Abstract
While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of horizons, it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing vehicles. As part of a phenomenological theory, this means that on the Husserlian view such representations are part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I believe that, although the intuitions supporting this idea are correct, it is a mistake to maintain that there are such representations defining the phenomenal character of low-level perception. What these representations are called on to explain, i.e., the phenomenal character of perceiving objects in their full presence, can be more parsimoniously explained by appealing to certain affective states or affect schemas that shape the intentional directedness of low-level perceptual experience and define its phenomenal character in a non-representational way. This revision of the Husserlian view, it is shown, also helps us understand the normative character of perception.
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Notes
On Husserl’s view, there is some sense in which the mind is related and perhaps “directed” (in an equivocal sense) to sensory data and other mental matters, but that relation is not an intentional relation, a consciousness-of (Rowlands 2010, p. 177). More on this below.
As it happens, this is also a fairly widespread view in contemporary philosophy of mind, thanks to the work of Tye (2002).
This is most immediately suggested by his early theory of sensory or “hyletic” data, as presented in the Logical Investigations and Ideas I. In these texts, he argues that sensory information is inherently non-intentional (Hua III, §85). It is not “about” anything, left to its own resources. Once one carries out an interpretation or apprehension (Auffasung) of it, then a sensation becomes the constituent of an intentional act aimed at some worldly matter. However, it is arguably the case that Husserl comes to see this position as being problematic (Nuki 1998; Rabanaque 2003). There is controversy about the extent and significance of Husserl’s change of mind on the point, and the way the controversy is negotiated will certainly bear on the question of whether sensory data are content vehicles for Husserl. I will remain undecided about that interpretive controversy. In fact, I will also assume, whether this is Husserl’s view or not, that sensory information is not intramental, but rather that it is a way of talking about a peculiar kind of mind-world (or, better, organism-world) relation. On this understanding, it would not be a content vehicle.
Cunningham (1986, p. 283) makes more or less the same observation, although without specific reference to “horizons.”
I would argue that this means appresented co-present properties are therefore neither concrete particulars (individual objects, e.g., this cat, and their detachable parts, e.g., this cat’s tail) nor tropes (abstract particulars, e.g., this shade of green). As Husserl quite often stresses, it is a consciousness of types. Surely one can be conscious of other sorts of things, but that is not what I am trying to capture here, i.e., what Husserl calls the “horizon” of our intentional acts. I think this point is underappreciated and often not recognized, and that it could do a lot to clarify Husserl’s phenomenology of perception in a useful way.
For the sake of simplicity, I will restrict myself to the internal horizon, which is precisely what I have been describing. No account will be given here of the external horizon, i.e., what is grasped in perception of an object’s relations to one’s own material body, to other objects, and to its environment and surrounding conditions. Husserl discusses the distinction between “internal” and “external” horizons in the following passages: Hua XI, pp. 43–48, 60, 108, 150, 253, 257–258, 445; Husserl 1973, pp. 33, 150, 361. See Hopp (2011, pp. 54–60) for further discussion. I will thus be using the term “horizon” in a limited sense.
Indeed, Husserl often speaks of the Horizontsinn of intentional acts. See, e.g., Hua I, p. 141/111, Hua XV, pp. 46, 57, 95, 137, 209, 429, 491, 549, 603, Hua XXXIX, pp. 3–4, 27, 195–196, 430, 480, 496, 676, Hua Mat VIII, pp. 241, 243.
