Philosophy 5550
Seminar 2 - Perception and Direct Awareness
The Objects of Direct Awareness: Physical Objects or Sense Data?
Chapter IV of Michael Huemer's Skepticism and the Veil of Perception: "A Version of Direct Realism"
Overview
Mike Huemer starts off by saying,
“My direct realism embodies two main theses: first, the thesis that
perception is direct awareness of external reality; second, that we
have noninferential knowledge of the external world as a result of
perception.” (51)
Chapter IV contains a defense of the first thesis, while Chapter V contains a defense of the second.
Comment
It is often thought that if one is directly aware of
physical states of affairs, that provides a basis for concluding that
one can have non-inferentially justified beliefs about physical states
of affairs. But Mike rejects such an approach. His reason
is that he wants to hold – surely correctly – that one can have
non-inferentially justified beliefs about physical states of affairs
when one is suffering from an a hallucination. A satisfactory account
of non-inferentially justified beliefs about physical objects should
plausibly be such as can be given both when the beliefs are true and
when they are false, and an account that appeals to direct awareness of
physical states of affairs does not satisfy this requirement.
1. Some Important Concepts: Representation, Assertiveness, Apprehension, and Awareness
1.1 Apprehensions, Representations, and Assertiveness
Mike Huemer defines an apprehension as follows: “In sum, we can define
an apprehension as an assertive, mental representation.” (54)
So apprehensions, as Mike uses that term, have three properties:
(1) They are mental states.
(2) They represent possible states of affairs.
(3) “They also have another interesting, defining feature:
apprehensions represent their contents as actualized. This feature I
refer to as their ‘assertiveness’ . . . .” (53)
Comments
(1) Regarding the Concept of Representation
Mike does not offer any analysis of the idea of
representation. This, it seems to me, is a shortcoming. What he does,
instead, is simply to mention some things that represent other things,
including (a) linguistic entities, such as statements, (b) beliefs, (c)
pictures, and (d) perceptual experiences.
A crucial claim that Mike makes is this: “Note one
important difference between the pictorial representation and the
others: the picture represents a certain state of affairs by resembling
it.” (52) Notice that this claim that pictorial representation differs
from the three others that he mentions, including representation by
perceptual experiences, is highly controversial. According to the
classical representative theory of perception, advanced by John Locke,
Frank Jackson, and many other philosophers, there are such things as
visual fields, involving spatial arrangements of qualitative color
patches, and those visual fields resemble, albeit not with regard to
qualitative color, spatial arrangements of physical objects and
physically colored parts of physical objects. More precisely, advocates
of the classical representative theory of perception claim that
perceptual experiences stand in the same sort of relation to the
external world that maps stand in to what they are maps of.
Mike's rejection of this view of the relation
between perceptual experience and external, physical reality is very
weak: “ . . . visual experiences of cats don't look like cats, or like
anything else, because you can't see a visual experience; that would
require having a visual experience of a visual experience.” (53) Here
the answer is simply that while you cannot see a visual experience, you
can certainly be aware of a visual experience, and that can ground the
claim that visual experiences resemble arrangements of physical objects
in certain specifiable ways.
In short, there are two very different kinds of representation:
(1) Representations that involve concepts and propositional attitudes;
(2) Representations that involve a mapping relation.
One can then ask:
(1) Do ordinary perceptual experiences, where “perceptual experience”
is understood in a broad fashion, involve representations in both of
these senses, or in none, or in one, and if the latter, which?
(2) Do ordinary perceptual experiences, where “perceptual experience”
is understood in a narrow fashion, involve representations in both of
these senses, or in none, or in one, and if the latter, which?
Comments
1. Mike uses the expression “perceptual experience” as synonymous with
“sensory experience” (58), so it includes hallucinations.
Perceptual experiences are “the purely internal, mental components of
perception.” (58)
2. What do I have in mind by the “broad” versus “narrow”
distinction here? In the narrow sense of “perceptual experience”,
this expression refers only to what one might refer to as conscious
sensory states, whereas in the broad sense of “perceptual experience”,
this expression also refers as well, for example, to perceptual beliefs
about an external world that are related to the relevant conscious
sensory states.
(2) Regarding the Concept of Assertiveness
The feature of assertiveness is very important when
one considers – though we shall not be doing that here – the second
claim involved in Mike’s formulation of direct realism – the claim,
namely, “that we have noninferential knowledge of the external world as
a result of perception” (51). The reason is that the idea of
assertiveness is closely related to what Mike calls his “Principle of
Phenomenal Conservatism” – a key principle that he uses to defend that
second claim, and which is as follows (99):
“(PC) If it seems to S as if P, then S has at least prima facie justification for believing that P”
So what exactly is “assertiveness” as a property of mental states? Mike
attempts to explain what the property of assertiveness is by referring
to three sentences, one a command, one a question, and one an
assertion, and he says, “Only the third is assertive: it represents the
state of affairs as actual, as what is actually going to happen.” (53)
One answer, then, and it appears to be Mike's, is
that assertive mental representations are related to the linguistic act
of asserting. But assertions are based upon beliefs, and so the
question arises as to how any state that does not involve belief can be
an assertive mental representation. Mike claims that there are other
mental states that are compatible with the absence of a corresponding
belief, and that are also assertive. In particular, he goes on to say,
“Beliefs are a kind of apprehension, as are the experiences we have
when perceiving things.” (54) Later, in Chapter V, he will also claim,
first, that there are mental states that he calls “seemings”, and,
secondly, that those mental states are also apprehensions. But given an
account of assertiveness in terms of the idea of assertion, how can
there be apprehensions that are compatible with the absence of the
corresponding belief, as is that case with both seemings – as Mike
conceives of seemings – and with perceptual experiences – as is shown
by situations in which either one is hallucinating, and realizes that
this is so, or one is actually perceiving something, but one mistakenly
thinks that one is hallucinating?
A crucial thing to notice here is that the term
“assertive” is based upon the more fundamental term “assert”, so when
the term “assertive” is used, there must be someone or something that
is doing the asserting. In the case of an assertive person, it is the
person who is doing the asserting. But what does it mean to
characterize a mental state as assertive? Surely mental states do not
literally make assertions, since mental states are not capable of
performing actions.
The upshot is that if one speaks of mental states, such as mental
representations as “assertive”, that term cannot have its ordinary,
literal sense, so one needs to explain what the meaning of that term is
when it is thus used.
1.2 The Concept of Awareness
Given the above account of what an apprehension is, Mike now offers the following definition of awareness:
“To summarize the conditions required for awareness:
S is aware of x if and only if
i. S has an assertive mental representation (an apprehension)
ii. x exists and at least roughly satisfies the content of that representation
and
iii. it is not accidental (not due to chance) that the content of the
representation is satisfied.” (55)
Comments: Awareness and Qualia
1. Notice that, as awareness has just been defined, it is not necessary
that awareness involve any qualia – that is, any mental state involving
qualitative properties.
