Abstract
This paper argues for the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experiences. Naïve realism holds that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is (at least in part) constituted by environmental objects that the subject perceives. Phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experience states that perceptual experience has intentionality in virtue of its phenomenology. I first argue that naïve realism is not incompatible with phenomenal intentionalism. I then argue that phenomenal intentionalists can handle two objections to it by adopting naïve realism: the first objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a veridical perceptual experience is directed at a particular object rather than any other object of the same kind. The second objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a perceptual experience is directed at a type of external object rather than other types of objects without appealing to a resemblance relation between a perceptual experience and an external object, which is considered to be problematic.
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Notes
Ott states that “I shall mainly be concerned with phenomenal intentionality in veridical perceptual cases. […] I am interested in a very narrow version of PI [Phenomenal Intentionality], one designed to account only for such simple cases. I take no position on whether all intentional content is phenomenal or whether all of its other forms can be derived from the perceptual kind” (2016, 132). I share his interest.
Since my focus is on PIP, I restrict the scope of these claims to phenomenal perceptual intentionality.
Note that naïve realism does not conflict with Phenomenal Grounding. Naïve realism states that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is in part constituted by environmental objects that the subject perceives. This implies that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is grounded in the subject perceiving the environmental objects. Importantly, this does not conflict with the relevant phenomenal grounding claim that the intentionality of veridical perceptual experience is grounded in its phenomenology. What the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and PIP must accept is the grounding order that the intentionality of veridical perceptual experience is grounded in its phenomenology, which is grounded in the subject perceiving environmental objects.
Opponents of naïve realism may criticize the understanding of neural states/activities as the enabling condition by pointing to two specific kinds of empirical findings: (1) when the same object is perceptually experienced by two subjects who differ in some internal conditions, their perceptual experiences differ phenomenologically (Block 2010) and (2) when two objects with different reflectance properties cause the same neural activations in brain areas responsible for colour perception (V4), the two objects are perceptually experienced as having the same colour (so-called metameric matching). If naïve realism holds that (a) neural states/activities only serve to select what external items constitute the phenomenology of perceptual experience and that (b) the phenomenology of perceptual experience is entirely constituted by the selected external items, then naïve realism seems incompatible with the empirical findings in question. However, naïve realists can allow that neural states/activities can contribute to perceptual phenomenology more substantially than just serving the selecting role, while holding onto the naïve realist core idea that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is in part constituted by external items (French 2018). Although I admit that the empirical data in science of perception might be better explained by the internalist theories accepting the narrowness principle as Pautz (2017) suggested, it is fair to say that naive realism is not incompatible with the empirical data.
One may cast doubt on the compatibility of naïve realism and PIP by focusing on non-veridical perceptual experiences such as illusion and hallucination. It seems undeniable that non-veridical perceptual experiences also have intentionality. If the adoption of naïve realism causes a problem for PIP in explaining the intentionality of non-veridical perceptual experiences, advocates of PIP should not adopt naïve realism. Note, however, that naïve realism does not indicate anything about the ontological status of non-veridical perceptual experiences. As Moran (2018) persuasively argues, naïve realists can coherently take any kind of view about the nature of non-veridical perceptual experiences. Given this, the adoption of naïve realism does not affect what account advocates of PIP can provide for the intentionality of non-veridical perceptual experiences. Although I leave fully open how the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and PIP should explain the intentionality of hallucinatory experiences, I briefly discuss the intentionality of illusory experiences at the end of Section 3.2.
This is not to say that there is no other condition to be satisfied for a particular object to be the intentional object of a perception experience. For instance, one additional condition may be that a large number of singular perceptual judgments that can be formed based only on the perceptual experience are true of the particular object. When I say that a perceptual experience is appropriately caused by a particular object, I mean that such other conditions are also satisfied.
Perhaps, we can imagine an abnormal case in which two particular apples are causally related to a perceptual experience in which only one apple is phenomenally manifested. I do not discuss this kind of illusory cases because my focus is how PIP can explain singular intentionality of veridical cases.
For this point, see also Allen (2019, 6).
