https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4884-4830
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Almost every case of visual experience is as of a unified state of affairs and as of one or more specific particulars. I argue that a view on which the content of visual experience is a singular proposition, does a better job at explaining these two features of visual experience than three popular theories: the Complex Property Theory, Generalism, and Fregean Particularism. The defended view, however, entails that there are no visual hallucinations, traditionally understood. I make the case for the plausibility of this consequence.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Ned Block, David Chalmers, Joseph Gottlieb, Christopher Hom, and two anonymous reviewers and the editors of AJP for comments and discussion.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Schellenberg (Citation2018) distinguishes between the phenomenological and the relational particularity of experience. The latter is a metaphysical claim to the effect that while undergoing the experience, the subject is thereby related to a particular. Although I ultimately agree with Schellenberg that experience instantiates relational particularity, my starting point in this paper only involves the phenomenological aspect.
2 See Dretske Citation1999, Johnston Citation2004, and Tye Citation2014. It is worth noting that Johnston is not a representationalist, but I discuss his view here because he can be considered a complex property theorist in all the ways relevant to this paper. What differentiates him from CP representationalists like Dretske and Tye is his account of perceptual awareness. Representationalists conceive perceptual awareness as a matter of representation; Johnston considers it as a matter of acquaintance (2004: 148).
3 Some have argued that the CP theorists should also allow for globally uninstantiated properties and thereby, be committed to Platonism (See e.g., Thompson Citation2008, Gow Citation2018).
4 See Armstrong Citation1997: 31 for discussion of conjunctive, disjunctive, and structural relations between properties.
5 For a detailed discussion of some of the recent responses to the problem of the unity of the proposition, see King, Soames, and Speaks Citation2014.
6 Thanks to the anonymous referee for suggesting this point.
7 Also, Searle (Citation1983: 63) provides a well-known generalist explanation for the particularity of experience. I do not discuss it here, however, as it has been widely criticized (e.g., see Bach Citation2007).
8 Schellenberg (Citation2010: 36) criticizes de dicto Fregeanism along with other generalist accounts on the ground that they cannot account for what she calls the relational particularity of experience. While I agree with her on this point, my claim in this paper is that generalist accounts cannot even fully explain the phenomenological particularity of experience (For a similar view, see Montague Citation2016: Ch. 6).
9 In the rest of this section, following Schellenberg, I shall use formula of the form ‘MOPrT(τ)’ to show the de re MOP of a particular τ of the type T.
10 It is controversial whether we possess perceptual capacities that independently function to single out non-natural kinds such as balls. Here, for the sake of explication, I have assumed that we do have such capacities. None of what follows, however, is dependent on this assumption.
11 The notion of co-directedness of perceptual capacities has been proposed by Schellenberg (Citation2019: 748) in response to McGrath (Citation2019). However, no definition of co-directedness is offered there. The definition given here is my best guess as to what the co-directedness relation between two perceptual capacities amounts to.
12 One might worry that, since singular propositions are partially constituted by particulars, explaining the unity of such propositions may prove to be especially difficult. However, this shouldn’t be a cause for worry. For on the most prevalent theories of propositions, the explanation of the unity of singular propositions is as simple as (if not simpler than) the explanation of unity of general propositions (See King, Soames, and Speaks Citation2014).
13 Averill and Gottlieb (Citation2021) also appeal to singular representation to explain phenomenal particularly, but their view requires non-actual objects in the case of total hallucination. The view to be developed here does not require any such metaphysical exotica.
14 See Quilty-Dunn and Green (Citationforthcoming) for an extensive discussion of the evidence.
15 For a defence of this view see Green Citation2017.
16 Of course, any proposition is unified. I say ‘unified proposition’ merely to emphasize the role of the unity of the propositional content in this theory.
17 Unlike the view defended here, the problem of indistinguishable particulars is a difficult challenge for naïve realism. On naïve realism, the phenomenal character of experience is constituted by the particulars and property instances that the experience is of. This counterintuitively entails that experiences of two objects with identical visual properties should differ in phenomenal character (See Mehta Citation2014).
18 We should note, however, that Object Dependence does not ban the existence of hallucinations, traditionally understood, which do not exhibit specific phenomenological particularity. It is compatible with the theory defended here that such experiences do occur and that they are objectless. But in the rest of this paper, I will drop the qualification ‘phenomenologically particular’, and by ‘hallucination’ mean phenomenologically particular hallucination unless otherwise indicated.
19 This does not mean that the singular element refers to the whole causal nexus, since in that case, the reference would not be vague.
20 For an excellent review of cognitive models of visual hallucination, see Aleman and Vercammen Citation2013.
21 Here we should note that although naïve realism may provide a simple explanation of the objectual unity and particularity of veridical experiences, it arguably loses all of its force when it comes to hallucinations. This is simply because the naïve realist explanation rests on the assumption that phenomenal character is constituted by particulars and property instances in the perceived environment. However, this view of phenomenal character cannot extend to hallucinations, where the environment does not instantiate the perceived properties. To account for hallucinations, naïve realists often resort to the disjunctivist view of perceptual experience, i.e. the view that hallucinations are of a fundamentally different kind than veridical experiences. But this means that they lose their otherwise elegant explanation of objectual unity and particularity of hallucinatory experiences.