2. Mike thinks that there is an actual type of awareness that does not
involve qualia – namely, proprioception, understood as non-visual,
non-tactile awareness of the position of parts of one’s body. (67) He
also refers to a possible but non-actual case, namely, that of “’super
blindsight’, in which a person would find himself able to identify
objects in a part of his visual field even though, as it would seem to
him, he does not see them.” (89)
1.3 The Distinction Between Direct and Indirect Awareness
1. Mike draws a crucial distinction between direct and indirect awareness, which he explains as follows:
“In general, you are indirectly aware of x if you are aware of x, but
your awareness of x is based upon your awareness of something else. You
are aware of x directly if you are aware of x, and your awareness of x
is not based upon your awareness of anything else.” (55)
2. What is the based upon relation?
Mike's answer is as follows:
(1) First of all, the based upon relation is causal: if your awareness
of y is based upon your awareness of x, then your awareness of x causes
your awareness of y.
(2) Secondly, the relation is also a logical one: if your awareness of
y is based upon your awareness of x, then the content of your awareness
of x supports (or, at least, appears to you to support) the content of
your awareness of y.
(3) These first two features are connected: your awareness of x causes
your awareness of y because you believe, correctly or incorrectly, that
the content of your awareness of x supports the content of your
awareness of y.
3. The based upon relation functions, then, to expand the scope of what one is aware of.
4. Mike also hold that there are states other than beliefs that
are assertive mental representations – cases of awareness – that can
also be based on one another. (Mike's “seemings” are such states.)
2. Against the “Disjunctive Conception of Experience”
According to what is called the “disjunctive conception of experience,”
if A is the internal, mental state that one is in when one sees a ripe
tomato, while B is the internal, mental state that one is in when one
enjoys a completely convincing hallucination of a ripe tomato, A and B
have absolutely nothing in common. There are, in particular, no
properties that are present in both of those internal, mental states.
Mike agrees with advocates of a disjunctive view of perceptual
experience that the fact that it seems to one that there is something
common to the two internal, mental states does not entail that this is
in fact the case. But he says that the fact that there seems to be
something in common provides a strong reason for thinking that that is
the case.
Mike holds, however, that there is another line of argument that
provides a stronger reason for rejecting the disjunctive view of
perceptual experience. His idea is to focus upon a case where a
person’s brain is stimulated in such a way as to produce a
hallucination, and where the resulting neural state is precisely the
same neural state that the person would be in if he or she were really
seeing an object of the sort that he or she is hallucinating. This
gives rise to the following argument:
“1. In general, if A causes B, then any event
qualitatively identical with A would cause an effect qualitatively
identical with B.
2. It is possible to have a hallucination induced by
brain events qualitatively identical to the brain events that occur
during normal perception.
3. In such a case, the brain events cause a purely internal mental state.
4. Therefore, during normal perception, one’s brain
events cause a qualitatively identical effect – that is, a mental state
of the same kind.” (60)
3. In Ordinary Perception, Is One Aware of Anything Other than the External Physical Object or State of Affairs?
This brings us to the first of five philosophically crucial questions:
(1) Is it or is it not true that, when one has a perceptual experience,
one is always aware, at that time, of something other than the external
physical object or state of affairs?
This question is crucial because if, when one has a
perceptual experience, one is always aware, at that time, of something
other than the external physical object or state of affairs, the
question arises as to whether one's awareness of the external physical
object or state of affairs is a case of indirect awareness, based on
one's awareness of the other item. If it is, then direct realism
is false.
What might that other item be? If it is to be
something other than the external state of affairs that one is
perceiving, it must be something internal, and the traditional, and
very natural, view is that that internal something is something mental.
What might that be? The main answer that has
traditionally been given is that one is aware of qualia – or, to use
more common, though not necessarily preferable, terminology, sense data.
The contention that there are qualia is, of course,
a very controversial claim within philosophy of mind. Suppose,
then, that there are no qualia. Is there then any internal item
that it might be claimed one is aware of in perception? The
answer is that there are still possible candidates. First of all,
even if qualia do not exist, unless one is an eliminativist with regard
to mental states, humans still have sensory experiences when they
perceive things, and so one can hold that one is aware of those
experiences, or properties of those experiences, whatever one thinks
those experiences, or their properties, are. Secondly, and even
if one is an eliminativist with regard to the mental, there are still
brain states that one goes into when one is perceiving, and it is
possible to hold that one is aware of the relevant brain states –
although it is not immediately obvious what the content of the relevant
assertive mental representation is in the latter case.
The second crucial question is a conditional one:
(2) If one is always aware, at that time, of something other than the
external physical object or state of affairs, is one's awareness of the
external physical object or state of affairs then based upon one's
awareness of the other item, and, therefore, a case of indirect
awareness?
The arguments that bear upon this second question
appear to depend very much upon what the something other is, and, in
particular, whether the something other consists of qualia. One
has, then, a very important divide within direct realist approaches,
namely, between, on the one hand, those such as the views defended by
Mike Huemer and John Searle, that are combined with the acceptance of
qualia, and, on the other hand, approaches, such as that of David
Armstrong, that are combined with a rejection of qualia.
Consider, then, versions of direct realism that
accept the existence of qualia. Then there is a very natural candidate
for the type of mental item that one is aware of in perception: one is
aware of qualia. On the other hand, if, like Armstrong, one
rejects the existence of qualia, and holds, say, that perception is
nothing over and above the acquisition of beliefs, if one held that one
was aware of some mental item in perception, it would presumably have
to be a belief, or the acquisition of a belief. Perhaps that is
fine, but I think this idea is rather less appealing than the idea that
one is aware of qualia.
The crucial point here, however, is that, if a
direct realist holds that qualia exist, then his or her critic has
arguments for the view that one is, in perception, aware of something
other than the external physical object or state of affairs that are
not available in the case of direct realists who reject the existence
of qualia. Consequently, we have the following third, crucial
question:
(3) Do qualia exist?
This is not, however, a question that I want to
tackle here. What I want to do is to address the following two
conditional questions:
(4) If qualia exist, is one aware of qualia when one is perceiving?
(5) If qualia exist, and if one is aware of qualia when one is
perceiving, is one's awareness of the external physical object or state
of affairs indirect awareness, based upon one's awareness of qualia?
4. Direct and Indirect Awareness in Perception
4.1 Indexical Beliefs and Apprehensions
Notice that, if one has, at any point, indexical
beliefs about the content of one's sensory experiences, it will be
true, given Mike's account of awareness, that one is aware of those the
content of those sensory experiences, unless those beliefs are wildly
inaccurate.
What do I have in mind, however, by the content of a
sensory experience? Consider a visual experience. Part of that
visual experience is a visual field, an array of shapes that have
qualitative color properties. If, then, one has a true, indexical
belief to the effect that this is a circular, qualitatively red colored
patch, then one is aware of a circular, qualitatively red colored patch.
