35 If there are conflicting ways a thing could be in order to be the way it demonstrably looked, then, Travis concludes, contents of experience cannot be read off of demonstrable looks. Travis thinks this is just what we find. 36 A lemon, a lemon-shaped and colored soap, a small football in a lemon disguise, and countless other things could all share a demonstrable lemony look. How does the lemon (or the disguised football, etc) have to be in order to be the way it looks? You might think the answer is: it has to be yellowish and roughly lemon-shaped. But there are many lemony demonstrable looks, not all of which involve being yellowish and lemon-shaped. Maybe the lemon is cut in half. Maybe it's got a green patch. So a lemony demonstrable look seems too coarsely grained an item to determine any set of contents for experience. Alternatively, you might think the answer is: it has to be a lemon. But that may seem Substituting 'phenomenal character' for 'the ways things look' would result in the view that for any two experiences with the same phenomenal character, there is some content that both share. But some proponents of the idea that experiences have content deny this – such as Block (1996), who argues that that there are pairs of experiences that have the same phenomenal character, but differ in their content. Second, substituting 'known by introspection alone' for 'read off' results in the claim that introspection can tell us what contents experiences have. This claim is not entailed by the Content View, and I argue against it in Chapter 3. A wider target for Travis (and one that would make his criticisms more powerful) would look to constraints on contents by phenomenal character, without endorsing the supervenience claim, and without importing the assumption that we can discover what contents experiences have using introspection alone. 32 Travis op cit, p. 70. 33 Travis op cit, footnote 12. 34 Cf Ginet 1975, chapter 5. 35 p. 71: "If perception is representational, then for any perceptual experience, there must be a way things are according to it...things looking as they do on a given occasion must fix what representational content experience then has." 36 "Things looking (first notion) as they do fixes no way things should be to be the way the look full stop...There is just too much things look like...in having the demonstrable looks they do." p. 78-9. Cf. p. 74: "The conclusion so far is that on our first notion of looks, looking like such-andsuch cannot contribute to determining how things should be to be the way the look simpliciter. For so far as it goes, there is no particular way things should be to be the way they look simpliciter." arbitrary: why a lemon, as opposed to a football in disguise, or a well-crafted yellow soap? Even if we fix on a specific lemony demonstrable look that pins down shape, color, and illumination, we still don't seem to fix on any set of truth-conditions. Finally, you might think the answer is: once you fix a specific lemony demonstrable look, for something to be the way it demonstrably looks, it has to have just those properties that are involved in fixing the specific lemony demonstrable look: as it might be, lemon-shaped, roughly textured, yellowish, and so on. Of these three answers to Travis's question, the third seems the most sensible, as far it goes. But whatever status the answers may have, the question itself seems flawed, driven as it is by the idea that demonstrable looks might fix contents of experience. If the fact that a lemon demonstrably looks lemony doesn't entail that it looks lemony to S, why should we think that the lemon's demonstrable looks fixes the facts about the contents of S's experience when she sees the lemon? At best these facts are fixed by S's experience somehow picking up the demonstrable look of the lemon, when she sees it. But with the notion of picking up on a demonstrable look, we've introduced another kind of looking altogether. Demonstrable looks are irrelevant to fixing the content of experience. Since they are public, they are part of the way the world is, and as such don't automatically determine how the world looks, appears, seems, or is presented to a perceiver. If any notion of looking is going to constrain the contents of experience, it must be looking some way to a perceiver.37 Suppose we grant that 'looks' and its cognates as actually used in English do not exclusively track what's presented in visual phenomenology. This could be true, even if there was a special, regimented sense of 'looks' that did track what's presented in visual phenomenology, yet bears enough resemblance to ordinary uses to make it reasonable to choose the English word for that purpose.38 For the objection to have any force against the Content View, what's needed is reason to think that there couldn't be any such regimented use that could figure in the Argument from Appearing when it uses the notion of visual phenomenology presenting properties to a subject. We can thus distinguish the semantic objection from a more powerful objection, according to which no such regimentation is possible. Call this the psychological objection: 37 The second construal of looking that Travis considers is also a notion of public looks, and so likewise does not directly challenge the Argument from Appearing, or more generally the idea that the phenomenal character of an experience constrains its