Abstract
In his book Action in Perception, Alva Noë poses what he refers to as the “problem of perceptual presence” and develops his enactive view as solution to the problem. Noë describes the problem of perceptual presence as the problem of how to conceive of the presence of that which, “strictly speaking,” we do not perceive. I argue that the “problem of perceptual presence” is ambiguous between two problems that need to be addressed by invoking very different resources. On the one hand, there is the problem of how to conceive of the presence of objects as wholes, front side and back, and their constant properties. On the other hand, there is the problem of how to account for the presence of unattended detail. I focus on the first problem, which Noë approaches by invoking Husserlian ideas. I argue that Noë’s enactive view encounters difficulties, which can be dealt with by complementing it with Edmund Husserl’s idea of fulfillment and generally restoring the view to its original Husserlian context. Contrary to Noë’s purport, this involves regarding the view not as a theory of perception and perceptual content but as part of a descriptive–clarificatory project of conceptual analysis. The Husserlian phenomenologist analyzes, e.g., the concept of shape or color by investigating the fulfillment conditions pertinent to shape or color. In general, my critique of Noë’s enactive view serves to caution philosophers against unprincipled uses of Husserlian ideas.
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Notes
See, for example, Pautz 2009, p. 503.
This was pointed out to me by an anonymous referee.
The idea that subjects are phenomenologically naïve in the sense of being pervasively and drastically mistaken about the extent of what appears to them at a given moment, needs to be sharply distinguished from the kind of naivete with which Husserl contrasts his phenomenological perspective. I believe that the latter kind of naivete centrally consists not in being wrong about the extent of what appears to one or in being oblivious of the nuances of experience but rather in failing to adequately grasp the nature of the project and to abide by the constraints of the phenomenological method. A prime example of such failure is appeals to theories concerning the subpersonal functioning of the perceptual apparatus and how it makes contact with the physical environment.
Husserl, too, has discussions that bind together perceptual expectations on the one hand, and bodily skills and habits on the other. Given that I find fault with Noë’s view, would I also object to Husserl’s? However, there is a difference. Husserl accounts for the genesis of the relevant perceptual expectations in terms of associations between series of visual sensations and kinesthetic sensations: at least on the “constitutive” stratum pertaining to the “phantom,” i.e., the spatial object, actual experienced movements seem to be needed (see Husserl 1997, Section IV). While it seems that if we move to the higher “constitutive” strata, actual movements are not always needed, it is also the case that the constitutive Bodily involvement becomes more complex, involving skills and habits (Husserl 1989, pp. 266–269, 253–257). But the point is that all these discussions are at the level of experience or at what we might nowadays call the personal level, even if they are concerned with aspects of experience to which we do not attend and of which we are only marginally aware; and all these discussions concern the “constitution” of sensuous objectivity in experience.
Noë, on the other hand, as I try to argue in the paper, shifts back and forth between the personal and the subpersonal levels. Sometimes we find aspects of a Husserlian “constitutive” account, at other times reduction of perceptual experience to the subpersonal workings of perceptual mechanisms as when he discusses “access.” Thus, we may have Noë speaking about skills in a Husserlian vein but also arguing for his view by appealing to the ways in which the subpersonal mechanisms “skillfully” access the perceptual environment.
Noë pays tribute to Dennett as “[t]he thinker who has done most to articulate the new skepticism [concerning experience] and give it punch.” He points out that Dennett did so before change blindness was discovered and even predicted change blindness (Noë 2004, p. 54).
Kristjan Laasik—author of the present submission.
For how Husserl regards color, see Husserl 1989, pp. 46–47 (43). In order to accept that this is indeed Husserl’s view of shape and color constancy, one needs to adequately grasp Husserl’s notion of transcendence, but also how the discussions in Thing and Space and Ideas II complement each other, as concerning different “constitutive” strata. Husserl’s notion of transcendence is that of constancy in the flux of experience (Husserl 1997, p. 315 (355)). The shape and color properties, just as the object itself, are transcendent. The discussion of what Husserl calls the spatiotemporal “schema” or “phantom,” in Thing and Space, is rightly interpreted as an account of the transcendence of shape properties, and it requires visuo-kinesthetic expectations. However, the discussion of the transcendence of the “material thing” in Ideas II is distinguished from that of the “phantom” in that it involves objects’ “causal” interactions with other objects and their environment, and the interactions of color with the changing lighting context are a special case of that. In order to set the relevant fulfillment conditions, we need expectations concerning how the color will appear if the lighting context changes.
Indeed, according to Bernet, Kern and Marbach, “[i]t is the first and most fundamental task of a phenomenological analysis of the perception of a thing to make intelligible this necessary connection between partial or perspectival givenness and the whole or uniform thing” (Bernet et al. 1993, p. 116).
In Husserlian terminology, we can rephrase this claim in terms of grounding “active syntheses” in “passive syntheses.” Details aside, the idea is that the predicative ego-activities in acts of judgment presuppose passive syntheses, based on the psychological laws of association (or “motivation”). Where to draw the line between passive and active synthesis seems a somewhat complicated matter, regarding which Husserl changed views. See, for example, Roland Breeur’s editorial preface to Husserl (2000), Einleitung (Introduction).
See, for example, Pautz 2009, p. 503.
It is noteworthy that Jason Leddington has recently argued that Noë’s enactive view creates a strong pull towards phenomenalism,
Noë’s view threatens to collapse into a form of phenomenalism: what is given in perceptual experience is merely mind-dependent sensory stimulation or appearance, and the sense that we are encountering a world of mind-independent objects is reconstructed from our sense of being able to alter the course of experience in predictable ways (Leddington 2009, p. 491).
I lack the space to offer a discussion of Leddington’s detailed argument, but Leddington’s worry should come as no surprise, since Husserl’s view may easily seem phenomenalist, and Noë’s enactive view incorporates Husserlian ideas.
For a statement concerning the nature of his project, see Husserl’s articulation of what he refers to as the Principle of All Principles (Husserl 1982, p. 44 (43–44)). As for calling the project “conceptual analysis,” I do not believe that Husserl has ever done that. I have adopted this label because I wish to make connections between conceptual analysis and phenomenology in my future work, and because I regard it as significant that the philosophers working in these traditions had reservations about metaphysical speculation of the kind that has once more gained considerable currency in recent decades. I look to varieties of what I refer to as “conceptual analysis” for alternatives and challenges to today’s prevalent philosophical approaches.
There is also another reason why Noë’s example with the people below is questionable as a case of a failure of perceptual constancy. Consider that, on one hand, I can fail to perceptually experience a ball that starts to roll away from me as maintaining its constant size. On the other hand, I can just be mistaken about the size of the ball to begin with. I believe that only the former case is rightly regarded as a failure of perceptual constancy, and Noë’s example is analogous to the latter case. However, Noë can change his example to accommodate this criticism, e.g., by having his subjects go up in an elevator with a view of the street below.
Concerning the difference between retention and reproduction (or primary and secondary remembrance), see Husserl 1964, §19.
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Laasik, K. On perceptual presence. Phenom Cogn Sci 10, 439–459 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9220-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9220-4