Moreover, since there are, as a matter of fact, no
circular, qualitatively red colored patches out there in the external
world, one will be aware of something that is not an external physical
state of affairs.
4.2 The Case of Children
(1) Mike Huemer holds that qualia exist. Assume, then, that
qualia do exist, and consider the property of redness that a young
child ascribes to the surfaces of objects. Looking at a ripe tomato
under normal conditions, the child has – unless, perhaps, the child
thinks that he or she is hallucinating – a belief, and thus an
assertive mental representation, to the effect that that's an instance
of redness. But, although the child does not think that this is the
case, the property of redness that a young child ascribes to the
surfaces of objects is, as a matter of fact, and on the assumption that
qualia exist, not a property of the surfaces of external objects, but a
property of something in the mind, specifically, a property of part of
one's phenomenal, visual field. Accordingly, ordinary visual
perception, in the case of a young child, involves an assertive mental
representation of a property that is, as a matter of fact, a property
of something in the mind.
(2) If one believes in qualia – as Mike does – then one believes that
the property instance in question certainly exists. But is it true that
it "at least roughly satisfies the content of that representation"?
Mike might argue that it does not, on the grounds that the
representation represents the property instance as being out there in
the world, whereas it is not.
(3) I think that would be an extremely ad hoc
move. If one considers the total set of beliefs involved in the
representation that is present when one has a visual experience – an
experience that may involve an extremely large number of colors and
shapes - there is an enormous correspondence between that total
representation and the nature of one's visual field, and to treat the
fact that those property instances are located in the mind, rather than
externally, as outweighing all the other ways in which the
representation is accurate, so that the representation is viewed as not
even "at least roughly" satisfied, would seem to me to be a move that
was not independently plausible, and one that was being made simply to
avoid an unwelcome consequence. So I think that the second condition in
Mike's definition is also satisfied.
(4) If so, then the third condition is satisfied as well, since it is
not an accident that the content of the representation is satisfied:
one has the ability to form very accurate beliefs about the content of
one's visual experiences, considered in themselves.
(5) The upshot will therefore be this:
If qualia exist, then young children are, in perception, aware of
properties that are, as a matter of fact, property instances within the
mind, not in the external world.
(6) The question is then whether young children are aware of something
in perception that sophisticated adults are not aware of in perception.
I think it is hard to see what grounds there could be for that claim.
But if sophisticated adults are aware of everything that young children
are aware of in perception, we have the following conclusion:
If qualia exist, then all normal perceivers are, in perception, aware
of properties that are, as a matter of fact, property instances within
the mind, not in the external world.
4.3 The Case of the Sophisticated Perceiver
(1) In Chapter V of Skepticism and the Veil of Perception,
Mike discusses the question of the relation between the content of a
perceptual experience and the content of a perceptual belief that is
directly based upon it, and he says that the former entails the latter.
(2) If qualia exist, however, a sophisticated human perceiver, who
knows that there are no qualitative colors out there on the surfaces of
objects, will not have a perceptual belief to the effect that external
objects possess qualitative color. The belief will have to be a belief
that external objects are colored in some other sense – such as that
they have certain Lockean powers to produce instances of qualitative
colors in normal human perceivers, under normal conditions, or,
alternatively, that they have certain physically definable reflectance
properties.
(3) If Mike is right that the relation between the content of a
perceptual experience and the content of a perceptual belief that is
directly based upon it is one of entailment, it follows that, in the
case of a sophisticated perceiver, perceptual experiences of a visual
sort have to involve assertive mental representations to the effect
that external objects are colored in a different sense than that in
which the unsophisticated perceiver takes them to be colored.
(4) But as was argued earlier, there appears to be good reason for
holding that one is aware of the qualitative property instances that,
as a young child, though not as a sophisticated perceiver, one
attributes to the surfaces of external objects.
(5) Awareness of the latter sort is certainly direct. The question,
then, is whether it can be claimed that the type of awareness that is
also present in a perceptual experience in the case of a sophisticated
perceiver, to the effect that external objects are colored in a
different sense than that in which the unsophisticated perceiver takes
them to be colored, can also be direct.
(6) If one were not aware of instances of sensible redness, greenness,
etc., would one nevertheless have an assertive mental representation
that objects were red and green in a different, non-qualitative sense
of "red" and "green"? The Australian philosopher David Armstrong, along
with a number of other contemporary philosophers, would say that one
would, on the grounds that in the world as it is, one is not aware of
instances of sensible redness, greenness, etc. – because there aren't
any. But if one believes in the existence of qualia – as Mike does –
then one is granting, unlike Armstrong, that there are sensible,
qualitative properties that one is aware of, and which children
attribute to the surfaces of external objects. Can it be plausible,
then, to hold that awareness of those properties is not causally
relevant to one's having assertive mental representations of external
objects? This would seem to me to be a very implausible claim, since it
is surely true in a situation where one believes that one is seeing
something red, under normal conditions, that one would not have the
relevant assertive mental representation if one were not aware of
sensible redness, and what is the ground of this counterfactual if not
a relation of causation between the latter awareness and the former?
Might not one argue that the first of the following counterfactuals is true, but not the second?
(a) If one's visual field did not contain an instance, say, of
qualitative redness, one would not believe that there was a red object
in front of one.
(b) If one were not aware of an instance, say, of qualitative redness
in one's visual field, one would not believe that there was a red
object in front of one.
I don't think that one can. Suppose that one is hiking, and the
first person to see a purple flower will win a prize. As you are
walking along, light from a purple flower strikes you eyes, giving rise
to an experience involving a visual field containing a qualitatively
purple colored patch. But you are in a deep philosophical conversation,
and thus are not aware that you are seeing a purple flower. This lack
of awareness of a certain external, physical state of affairs is not
caused by the absence of qualitatively purple patch in your visual
field, since there is such a colored patch. How then can it be
explained? It seems to me that it must be explained by the fact that
you are not aware of the qualitatively colored patch in your visual
field. So it seems to me that it is false that while (a) is true,
(b) is not: both counterfactuals are true.
(7) Mike's definition of indirect awareness also requires that the
causal relation be based upon a belief that the content of the one
representation is evidentially relevant to the content of the other.
(What is required is not that the content of the one representation is
in fact evidentially relevant to the content of the other, but only
that the perceiver, perhaps incorrectly, takes it to be so.) So
consider, for example, a sophisticated, normal human perceiver who
interprets the sentence "That tomato is red" as follows:
"That tomato has the power to produce experiences with the
sensible quality of redness in normal human perceivers under normal
conditions."
Will not such a perceiver, rightly or wrongly, take his awareness of an
instance of sensible redness as evidentially relevant to his belief
that the tomato he now takes himself to be perceiving has the power to
produce experiences with the sensible quality of redness in normal
perceivers under normal conditions?