contents. The second notion is expressed by locutions that begin with "It looks as if..." and take an indicative propositional complement, such as "It looks as if Pia will sink the putt" (or "It looks like Pia will sink the putt" – these are Travis's examples). Like demonstrable looks, these (putative) facts are also supposed to be public facts about how things look, rather than facts about mental states: Travis writes: "It cannot look as if X on this notion where it is perfectly plain that X is not so." (76). It might be 'perfectly plain' that the sphere is to the right of a green cube, while nonetheless looking as if it is alone on the table to someone who is blind in their right visual field. If 'it looks as if p' were reporting a contentful experience, then it could certainly look to a subject S as if X, even if it were perfectly plain that X were not so – for instance, if S were hallucinating an airport lounge while standing alone on an empty beach. 38 Byrne 2009 argues that some uses of 'looks F' do reflect contents of experience, but grants Travis's semantic objection and goes on to argue for the Content View on the grounds that it offers the best explanation of perceptual illusion. Psychological objection: There is no mental state for any uses of 'looks F' and its cognates to track, other than judgments that would be reasonable to make on the basis of experience. If the psychological objection stands, then we can explain why we make the comparative classifications of veridicality in cases such as Fishtank, Airport, and the other cases described in section 2.2 without relying on the idea that experiences themselves are assessable for accuracy. Rebutting this objection thus contributes to defending the claim that the best explanation for our classifications is that experiences themselves can be accurate or inaccurate. What structure would the phenomenal character of a visual perceptual experience have to have, in order for the psychological objection to hold? There seem to be two answers: Answer 1: Visual phenomenology is a pure raw feel, or Reidian sensation. Answer 2: When a visual experience is not hallucinatory, its visual phenomenology does not consist, even in part, in the subject's perceiving properties. According to Answer 2, in non-hallucinatory experiences, we perceive entities that are concrete and worldly. If the entities are objects and we perceive both the objects and some of their properties, then this will allow us to define a sense of 'looks F' that picks out the properties objects look to us to have. This sense could then figure in the Argument from Appearing, and in the descriptions of Fishtank, Lunchtime, and the other experiences we have discussed. So this model of visual experience does not support the psychological objection, which denies that any special use of 'looks' could be defined that would exclusively track what's presented in visual phenomenology. To support the psychological objection, it has to be the case that properties are never presented in visual phenomenology. Travis seems to endorse this conclusion. He writes: "Perception can...make the world bear on what one is to think by furnishing access to things being as they are. Insofar as things being as they are is a different candidate object of perception than A being F,G, H,... then that's a reason not to think that perception or its phenomenal character (whatever that is) involves a commitment to the truth of some proposition." (p. 20, unpublished, quoted with permission.) According to Travis, non-hallucinatory experiences are perceptual relations to 'things being as they are', and things being as they are differs from objects (or anything) having properties, and from anything individuated by objects and the properties they instantiate. The phenomenal character of non-hallucinatory experiences consists in this relation. Travis's position is a version of what we can call Radical Naïve Realism. According to Radical Naïve Realism, all non-hallucinatory experiences consist in a perceptual relation to something other than properties. Radical Naïve Realism: All non-hallucinatory experiences consist in a perceptual relation to a worldly item, and properties are not among the things the subject is perceptually related to. A form of Radical Naïve Realism is the Pure Object View, according to which non-hallucinatory experiences are perceptual relations to objects. Pure Object View: All non-hallucinatory experiences are perceptual relations to objects and only to objects.39 A potential proponent of the Pure Object View is Bill Brewer, who writes: The only alternative to characterizing experience by its representational content is to characterize it as a direct presentation to the subject of certain objects which constitute the way things are for him in enjoying that perceptual experience. Call these the direct objects of experiences: the objects which constitute the subjective character of perceptual experience.40 Brewer holds that in cases of illusion, 'direct objects' of experience "have the power to mislead us, in virtue of their perceptually relevant similarities with other things" (op cit). Since similarities have to hold in virtue of something, it seems that they would hold in virtue of properties of the objects. And at that point it is hard to see how the resulting version of Naïve Realism avoids perceived properties.41 Both Answer 1 (the raw-feel