How Does Visual Phenomenology Constrain
Object-seeing?
Susanna Siegel * Harvard University
Perception provides a primitive form of
contact with the world and the other people in it. For example, we can learn
that Franco is sitting in his chair by seeing Franco; we can learn that his
hair is gray by seeing the color of his hair. Such perception enables us to
understand primitive forms of language, such as demonstrative expressions
"this" and "that". These are expressions we can readily use
to talk about the particular things we perceive.
Given
its apparently fundamental role in knowledge and understanding, it is natural
to wonder what the nature of our perceptual access to the world is. I will
focus on the case of seeing ordinary objects—people, horses, trains and the
like. The property of being an object is notoriously difficult to define, but
it is clear enough to support theorizing by psychologists (for instance,
theorizing about what concept of object adults and infants each have)[1],
and there are plenty of paradigm objects to point to, however cloudy the
margins of the concepts may be. Sticking with paradigm ordinary objects, I'll
call cases of seeing them "object-seeing". So while I'll be talking
quite a bit about seeing Franco, I won't talk at all about seeing the color of
Franco's hair.
It is hardly controversial that seeing
has a visual phenomenology. What's more controversial is its role in
object-seeing. Some philosophers hold that in general it doesn't matter for
object-seeing what sort of phenomenology object-seeing has; all that matters is
how that phenomenology would change with changes in the object seen. A pure
counterfactual analysis, they say, can reveal the nature of the object-seeing
relation. I will argue that visual phenomenology plays a role in object-seeing
that is overlooked in some influential discussions. It is visual phenomenology,
in part, that makes it the case that an experience is an experience of seeing a
particular object o, rather than no object at all.
After discussing the notion of
object-seeing in section 1, I defend the phenomenological constraint in
sections 2 and 3.
In order to bring into focus the kind of
seeing that is at issue, I will first mention three psychological states that
fall outside any intuitive notion of seeing, or are best borderline cases of
seeing in any intuitive sense. Then I will further characterize the kind of
seeing that is my subject-matter.
The first psychological state is
blindsight. In blindsight, although there does not seem to the subject to be
anything in her visual field, if forced to guess between certain parameters
(e.g., which way a line is oriented), subjects guess correctly more than half
the time.[2]
Blindsight is at best a borderline case of seeing.
Another bordeline
case of seeing is illustrated by a familiar sort of situation.Suppose you open
the refrigerator to look for the mustard. You take yourself not to have seen
it. Then you open the refrigerator again, and there’s the mustard, right in
front of you. One thing that could have happened the first time you opened the
refrigerator is that you saw the mustard, but didn’t recognize it as the
mustard, because you mistook it for something else. But another thing that
could have happened is that the mustard jar just didn’t register with
you at all. Some would want to describe this as a case of seeing the
mustard jar without noticing it, where noticing the mustard is something
that can happen even if you don’t form any belief about it.[3]
Favoring this description is the following idea: if you are looking in
direction D, o is a visible distance from you in direction D, and your visual
system is working properly under external conditions that are generally
conducive to seeing, then you will see o. This idea seems to be false.[4]
Moreover, it is not obvious whether the mustard jar appears some way to
you, and if it doesn’t appear any way to you, then it seems a stretch to say
that you see it. If there is a kind seeing and appearing that occurs in
mustard-jar type cases, these too are at best bordeline cases of seeing and
appearing.[5]
Finally, if a certain controversial
thought-experiment is coherent, then there may be a psychological state that is
clearly not a case of seeing in any intuitive sense (though it maybe a case of
seeing in some extraordinary sense). According to the controversial
thought-experiement, we can conceive of such a thing as my zombie twin —
someone just like me in all functional respects, but lacking all kinds of
phenomenology (visual or otherwise) whatsoever. It is controverisal whether
such a creature is even conceivable. But assuming for the sake of argument that
it is, if zombies could see objects, then their kind of seeing would be clearly
different from ours.
