Perception

Barry Maund

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317489528
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The philosophical issues raised by perception make it one of the central topics in the philosophical tradition. Debate about the nature of perceptual knowledge and the objects of perception comprises a thread that runs through the history of philosophy. In some historical periods the major issues have been predominantly epistemological and related to scepticism, but an adequate understanding of perception is important more widely, especially for metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. For this reason Barry Maund provides an account of the major issues in the philosophy of perception that highlights the importance of a good theory of perception in a range of philosophical fields, while also seeking to be sensitive to the historical dimension of the subject. The work presents chapters on forms of natural realism; theories of perceptual experience; representationalism; the argument from illusion; phenomenological senses; types of perceptual content; the representationalist/intentionalist thesis; and adverbialist accounts of perceptual experience. The ideas of, among others, Austin, Dretske, Heidegger, Millikan, Putnam and Robinson are considered and the reader is given a philosophical framework within which to consider the issues.

1 The philosophy of perception

The most natural view to take of perception is that it is a process by which we acquire knowledge of an objective world. We take this world to consist of physical objects and happenings, which exist independently of us and our acts of perceiving, and which are the things we commonly perceive. Problems arise, however, when we reflect on the nature of that process and on how the knowledge is supposed to be acquired. Many of the traditional puzzles of perception arose, for example, when people tried to make sense of the fact that in different circumstances the same things appeared differently, either to different people placed differently, or to the same person on different occasions. Crucial questions that arose were whether we ever know what objects were really like, as opposed to how they appeared, and indeed whether how they appeared had anything to do with what they were really like. Such ancient puzzles were refuelled as the scientific revolution developed, as Galileo, Descartes, Locke and others attempted to make sense of the relationship between perceptual experience and the physical world; and more recently in the philosophy of science, where it has become widely believed that all perception is theory laden and strongly conceptual in nature.

Two different philosophical approaches to perception

Perception is a subject of interest in its own right, from both a philosophical and a scientific point of view. There is little doubt, however, that in philosophy the main interest in perception, historically, has been motivated by the recognition of its pivotal epistemological role. Perception is one of the major sources of our acquisition of knowledge about the world, certainly about the environmental world.¹ There are, however, different kinds of epistemological motivations for developing a theory of perception. One motivation is found in the context of justificationist epistemology: we are interested in the justification of general knowledgeclaims — for example, those made in everyday life or those made in the natural sciences — and we need to spell out the role of sense perception in the process of justification. At certain historical periods, the motivation has been to find an answer to “the sceptic”, who raises, or is taken to raise, doubts about the reliability and validity of the senses. At other times, it concerns the justification of specific knowledge-claims of a specific theory or approach, against those of rival theories and approaches. And at certain times, both concerns may be important. In the seventeenth century, for example, in his Meditations, Descartes is driven by the first concern, but other writers, for example, Locke and Descartes himself at other times, are interested in a different project; namely, justifying the claims of the newly emerging sciences against the claims of a set of rival approaches — neo-Aristotelianism, hermetical natural philosophy and scepticism.

In both types of epistemological context, it is important to be clear about the role of sense perception, and of the nature and character of perceptual experiences and perceptual states. We need to keep in mind, however, that there are different major epistemological projects, and that these might well affect our study of perception in different ways. For example, in the epistemological contexts described above, scepticism has a role to play. There is, however, yet another epistemological approach, which takes a different attitude to scepticism. This alternative approach, which goes at least as far back as Aristotle and the Stoic philosophers, and includes more recent philosophers such as Thomas Reid, takes it for granted that we perceive the physical world and its features.² For those within this tradition, perception is characterized functionally: in a healthy organism, properly operating sense organs function so as to enable the organism to acquire knowledge of the world.³ The crucial matter is to understand how perception works; for example, to find out how knowledge is acquired and whether or not it is through having sense impressions or representations or ideas or cognitions, or whatever. It is implicit in this approach that scepticism is not treated as a problem. According to Aristotle, we can safely leave the sceptic “like a bump, sitting on a log”.

For philosophers who follow the Aristotelian–Stoic approach, their study of perception falls within what may properly be termed "naturalistic epistemology". This term needs to be understood in a certain way since, after Quine, the term (or its sibling, "epistemology naturalized") is often taken to cover the task of fitting epistemology within the body of science, and more precisely within psychology, where the latter is taken to be a natural science, that is, as relating not so much to cognitive and intentional phenomena as to behaviouristic and neo-behaviouristic phenomena. If "psychology" were interpreted so as to include intentional psychology, social psychology and the social (moral) sciences such as sociology, history, politics and so on, then naturalized epistemology would be more defensible.⁴ Even so, there is something seriously misguided about Quine’s project of reducing epistemology to psychology. What it overlooks is that psychology, like any of the natural sciences, presupposes an epistemology. The scientist who defends her theories or experimental results is in the business of making knowledge-claims, and even if she doesn’t have an explicit epistemology, if she is making knowledge-claims, she is potentially open to epistemological criticism. As a consequence, this scientist, or someone on the scientist’s behalf, has to be ready with an epistemological defence for the claims. Because any science is epistemologically sensitive in this way, the project of reducing epistemology to psychology has to be understood as reducing epistemology not to psychology, but to psychology + epistemology. It certainly won’t entail the replacement of epistemology by psychology.