view) and Answer 2 (Radical Naïve Realism) deny that properties ever figure in experiences. (Answer 1 says the same about objects.) Phenomenologically this is highly dubious, for reasons related to those that arose in defending premise (i) of the Argument from Appearing. Normally, when we see objects, we can discern where they are in relation to us, which bits of space they occupy, and in this informational feat visual phenomenology does not seem to be merely incidental. Visual phenomenology changes with big changes in what perception furnishes us access to. If we see a teapot in one case and a writhing snake in another, then the specific conscious character of each experience differs, as do the features of the world to which the experience gives us access. Within a Naïve Realist framework, we need properties (or something in the vicinity, such as centering features or tropes) to specify which aspects of the experience we pick up on in experience, and correlatively which specific phenomenal character an experience has. Radical Naïve Realism denies, implausibly, that experience presents us with properties of the things we see. Radical Naïve Realism is radical in another way as well. It denies the intuition that something is missing from cases of predicative veridical illusion, such as the case of Simone (2.1). Since according to Radical Naïve Realism, we never perceive properties (or propertyinstances) of the things we see, there is nothing short of completely successful perceptual contact when blue things look blue to Simone, but only due to an intervention that removes a color illusion to which she would otherwise be subject if left to her own devices. Radical Naïve Realism denies that there are any superstrongly veridical experiences. In contrast, standard Naïve 39 The Pure Object View could be extended to non-hallucinatory experiences generally, including illusions. If extended it in this way, it would become a version of Naïve Realism on which the main division among experiences is between hallucination on the one hand, and nonhallucinatory experiences on the other. (Byrne and Logue 2008 call this VI vs. H disjunctivism). 40 Brewer 2006 41 Ultimately, Brewer's theory of illusions assimilates them to strongly veridical experiences, with the only errors in the picture located downstream of experiences. Realism may take superstrongly veridical experiences to be the central case of visual perceptual experience from which theorizing should proceed. Does standard Naïve Realism provide any support for the psychological objection? In standard formulations of Naïve Realism, in which the worldly items that partly constitute the relevant class of non-hallucinatory experiences are individuated by both objects and properties. Since different proponents of Naïve Realism define this class differently, we can call such experiences Good, and say that Naïve Realists differ amongst themselves about which nonhallucinatory experiences are Good. But standardly, Naïve Realists take Good experiences to be relations to both objects and properties.42 And to the extent that Good experiences are tied closely to knowledge, they will be superstrongly veridical.43 For instance, John Campbell writes: On a Relational View, the phenomenal character of your experience, as you look around the room, is constituted by the actual layout of the room itself: which particular objects are there, their intrinsic properties, such as colour and shape, and how they are arranged in relation to one another and to you (116, 2002). Likewise, M.G.F. Martin describes Good experiences by invoking both objects and properties: The Naïve Realist claims that...some of the objects of perception – the concrete individuals, their properties, and the events these partake in – are constituents of the experience (39, 2005). A similar commitment is incurred by Kennedy and by Mark Johnston.44 To oppose the Content View, these proponents of Naïve Realism need grounds for denying that token Good experiences are accurate with respect to the situation in which they are had. It is hard to see what grounds these might be. According to one line of thought, Good experiences (as standard Naïve Realism construes them) are not accurate, because it is not possible for such experiences to be inaccurate. This line of thought assumes that it makes sense to ascribe accuracy to a state, only if it is possible for instances of that state to be inaccurate. The 42 Martin talks about experiences as relations to events involving properties, rather than objects having properties: e.g., the ball's hitting the cube, rather than the fact that the ball it hitting the cube. A more fine-grained ontology than I will assume here would recognize metaphysical distinctions between the ball hitting the cube, the ball's hitting the cube, and the fact that the ball is hitting the cube, considering the first two events rather than facts. For the purpose of understanding the relationship between Naïve Realism and the Content View, it won't matter if we ignore the ontological differences between these relata, since they are all individuated at least partly by perceived objects and properties (the ball, the cube, being hit, being in the process of being hit, etc). Depending on how the perceived properties are construed, Naïve Realism also comes in a trope version and a universal version. 