Perceiving events

Abstract

The aim in this paper is to focus on one of the proposals about successful perception that has led its adherents to advance some kind of disjunctive account of experience. The proposal is that we should understand the conscious sensory experience involved in successful perception in relational terms. I first try to clarify what the commitments of the view are, and where disagreements with competing views may lie. I then suggest that there are considerations relating to the conscious character of our perception of events that speak in its favour.

Keywords:

• disjunctivism
• relationalism
• representationalism
• perception
• mental state
• mental event

Acknowledgements

For very helpful discussion of these issues I am grateful to Bill Brewer, Steve Butterfill, Tom Crowther, Naomi Eilan, Christoph Hoerl, Hemdat Lerman, Guy Longworth, Ian Phillips and Johannes Roessler. I am also grateful to Marcus Willaschek for his comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

Notes

Sometimes called ‘intuitive apprehension’ or ‘awareness of’. Different sense-datum theorists make different claims about the relation, and not all sense-datum theorists use the term ‘acquaintance’ in the same way. For example, Russell held that experience is constituted by a relation of ‘acquaintance’, but he also held that there is reason to suppose that ‘there are several species of the general relation of acquaintance’ – for example, different varieties of the relation obtain, according to Russell (1984, p. 38), in the cases of memory, imagination, and thinking. At one stage in his thinking, Russell uses the label ‘sensation’ to pick out a particular species of the general relation that obtains when one has perceptual experience. Sensation, he says, implies acquaintance, but is not identical with acquaintance (Russell 1984, 63).

Those who contrast their relationist proposals with representationalist accounts include Campbell (2002a, 2002b) and Brewer (2006), and Martin (2002) also contrasts his naïve realist view with representationalist accounts.

One formulation of the disagreement between the relationist and his opponent might invoke the notion of a fundamental kind. (This formulation is principally due to Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), but see also Snowdon (2005).) According to this formulation, the relationist is committed to denying that successful perceptions and hallucinations are mental events/states of the same fundamental kind. This formulation obviously depends on further questions about what it is that makes a kind ‘fundamental’.

The sort of view I have in mind here is one according to which (i) a particular experience E that is a veridical perception of a particular mind-independent object O will have an intentional content with a demonstrative element that successfully refers to O and a distinct particular experience E* will have an intentional content with the same veridicality conditions only if its intentional content contains a demonstrative element that also refers to O, and (ii) if two experiences have intentional contents which differ in their veridicality conditions, then this is not just a respect in which these mental events differ, it is also amounts to a difference in their mental kinds.

I have in mind a view that regards the state of seeing that p in the same sort of way that Williamson (2000) regards the state of knowing that p (whether or not the view commits to the claim that seeing that p is a way of knowing that p).

Just as those who claim that conscious sensory experience possesses non-representational phenomenal properties need not be committed to denying the supervenience of the mental on the physical, the same can be true of the relationist.

Compare here the way in which the sense-datum theorist Price (1932) claims that the relation of acquaintance is an ‘element’ of perceptual consciousness.

For discussions of the transparency of experience, see Moore (1903), Harman (1990), Tye (1992, 2000), Martin (2002) and Crane (2006).

Not all of those who appeal to the ‘transparency’ of experience agree on the details of the positive and negative claims, and some of those who appeal to the transparency of experience are not attempting to highlight the claim that we seem to be directly aware of mind-independent material objects, (e.g. Moore 1903).

See Steward (1997) and Mourelatos (1978) for discussion of the idea that there are various ontological distinctions to be marked between different aspects of mind that are determined by the different ways in which those aspects of mind fill time.

An explanation of the fact that over the interval of time t ₁–t ₅ S underwent an experience with the content that ‘That F is G’ might appeal to neural processes and psychological processes that occur at a sub-personal level. For example, over the sub-interval t ₁–t ₃ there might occur (or obtain) a sub-personal psychological event (or state) that represents an F, and over the sub-interval t ₄–t ₅ there might occur (or obtain) a sub-personal psychological event (or state) that represents its G-ness. In virtue of the occurrence of such sub-personal processes, it may seem that ‘That F is G’ to the subject at a personal level. However, the sub-personal events and states that are appealed to may themselves be specified in terms of contents with veridicality conditions, and not simply parts of such contents that lack veridicality conditions. And if they are not, the sub-personal event (or state) that, say, represents G-ness is, by assumption, not to be identified with a personal level conscious experience that simply represents ‘is G’.