The claim that zombies, blindsighters and
mustard-missers fail to see what’s right in front of them is not one that I
will be arguing for (or against).[6]
I am simply pointing out that none of these cases clearly count as seeing in
any intuitive sense.
So far, I have invoked an intuitive
notion of seeing, but I haven’t said anything about the subject-matter of the
discussion, object-seeing. Object-seeing is a subclass of seeing
in the intuitive sense. It involves
ordinary objects such as bottles, fish and bananas. Further positive
characterization comes from considering its role in anchoring de re attitudes
to particulars that they are directly about.[7]
These propositional attitudes are ones we invoke cases of seeing objects to
explain. Let me indicate which propositional attitudes I mean by drawing a
familiar contrast. Some propositional attitudes are not directly about any
particular object at all. The newspapers report an influx of barnacles, and say
that no boat will be spared. The editor thinks to herself, "Even the fastest
boat is covered with barnacles." She does not form this belief by figuring
out which boat is fastest, and then determining that it is so covered.
In contrast, other propositional
attitudes are directly about particular objects: for instance, Franco's belief,
of the boat he saw, that it is covered with barnacles. Franco's belief is a
canonical instance of beliefs that are directly about particular objects. It is
formed from his having a simple perceptual relation to the boat, for instance
by his seeing it. It is the kind of belief that could naturally be expressed by
using a demonstrative expression, as in "That is a boat". De re
mental states can also be anchored to their objects by relations other than
perception, for instance by memory.
As it happens, ordinary language reports
of the form S sees o and S does not see o are not
exact guides to the sort of object-seeing at issue. Franco and Ray go down to
the docks and stand by a boat wrapped tightly in a tarp, which someone tells
them is the renowned Lady Windermere, fastest boat on water. Later on, someone
asks Franco what color the Lady Windermere is, and he answers, "I don't
know, I didn't actually see her." Now consider a counterfactual situation
in which someone asks if anyone knows whether the Lady has anchored yet, and
Franco says "She has: I saw her down by the dock earlier today."
Franco seems to speak truly both times. And if he speaks truly both times, then
the truth of reports of the form S sees o does not
depend only on facts about o, the speaker's perceptual workings, and external
conditions, since these factors are held constant in the two scenarios. So even
if Franco speaks truly when he says, of the Lady Windermere, "I didn’t see
her," he might still stand in the object-seeing relation to the boat.[8]
I've said that playing a role in anchoring de re mental
states to their objects provides a positive characterization of object-seeing.
I don't mean by this that an experience's playing such a role with respect to any
de re mental state is sufficient for the experience to be a case of seeing the
object that the perceptually-anchored de re belief is about. One might form a
de re belief about a house in which one is standing in part by seeing only the
basement, even when seeing the basement does not to suffice for seeing the
house. One can arguably form a de re belief about a jet by seeing only the
vapor stream it is leaving behind, and yet seeing only the vapor stream—without
so much as a grey speck at the moving end—does not seem to suffice for seeing
the jet. In general, a subject can form a de re belief about o that is linked
to o via perception, even if it is perception of something other than o. But if
one does see o, and one has and uses the requisite cognitive apparatus, then
one can form a de re mental state about o by seeing it.[9]
The subject-matter of the discussion
here, then, is a kind of seeing in the intuitive sense, so that neither
mustard-missing, blindsight nor zombie-seeing (if such there be) count as cases
of it. The conclusion of this paper is that there is a phenomenological
constraint on object-seeing. There is a
specific sort of visual phenomenology that perceivers must have to see objects,
and it is that specific sort of phenomenology that plays a role in making the
situation one in which the perceiver sees a particular ordinary object o, as
opposed to seeing no object at all.