Or consider, instead, a sophisticated perceiver who interprets the sentence "That tomato is red" as follows:
"That tomato has a surface with the reflectance property R."
Will not such a perceiver, rightly or wrongly, take her awareness of an
instance of sensible redness as evidentially relevant to her belief
that the tomato she now takes herself to be perceiving has reflectance
property R?
Would the perceiver in the first case say that he thinks it would still
be reasonable to believe that the tomato had the power to produce
experiences with the sensible quality of redness in normal human
perceivers under normal conditions even if, rather than now being aware
of an instance of sensible redness, he were instead aware of an
instance of sensible greenness? Or would the other perceiver in the
second case say that she thinks it would still be reasonable to believe
that the tomato had a surface with the reflectance property R even if
she were aware of an instance of sensible greenness, rather than of an
instance of sensible redness?
I do not think that either of these things is plausible, and so it seems to me that the correct conclusion to draw is this:
The sophisticated perceiver's awareness of the redness of a tomato (in
whatever the relevant sense of 'redness' is) is a case of indirect
awareness that is based upon a direct awareness of an instance of
sensible, qualitative redness.
(8) In thinking about this, there are two points that are crucial. The
first is that knowledge of the physics of the external world does not
result in a disappearance of the illusion that objects have colors in
the sense of having properties with which children are acquainted, and
which they attribute to the surfaces of objects. This illusion is like
other sensory illusions, and because of this the awareness that is
present in the child is still present in the sophisticated perceiver.
(9) The second point is that Mike, quite correctly, does not draw the
distinction between direct awareness and indirect awareness in terms of
a distinction between noninferential knowledge and inferential
knowledge, or in terms of a distinction between noninferentially
justified belief and inferentially justified belief. So the claim that
the sophisticated perceiver's awareness that a tomato is red is
indirect does not entail that the content of that indirect awareness is
inferentially justified on the basis of the content of the direct
awareness of instances of sensible properties. The claim is only that
the sophisticated perceiver takes the latter to be evidentially
relevant to the former – that is, that he or she thinks, for example,
that the belief that one is presently having an experience involving a
red quale renders it more likely to be true that one is perceiving a
physical object that has the power to produce experiences involving red
qualia in normal perceivers.
(10) To sum things up. Consider the following four propositions:
(a) Awareness of red physical objects is, in general, caused by awareness of qualitative redness.
(b) Awareness of qualitative redness is evidentially relevant in a positive way to awareness of red physical objects.
(c) The causal relation referred to in (a) exists because of the evidential relation referred to in (b).
(d) One can be non-inferentially justified in believing that there is a red physical object in front of one.
First of all, what I have been arguing is that propositions (a), (b),
and (c) are all very plausible. Secondly, acceptance of (d) is
perfectly compatible with the conjunction of (a), (b), and (c), since
(d) will be true if Huemer's Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism is
true, and the latter principle is compatible with the conjunction of
(a), (b), and (c).
4.4 Looking Green, in the Phenomenal Sense of that Term
(1) As Frank Jackson argues in Chapter 2 – “Three uses of ‘looks'" – in his 1977 book Perception: A Representative Theory,
there is a use of the term “looks” in which it functions in a
“phenomenal” way – that is, to describe the qualitative nature of ones
experience (1977, 30). (A similar view concerning the related term
“appears” is advanced by Roderick Chisholm in Perception: A Philosophical Study (1957), and also in his book Theory of Knowledge (1966 and 1977).)
(2) In that phenomenal sense of “look", things can look green either
because they are green and conditions are normal, or because, while
they are not green, conditions are abnormal, and such as to make it the
case that they look green.
(3) Consider a case where a green thing looks green to some human
perceiver. Does such a perceiver have a belief that the thing is green,
while having no belief at all about whether the thing looks green? This
seems to me very implausible.
(4) In the situation described, both beliefs will be accurate, and this
will not be an accident. So the person will be aware both of an
object's looking green and of the object's being green.
(5) If these two sorts of assertive mental representations are found
together, what explains that fact? The plausible answer here is surely
that the explanation is that the belief that something looks green
causes the belief that something is green.
(6) If so, the final question is whether the person takes the belief
that something looks green as evidentially relevant to whether it is
green, and the answer, once again, is surely that he or she does,
since, in the absence of other evidence, the person would not think
that the belief that the object was green would be justified if the
object looked red to him or her, or if it did not look any way at all
to him or her.
(7) The upshot is that one's awareness of the state of affairs that is
the object's being green is based upon one's awareness of the state of
affairs that is the object's looking green. So we have the following
conclusion:
A perceiver's awareness, in normal conditions, of the redness of a
tomato (in whatever the relevant sense of 'red' is) is a case of
indirect awareness that is based upon an awareness of the tomato's
looking red in the phenomenal sense of “looking”.
5. Sensory Qualia
1. Mike defines the term “quale” as follows:
“A quale (plural: 'qualia') is a kind of property of an experience. The
quale of an experience is what the experience is like, from the
subject's point of view; in other words, what it is like for the person
having the experience.” (66)
2. Mike talks about the fact that qualia are, in a certain sense,
ineffable, but he says that there is nothing mysterious or problematic
about that, since the ineffability “results from the facts (a) that you
cannot describe a phenomenon to someone who does not have the concepts
required to grasp it, and (b) that the concept of a given quale can be
gained only by experience of that quale or other, similar ones.” (66-67)
3. The following passage contains a number of important claims:
“I view qualia as something over and above the representational
contents of experience. It is possible to have perceptual experiences
that lack qualia, and this provides one way to illustrate what qualia
are and how they differ from representational contents. The only actual
example I can think of is awareness of the position of one's body
(proprioception).” (67)
Comments
(1) The claim that qualia are something over and above the representational contents of experiences is certainly true.
(2) It is also true that it is logically possible that one could
acquire beliefs about things without that acquisition being accompanied
by qualia.
(3) Beliefs thus acquired could be perfectly reliable, and so would satisfy an externalist account of knowledge.
(4) But I do not think that they would be directly justified in an internalist sense.
(5) I do not think that proprioception is an actual case of perception
that does not involve qualia, since if one focuses on what one
experiences when one holds one's arm in different positions, or alters
the position of a finger, what one will notice, I suggest, is that
there are slight sensations associated with the muscles that are
involved in maintaining the position of the relevant part of one's body
***************************************************************************
4. Mike offers another argument in support of the following crucial
claim - an argument that involves “'the inverted color spectrum'
thought experiment” (67):
Qualia are something over and above the representational contents of experiences.
The argument might be put as follows:
(1) Let us introduce the term “red*” to designate rigidly the property
that the visual experiences of normal humans have when they look at red
objects under normal conditions, and similarly, for other colors, such
as violet.
(2) Let the Inverts be an intelligent species whose color spectrum is
inverted relative to that of normal humans, so that they have
experiences with the property red* when they look at violet things, and
experiences with the property violet* when they look at red things.