43 Arguably in the case of Simone, the connection between the belief that the cube is green, the experience in which it looks green, and the cube's being green is too spotty to support knowledge. In nearby worlds where there is no intervention to cancel out Simone's illusion, her experience would lead her to make a mistake about the cube's color. If so, then arguably her strongly but not superstrongly veridical experience does not provide justification sufficient for knowing that the cube is green. 44 Kennedy 2009: "Naïve Realists think of veridical experience as a relation between subjects and material particulars and their perceptible properties." Johnston (2006) discusses superstrongly veridical experiences explicitly (though not under that label) and argues that they are not fundamentally contentful states, but rather states of perceptual awareness. assumption, however, is wrong. The state of believing that 3+5=8 is never inaccurate. But it doesn't follow that the belief is not true.45 According to a different attempt to deny that Good experiences (as standard Naïve Realism construes them) are accurate, if a state is accurate, then it must be possible to compare the state with the situation of which it is accurate. As standard versions of Naïve Realism construe Good experiences, those experiences contain the relevant situations as constituents. One might conclude from this that no comparison is possible. But there is no metaphysical bar to comparing a state that is partly composed of a situation with the situation of which it is partly composed. (Compare: when a Russellian proposition composed of an object and a property is evaluated with respect to worlds where the object exists, a proposition that is partly composed of an object is compared with a situation containing that very object). The relata are different, even if overlapping. If the idea of comparison still seems strained, the feeling of strain seems rooted in the redundancy of the perceived situation, which figures on both sides of the comparison. If the state in the alleged comparison is a state of seeing Franco's sitting down, then in describing the state, we have already described the situation in which the state is had: it is a situation in which Franco is sitting down. Since a situation is not accurate with respect to itself, it may seem as if any comparison covertly targets an aspect of the state that is separable from the things and properties perceived. Since Naïve Realism denies precisely that there are any such separable aspects, such comparison would be illicit. In response, the Naïve Realist is committed to the idea that perceptual contact with Franco and some of his properties constitutes the subjective character of the experience. When we focus on the subjective character of the experience, comparing it with the situation in which it is had seems to make sense, no matter what metaphysical structure it may have. Franco appears to be sitting down, and we can ask whether things are as they appear. In making this comparison, we don't have to make any assumptions about the underlying metaphysical structure of the experience. So the idea of comparing a Good experience with the situation in which it is had is not illicit, even if those experiences are structured the way Naïve Realism says they are. In summary, nothing in the structure of Good experiences as standard Naïve Realism construes them precludes experiences from presenting it as being the case that the object seen has the properties seen, and nothing prevents such experiences from having a presentational character. The contrast drawn earlier between experiences and hopes holds independently of whether Naïve Realism is true. If so, it is hard to see the daylight between standard Naïve Realism and the claim that Good experiences are accurate. 2.6 The Significance of the Content View We have seen that the Content View can be resisted by denying that properties are presented in experience. We can also ask: is the Content View unavoidable, so long as properties 45 Of course experiences as standard Naïve Realism construes them differ structurally from beliefs. The present point is just that it is not in general true that a state is assessable for accuracy only if it is possible for instances of that state to be false. This is shown by the case of beliefs whose contents are necessarily true propositions. So no such general point supports that claim that strongly veridical experiences as Naïve Realism construes them are assessable for accuracy. are presented in experience? If so, this would be a powerful philosophical result. There are many ways in which properties could be presented in experience. In particular, properties are presented in experience, even according to theories that are traditionally taken to be at odds with the idea that experiences have contents, such as Naïve Realism as it is standardly construed. If the Content View is unavoidable given widely accepted assumptions, then it will not be a parochial thesis, of interest only in a small corner of philosophy, but will rather be a thesis that can be used in the analysis of perception across a wide range of theoretical assumptions. Just as important questions about belief are usefully posed within a framework assuming that beliefs have accuracy conditions, the same may be true of perception. One way for properties to be presented in experience leads directly to the Content View. Call this way the Property