Abstract
My paper has three parts. First I will outline the act/object theory of perceptual experience and its commitments to (a) a relational view of experience and (b) a view of phenomenal character according to which it is constituted by the character of the objects of experience. I present the traditional adverbial response to this, in which experience is not to be understood as a relation to some object, but as a way of sensing. In the second part I argue that acceptance of (a) is independent of acceptance of (b). I then present a modified adverbialism that presents experience as relational in nature but whose character is nevertheless to be explained in terms of the way in which one senses an object. Finally, I will offer an explanation of how a naïve realist about experience can adopt this modified adverbialism and in so doing accommodate the possibility of perceptual error.
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Notes
Note that the term, ‘perceptual experience’ that I am using denotes only those experiences that we enjoy when perceiving objects. A hallucination, on this usage, would not be a perceptual experience, but a non-perceptual experience.
For a fuller explanation of this notion of ‘non-dependent’ demonstrative reference see Snowdon( 1992).
For this kind of view about the nature of experience, see McDowell (1998).
Except, perhaps, in cases of non-conscious perception such as blindsight. I am concerned here only with an account of conscious perception.
See, for example, Chisholm (1957).
For example: “We have the ordinary notion of a ‘view,’ as when you drag someone up a mountain trail, insisting that he will ‘enjoy the view.’ In this sense, thousands of people might visit the very same spot and enjoy the very same view. You characterise the experience they are having by saying which view they are enjoying. On the relational picture, this is the same thing as describing the phenomenal character of their experiences” (Campbell 2002, p. 116). I take this to mean that what one describes, when one describes the view, and what one describes, when one describes one’s experience of that view, are the very same thing, namely, the objects and properties of the scene before one’s eyes.
For example: “On the relational view [...] In the case in which there is a dagger [to which you are consciously attending], the object itself is a constituent of your experience” (Campbell 2002, p. 117). And later, he explains that “constituency” must be something other than the object entering into the content of perceptual experience: “On the relational view, experience of objects is a more primitive state than thoughts about objects, which nonetheless reaches all the way to the objects themselves” (Campbell 2002, pp. 122–123).
A further, minor difference is that Brewer takes perceptual experience to be a three place relation between subject, presented object and conditions of perception, whereas I have just been assuming a two place relation between subject and presented object.
Broad himself acknowledges a competing explanation for the character of experience that denies the object determination thesis but upholds the relational thesis. This was known as The Multiple Relation Theory of Appearing (see Price 1932) and still has some currency today as the Theory of Appearing (Alston 1999; Langsam 1997). On this account, phenomenal properties of experience are not instantiated in some object, but in a relation between subject and object. This is in sharp contrast to the relational views of the sense-datum theorists and modern day naïve realists for whom phenomenal properties are intrinsic properties of the objects to which we are related in experience. The theory of appearing, then, occupies the same space as the modified adverbialism I describe below. I do not consider this position in any detail here, but I regard it as unsatisfactory. I mention it as another example of a position that endorses the strong relational thesis but denies the phenomenal thesis.
See, for example, the experimental use of ‘Blake shapes’ in determining efficiency of grasp in test subjects. (Goodale and Milner 2005, pp.24–27)
It does not, however, provide the naïve realist with an answer to the argument from hallucination. That will require a different strategy. It is my purpose in this paper only to outline a defence of a particular conception of what the experience one enjoys when perceiving consists in. How might the naïve realist who adopts this modified adverbialism deal with hallucination? There are two possible strategies. The first would be to adopt some form of disjunctivism. According to disjunctivism, there are fundamentally different kinds of visual experiences, and so it would be open to the naïve realist to give a modified adverbialist account of veridical and illusory perceptual experiences and a different account of non-perceptual experiences. For various accounts of disjunctivism, see Snowdon (1980–81; 1990), Martin (2004; 2006), and Langsam (1997). The second strategy is more radical. It is for the naïve realist to reject disjunctivism and accept that non-perceptual experience has the same nature as perceptual experience. Both perceptual and non-perceptual experience would be conceived of as a relation between subject and object whose existence is independent of its presence in experience. The difference between the two kinds of experience would then be explained in terms of a fundamental difference between the kinds of object that one is related to in the two cases. The problem with this account is its distinctly unintuitive picture of hallucinations as having, at least in some sense, real objects.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to the participants of the Second Philosophy Graduate Conference at CEU, where this paper was originally presented. For helpful discussion and criticism, many thanks to Tim Crane, Howard Robinson, Nenad Miscevic, Tomasz Budek, Elizabeth Hannon and E J Lowe.
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Conduct, M.D. Naïve Realism, Adverbialism and Perceptual Error. Acta Anal 23, 147–159 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0024-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0024-2