(3) “I assume that when I, a normal human, look at a ripe tomato and
have a red* experience, my experience is not an illusion or a
hallucination–that is, my experience does not misrepresent that object.
But if I were to look at a violet object and if, due to some abnormal
conditions, I were to have the red* experience then I would be
suffering an illusion.” (69)
(4) If (3) is correct, then the following conclusion can be drawn with regard to the content of a red* experience for me:
“Therefore, my red* visual experiences have a content that is normally
satisfied by red things, but that is not satisfied by violet (or
yellow, green etc.) things.” (69)
(5) Our normal human perspective is not privileged: “There is no reason
to regard the quale we experience when looking at red things as the
uniquely right way of perceiving those things.” (69)
(6) Accordingly, it is false that the Inverts are misperceiving the
world. Their sensory experiences are not illusions, with respect to the
colors of things. (68-9)
(7) “So an Invert's violet* experience has a content that is normally
satisfied by red objects, and not satisfied by violet objects.” (69)
(8) In view of (4) and (7) we have the following conclusion:
“In other words, the Invert's violet* experiences have the same
representational content as our red* experiences, since they are
satisfied by precisely the same kinds of things.” (69)
(9) The conclusion of the argument then immediately follows:
“But by definition, their violet* experiences do not have the same
qualia as our red* experiences. So qualia are not a function of
representational contents. So qualia are something over and above
representational contents.” (69)
5. Mike offers, on pages 69-70, the following summary of his argument:
“1. The content of my red* experience is satisfied by red things and only red things.
2. The content of the Invert's violet* experience is satisfied by red things and only red things.
3. So the content of my experience and the Invert's experience are satisfied under the same conditions. (from 1, 2)
4. So my experience and the Invert's experience have the same content. (from 3)
5. My experience and the Invert's experience do not have the same
qualia. (One of them has the red* quale, while the other has the
violet* quale.)
6. Therefore the quale of an experience is something over and above its content. (from 4, 5)”
Comments on this Argument – Part 1: Qualia and Representational Contents
(1) Note that the cases considered in this argument would establish, if the argument were sound, TWO theses:
(a) Qualia do not logically supervene upon the representational contents of experiences;
(b) The representational contents of experiences do not logically supervene upon qualia.
Or, alternatively:
(a) Qualia are something over and above the representational contents of experiences.
(b) The representational contents of experiences are something over and above qualia.
If Mike's argument were sound, the second thesis could be established
by comparing the representational content of a red* experience enjoyed
by a human with the representation content of a red* experience enjoyed
by an Invert.
(2) Mike does not mention the second thesis. It is, however,
quite crucial, since it immediately gives rise to the following
question:
What is the relation between qualia and representational content?
(3) Moreover, the answer, surely, will be such that not only the first of the following theses is true, but the second as well:
(i) For any given quale property Q, there is no specific
representational content C such that it is logically necessary that
that specific representational content C be associated with property Q;
(ii) For any given quale property Q, it is not logically
necessary that there be any representational content at all that is
associated with property Q.
(4) Why is the second thesis true? The answer is that if a given type
of quale can be associated with different ways in which the external
world might be – as it in Mike's example – then there can be possible
worlds where that type of quale is not associated with any way that the
external world is, either because there is no external world at all, or
because there are no causal connections running from some way that the
external world is to the occurrence of a quale of the relevant type.
(5) What has emerged, then, is both that whether any representational
content at all is associated with any given quale property – such as
red*ness or tickly*ness – and what that representational content is,
depends on what the world is like.
To expand a bit on this claim, the crucial point is
that an experience of a given qualitative sort will be a perceptual
experience in some possible worlds, but not a perceptual experience in
other possible worlds. Thus in this world, headaches are purely
subjective experiences that give one no information about the world
external to one’s mind and body, but it is easy to imagine a world that
contained, say, ‘headache clouds’ that moved about, and that produced a
headache in anyone in the cloud, and where people did not get headaches
for any other reason. In that world, headaches would be perceptual
experiences. Conversely, one can imagine a world where no animals had
eyes, but where consuming some chemical gave rise, for example, to
experiences of precisely the sort that one would have in our world if
one were located at the center of a uniformly red spherical surface,
with no other features.
Comments on this Argument – Part 2: The Unsoundness of the Argument
(1) Two passages are crucial for an evaluation of this argument. The first has been quoted above:
“I assume that when I, a normal human, look at a ripe tomato and
have a red* experience, my experience is not an illusion or a
hallucination–that is, my experience does not misrepresent that object.
But if I were to look at a violet object and if, due to some abnormal
conditions, I were to have the red* experience then I would be
suffering an illusion.” (69)
The other passage, which I didn't quote above, is at the beginning of the very next paragraph:
“Notice that what I said in the preceding paragraph is pretty weak. I
have not offered a theory of what colors are, though I have assumed at
least that physical objects are colored. I also have not specified what
the content of a red* experience is. I have only said that, whatever
that content is, and whatever redness is, the latter satisfies the
former, while violet does not. This abstract statement will be enough
for the argument I want to make.” (69)
(2) Suppose, now, that you are a normal human being, so that when you
see a ripe tomato, you thereby have a red* experience. But suppose,
further, that you know nothing about physics, or about the theory of
colors and color perception. When you see a ripe tomato, what belief do
you thereby acquire? Well, red*ness is the property that Mary becomes
acquainted with when she looks at a ripe tomato under normal
conditions, with normal eyes, and so the questions I want to ask are
these:
1. When the person we are considering acquires the belief that
something is red, doesn’t that person acquire a belief about an
instance of red*ness?
2. Doesn't that person also acquire a belief about the surface of the tomato?
3. When the person believes that the tomato is red, isn't the belief in
question precisely the belief that the surface of the tomato has the
property of red*ness?
It seems to me that the right answer in the case of each of these three
questions is affirmative. But if that's right, and if the belief that
such a person acquires when he or she has a red* experience is the
belief that the surface of the tomato has the property of red*ness,
then the representational content of a red* visual experience for such
a person must be the proposition that the surface of the tomato has the
property of red*ness.
But that proposition, of course, is false. So when color language is
used in the way that it would seem our naïve but normal perceiver must
use it, Mike's assumption that “physical objects are colored” is false.
(3) Next, suppose our naive perceiver is exposed to physics, and
decides, as a result, that it is unlikely that the surface of a ripe
tomato has the property of red*ness. Because color language is very
useful, he or she may think that, rather than completely jettisoning
color talk, one should reinterpret it so that it will be true, for
example, that ripe tomatoes are red. How might color language be
reinterpreted? Well, the situation is that the person now believes that
while the surface of a ripe tomato does not have the property of
red*ness, there are instances of red*ness in the world, since red*ness
is a property of experiences, or of parts of, or of constituents of,
experiences. Moreover, objects such as ripe tomatoes, which the person
previously, but erroneously, believed had the property of red*ness, do
have a related property – namely, the power to produce experiences
involving the property of red*ness in normal human observers under
normal conditions. So one very natural way for humans to redefine the
term “red” is as follows:
“X is red” = def. “X has the power to produce red* experiences in normal human observers under normal conditions.”
