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The Common Kind Theory and The Concept of Perceptual Experience

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Abstract

In this paper, I advance a new hypothesis about what the ordinary concept of perceptual experience might be. To a first approximation, my hypothesis is that it is the concept of something that seems to present mind-independent objects. Along the way, I reveal two important errors in Michael Martin’s argument for the very different view that the ordinary concept of perceptual experience is the concept of something that is impersonally introspectively indiscriminable from a veridical perception. This conceptual work is significant because it provides three pieces of good news for the common kind theorist.

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Notes

  1. Martin (2004, p. 37).

  2. I will be focusing on Martin’s most detailed presentation of the argument, which is in his (2004, pp. 47–52). But see also Martin (2006), which briefly revisits parts of this argument.

  3. The common kind theory has so many advocates that it would be tedious to cite them all. Still, for some paradigms, see Tye (1995), Schellenberg (2018).

  4. The notion of a fundamental kind has been developed in several subtly different ways. See for example Martin (2006, pp. 360–361), Brewer (2011, p. 3), Logue (2012b, p. 174) and (2013, p. 109).

  5. Metaphysical disjunctivists (or those who accept some nearby view) include Hinton (1967), Campbell (2002), Martin (2004) and (2006), Snowdon (2005), Fish (2009), Nudds (2009), Brewer (2011), Logue (2012), Allen (2015), Genone (2016), Miracchi (2017), Moran (2018), French and Gomes (2019). For a bracingly clear overview of different forms of metaphysical disjunctivism, see Soteriou (2016).

  6. I use the expressions reasonably natural property and natural kind in the sense of Lewis (1983).

  7. I use the term “entity” as an especially broad sortal that includes properties, objects, events, states, etc.

  8. Martin dubs this the “immodest view” (2004, pp. 47–48). However, since this is precisely the view that I wish to defend, I prefer the less prejudicial label given above. In addition, Martin does not speak of just one property E; he speaks of a whole host of properties E1 … En. But you can think of E as the conjunction of E1 … En.

  9. For a few advocates of the common kind theory, see fn. 3.

  10. For advocates of metaphysical disjunctivism, see fn. 5.

  11. Again, see Martin (2004, pp. 75–76) and (2006, §5). Martin takes inspiration from Hinton (1967). I have departed from Martin’s presentation in a few minor ways, however. First, Martin dubs this the “modest view,” but I will argue that there is nothing particularly modest about it; thus I prefer the more informative label given in the text. Second, Martin inquires into the ordinary concept of a perceptual experience of a street scene, but for our purposes I find it more helpful to inquire more generally into the ordinary concept of perceptual experience.

  12. See Martin (2004, pp. 74–81) and (2006, pp. 379–96).

  13. Martin (2004, p. 49).

  14. Ibid, p. 50.

  15. Ibid, p. 49.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid, pp. 49–50.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid, p. 50.

  20. Ibid, p. 51.

  21. I thank my undergraduate student Xianda Wen for the astute observation that seemings are sometimes inconsistent.

  22. I owe this concern to an anonymous referee.

  23. Martin (2004, pp. 50–51).

  24. Ibid, pp. 50–51.

  25. At least, assuming that some perceptual experiences exist. (Otherwise there are no events that instantiate E, so telling whether or not an event instantiates these properties might turn out to be very easy).

  26. Martin (2004, pp. 51–52).

  27. See their (2008, p. 75).

  28. Ibid, p. 78.

  29. Ibid.

  30. I thank an anonymous referee for this suggestion.

  31. My objection presupposes that sensations are not perceptual experiences. Can Martin reinstate his argument by denying this? Perhaps—but at this point in the dialectic, the onus is on him to defend this claim. He does not do so.

  32. See Martin (2004, pp. 37–38).

  33. See Siegel (2004, p. 94). For a response, see Martin (2004, pp. 80–81). For what it is worth, I believe that Martin’s response does not handle all of the problematic cases.