I therefore cannot agree with Smith’s (2007, p. 236) view that distinguishes noema from horizon in such a way that the noema occurs “within” a horizon. The horizon, in Smith’s reading of Husserl, is a consciousness of possible acts. Husserl does often speak this way, so Smith’s understanding does have textual support. I think, however, that Husserl is being loose with his language when he speaks like this. Phenomenologically speaking, I think it is dubious to claim I am constantly aware of possible acts in ordinary perceptual experience, not even “tacitly” or “implicitly.” (Of course, it is harder to deny claims about “tacit” experiences, since it can always be said that one is simply overlooking them if one denies their existence.) The meaning of Husserl’s talk of possible acts, I propose, is more like this: One perceives an object, and recognizes it according to a type or generic schema (e.g., material thing, animate being, person, etc.), and this type is a setup for the future course of experience, such that it is expected to conform to the type. In a sense, that means the future course of experience is “implied” in the present phase. Combined with protentional consciousness, the awareness of the type is projected into the future, but that hardly counts as an awareness of other acts. It is, rather, the awareness of the continuation of a present act. This would be more apparent from Husserl’s later analyses of passive synthesis and association, which are not the primary textual loci for Smith’s analysis. Hopp (2011, pp. 54–55) is similarly critical of Smith’s view.
This is a point that Aron Gurwitsch is especially emphatic about (Gurwitsch 2009).
The quotation is my translation. In Balle’s words: “Die Sinnstruktur des intendierten Gegenstandes ist hierbei nicht eigens bewusst, es handelt sich beim Typus vielmehr um eine Art Instrumentarium, mittels dessen das Subjekt in die Lage versetzt wird, einen Gegenstand als einen Bestimmten zu erkennen.”
Husserl is similar to Tye (2002) in this respect. Tye claims that representational contents “contribute to the phenomenal character of experience” (Tye 2002, p. 142). This is just what I have been trying to show in Husserl. It is not clear, though, whether Husserl would agree with Tye’s view that the phenomenal character of an intentional act is its representational content. In any case, the view I present below will not go along with that, since I will try to paint a picture of perception without representational content.
On the notion of appresentation in Husserl, see Rodemeyer (2006).
The context is worth reproducing: “We presently have this immanent stream of lived-experience together with an egoic stratum, where affection is not externally superimposed on the particular pre[ontic] lived-experience. […] Every lived-experience, therefore now concretely as a two-sided lived-experience, has an egoic side and an egoless side, alien to the ego. Put differently, every unity is two-layered, having a stratum of allure or a directional point [Richtpunktes] (the ‘form’) and the what [das Was] of this form” (Hua Mat VIII, p. 189; my italics).
This view is apparently not idiosyncratic to Husserl. Barrett and Bliss-Moreau (2009) report that Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener likewise view affect and sensation as inseparable.
Shim (2011) makes the converse point, which is also relevant here.
This point is inspired by Chemero (2009, pp. 57–66), who makes a similar point about perceptual cognition (and not about the phenomenal character of perception).
There is nothing wrong with this. I think the two approaches are complimentary.
This is a point I agree with, as will become apparent in the final section, though I think one can do a lot more phenomenologically than Noë tries to do.
I mean the difficulty to be a phenomenological one. Recent work on prospective control (Stepp and Turvey 2010), which relies heavily on vision, suggests the same point could be made about vision despite this phenomenological hang-up.
Some phenomenologists have already emphasized certain affinities between the Husserlian and Gibsonian views of perception. See, for instance, Sokolowski (2008) and Natsoulas (2013). Zhok (2013) is less sanguine. I think Zhok’s reticence is not unfounded, but it would not be problematic for my account, which emphasizes the importance of the subject-side of perceiving in ways that Gibson is sometimes criticized for neglecting. Barrett (2011), however, suggests there is no reason in principle for ecological psychology to remain silent about the subject-side of perception. I remain neutral here on the metaphysical status of affordances and the issue of naturalism and the transcendental, which likely would be a serious point of contention for Husserl and Gibson.
The view I am proposing, recall, is for the most part an extension of Husserl’s ideas about a possible driving role of affection in intentional acts. Only I am suggesting that we ought to extend these marginal ideas further than Husserl was willing to do.
The affect scientist Panksepp (1998) has referred to the biological underpinning of this phenomenon as the “seeking system.”
This idea is inspired in part by Anderson and Rosenberg (2008).
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Bower, M. Affectively Driven Perception: Toward a Non-representational Phenomenology. Husserl Stud 30, 225–245 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-014-9152-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-014-9152-2