Giorgio Mazzullo
Affiliation: University of Nottingham
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: Hallucination, Monism
Date: Tuesday 2nd of September
Time: 15:00
Location: Gen. Henryk Dąbrowski Hall (006)
View the full session: Metaphysics of Perceptual Experience
Naïve Realism is often presented as the common-sense view in the philosophy of perception and the view that best accommodates how perception strikes us through introspective reflection. According to this view, the phenomenal character of (at least) veridical conscious perceptions is constituted by a relation of perceptual awareness between a subject and aspects of their mind-independent environment. When Mary perceives a red apple on the table in her living room, the actual apple before her and its perceptible properties are constituents of the experiential event and, at least in part, determine what it is like for Mary to undergo such a visual experience. In this paper, I suggest that Naïve Realists have so far neglected the role that regions of space play in shaping the phenomenal character of experiences. Moreover, I suggest that this neglection is costly. Acknowledging the role of regions of could be necessary for Naïve Realists to resist the most significant challenge to their view: the Master Argument from Hallucination.
Naïve Realists typically hold that “the persisting mind-independent physical objects that we all know and love” (Brewer 2007: 93), and their properties enter as constituents of veridical conscious perceptions. Consider again Mary’s perception of a red apple. Mary is presented with an apple and a variegated scene, consisting of different objects and their properties (e.g., a red chair and a white wall). These are the kinds of entities that Naïve Realists have considered as paradigmatic character-constituting elements of the experience: material objects and their properties. This is symptomatic of what I call a (material) object-centred approach.
If we are to take seriously one of the main motivations for supporting the view, however, the picture that we get from the deliverances of introspection is far-reaching, or so I want to suggest. Consider Mary’s perception again. Mary is presented with a variegated scene, consisting of different objects and their properties spread out in space. Veridical conscious perceptions seem to be episodes where a subject is aware not only of objects and their properties but also regions of space. The way in which perceptions strike us through introspective reflection recommends taking regions of space as literal constituents of the experiential event.
Suppose that the Naïve Realists are happy to accept the role or regions of space in ordinary perceptions. Let us now move to consider the general structure of the Master Argument: it posits that (i) certain kinds of exotic hallucinations, produced by replicating the neural state of a perception of an F, are possible. Such hallucinations (ii) must be explained in the same way as their neurally matching perceptions. If so, however, given the seemingly plausible assumption that (iii) these hallucinations cannot involve a relation of perceptual awareness between a subject and aspects of their mind-independent environment, (c) perceptions cannot be Naïve Realist.
Few Naïve Realists have suggested to reject (iii) (Raleigh 2014; Ali 2018). In a recent paper (2025), I have suggested that these attempts are not really viable. However, if we consider the role of regions of space in potentially shaping the character of our visual experiences, I suggest that Naïve Realists could have a compelling way to reject (iii). Take Mary’s exotic hallucination of a red apple on the table in her living room, for example. This visual experience may be deceptive regarding the presence of such objects and their properties. After all, we can imagine that the scene before Mary is actually a lab room. But is it equally deceptive about the presence before one’s mind of a region of space?
My paper suggests that Naïve Realists should take the hallucinations invoked by the argument as a case of (material)objectless consciousness, where one is related only to a particular region of space, which appears in a way that it actually is not. This raises at least two questions:
Regarding the second point, I propose that Naïve Realists should rely on the strategies they have already developed to address the problem of perceptual illusions. After all, the hallucinatory case would turn out to be a massive illusory experience. In particular, I suggest t that Naïve Realists should rely on those strategies that reject the Diaphaneity of visual experiences, i.e., the claim that sameness and difference in phenomenology are just sameness and difference in the character of the constituents of the experience such as the austere account of visual illusions developed by French and Phillips (2022).
Naïve Realists have so far neglected the role that regions of space play in shaping the phenomenal character of experiences. But acknowledging the role of regions of could be necessary for Naïve Realists to resist the Master Argument from Hallucination.