  34. See Siegel (2008, pp. 218–223). For responses, see Nudds (2009, pp. 342–343); Soteriou (2016, ch. 6).

  35. See Sturgeon (2008, p. 134). For a response, see Nudds (2009, p. 342).

  36. See Siegel (2008, pp. 211–214). For a response, see Nudds (2009, pp. 342–343). For the record, I believe that Siegel’s objection is correct.

  37. This phenomenon is well-known, though it has been called many different things—Millar (2014, p. 240) gives an especially perspicuous description of it under the heading of object-immediacy. For other influential descriptions of this phenomenon, see Broad (1952, p. 6); Alston (1999, p. 182); Sturgeon (2000, p. 9); Martin (2002, p. 413); Levine (2006, p. 179); and Brewer (2011, p. 2).

  38. For more discussion of these matters, see Mackie (2019).

  39. As an anonymous referee observes, this view is by no means irresistible. Another option is to say that perceptual experiences and sensations both simply seem to present objects (while remaining silent on their mind-independence); perhaps perceptual experiences and sensations even belong to the same fundamental kind. If this is right, then we might instead consider:

    The variant presentational semantic view: It is a conceptual truth that what it is to be a perceptual experience or sensation is to seem to present objects. (The property of seeming to present objects is thus experience-grounding.) In addition, this property is introspectible, and it is not perception-dependent.

    For the sake of simplicity, however, I will continue to work with the view in the text.

  40. See Bayern et al. (2018).

  41. Notice that, on this view, seeming (or purporting) to present mind-independent objects does not require concept-possession, but introspectively seeming to present such objects does require concept-possession.

  42. For the record, I am not just being coy here: I am not a representationalist. I prefer a pluralist theory of perception, one that blends certain elements of naïve realism and representationalism. See Mehta (ms).

  43. Some would reject this last claim. For instance, some will think that veridical perceptions do not seem to present mind-independent objects, but just objects, simpliciter. I discuss this idea in more detail in fn. 40.

  44. This is not quite right, since it is possible to hallucinate an impossible object such as an Escher staircase. But, borrowing an idea from Martin (2004, pp. 80–81), the objection could be reformulated into something like this: surely what it is to seem to present mind-independent objects is just to be exhaustively decomposable into parts that each seem to be perceptions. I will ignore this nuance in what follows.

  45. This seeming is not introspective, so we can still allow that a perception might introspectively seem to present mind-dependent objects. Again, this is one way to understand the case in which the subject mistakes a perception of a faint ringing sound for a ringing sensation.

  46. It is worth mentioning an alternative approach. We might say that what it is to be a perceptual experience is to seem to present external (rather than mind-dependent) objects (see fn. 40); that what it is to be a perception is in fact to present external objects; and that what it is to be a sensation is in fact to present internal objects. Perhaps hallucinations are a subclass of sensations—the ones that in fact present internal objects but seem to present external objects. This approach can allow that some perceptions present, and correctly seem to present, objects that are external but mind-dependent. So this approach lets us reject the biconditional claim that something seems to present mind-independent objects just in case it seems to be a perception. The approach can also allow us to say that perceptions and sensations can be introspectively mistaken for one another, since the seemings invoked in the account are not introspective.

  47. ,

    Some experiences might seem to present mind-independent objects and mind-dependent ones. How would I account for these? I would say that they are mixtures of perceptual experiences and sensations. (It is not surprising to posit mixed experiences. It is for instance entirely possible to mix perceptual experiences and imaginative ones, by imagining coffee in a cup that I see to be empty.) However, another option is to say that it is possible to perceive, in an unmixed way, mind-independent objects and mind-dependent ones, as long as all of these objects are external. See fns. 40 and 47 for a way to develop this idea.

  48. See Martin (2004, p. 71).

  49. Ibid, pp. 68–70.

  50. For other metaphysical disjunctivist attempts to fill this lacuna, see Alston (1999, p. 191); Fish (2009, p. 94); Allen (2015).

  51. I use the terms reasonably natural property and natural kind in the sense of Lewis (1983).

  52. For further discussion of fundamental kinds, see Mehta (2021).

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    Neil Mehta

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Mehta, N. The Common Kind Theory and The Concept of Perceptual Experience. Erkenn 88, 2847–2865 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00480-z

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