This point indicates that there is another way to understand "naturalistic psychology", and that is to interpret it not as applying to a study reducible to a branch of a natural science, but as describing a study for which the natural sciences are relevant. Understood in this way, naturalistic psychology makes a great deal of sense. To pursue it is to acknowledge that the study of certain natural sciences can be extremely helpful in making epistemological progress. (A discussion of the distinction between these two ways of understanding naturalistic psychology can be found in Kornblith 1985.⁵) On the second way of understanding, naturalistic psychology is not an alternative to justificationist epistemology, but is consistent with it.

Naturalistic epistemology in this second, more modest, sense is the study of a field or domain of knowledge, where one of the aims is to show how the knowledge is possible, in the sense of explaining the conditions under which knowledge is acquired, the means whereby it is acquired, and so on. Such a study starts with the assumption that knowledge is acquired, (which does not mean that it ends with that assumption). Its primary aim is not to seek or provide foundations for knowledge, but it does not rule out drawing normative conclusions. It is within this kind of naturalistic epistemology that the Aristotelian—Stoic approach to perception can be found.

This feature of the Aristotelian—Stoic approach marks it off from the dominant philosophical tradition (historically) in the philosophy of perception, where the study of perception is set against the background of justificationist epistemology. There is another important difference. On the justificationist approach, the theorist focuses on our perceptual experiences: we know what it is to see a fox, to hear a bell, to taste a wine and so on. We attempt to provide an account of both the nature and structure of these experiences, and of the epistemological role they play. Emerging from this tradition are debates about the nature of perceptual experience, that is, its character, its content and its objects. Within this tradition, the emphasis, standardly, has been on the phenomenology of perception, and on describing perception from the first person point of view. It is within this tradition that we find Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Russell, Price, Broad, Ayer and many others.

This approach begins with perceptual experiences and attempts to describe them from the first person point of view, and to give an account of them that will help us determine the extent to which they justify our beliefs in the physical world. The Aristotelian—Stoic approach does not deny a role for the phenomenology of perception or for describing perceptual experience from the first person point of view, but it adopts a different starting point to thinking about perception. It begins with the acknowledgment that perception is a natural process in the world, like breathing and eating. Our first task is to describe the role that it plays, and as a result, to try to solve the problems that arise from attempting to perform that task. It is at a later stage, however, that it becomes important to give an account of perceptual experiences, and here describing the experience from the first person point of view is crucial. But that stage comes after we have set up a framework for describing perception as a natural process. It will still be necessary, following this approach, to provide an account of perceptual experience, for perceptual experience is part of the means whereby the perceiver acquires his or her knowledge of the environment. On either approach then, it will be necessary not only to spell out the epistemological role of perceptual experiences, but to provide the right characterization of them, that is, of their character, their content and their objects.

In the remainder of this book I propose to follow the Aristotelian—Stoic approach in trying to deal with the problems of perception. There are several reasons for adopting this approach. The first is that since, as we shall see, it involves giving an account of perception from the first person point of view, it does not rule out taking into account those considerations raised in the first approach. Secondly, as will emerge in later sections of this chapter, the Aristotelian—Stoic approach provides a rationale for treating the first person point of view as important, which is not readily available on the other approach. Finally, it is the most promising as an approach likely to deliver a theory of perception that will provide an integration of the first person and third person points of view. Such integration is a crucial requirement for any adequate theory of perception.

Philosophical theories of perception

There is a small but distinctive range of theories that have fought for dominance among philosophers of perception. These theories may be usefully characterized by where they stand on two of the major questions in the philosophy of perception. These questions arise when we reflect on the nature of perception, especially in response to issues raised in the context of the classical argument from illusion, but in epistemological contexts in general.

One of the questions concerns whether perception is direct or indirect. This question usually arises in contexts in which it is accepted that standardly the perceiver perceives physical objects and their qualities. The issue is whether we perceive them directly or rather by virtue of being aware of certain intermediaries: images, ideas, sense impressions, sensations, sensa or sense-data. The second major question concerns the nature of the perceptual experiences themselves: for example, whether there are different types (or different components) of perceptual experiences, for example, sensations and conceptual states, such as thoughts or beliefs; whether perceptual experiences contain representations and, if they do, what kind of representations they are; how we should characterize the content that perceptual experiences carry; and so on. These questions are not unrelated, for how we think of the experiences can affect how we draw the distinction between direct and indirect theories, and indeed makes it difficult to draw the distinction in a non-controversial way.