Similarly, one very natural way for Inverts to redefine the term “red” is as follows:
“X is red” = def. “X has the power to produce violet* experiences in normal Invert observers under normal conditions.”
4. But if this is done, then the following statement – which is statement 4 in Mike's summary of his argument – is false:
"4. So my experience and the Invert's experience have the same content." (70)
Statement 4, however, is a conclusion, so the question is what is wrong
with the argument leading to that conclusion. The answer is that the
fact that two representational contents are satisfied in all of the
same circumstances in the actual world, or in some particular possible
world, does not entail that the two representational contents are
identical. For the representational content of something is a matter of
the proposition that is expressed (or of the abstract state of affairs
involved), and so one will have identity of representational content
only if the proposition involved in the one representational content is
identical with the proposition involved in the other representational
content, and this requires that the two representational contents agree
with respect to satisfaction in all circumstances, not just in the
actual world, but also in all possible worlds. But this is not so,
since there could be a possible world where an object had the power to
produce experiences of the red* variety in humans, but did not have the
power to produce experiences of the violet* variety in Inverts. (The
possible world could be one that had a different law linking neural
states of a certain sort with qualia of the violet* variety. Perhaps
the laws of the world are such that the neural states that green
objects give rise to cause, not instances of green*ness, but instances
of violet*ness.)
The upshot is that if, in statement 3 – that is, in
"3. So the content of my experience and the Invert’s experience are satisfied under the same conditions."
– “under the same circumstances” is interpreted as “under the same
circumstances in all possible worlds”, then 3 does not follow from
statements 1 and 2, whereas if “under the same circumstances” is
interpreted as “under the same circumstances in the actual world”, then
4 does not follow from 3.
Comments on this Argument – Part 3: A Sound Argument
1. Where Mike goes wrong is in attempting to formulate an argument that
refrains from specifying the representational content in question in
terms of a proposition.
2. If one does specify the representational content, and does so in a certain way, one has the following sound argument.
(1) Interpret “X is red” as “X has reflectance property R”.
(2) Suppose that “X is red”, thus interpreted, is a statement both in
the language of some human, and in the language of some Invert.
(3) Suppose, further, that when the human in question has a red*
experience, then the representational content of that experience is the
proposition that some indexically picked out thing is red, and,
similarly, that when the Invert in question has a violet* experience,
then the representational content of that experience is the proposition
that some indexically picked out thing is red.
(4) In view of (3), there can be cases where experiences have the same
representational content, but involve different qualia. (One of them
involves the red* quale, while the other involves the violet* quale.)
(5) Therefore the quale of an experience is something over and above its content.
****************************************************************************
6. Mike concludes this section by asking why humans have qualia, rather
than just experiences with representational contents, but no qualia,
and he offers two (tentative) answers, the first of which is this:
“The first is that the particular information that we get from
perceptual experiences would be difficult or impossible to represent
without qualia. For instance, how might we perceive something as red,
without having any qualia? It seems impossible. Maybe we could perceive
the object as reflecting a certain wavelength of light, without having
any special qualia associated with that perception, but it seems as if
that would be giving us too much information. It may also be impossible
to represent that sort of content nonconceptually.” (70)
Comments
(1) Mike is here overlooking the sort of account that Armstrong has
offered. Armstrong’s account avoids the “too much information”
objection, since the basic perceptual beliefs that one acquires are
beliefs to the effect that two things have resembling properties.
(2) Mike offers no reason why any content needs to be represented nonconceptually.
***************************************************************************
7. Mike's second suggestion appeals to the conative function of qualia.
Comment
Here Mike overlooks the possibility – mentioned, I believe, by David Hume in his discussion of the problem of evil in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion – that information about dangers could directly cause appropriate responses, without doing so via painful qualia.
***************************************************************************
6. Is this Direct Realism?
1. In contrasting his view with indirect realism, Mike reads too much
into the label “the representational theory of perception”. (79) For an
indirect realist, experience need not consist of anything beyond
arrangements of qualia. In particular, there need not be any
representational content that is part of the experience in any way.
2. To determine whether he is advancing a version of direct realism, Mike suggests the following:
"To see whether I have presented a version of direct realism, we
therefore need to ask, in terms of my theory, What (if anything) are we
aware of in perception, and is this awareness direct or indirect?" (79)
3. Mike needs, accordingly, to defend three theses:
(1) Given his account of perception, we are aware of at least something in perception.
(2) Moreover, at least some of the things that we are aware of in perception are physical objects or physical states of affairs.
(3) We are directly aware of at least some of the physical objects or states of affairs that we are aware of in perception.
4. In order to defend the thesis that we are aware of at least
something in perception, Mike needs to argue that perception involves
apprehension.
5. In order to do this, Mike appeals to the property of forcefulness in
order to support the assertiveness element that is needed if one is to
have an apprehension.
Comments
(1) A crucial point that needs to be noticed here is that one can be
perceiving something without knowing that one is perceiving. Similarly,
one can be acquainted with external objects without knowing that one is
thus acquainted.
Thus, for example, assuming that it is logically possible mistakenly to
think that one is dreaming, one could think that one is dreaming, while
one is really perceiving, and in such a case, there will not be any
assertive mental representation, any more than there is when one is
imagining or dreaming. Or, if it is claimed that the idea that one can
mistakenly think that one is dreaming is incoherent, one can use a
different sort of case, such as one where one mistakenly believes that
one is hallucinating.
Alternatively, consider a case where there are experiences that are
almost always drug induced, and where the experiences have a “fuzzy",
“dream-like” quality, and change rapidly in ways that exhibit few
regularities. Imagine, however, that there are very rare properties of
physical objects that can give rise to such experiences, and that when
this happens, the conditions for perception are satisfied. A person
might then very well have had experiences of this qualitative,
phenomenological type frequently, but never when they functioned
perceptually, and in that case it would seem that the experiences might
very well not be associated with any assertive representational
content. If so, such a person might have such experiences when it was a
case of perception, though once again the experiences would have no
assertive representational content. So there can be conditions where
one is perceiving something, but where one would not be doing so if
Mike's analysis of perception were correct. So Mike's account does not
cover all cases of perception.
(2) The immediate consequence is that one can have cases of perception
in which there is no awareness in Mike's sense, since there is no
assertive representational content
(3) These considerations also show that not all perception involves forcefulness.
(4) This sort of objection to Mike's analysis establishes a more general, and important, conclusion:
Perception of an object cannot be analyzed in terms of perceiving that something is the case.