View. Property View: All experiences involve relations to properties presented in experience, and are accurate only if those properties are instantiated.46 Since the Property View says that experiences have accuracy conditions that derive from the properties presented in experience, it leads to the Content View (given the assumption defended earlier that these properties are conveyed to the subject). Since the Property View entails the Content View, to oppose the Content View, one must also oppose the Property View. The Property View may be resisted in several ways. First, properties might figure in experience in a way that avoids it. For instance, according to classical sense-datum theories of the sort defended by Russell (1912), experiences consist in perceptions of sense-data (construed as mental objects) and their properties. The properties had by sense-data were thought to be different from properties of external objects, but systematically related to them. For instance, whereas apples are red, the sense-data you have when seeing an apple are red' (red-prime). And since sense-data were thought to be located in mental space (rather than in the same space as the external apple), they couldn't have exactly the same spatial properties (notably depth) as the external objects that were thought to cause them.47 The discrepancy between the properties of external objects and the properties of sense-data makes the latter ill-suited to figure in accuracy conditions, and so is at odds with the second conjunct of the Property View. If an experience as the sense-datum theory construes it is allowed to count as accurate, it won't have this status thanks to the 'primed' properties of sense-data, it will have this status thanks to the properties of external objects. So some versions of the classical sense-datum theory that avoid the Property View can nonetheless embrace the Content View.48 Second, Reidian sensations or raw feels involve properties to the extent that they purport to provide qualitative types of experience (so that two perceivers, or the same perceiver in different situations, could have experiences with the 46 'Property' can be construed broadly to include either universals or tropes or centering features, because none of these options alter the dialectic surrounding the Argument from Appearing. 47 For discussion of depth and other spatial properties, see Foster 2000. 48 For instance, nothing in Russell's theory rules out that experience of seeing an (external) apple is accurate, even on the assumption that the experience consists in the perception of sense-data. One could consistently hold that such an experience is accurate if it is caused by something that has properties systematically related to the "primed" properties of the sense-data. And primed properties could be presented in experience in our sense, since sense-data are not all experiences all by themselves – the subject has to be related to them via a mental act. same raw feel). Since these properties are not presented in experience as properties instantiated by anything at all, the Property View is avoided. The pure raw feel view and the classical sense-datum theory each face substantial objections. First, according to the raw feel view, neither objects nor properties are presented in experience, which leaves it mysterious what role experience plays in enabling the subject to distinguish objects from one another and figure from ground. Second, the raw feel view allows that two experiences could be phenomenally the same, while varying enormously in which contents it would be natural to believe on the basis of the experience. Finally, the classical sensedatum theory faces the challenge of making sense of the notion of mental space to house sensedata, where mental space is distinct from the space in which our bodies and other external bodies are found. A full case against each of these views would require separate discussion, but these objections suggest that neither position provides a powerful basis from which to deny the Property View. Many proponents of Naïve Realism, including Campbell, Brewer, Martin, and Mark Johnston, have been vocal critics of the Content View. As we've seen, standard Naïve Realism is hard-pressed to avoid the Property View. The most stable way for Naïve Realists to oppose Content View is by embracing the Pure Object View, or some other form of Radical Naïve Realism. But Radical Naïve Realism runs afoul of phenomenological considerations. If standard Naïve Realism can't avoid the Property View, it must embrace the Content View as well. Naïve Realism and the Strong Content View When proponents of Naïve Realism criticize the idea that experiences have contents, their criticism is best understood as directed at a strong form of the Content View according to which experiences are fundamentally structured as a propositional attitude. One version of this idea is the Strong Content View: Strong Content View: All visual perceptual experiences consist fundamentally in the subject's bearing a propositional attitude toward the contents of her experience. The Strong Content View is not entailed by either the Content View or the Property View. It is compatible with both the Property View and the Content View that experiences (or some subset of them) are fundamentally structured by a perceptual relation, either to external objects (as in Naïve Realism) or to