A final note. The question addressed by
this paper -- ‘How does [visual] phenomenology constrain object-seeing’? -- can
be pursued with prejudging the nature of visual phenomenology. Most
philosophers deny that the phenomenology of seeing Franco is in any way
constituted by Franco himself. One could have an experience with the same
phenomenology, they hold, even if Franco didn't exist. The alternative is disjunctivism. Disjunctivism denies that
there is any mental common factor between genuine perceptions and events that
are subjectively indistinguishable from them.[10]
According to some disjunctivists, the visual phenomenology had in object-seeing
consists (in part) in the perceiver’s perceiving an object. The main argument
and conclusion of this paper is independent of this dispute. Visual phenomenology constrains object-seeing in
a way to be spelled out—whether that relation constitutes the phenomenology of
object-seeing, as per the disjunctivist, or not.
2. A phenomenological
constraint
It seems plausible to suppose that object-seeing is unified
in the following sense. Suppose you start out with a situation where a
perceiver sees an object, then subtract from the situation a putative necessary
condition for object-seeing, and the result is a case where there is no
object-seeing. If object-seeing is unified, then it is legitimate to conclude
from this result that the putative necessary condition is indeed necessary for
object-seeing. This conclusion wouldn’t be legitimate if the object-seeing
relation were heterogeneous, in the following sense: suppose there were two
relations sufficient for object-seeing, call them OS1 and OS2, and no more
general relation sufficient for object-seeing, besides the one defined as a
disjunction of OS1 and OS2, of which these two were instances or realizations.
Then from the fact that some condition was necessary for the relation OS1 to
hold between a perceiver and an object, it would not follow that the condition
was necessary for object-seeing itself.
I am going to assume that object-seeing is unified, rather
than disjunctive in the way just described. This assumption is shared by the
proponents of the views that I’ll be criticizing in section 3.
If object-seeing is unified, then if we could get from an
uncontroversial case of object-seeing to a case where there is no object-seeing
by subtracting some component, that would show that at lesat part of the
subtracted component was necessary for object-seeing. This is the strategy I
will use to argue that there is a phenomenal constraint on object-seeing.
Starting with an uncontroversial case of object-seeing, I will end up with a
case where there is no object-seeing by subtracting a component. I will argue
that a crucial part of the subtracted component is phenomenal.
Suppose you have a friend, Franco, who likes doing stunts in
the sky. He dresses in red, and uses invisible fibers to suspend himself in the
air. And there you see him, while you are looking through the window of a
skyscraper: he is a figure in red, bobbing and waving.
Now for the
subtraction. Once again, consider a subject looking through the window of a
skyscraper, call her S (making it a different subject from the first case
eliminates irrelevant considerations concerning memory, though it could just as
well be the same subject lacking the relevant memories). S seems to see nothing
but a uniform bright blue expanse. S's experience is at least partly veridical:
this time, Franco has painted his body so that its surfaces look to S to be the
exact shade of blue as the sky looks, and he is suspended from invisible
fibers in S's line of sight as she
looks through the window.[11]
Although Franco is not part of the uniform expanse of bright blue light, the
part of the scene before S's eyes where Franco is located appears to be part of
such a uniformly bright blue expanse. Call this the Franco case.
In the Franco case, even though S is
looking straight at him, S does not see Franco. Perhaps S sees Franco's
disguised surfaces. But S is not in a position to form a de re belief
about Franco on the strength of her visual experience. So S does not see Franco
in the sense that matters, given the theoretical purpose of the notion of
object-seeing that is at issue.
Franco, in this case, is like a
chameleon: he blends in with his surroundings to the point where he is, to S,
indistinguishable from them. If Franco were painted a different color, or if
instead of hanging still he moved
around, as in the first case, he probably would bring about a change in S's
visual phenomenology, and S would be able to see him. But the fact remains: S
does not see him in the world in which he is painted blue and hangs still.
What has been subtracted from the first
case, in which Franco was seen? What seems to be missing is that S cannot, by
using her visual phenomenology, differentiate Franco from his immediate
surroundings. Call this the Differentiation condition on object-seeing.[12]
Differentiation condition: If S sees o,
then S visually differentiates o from its immediate surroundings.
