Abstract
Perception is a central topic in both epistemology and philosophy of mind. This essay addresses perception from both perspectives, exploring its structure, phenomenology, and relation to belief and knowledge. Perception embodies sensory experience and in that way is phenomenologically representational; it is a response to its object(s) and in that way a source of information about what is perceived; and it is a basis of belief and knowledge and in that way enables us to navigate the world. These points are examined in relation to five dimensions of the theory of perception: the “contents” of perceptual experience; the levels of its responsiveness to its objects; the extent to which, in various forms, it may depend on conceptualizing what is perceived; its liability to influence by the perceiver’s beliefs or theoretical commitments; and its role in grounding justification and knowledge.
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Notes
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In Prinz 2015, we find a case for countenancing unconscious perception, which he characterizes as “unconscious transduction of information that is in someone [some way?] useable by the organism that transduces it” (373), and later as “perception without the benefit of a frontal cortex” (386). I do not see that the case he offers is inconsistent with describing the phenomena he cites from the literature in terms not entailing what I am suggesting is not possible: that genuine perception occurs without the instantiation (in consciousness) of any of the kinds of phenomenal properties I view as essential to it.
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Jesse Prinz cites Ned Block as using a similar example, air conditioner noise, and holding (in Prinz’s words) that “we can be phenomenally conscious of a stimulus while lacking access consciousness to it.” See Prinz 2015, 375. As I see such cases, in them we do not in fact “access” our consciousness, but normally can. I grant, however, that consciousness of something does not entail the ability to describe or even report it. I do not accept Prinz’s view that “to notice something we have to classify it” (374); but perhaps there is a very think sense of ‘classify’ for which it is plausible. As to his using of ‘unconscious perception’ to refer to “unconscious transduction of information that is . . . useable by the organism that transduces it” (373), this neurological view of perception makes it easy to see how perception can be considered sometimes unconscious once we grant that (as seems uncontroversial) the brain, quite apart from our experiences (and certainly without our noticing), can receive information that can guide purposive action.
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For Susanna Schellenberg 2017, who does not distinguish perceptual and sensory experience as I do, the same “perceptual capacity” is instantiated by seeing and by a mere sensory experience with the same visual phenomenological elements. I can see a rationale for speaking of a perceptual capacity here. But consider a Cartesian demon scenario, in which, for a non-embodied mind, there is sensory experience intrinsically like perceptual experience. Would genuine perceptual experience be possible for the kinds of objects hallucinated? Perhaps so, and perhaps she would grant this. I would not foreclose that possibility, but do not call mere sensory experience perceptual and use ‘perceptual experience’ for experiences that are relational as well as sensory.
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I take causal connections to imply certain counterfactuals but do not consider those connections analyzable simply in terms of counterfactuals (I leave open here whether actual causal connections are fully analyzable or conceptually primitive). A related qualification is this. Where there is a time gap, as with seeing distant stars, the best option seems to be to suppose that we see them as they were at a certain time, and that this requires that we have whatever discriminative responsiveness is appropriate to seeing them by the properties they had by which we see them.
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This is compatible with holding that if there is nothing tasted or smelled, then one is having a merely sensory experience.
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It is not self-evident that seeing x by seeing its F-ness does not entail seeing it to be F, but if we grant that it positions one to see it to be F, we may then plausibly claim that whereas seeing x by seeing its F-ness requires somehow responding to the property, F, seeing x to be F requires more, at least if the seeing is conceptual since that entails conceptualizing F in some way. If it is not conceptual, it entails at least attributing F-ness, where this attribution requires a kind of focal consciousness of F, even if not any attributive event.
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The sense in which phenomenal properties are representational seems to presuppose an understanding of the representationality of physical properties. I have anyway assumed that we may describe the former as if we had some kind of acquaintance with the latter. If a Cartesian demon world is possible, we must take such acquaintance to be possible in the absence of physical objects instantiating the properties. This possibility seems real, but is controversial. My concern with the problem and its relation to justification is partly due to Ralph Kennedy’s discussion of these in his 2011.
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How this higher-level representation takes place without being pictorial is explained in my 2013, esp. Chapters 2 and 3.
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This might be thought not to apply to Russellian propositions, constituted (in these cases) by the object perceived and the property in question. But here it seems that believing such a proposition comes to no more than believing the object to have the property, in which case the Russellian proposition is not by itself true or false, but rather adequate or inadequate to the object, depending on whether or not the property it predicates is true of it.
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This is the minimal property content because there can be properties represented in a perceptual experience that do not belong to the object—ranging from the ellipticality that the mouth of a glass can seem to have when viewed from an angle to the properties of a hallucinated face of a rival of a distraught man, which he might “see” in the middle of an abstract painting he is actually seeing. We might term the set of all the properties represented (phenomenally as opposed to intellectively) in a perceptual experience its full property content. A further distinction is between what is basically represented (the ellipticality) and what is non-basically represented—the roundness, which, for those whose vision “corrects” for angular distortion, is seen through visually experiencing “elliptically.”