***************************************************************************
6. Having attempted to show that “perception is a species of awareness”
(80), the next thing that Mike attempts to do is to show that the
object of awareness is something physical. Here his argument is as
follows:
(1) “The content of a visual experience might be, for instance, that
there is an object of a certain shape and color in front of me.” (80)
(2) “Assuming that there is in front of me a physical object of the
appropriate shape and color (which there normally is), that fact is
what I am aware of, since that fact is what corresponds to the content
of my experience.” (80)
(3) “Notice that my perceptual experience does not count as the
awareness of any mental state or event, since no mental state or event
has any shape or color.” (80)
Comments
1. Whether the claim made at step (2) is true or false depends upon
precisely what the content of the perceptual experience is. In
particular, it depends upon the color concept involved.
2. If color is conceived of as unsophisticated human perceivers do – so
that redness is the sensuous, qualitative property that one is directly
aware of, and a quality that unsophisticated perceivers mistakenly
think is a property of external objects, a property that, for example,
they think they can touch – then the claim advanced at step (2) is
false.
3. The argument is incomplete, since step (3) needs to be supplemented by the following claim:
(4) My perceptual experience does not count as the awareness of any
part of any mental state or event, since no part of any mental state or
event has any shape or color.
4. But there is a strong reason for holding that (4) is false. The
property instances of redness that everyone is aware of in perception,
and that unsophisticated perceivers take to be properties of surfaces
of external objects, do not cease to be cases of color, and those
instances of colors do not cease to have shapes, when it is realized
that those property instances are properties of things in the mind,
rather than properties of surfaces of objects.
****************************************************************************
7. This brings us to the final step in the argument. Having argued that
in the case of a perceptual experience, the object of awareness is
something physical, what Mike must now attempt to do is to show that
that awareness is direct. Here is his argument:
“Finally, is this awareness of facts in the external world direct or
indirect? This boils down to the question of whether perceptual
experiences are based on some other sort of apprehension. I have not
addressed this question before now, but I think it is clear that the
answer is no. When one sees a tomato, one’s visual experience of a
tomato is not caused and logically supported by any other apprehension.
I cannot even think of a plausible candidate for a state it might be
said to be based on. One might try citing the brain states involved in
the visual system’s ‘information processing’ preceding the visual
experience of the tomato. But I think this would be a mistake, for
those brain states are not apprehensions. There is nothing, nor does
there even appear to be anything, that one is aware of in having those
brain states, other than the tomato. One is not aware of, not even
seemingly aware of, the brain states themselves, nor of the information
they are supposed to be processing; the first thing one is actually
aware of is the tomato, as a red, roughly spherical thing.” (80)
Comments
1. The argument here seems to have the following form:
(1) The only sort of thing that one's awareness of external physical
states of affairs might even be thought to be based on is awareness of
preceding,‘information processing’, brain states.
(2) But one is not aware of such brain states, or of the‘information processing’(supposedly) taking place there.
Therefore:
(3) Awareness of external physical objects and external physical states of affairs is not based on awareness of anything else.
Therefore:
(4) Awareness of external physical objects and states of affairs is direct awareness.
2. The puzzling thing about this argument is that Mike makes no mention
at all of the standard candidate for the role in question, namely, the
property instances – of sensible, qualitative redness, greenness, etc.
– that unsophisticated perceivers take to be properties of the surfaces
of external objects, but that are in fact qualia. (This is especially
puzzling because the main philosopher that Mike's version of direct
realism is on a collision course with is Frank Jackson, who defended
indirect realism in his book Perception: A Representative Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).)
3. Just as unsophisticated perceivers are aware of such property
instances, the same is true of sophisticated perceivers. The only
difference is that unsophisticated perceivers mistakenly take those
property instances to be properties of the surfaces of external
objects.
4. As I argued earlier, perceivers are not only directly acquainted
with such property instances, they are also aware of them in the sense
of awareness defined by Mike. For sophisticated perceivers, no less
than unsophisticated ones, believe in the existence of these property
instances, and the truth of those beliefs is in no way an accident.
5. Once this candidate is considered, there is a very strong argument
for the view that awareness of physical states of affairs is based upon
awareness of these properties.
6. The initial part of that argument, which is concerned with the causal aspect of the basing relation, is roughly as follows:
(1) Whenever one sees something, one is in a mental state involving visual qualia.
(2) Consider a case where one is having, say, a purple* qualia, but
doesn't notice it – perhaps because one is very absorbed in a
philosophical conversation. In such a situation one will neither
believe that there is something purple in front of one, nor will one be
tempted to believe that there is something purple in front of one, nor
will one be disposed in the relevant way to believe that there is
something purple in front of one, nor will one’s situation be such that
one would believe that there is something purple in front of one were
it not for countervailing evidence that one possesses. Nor will it seem
to one, in any sense of “seem”, that there is something purple in front
of one.
(3) Therefore, in such a situation, though it may be true that one is
seeing a purple object, it is not true that one is seeing that there is
a purple object in front of one, and it is not true that one is in an
assertive mental state that represents to one that there is something
purple in front of one.
(4) The conclusion, accordingly, is that if one is not aware of
sensible color properties of the sort that unsophisticated perceivers
take to be properties of the surfaces of external objects, then one
does not have a corresponding perception that the external world is a
certain way.
(5) This conditional obtains because there is a causal relation between
the awareness of the qualitative, sensible property and the awareness
of the external object.
7. So much for the causal part of the argument. One now needs to show
that the causal connection in question obtains because perceivers
believe, rightly or wrongly, that awareness of the occurrence of such
property instances is evidentially relevant to the corresponding claims
about objects in the external world.
8. Consider, then, situations in which perceivers are aware of, say, an
instance of sensible greenness that is caused by a green physical
object, and where they would hold that they are justified in believing
that they are seeing a green physical object. In such a situation,
there is an object that looks green to them, and this is something that
they are aware of, since they are aware of the relevant instance of
sensible greenness. Is it plausible that such a perceiver would
maintain that his or her awareness of the object’s looking green to
them was not evidentially relevant, in a positive way – even if not on
its own sufficient – to the belief that he or she was seeing a green
object? Surely this is not at all plausible, any more than it would be
plausible for such a perceiver to hold that his or her awareness of the
object's looking red to them was not evidentially relevant, in a
negative way, to the belief that he or she was seeing a green object.
9. Notice that Huemer's account of justification, which involves an
appeal to his Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, does not provide
any ground for rebutting this contention. For it to do so, it would
have to be true, for example, that in cases where one’s awareness of an
instance of qualitative greenness causally gives rise to one’s
awareness of a green object in front of one, it would still have seemed
to one that there was a green object in front of one even if one had
not been aware of the instance of qualitative greenness, and there
would seem to be no reason at all for thinking that that counterfactual
is true.
In short, how things seem to one visually depends on
what qualitative properties one is aware of, so Mike's Principle of
Phenomenal Conservatism does not enable one to defend the view that
one’s awareness of the relevant qualitative properties of experiences
is not evidentially relevant to the justification of perceptual beliefs
of a visual sort.