In
this condition, ‘visual differentiation’ is differentiation of o from its
immediate surroundings for which visual phenomenology suffices. It seems to be
a natural moral to draw from the Franco case that what’s missing is visual
differentiation in this sense. More exactly, a natural moral to draw is that
for object-seeing, not just any phenomenology will do; what’s needed is visual
phenomenology that suffices for differentiating Franco from his surroundings.
It will be useful to have a label for this kind of visual phenomenology; call
it ‘differentiation phenomenology’.
What makes this a natural moral to
draw from the Franco case ? A
clear case of lacking differentiation phenomenology is the case in which a
thing is camouflaged. And when a thing is camouflaged, you can’t see it. It is
therefore natural to suppose that a necessary condition for seeing something is
that the perceiver have differentiation phenomenology.
Let me stress that (in this case) the differentiation at
issue—that is, the differentiation enabled by visual phenomenology—is
differentiation of Franco from his surroundings. The phenomenology as of seeing
a uniform expanse is not differentiated at all, but presumably there are some
kinds of differentiation within phenomenology that would not count as
differentiation phenomenology in our sense. For instance, if one saw an
otherwise uniform expanse that was half blue and half green, that would not be
phenomenology suitable for seeing Franco. Or if one had the phenomenology of
seeing a blue sky with a bit of red in one corner, this might enable one to
differnetiate a red square from its surroundings, but not Franco from his. So
differentiation phenomenology is not a type of phenomenology : one could
not divide the phenomenal types into two, the ones that enable differentiation
and the ones that don’t. Rather, the proposed constraint on object-seeing is
that given an object o, it is necessary for seeing o that one have visual
phenomenology that suffices to differentiate o from its surroundings.
There are two main challenges to drawing the moral from the
Franco case that differentiation phenomenology is necessary for object-seeing.
They both deny that to get from the Franco case back to a case of
object-seeing, what’s needed (and all that’s needed) is suitably caused
differentiation phenomenology. According to the first challenge, instead of
differentiation phenomenology, to get from the Franco case to a case of
object-seeing, all that’s needed is differentiation itself, where (for S) this
consists in S’s having certain
sensory-motor dispositions. So this challenge agrees that differentiation of
Franco from his surroundings is necessary for object-seeing, but denies that
the differentiation must be visual in the sense defined. According to the
second challenge, all that’s needed is a causal or counterfactual condition,
one that does not itself include as a relatum the special visual phenomenology.
In the rest of this section, I will consider the first challenge, and take up
the second in the next section.
According to the first challenge, what's
missing from the Franco case are certain sensory-motor dispositions. The
challenge begins with the observation that in the case of Franco in the sky,
even if S wants desperately to pat Franco on the back right then, no matter
where he is, she will nevertheless not be disposed to take herself into the sky
to do it.[13] It might be
thought that in normal cases, if S sees o, then S will be disposed to
manipulate her position in space relative to o in accordance with her
intentions. Having such dispositions toward objects, on this line of thought,
is necessary for seeing them, and they are what is missing in the case of Franco
in the sky.[14]
According to this view, nothing about S’s
visual phenomenology as described in the case would have to change, in order
for Sam to see Franco. All that would have to change is S’s sensory-motor
dispositions. Suppose S is flying a kite, and discovers by chance that when it
is in a certain area of the sky, it collides with Franco, disturbing the flow
of the kite while leaving Franco's camouflage intact. After some
experimentation, S discovers the exact area in which the kite's flight is
disturbed. If she wants to explore further the nature of the disturbance, she
now knows where he has to go. She thus seems to acquire the disposition said to
be lacking in the original Franco case.
However, there is little temptation to
say that finding out about (what are in fact) the boundaries of Franco in this
way will make S see him. Rather, what we seem to have is a case where S
can act as she would if she saw him, even without having any visual
phenomenology at all. Suppose S had her eyes closed, and made the same tactile
discoveries about where the obstacles to the kite are. There would be no
temptation to say in this case that S thereby sees Franco.
3. Pure causal theories
of object-seeing
The second challenge to the moral that
the visual differentiation is necessary for object-seeing comes from an
influential theory of perception. I will first present the theory, then the
challenge it poses to the moral, and finally I will reply to the challenge.