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This implication apparently accounts for Scott Hagaman’s conception of perceptual content in its widest sense. See his PhD dissertation Content and Justification: Prospects for Epistemological Rationalism (University of Notre Dame, 2015).
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For a case supporting this remark see my 1994.
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A recent example of theorizing that focuses significantly on parallels between perception and action is Sosa 2015. His concern, however, is more with success conditions on each side and their similarity. The parallel I stress here is compatible with the kind of difference (e.g. in direction of fit) that exists there.
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It will be plain to those conversant with recent psychological literature that ‘inference’ is used quite differently therein. See, e.g., Clark 2014, Chapter 11, esp. 229–237, which explicates the “perception-as-inference” view of Richard Gregory, emphasizing “predictive processing” as “essentially a process of bottom-up feature detection.” My position is neutral with respect to the nature and role of inference in this technical sense.
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One might wonder how the causative property could fail to be observable; but the causative token need not be observable, as opposed to be intimately connected with an observable property as, e.g., tokening light-ray reflection is intimately connected (but not identical) with coloration, which is observable.
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The property might be relational: I can see a distant plane when I misperceive its color and shape but see its approximate location and its relation to me produces a suitable phenomenal responsiveness to changes in it. I must here ignore these and other complications.
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I propose a more detailed account of apprehension in my “Perceptualism in the Abstract Realm: Toward a Theory of Apprehension,” in progress.
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Recent literature on cognitive penetration brings out some of what was said or implied in earlier literature on theory-ladenness. For much on how the former affects perception and justification of perceptual beliefs see Siegel 2017, and for some critical discussion of some contemporary views about the significance of such penetration see Tucker 2014. See also Stokes 2014 and 2018.
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I have developed and defended this conception in my 2006, esp. Chapter 8.
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This allows for the formation of inferential belief without inference, as where one believes p non-inferentially (say just from wishful thinking), then learns that q, which is an excellent premise for p, and becomes such that one believes p on the basis of q in the way one would have, given a normal formation of the belief that p on the basis of inferring it from q. Such cases may be instances of believing for a reason without instantiating believing on the basis of reasoning (which is a kind of inference).
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In, e.g., my 2013, Chapters 2 and 3.
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For a view of perception that has some similarities to mine but is more “practically” oriented and provides a conception of the navigation metaphor, see Bengson 2016. He conceives perception as “fundamentally practical” in the sense that it renders perceivers “poised for action.”
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This does not entail that perceptual justification is indefeasible, or even that it is not negatively dependent, in the way defeasibility implies, on the perceiver’s beliefs. This point is explained in Chapters 8 and 9 of my 2010. In Part One of Siegel’s 2017 she proposes a view on which perception itself may be rational or irrational, as well as a view on which it may be inferential. It may be apparent why I do not hold these views or take the justification of (de dicto) perceptual beliefs to depend on whether the underlying perception is cognitively penetrated; but, by making more use than she does of a partial account of aspectual perception (especially seeing as) I can explain many of the data she notes.
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This metaphorical statement does not entail that inference (in the process sense) is propositional and roughly equivalent to ‘reasoning’: a kind of mental tokening of an argument. A detailed statement of my broadly propositional view of inference is provided in Chapters 5, 7 and 8 of my 2006. Some philosophers and psychologists use ‘inference’ more broadly. See, e.g., Clark 2014, and Green 2010, 49: “The inferences I speak of here will not in general consist of the derivation of one proposition from a set of others… they will more commonly take the form of a positioning of an object in egocentric space, an attribution of absolute and relative trajectories, and so forth.” On this view, inferences need not be drawn, or figure in consciousness as reasoning does, or be valid or invalid, or voluntary, if indeed they constitute doings at all. I am not arguing that perception cannot involve inference if the term is used in a technical sense with the suggested breadth. Indeed, a case can be made that perception—as where, through experience with the relevant kind of thing, one “estimates” size and shape of a distant object or “updates” one’s sense of the speed of an object by visual cues—is Bayesian, in the sense that (among other things) “the perceptual system estimates environmental conditions.” For detailed discussion see Rescorla 2015, 694. Rescorla shows how Bayesian information processing in the perceptual system can be accounted for without endorsing Helmholtz’s “constructivism,” on which perception embodies unconscious inferences.
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This essay was written to serve as the 2016 Münster Lecture and has benefited from discussions surrounding its presentation at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, as well as from presentation of parts of it at many other universities and in seminars at the University of Notre Dame. I am grateful for comments and questions from colleagues, students, and audience members; and, for extensive editorial assistance I thank Johannes Müller-Salo. For detailed remarks and queries on the penultimate version, I particularly want to thank Brian Cutter and Declan Smithies.
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Audi, R. (2018). Perception and Cognition. Structural and Epistemic Elements. In: Müller-Salo, J. (eds) Robert Audi: Critical Engagements. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00482-8_1
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