10. The conclusions, accordingly, are as follows:
If there are qualia, then awareness of external objects in visual
perception is always based upon awareness of the sensible, qualitative
properties that unsophisticated perceivers mistakenly take to be
properties of external objects, but that are in fact properties in the
mind of the perceiver.
If there are qualia, then awareness of external objects and their states in visual perception is always indirect.
11. The same conclusions could equally well be established for the other senses.
Grand Conclusion: One of the two central theses of Mike's version of direct realism is false.
7. Summing Up: My Main Criticisms of Chapter IV
Weakness 1: The Failure to Grapple with a Central Claim Advanced by Frank Jackson
1. A claim that lies at the heart of Frank Jackson's defense of indirect realism is this:
(*) In perception, one is aware of states of affairs that are mental,
and that involve qualitative properties that are not properties of
external, physical objects.
2. More specifically, Jackson argues at length for what might be put retrospectively in terms of the following two theses:
(1) The redness and other color properties that arguments such as the
'Mary' (or‘knowledge') argument and the inverted spectrum argument
attempt to establish the existence of are not properties of the
external physical world.
(2) In perception, one is aware of instances of those properties.
3. Mike does not mention Jackson's arguments for these central theses,
let alone attempt to rebut them, and this is a serious weakness, since
Jackson is clearly one of Mike’s main opponents.
Weakness 2: The Failure to Establish the "Direct Awareness of Physical Objects" Claim
1. One of the two central theses that Mike is defending is the claim
that we are, in perception, directly aware of external, physical states
of affairs, and this is the focus of the present chapter.
2. There are basically two ways in which one might attempt to establish that thesis:
(1) One might argue that in perception (a) one is aware of something,
(b) one is not aware of any physical state that is internal to one, and
(c) one is not aware of anything mental.
(2) Alternatively, one might concede that one is aware, in perception,
of something mental, but then argue that one is also aware of some
external, physical state of affairs, and that the latter awareness is
not based upon the former.
3. The problem is that Mike does not do either of these things.
4. He does not do the former because he does not grapple with the
central thesis of Jackson mentioned in connection with Weakness 1.
5. He does not do the second because, in his discussion of whether
awareness of external physical states of affairs is indirect – which
occupies a single paragraph on page 80 – he does not even consider the
claim that indirect realists such as Jackson would advance concerning
what awareness of physical states of affairs is based upon.
Weakness 3: The Failure to Offer an Analysis of the 'Represents' Relation
1. One of the most crucial ideas in Mike's exposition of his approach
to the epistemology of perception is the idea of representational
content.
2. The term “represents” in the expression “S represents p” is a
theoretical term: it does not refer to any observable relation.
Consequently, an analysis of it is needed.
3. Rather than offering an analysis, Mike attempts to convey what he has in mind by examples.
4. Given that the relation referred to by the term 'represents' is an
intensional rather than an extensional relation, it is natural to try
to analyze it in terms of other intensional relations. In particular,
an analysis in terms of belief looks promising. But Mike seems
reluctant to accept such an analysis, without putting anything in its
place.
Weakness 4: The Failure to Offer any
Language that is Adequate for the Description of the Qualitative,
Non-Representational Part of Experience
1. A crucial issue that arises for any account of the epistemology of
perception concerns how the non-representational part of experience is
to be described.
2. One answer to this question is provided by sense-datum theory. Mike
neither discusses the sense-datum answer, nor provides any alternative
account.
3. Another answer is provided by an appeal to the language of
appearing. But Mike, in footnote 39 says, “I think ‘appear’ words
always refer to apprehensions, and, in some manner, report their
contents” (90), and if one is thus inclined to treat "appears" as
reporting apprehensions, the problem is that one can have visual
experiences at least parts of which are not connected with any
apprehensions, and thus for which there are no corresponding assertive
mental representation. So a language of appearing, thus interpreted,
cannot do the job.
4. A crucial claim that is part of indirect realism is that visual
experiences involve elements that stand in spatial or 'quasi-spatial'
relations – including, most importantly, a relation, R, that has the
formal properties of the betweenness relation, including:
(1) If Rabc then Rcba.
(2) If Rabc then it is not the case that Rbac.
(3) It is not the case that Rabb or Rbab, where a ≠ b.
It then follows from (2):
(4) It is not the case that Raaa.
Moreover, it follows from (1) together with (2):
(5) If Rabc then it is not the case that Rcab, or that Rbca or that that Racb.
Mike does not discuss whether such a relation exists or not. But this
is important, since it is a central claim of indirect realism that
there is a mapping relation between the content of mental states of a
visual sort and states of the external world, and that the betweenness
relation plays a crucial role in that mapping relation.
Weakness 5: The Failure to Offer any
Account of How the Representational Content of Experience Is Related to
the Qualitative, Non-Representational Part of Experience
1. On the one hand, Mike holds that the representational content of
perceptual experience is propositional: “The foregoing reasons for
accepting that a perceptual experience has content also support the
thesis that this content is propositional. By that, I mean it is
something that is either true or false – a perceptual experience
represents something to be the case.” (74)
2. On the other hand, Mike also holds that qualia are needed in a
certain way, for after arguing for the conclusion that “the quale of an
experience is something over and above its content” (70), he
immediately goes on to say,
“Once we accept this conclusion, another interesting
question arises. If indeed the quale of a perceptual experience is
something beyond its representational content, and if the function of
perceptual experiences is purely assertive (that is, their function is
just to give us information about the world), what, if anything, are
qualia good for? Is there any biological reason why we should have
experiences with qualia rather than just having experiences with
representational content and no qualia? I do not know the answer to
this, but I can suggest two possible sorts of answer. The first is that
the particular information that we get from perceptual experiences
would be difficult or impossible to represent without qualia. For
instance, how might we perceive something as red, without having any
qualia? It seems impossible.” (70)
3. But if this is right, mustn't the representational contents of a
perceptual experiences itself involve reference to the relevant qualia?
For otherwise, how could the qualia make any contribution to the
content of the representation?
4. One way in which this could be done were if the representational
content of a perceptual experience were of the form that Mike mentions
– without either endorsing or rejecting – in footnote 37:
“Someone with Searle's view of intentionality (see
his chapter 8), to which I am sympathetic, might object to either (3)
or (4) in the argument, saying that the content of my red* experience
is something along the lines of,‘That object has the surface property
that normally causes in me experiences of the red* variety.’ The
Invert's red* experience will have the same content, except that it
will make reference to what causes those experiences in him.” (90)
5. But if the representational content of perceptual experience
involves propositions of that sort – propositions that refer to types
of qualia, then there is an additional reason for holding that one's
awareness of properties of physical objects is indirect awareness,
based upon awareness of qualia. For how does one come to have an
assertive, mental, representation to the effect that that object has
the surface property that normally causes in me experiences of the red*
variety except by having an assertive indexical mental representation
to the effect that that 's an instance of the property of red*ness?