H. P. Grice argued that to be seen,
objects must causally influence the perceiver's visual phenomenology. For Sam
to see Franco, on this view, Franco must have some effect on Sam's visual
phenomenology. This isn't the same as the condition that Franco must visually
appear to Sam, since something can cause Sam's visual phenomenology—for
example, a drug—without visually appearing any way to Sam at all.
Grice went on to add that given (what he
took to be) the necessary condition of causal influence on visual
phenomenology, sufficient conditions for object-seeing were not far off. So
long as some visual phenomenology is produced in S by o, Grice thought, it
would suffice for S to see o that o stand in a kind of causal relation to S's
visual phenomenology that obtains in paradigm cases of object-seeing. On this
view, the kind of causal relation holding between Franco and Sam's visual
phenomenology suffices for object-seeing. Grice put the point like this:
[f]or an object to be perceived by X, it
is sufficient that it should be causally involved in the generation of some
sense-impression had by X in the kind of way in which, for example, when I look
at my hand in a good light, my hand is causally responsible for its looking to
me as if there were a hand before me, or in which…(and so on), whatever that
kind of way may be; and to be enlightened on that question, one must have recourse
to the specialist.[15]
What
Grice calls a "sense-impression" is what I've been calling
"visual phenomenology". The purportedly sufficient condition for a
perceiver S to see an object o that Grice alludes to is that the kind of causal
relation that obtains in paradigmatic cases of object-seeing should obtain
between S and o.
Grice speaks of the kind of
causal relation that obtains in a paradigmatic case of object-seeing, but there
are bound to be multiple kinds instantiated by this causal relation that differ
in their extension. For instance, one kind might be individuated by the
specific neurological visual processing system had by S in the paradigmatic
case, whereas a relatively more general kind might abstract away from this system,
focusing on the functional roles that the neural processes play. These are two
kinds of processes, both realized physically (the first is essentially
physical, the second is not). At a yet more general level, there might be a
kind individuated merely by a pattern of counterfactual dependence between
states of o and S's visual phenomenology in the paradigmatic case, without any
restrictions on the sort of process, physical or otherwise, by which these
changes in phenomenology are effected.[16]
Assuming that there really is a kind of
causal relation that suffices for an arbitrary perceiver S to see an object o,
it is an open question whether this condition also fixes the extension of S
sees o. Is the kind of causal relation that obtains between S and o in
a paradigmatic case of object-seeing instantiated whenever S sees o?
The modest answer is that the condition
is merely sufficient, and does not fix the extension of S sees o.
According to the modest answer, there will be cases of object-seeing that do
not instantiate the kind of causal relation present in a paradigmatic case of
seeing, though they do instantiate some other kind. Grice himself thought that
the kind of causal relation at issue was specific enough to S's biological
properties that it would take a "specialist", as opposed to a
philosopher, to specify the kind of causal relation in question. A more robust
claim is that the sufficient condition that S's visual phenomenology stand in
the kind of causal relation to o instantiated in the paradigmatic case is also
necessary, and so fixes the extension of S sees o.
According to one interpretation of Grice,
in either the modest or the robust version, it is supposed to suffice that what
is caused in S be merely some visual phenomenology or other. Aside from
the causal condition, no further constraint on the sort of visual phenomenology
is proposed. The assumption that no further phenomenological constraint is
needed is made explicitly by Michael Tye, who offers a causal analysis of S
sees o. In Tye's proposal, all that is required of visual phenomenology
is that it systematically co-vary with certain changes in the object seen.[17]
Let a "pure causal theory of
seeing" be any theory according to which it is sufficient for S to see o
that S have some visual phenomenology that causally or counterfactually depends
on o, and no further constraints on S's visual phenomenology are needed. Tye
offers one such theory, and on one interpretation Grice does too (I'll
introduce a different interpretation shortly).