One might claim that the question can be answered by saying that the phenomenology of the experience makes it such that it is accurate only when there is a red apple (rather than other types of objects) before me. In this case, however, we are asked why and how this is so; this question is not essentially different from the original one. Moreover, I think that this answer goes wrong direction in explanatory order. It seems to me that the fact that the experience is about a red apple rather than other types of objects explains (not being explained by) the fact that the experience is accurate only when there is a red apple (rather than other types of objects) before me.
Ott (2016) does not explicitly distinguish between singular intentionality and general intentionality. Since I have interpreted the resemblance thesis as aiming to explain the general intentionality of perceptual experience, the description of the resemblance thesis that I have presented slightly differs from Ott’s one. But the problem with the resemblance thesis that I will take does not depend on this difference.
Ott (2016, 141–42) tries to explain the singular intentionality of perceptual experience by appealing to resemblance. His idea is that it is very unlikely that a single perceptual experience perfectly resembles two numerically distinct scenes in reality and therefore it can single out an actual scene as the only one which the experience perfectly resembles. This account does not deal with Masrour’s argument against PIP with respect to singular intentionality, because it relies on the contingent fact that a perceptual experience does not perfectly resemble two numerically distinct scenes in reality.
Note that this is not to claim that if the resemblance thesis is true, we can never know what type of environmental object a perceptual experience is directed at. My point is that if the resemblance thesis is true, it is not through perceptual and introspective observations that we can know an intentional fact, such as a perceptual experience being directed at a red apple rather than a green apple or a red car.
I do not claim that it is intuitive to think that we can fully specify the intentional object of perceptual experience by introspection. For example, I do not claim that we can introspectively specify the intentional object of perceptual experience to the extent of determining whether it is about a real red apple or a fake red apple. My point is rather that it is intuitive that we can specify the intentional object of perceptual experience by introspection to the extent of determining whether it is about a red apple, green apple or a red car.
Note that the naïve realist constitution thesis is more determinate than the claim that a perceptual experience is (at least in part) constituted by an environmental object that the subject perceives. This claim does not imply that we can introspectively know what type of environmental object the perceptual experience is constituted by, because it does not specify what aspect of the perceptual experience is constituted by the environmental object. For example, if it is not the phenomenology but the metaphysical nature that is not accessible by introspection, then we do not have introspective access to the external constituent. The naïve realist constitution thesis is more determinate in that it specifies what aspect of perceptual experience is constituted by an environmental object: the phenomenology. Because of this, it follows from the naïve realist constitution claim that we can introspectively know what type of environmental object the perceptual experience is constituted by.
Note that I do not claim that we can always know by introspection alone what particular object a veridical experience is directed at. Suppose that I see an object O1 in an epistemically unsafe condition in which there are many objects qualitatively identical to O1 around me. Suppose further that my friend erroneously tells me that what I see is not O1 but one of other such objects. In this case, although the phenomenology of my perceptual experience is in part constituted by O1, it is controversial whether I can know by introspection alone that it is constituted by O1 rather than other qualitatively identical objects. This is because the unsafe external epistemic condition and/or my friend’s testimony may serve as an epistemological defeater. My claim is weaker: we can introspectively know what type of object a veridical perceptual experience is directed at.
I appreciate the anonymous reviewer’s suggestion to address this objection.
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Acknowledgements
I would especially like to thank Katsunori Miyahara, Paweł Zięba, Yusuke Ogawa, Uriah Kriegel, Yasushi Ogusa and Preston Lennon for their detailed comments on this paper. I also thank the members of Paris Consciousness/Self-consciousness [PaCS] group for the fruitful discussions. I also thank the audience at the conference “PERSPECTIVES ON INTENTIONALITY” (2014, Norway) and the workshop “Phenomenal Intentionality Workshop with Angela Mendelovici” (2019, Germany) for their helpful questions and comments. I appreciate the anonymous reviewer for their critical comments on the original version, which were really helpful for improving this paper. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number: 18 K00031).
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Niikawa, T. Naïve Realism and Phenomenal Intentionality. Philosophia 49, 1127–1143 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00273-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00273-8