mental objects (as in the classical sense-datum theory). So neither the Content View nor the Property View is committed to the Strong Content View. Given this difference between the structures posited by Naïve Realism and the Strong Content View, one might think that these views are incompatible. But this claim is an overgeneralization, and the difference in the structures per se is of little philosophical interest. We can see this by considering versions of these views that are clearly at odds, and contrasting them with versions of the views that have close affinities. Versions of the Strong Content View according to which no contents are individuated by perceived objects are clearly at odds with Naïve Realism. And some versions of Naïve Realism are clearly incompatible with the Strong Content View. These include standard Naïve Realism, Radical Naïve Realism, and 'negative' disjunctivism, according to which hallucinations consist entirely in a negative epistemic fact, rather than in a mental state with a specific structure.49 Other versions of each view, however, bring them closer together. For instance, as McDowell 1996 construes facts, facts are both true propositions, and are also concrete things that can be perceived.50 There could be a version of standard Naïve Realism that took facts so construed to be constituents of superstrongly veridical experiences. This version of Naïve Realism would clearly be compatible with the Strong Content View. There are also versions of the Strong Content View that closely resemble standard Naïve Realism. First, according to content disjunctivism, the contents of non-hallucinatory experiences (such as the strongly veridical Lunchtime, or the illusory Fishtank) are individuated by objects that are seen (e.g., the sandwich, the fish, etc), whereas the contents of hallucinations that are indiscriminable from these experiences – such as a hallucination of a sandwich that looks just like your lunch, or of a fishtank – would have contents that are not individuated by any perceived objects.51 It is also possible to formulate content disjunctivism in a way that individuates the contents of strongly veridical experiences by perceived properties, as well as by perceived objects. The structure of such experiences still differs from the structure posited by Naïve Realism, on the assumption (contra McDowell) that propositions are never also worldly items that can be perceived. But a necessary (and possibly sufficient) condition for entertaining the relevant sort of proposition is to perceive an object and a cluster of its properties. It may seem merely a matter of terminology whether the experience is the entertaining of the objectand property-involving proposition, as per this kind of content disjunctivist, or whether the experience is the perception of objects and properties that gives rise to the entertaining of such a proposition. Whether or not this issue is merely terminological, this sort of content disjunctivism remains closely related to standard Naïve Realism. Second, there could be a disjunctivist version of the Strong Content View according to which strongly veridical experiences are a variety of factive propositional attitude (such as seeing that p), while other experiences are non-factive propositional attitudes. In the end, whatever dialectical status Naïve Realism has in relation to the Strong Content View, it seems clear that Naïve Realism and the Content View are compatible. Even the forms of standard Naïve Realism that are incompatible with the Strong Content View are compatible with the Content View. To reject the Content View while maintaining Naïve Realism, it is necessary to move away from standard Naïve Realism and toward the radical form, which I have argued is implausible. It is easy to get the impression from recent discussions that fundamentally different approaches to perception are exemplified by Naïve Realism on the one hand and the Content View on the other.52 While the impression of a great divide between these positions is sociologically apt, philosophically it is overdrawn, and it makes a poor guide to the underlying 49 The epistemic conception of hallucination was first explained and defended by Martin 2004. See also Martin 2006. Pautz (2010) discusses the distinction between negative and positive disjunctivism. See also Hellie (forthcoming). 50 McDowell 1996. 51 For defenses of content disjunctivism, see Bach ms, Byrne/Logue 2008, Schellenberg (forthcoming), Tye 2007. 52 E.g., Campbell 2002 chapter 6, Martin 2002, Pautz 2010, Schellenberg (forthcoming), Logue diss. issues. The philosophical divide is not between these approaches per se, but between positions on two questions. The first question concerns whether properties are presented in experience. The Content View stands or falls with the answer to this question. If experiences do not present us with properties (as per Radical Naïve Realism and the raw feel view), then the Content View is false. The second question concerns whether there is any need to individuate experiences by the particular things that the subject of the experience perceives. Naïve Realism stands or falls with the answer to this question. If experiences are not individuated by such objects, then Naïve Realism is false. To the extent that these two questions are independent of each other, Naïve Realism and the Content View are independent of each other too.