Max Minden Ribeiro
Affiliation: Lund University
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: perceptual experience, presentational phenomenal character, perceptual content, propositional attitude, manifest dependence, enabling conditions
Date: Wednesday 3rd of September
Time: 15:00
Location: Room 161 (161)
View the full session: Perceptual Contents
Overview
The attitude-content framework characterises a class of views on which some mental states are representations composed of an attitude adopted by a subject towards representational content. In this paper I argue that the framework cannot explain perceptual experience’s presentational phenomenal character. First, I show that presentational phenomenal character is best described as the manifest spatial and temporal dependence of experience on its objects. Then I argue that these manifest spatial and temporal dependences cannot be explained within the attitude-content framework. My line of argument is simple. The attitude-content theorist must explain phenomenal character in terms of attitude, content or their combination. Explanations that place the explanatory burden on attitude commit to an error theory of perceptual presence. Explanations that place the explanatory burden on content face counterexamples from non-presentational representations partly composed of the same content. On examining the systematic way that individual elements of content and attitude contribute to explanations of functional role and phenomenal character, I conclude that no combination of attitude and content will be jointly sufficient to explain perceptual experience’s presentational phenomenal character.
Given the time constraint on the presentation, I will focus on explanations that place the explanatory burden either on content, or the combinations of content and attitude, and I will only briefly touch on ‘pure attitude’ explanations.
Section 1: Manifest Dependence
Here are two phenomenological claims that apply to perceptual experience but not imagination or recollection.
Manifest Spatial Dependence (MSD): The spatial location that the experience is had from seems to be positioned relative to the spatial location of the object.
Manifest Temporal Dependence (MTD): The temporal location of the experience seems to be determined by, and seems to be indistinguishable from, the temporal location of the object (Soteriou 2013, 88-90).
MSD and MTD reflect the apparent satisfaction of two basic enabling conditions for successful perception. First, the basic spatial enabling condition that the object is located in a region of space continuous with that of the perceiver. Second, the basic temporal enabling condition that the the object (or perceived event it participates in) occupy the right temporal location, given the spatial location of the object, the perceptual modality and the causal process that constitutes perception in that modality.
In seeming to satisfy these enabling conditions and so meeting MSD and MTD, perceptual experience possesses presentational phenomenal character.
Section 2: The Attitude-Content Framework
On the Attitude-Content Framework, perceptual experience is an attitude adopted towards representational content. The content’s satisfaction conditions double as veridicality conditions, and what it takes for a perceptual experience to be veridical is that the world is the way the experience represents it to be. On this framework, explanations of functional role and phenomenal character (including MSD and MTD) must appeal to features of attitude, content or perhaps their combination.
Section 3: Content Explanations of Presentational Character
Content Views are accounts within the attitude-content framework that place the burden of explaining MSD and MTD on representational content. They identify a difference in content between a perceptual experience, memory and sensory imagining of the same scene.
Searle endorses a content explanation of presentational phenomenal character (1983, 45-6). He holds that the veridicality conditions of perceptual experience (and so its content) include that the state of affairs that feature in those conditions cause the perceptual experience (ibid. 48). This distinguishes perceptual experience from memory and imagination. Perceptual experience causally depends on the states of affairs that are experienced, and what it is like to be conscious of this dependence (i.e. for it to be manifest) is that experience’s presentational phenomenal character.
Here is an objection to Searle’s account: I might believe ‘that there is a blue ball in front of me and that the blue ball is causing this very state’. As such a belief would not be presentational, the Searlean Content View is not sufficient for presentation.
Millar offers two revisions of Searle’s view of perceptual content. First, the causal link between object and the intentional state represented in the conditions of satisfaction ‘does not involve the mediation of some distinct experience’ (2014, 249). Second, it is among the condition of satisfaction of perceptual experience that the experience is caused ‘automatically’ (2014, 249). Millar states that it is impossible to adopt a belief with this direct causal content. However, the conscious judgment that I have unconsciously perceived an object provides a counterexample.
Searle and Millar are right that perceptual experience is and seems to be passive to and dependent on its objects. But they attempt to accommodate this dependence by stating it baldly in propositional content. The problem with this approach is that kinds of experience that are archetypally not receptive like beliefs can equally represent themselves as dependent, but without gaining the relevant phenomenal character.
Section 4: The Systematicity Principle and Combination Views
Here is a principle concerning the contribution of content and attitude to functional role and phenomenal character:
Systematicity Principle: On the attitude-content framework, the elements that compose a representation contribute to that representation’s functional role and phenomenal character in systematic and predictable ways.
With this principle in hand, I show that no combination of further items or formats of content (imagistic content; singular content), nor further attitudinal operators (an attitude with conclusive warrant) can be combined to realise presentational phenomenal character. For each element of attitude or content makes a systematic contribution to phenomenal character, and we know from other kinds of experience that the kind of contribution these elements make is insufficient for presentational phenomenal character. Indeed, even if we convey the descriptions MSD and MTD into the propositional content of a perceptual experience – call this Manifest Dependence Content – the resulting combination of attitude and content will be insufficient for presentational phenomenal character. I conclude that the attitude-content framework cannot explain perceptual phenomenal character.
References Millar, B. (2014). “The phenomenological directness of perceptual experience.” Philosophical Studies. 170, 235–253. Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge University Press. Soteriou, M. (2013). The Mind’s Construction. Oxford University Press.