The classical indirect theory of perception is what is known as the "representative theory of perception". This theory is committed to a theory of indirect realism: we perceive physical objects indirectly, where the physical objects are real entities that exist independently of the act of perceiving. There are, however, difficulties with how we characterize both the representative theory and indirect realism, and this means that things are far more complex than the simple dichotomy between direct realism and indirect realism suggests. The claim that we perceive physical objects indirectly is ambiguous in not distinguishing between saying that we perceive them by virtue of perceiving intermediaries, and saying that we perceive them by virtue of being aware of the intermediaries or representations. (This point is taken up with other issues in Chapter 4.)

There is a second difficulty. The representative theory of perception is often taken to be committed to a theory of perception that is indirect and inferential. Inferential representational realism implies that we are aware of sensory states or sensory particulars, as sensory states, or particulars, and then makes an inference to the hypothetical cause of these states or particulars. Or if we do not actually make the inference, we could if we wished. That is, the perceiver is construed as being aware of some inner item, and inferring from that there is present some physical object or state of affairs causing that inner item. The “classical” representative theory of perception is commonly taken to comprise this form of representationalism. However, this characterization of the theory, it is important to note, comes more from its opponents than from its advocates. It is doubtful that Descartes and Locke, to whom the theory is commonly attributed, actually held it, (see note 9) and C. D. Broad, one of the most important modern defenders of the representative theory, explicitly rejects the inferential component to the theory. He writes that it is false psychologically that we infer existence of physical objects and properties from our sensa, and false logically that we could so infer: “The belief that our sensa are appearances of something more permanent and complex seems to be primitive and to arise inevitably in us with the sensing of the sensa.”⁶

On the other hand, not all forms of representationalism (nor theories of perception that involve representations) are indirect. There are many philosophers who cheerfully admit that perception involves representations, but who steadfastly refuse to admit that this commits them to a representative theory. E. J. Lowe, for example, draws a distinction between “representational theories” of perception and the representative theory.⁷ The contrast is between theories in which perceptual experiences are representational or intentional states, and theories that involve “indirect realism”: the view that we perceive physical objects and their properties indirectly in virtue of being directly aware of some sensory or mental items or states that represent the physical objects and their properties. It has, indeed, become quite common for contemporary philosophers to hold that perception involves representations in the sense that it contains representational states or intentional states — that is, states that carry intentional content — but to deny that they are committed to a representative theory of perception. The contrast is illustrated neatly by Colin McGinn, who, after explicitly repudiating the classical representative theory, maintains that perception works through representations: “My view is that we see objects ‘directly’ by representing them in visual experience.”⁸ Indeed, several historians of philosophy argue that Descartes and Locke, who are usually thought of as indirect theorists, held this version of representationalism.⁹

Not all theorists who admit the role of representations would agree with Lowe (and Michael Tye and others) in calling their theory a “representational theory”, but they are all agreed that the theory is a form of direct realism: representational states are involved in perception but neither they, nor components of them, are said to be “objects” for the perceiver, nor objects that constitute a veil between perceiver and the world. Let us call this theory “cognitive direct realism”. This form of direct realism stands in contrast with “naive realism”, which implies that in perception we are directly confronted with the object itself. Myles Burnyeat has characterized a version of the latter theory as “the window model of perception”, and attributes it to a number of historical philosophers, including many of the ancient Greek philosophers.¹⁰ Like opening a window and looking out, the act of perceiving reveals the thing, perceived “as it really is”.

There is another, important and interesting, form of direct realism that is different from the ones so far considered: that held by the psychologist James J. Gibson, under the title “the ecological theory of perception”.¹¹ It is not easy to pin down precisely what the theory is committed to, but Gibson appears to say, and is often taken to say, that perception is an activity that does not involve representations at all. However, it is not clear whether this is really what he wants to say, or whether it is the doctrine that perception does not involve certain kinds of representation, for example, either the type that figures in Fodor’s language of thought hypothesis or the type that is central to the classical representative theory of perception, that is, representations that constitute a “veil” between the perceiver and the world.

Summarizing our discussion so far, we need to distinguish between various forms of representationalism: indirect representationalism (the representative theory of perception) and direct representationalism, where the latter may be thought of as cognitive direct realism (or at least one important form of it). With respect to the representative theory, moreover, we need to distinguish between the “classical” theory and non-inferential forms of the theory.

The de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The philosophy of perception
• 2 A theory of natural realism
• 3 Theories of perceptual experiences
• 4 Representationalism: representations as natural signs
• 5 Natural realism: Putnam, Austin and Heidegger
• 6 Perception: the argument from illusion
• 7 The phenomenal and phenomenological senses of "looks"
• 8 Types of perceptual content
• 9 The representationalist–intentionalist thesis
• 10 Adverbialist accounts of perceptual experience
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index