For example, see Kelly (2005).

Alternatively, it could be said that certain versions of the retention view fail to accommodate the positive phenomenological claim, insofar as they imply that if one attempts to attend to the temporal part of an occurrence that is concurrent with one's awareness of it, one will only discover an instantaneous temporal part of that occurrence.

The idea that it is not enough simply to say that experience unfolds over the interval of time that is occupied by the occurrence of which it is an experience can lead to an endorsement of what has been called the ‘principle of simultaneous awareness’ – the idea that in experience we are simultaneously aware of (or represent) different temporal parts of an occurrence (see Miller 1984). The thought here is that even if we accept that the experiential occurrence unfolds over the interval of time occupied by the occurrence of which it is an experience, we still need to appeal to properties of that experiential occurrence, and properties of the subject that obtain when he undergoes it, in order to account for the phenomenology of the experience of that occurrence. We may then say that the subject is aware of/seems to be aware of O (or the experience is as of O). But although such properties may be possessed for intervals of time, they do not unfold over time. So we then should accept, it is suggested, that different temporal parts of O are experienced/represented together at, or over, the same instant, or interval, of time. The principle of simultaneous awareness is then thought to be in tension with what has been called the ‘principle presentational concurrence’: ‘the duration of a content being presented is concurrent with the act of presenting it … the time interval occupied by a content which is before the mind is the very same interval which is occupied by the act of presenting that content’ (Miller 1984, 107). Attempts to resolve this tension one way or the other can lead to different versions of specious present theories and retention theories. Dainton (2000) appeals to the phenomenal relation of ‘co-consciousness’ in his account. However, one might again think that if the obtaining of this relation between phases of experience is to make a difference to what it is like for the subject to have an experience in which this relation obtains, then this ought to be reflected in the psychological properties/states of the subject that obtain when the subject undergoes an experience in which such a relation obtains. So arguably, for Dainton's account too, the problem emerges.

This need not involve denying that when the relation obtains perceptual events and processes also occur, and it need not involve denying that the perceptual events and processes that occur are phenomenally conscious. But the phenomenally conscious properties of such events will be ones that make a difference to the subject's psychological properties. So when such events occur the subject will be in phenomenally conscious states that would not otherwise obtain, and here I am focusing on the question of what to say about such phenomenally conscious states.

For example, consider a position according to which there is a phenomenally conscious mental state of seeing that p, the obtaining of which entails awareness of objects and their features, but according to which this phenomenally conscious state of seeing that p can be specified independently of the relation of awareness of. Or consider a position according to which the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is determined by the intentional content of that experience, but according to which the content in question contains demonstrative elements that are object-dependent. On one such view, one has an experience with such content only if the demonstrative elements have referents, and if they have referents then the subject of experience is aware of objects and features, but that which determines the referents of those demonstrative elements can be specified independently of the relation of awareness of – e.g. perhaps an appropriate causal relation.

Consider, for example, the idea that the temperature of a liquid (a state of the liquid) depends on the motion of the molecules of the liquid (occurrence). For discussion of this example, see Steward (1997).

Rothstein (2004) characterises the relevant notion of homogeneity in the following way: If a predicate is homogeneous then x Φ-ed for y time ENTAILS that at any time during y, x Φ-ed was true. She suggests that states have the distinctive feature of being homogeneous down to instants. ‘If John loved Mary for twenty years then he loved her at each instant during that twenty year period …’ (Rothstein 2004, 14).

We can contrast this with the phenomenology of the spatial sensory field of vision. The phenomenology is that of being aware of a region of space from a spatial location that is distinct from that region of space. I discuss this contrast in ‘The perception of absence, space and time’ (Soteriou forthcoming).

For one such important development, see Martin (2006).

I do not think it follows from this that the relationist needs to deny that a subject can come to know what it is like to have an experience with the conscious character of a successful perception through having an introspectively indiscriminable hallucination. But defence of this claim depends on views on what is involved in attributing to a subject ‘knowledge of what it is like’ that I do not have the space to discuss here.