Abstract
This paper explores the distinction between perceiving an object as extended in time, and experiencing a sequence of perceptions. I argue that this distinction cannot be adequately described by any present theory of time-consciousness and that in order to solve the puzzle, we need to consider perceptual content as having three distinct constituents: Explicit content, which has a particular phenomenal character, modal content, or the kind of content that is contributed by the psychological mode, and implicit content, which lacks phenomenal character. These notions are then further clarified and related to each other.
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Notes
It is important to note that whereas you intend a perceptual object, it is on my account not the case that you have a visual experience in virtue of intending the perceptual content. Your experience of the visual content is not an awareness (in an intentional sense) of an intentional object except in unusual circumstances. Neither do you need to attend to your perception in order to have an experience.
It should be noted that Husserl did not conceive of retentions or protentions as discrete parts of acts, but rather as forming a continuous manifold. In order to simplify the theory I shall however in examples and the main text regularly express the theory as though perceptual content consists of a series of discrete retentions, primal impressions and protentions. Nothing important hinges on this simplification.
This has been questioned, in particularly by Dainton (2000). It would however take us too far from the problem at hand to discuss Dainton’s arguments to the effect that PSA is untenable.
See however Zahavi (2003) for an account according to which they only intend past primal impressions.
A note on terminology: When I write that y p-perceives x at tn, this is to be read in the sense that this p-perception will be a constituent of all acts of perception covering tn. This is a simplification in the sense that p-perceptions are normally not retained as qualitatively identical in the specious present. A p-perception that first occurs as a primal impression is for example retained as a retention. Nothing important hinges on this simplification.
A note on terminology: When I write that someone perceives something at a time tx, this is not to be taken as entailing that that point in time is unextended. It might well have some kind of temporal extension. Neither do I mean when writing that we first perceive something happening at t1 and then something differently at t2, that the points in time are presented as discrete units, so that within the specious present we discern first one point in time and then another point in time. That is patently not what happens. The points in time constituting the specious present are experienced as blending into each other, not as discrete units. But in order to account for the fact that we can perceive distinct events as temporally ordered, it is necessary to use this somewhat simplified terminology.
Note that this example does not presuppose a stand in the discussion pertaining to whether phenomenal content can represent “higher order” properties such as being a house or being a human in addition to “lower order” properties such as colour, spatial position, movement and so on. (See for example Bayne 2009 for a discussion) A smile is a Gestalt and as such certainly a lower order property.
Note that since t0 lies outside the specious present, Alan never perceives that she is smiling at t0, though he may certainly judge that this is the case on the basis of remembering that her expression had been unchanged for a period beginning before the specious present.
It is true that in some illusions the primal impressions are not retained in consciousness, but replaced with ersatz-retentions presenting the object differently than the primal impression did. But arguing that this is the case in the above example will not help. For in such a case the retentions constituting the perception at t3 would after all present the lady as smiling. But if the retentions did this in the present case, there would be no experience of a change in content.
This case actually comes in a second version as well. In our version, Alan veridically retends the content that featured as a primal impression in the perception at t2 and which failed to present the dot as being anywhere at all. In another version however, Alan’s retention in t3 of the ball erroneously presents the dot as located somewhere between position p1 and position p3 in t2.As has been argued by Grush (2008), Husserl’s theory can easily explain the second version. Grush however does not discuss the much more problematic first version. Kolers (1972: ch 2–3) has a very good discussion of these and other versions of the phi-phenomenon.
This is a contested point in the literature since a lot of philosophers and psychologists seems to have a strong intuition to the effect that the changes in at least some cases are too large not be unregistered by the mind, even though we are not conscious of them. For a very good overview of the discussion on inattentional blindness, see Ford (2008) (cf Mack and Rock 1998 for various experimental studies). Ford defends the notion that these cases are best construed as inaccurate experiences, using the notion of peripheral consciousness. An intriguing question which I lack the space to deal with here is how to understand time-consciousness in cases where an object passes from the center to the periphery (or vice versa) of attention.
An alternative option would be to assume that in addition to the content in the first option, the content would include a “change” property in the woman. So in addition to the content presenting the lady as initially astonished and then pleased, the content includes a representation of a change occurring in the facial expression. This is not an effect of the intentional content presenting her as looking astonished and then pleased, but something that comes in addition to this content. I for one find this addition rather superfluous. It does not seem to be required in order to explain the case at hand.
This is somewhat of a simplification since Husserl would also attempt to account for various Gestalt-properties of the intended object which is not captured by (a). But these need not concern us here.
Miller (1984:90) includes retentions and protentions in the act, but this contradicts Smith and McIntyre who seem to claim that the horizon lack a phenomenal character.
Recanati and Smith seems to have reached largely the same conclusions independently of each other.
This description uses Recanati’s terminology, but does not describe his preferred solution, since he locates time-consciousness in the contribution made by the psychological mode and does not seem to consider that perceptual content includes tenses other than that of the present. We depart from him in that respect. For a criticism of Recanati’s account of time-consciousness, see Almäng (forthcoming).
Obviously, the experience of an event will always succeed the event in time. If you see an apple falling, your visual experience will occur in a very short period of time after the event. However, this temporal lag does not seem to be presented in perceptual content. And we shall overlook this complication.
It might be argued that the tensed indexical in the modal content refers to a fixed period of time which ends with the time of the act and begins a short period before. It is however important to remember that the modal content is invariant for all acts of a specific kind. So if the indexical has such a reference, the specious present always must have the same extension for acts with a certain mode. This is however at best a speculative proposal. In order to account for the possibility that the length of specious present varies, the tensed indexical in the modal content would better refer to the temporal extension mentioned in the explicit content.
In various details not pertaining to time-consciousness, this formulation is influenced in particular by Smith (1989). The influence of the latter is not least reflected in the fact that (d’’) contains a primitive form of self-reference.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Alexander Almér, Kent Gustavsson, Ingvar Johansson and Christer Svennerlind for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Almäng, J. Two Kinds of Time-Consciousness and Three Kinds of Content. Axiomathes 23, 61–80 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9179-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9179-3