Pure causal theories pose the second
challenge to the moral I’ve drawn from the Franco case. According to this
challenge, what’s missing from the Franco case is the right sort of causal
relation, so no phenomenological constraint on object-seeing is needed after
all.
As against this challenge, causal relations at all the
levels of generality considered above (neurological, functional,
counterfactual) seem to obtain in the case of Franco in the sky.
Consider first any pattern of
counterfactual dependence of S's visual phenomenology on changes in Franco.
This would be the kind of counterfactual dependence that it is plausible to
suppose necessary for object-seeing.[18]
But there is reason to think that the Franco case is perfectly fine specimen of
the counterfactual dependence that is necessary for object-seeing. The reason
to thinks this is that in the Franco case, the camouflage is very fragile. It
leaves intact the sensitivity of S's visual phenomenology to changes in Franco.
The slightest change in Franco's color or motionlessness would disrupt it.
Contrast a camouflage that worked by partial occlusion, such as a bird's
blending in with foliage of the same color as its body. The subject's visual
phenomenology would not be sensitive to changes in the parts of the bird
occluded by the leaves. In contrast, it is exclusively the fault of Franco's
surroundings—not of the link between him and S's' visual phenomenology—that S
cannot see him.[19]
Now consider the physical and functional
processes between Franco and S. Unless it is built in to the causal process
that it results in experience enabling visual differentiation, these causal
processes will be just as they would be, if the sky were slightly lighter so
that Franco's outlines showed through. It might be thought that by expanding
the distal relatum to include the immediate surroundings of o, the
phenomenological constraint could be made to fall out of the causal constraint,
and thus no additional phenomenological constraint is needed. Expanding the
distal relatum in this way might indeed result in a sufficient condition for
object-seeing, but only if the distal relatum causes the right sort of
phenomenology. S's visual phenomenology is caused by both Franco and his
immediate surroundings in the original case, yet that is not a case of
object-seeing. Merely expanding the relatum, while the relation stays the same,
will not by itself incorporate the phenomenological constraint into the causal
condition.
This brings us to the alternative
interpretation of Grice. On the alternative interpretation, the kind of causal
relation between o and S's visual phenomenology that holds in paradigmatic
cases of object-seeing is individuated in part by its mind-side relatum. If one
stipulates that the relevant causal relation is so individuated, then one
recognizes some sort of phenomenological constraint on object-seeing ;
whether it is differentiation phenomenology depends on which cases one is
prepared to take as paradigmatic.
On the first interpretation, as on Tye’s
view, the view does challenge the moral drawn earlier from the Franco case,
that for object-seeing, differentiation phenomenology is necessary—not just any
phenomenology will do. This challenge seems easily met by pointing out that all
the candidate causal conditions hold in the Franco case.
If what’s missing from the Franco case is
differentiation phenomenology, then pure causal theories are mistaken. Assuming
(as seems plausible) that some sort of causal or counterfactual dependence of
phenomenology on objects seen is necessary for object-seeing, differentiation
phenomenology either has to be built in to causal or counterfactual dependence,
or must hold in addition to any such relations of dependence.
In conclusion, when one sees an object, one’s visual phenomenology plays a key
role in making one’s experience connect to the particular object seen. Visual
phenomenology is not a mere accompaniment to object-seeing. Rather, it is a
crucial part of its intentionality.
Works Cited.
Dretske,
F., 1969. Seeing and Knowing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Grice,
H.P., 1989. Studies in the Ways of Words. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Hinton,
J.M., 1967. Visual Experiences. Mind 76, 217-27.
Noe,
A., 2003. Perception and Causation: The Puzzle Unraveled. Analysis 63.2.
Peacocke,
C., 1981. Demonstrative Thought and Psychological Explanation. Synthese
49.
Spelke,
E, G. Gutheil, and G. Van de Walle, 1995. The Development of Object Perception.
In An Invitation to Cognitive Science : Visual Cognition. Vol. 2,
ed. S. Kosslyn and D. Osherson. Cambridge : MIT Press, 297-330.
Tye,
M., 1982. A Causal Analysis of Seeing. Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research XLII , 311-25.
Warnock,
G., 1954. Seeing. (with 1963 Postscript). In R. Swartz, ed. Perceiving, Sensing
and Knowing. New York: Doubleday.
Weiskrantz,
L., 1986. Blindsight : A Case Study and its Implications. New
York : OUP.
[1] See, e.g., Spelke et al (1995), and many of the papers cited therein.
[2] For
discussion of this condition, see Weiskrantz 1986.
[3] Dretske’s
case of the cufflink is similar (1969, p. 18).
[4] Cf. the objects that viewers ‘miss’ in ‘inattentional blindness’ experiments. See Mack and Rock 1998.
[5] Surprisingly, the view of Warnock in the 1963 Postscript to his 1954
denies that S will see o
only when S (right then) has a visual experience in which o appears some way to S (where this requires that one identify a visual phenomenon as an object). What makes this surprising is that otherwise Warnock seems to take ordinary language as a guide to the phenomenon of seeing. Nevertheless, his view allows that you can see the mustard jar even if it doesn’t register. According to it, an instance of S sees o can be true even when S does not recognize or identify “any visual phenomenon as an object,” so long as S has the capacity to identify visual phenomena as objects.
[6] In the case of the mustard-misser, of those things right in front of the perceiver, what is not seen is limited to the mustard jar.
[7] For a similar characterization, see Peacocke 1981, p. 209.
[8] There are two other options here. First, one could deny that Franco speaks truly both times, on the grounds that our best theories of object-seeing overrule our intuitive judgments about when ordinary utterances are true (since there’s no strong inclination to take either of Franco’s utterances as false). The trouble with this stance is that it assumes that speakers are always using a somewhat regimented notion of seeing when they talk about seeing ordinary object, but ordinary usage seems more diverse than that. Second, one could go to the other extreme and hold that the only theoretically useful notion of object-seeing is one that is tracked exactly by ordinary language reports—and hence that whether S sees o depends on more than the factors held constant in the two examples given in the text. This second option is a threat to the option I favor only if the more restricted notion that I’ve zeroed in on is not a legitimate subject-matter for theorizing. But far from seeming illegitimate, the subject-matter I’ve tried to define seems to be on the central explananda in the theory of intentionality.
[9] The
role of object-seeing in forming other de re mental states is meant merely to
illustrate the
phenomenon. A creature could see objects, even if it
lacked the cognitive equipment needed to form de re mental states other than
object-seeing itself.
[10] Disjunctivism was introduced by Hinton in his 1967.)
[11] Arguably, the experience’s content is neutral on whether or not there is anything else in sky, and the experience is totally veridical. Although one might say the experience is merely partly veridical on the grounds that it falsidically represents Franco’s absence, it seems implausible to suppose that Franco’s absence is represented in experience, if the subject has not first been primed to see Franco in the sky, and nothing about the case requires that. In any case, whether the experience is totally or only partly veridical is inessential to the objection against pure causal theories.
[12] Dretske argues for the necessity of a similar condition on object-seeing in chapter 1 of his 1969.
[13] Assume that Sam is not akratic, and then he would recognize Franco upon seeing him.
[14] Recently some philosophers have argued that such sensory-motor dispositions constitute visual phenomenology. See e.g., Noe 2003. If this were correct, it would refute the first challenge, since the dispositions being considered would themselves suffice for visual phenomenology. Since I think this account of visual phenomenology is incorrect, I will offer a different response to the challenge.
[15] Grice 1989, p. 240.
[16] I’ve
spoken of the counterfactual dependence as a kind of causal relation. One might
hold that any case in which the visual phenomenology of a subject S
counterfactually depends in the right way on states of o is a case where S to
see o, yet deny that causation is any kind of counterfactual dependence. I’ll
continue to speak of counterfactual dependence as a kind of causal relation,
but this is only for the sake of simplicity.
[17] Tye’s
proposal goes as follows. Where M-properties are properties
representable in visual
experience,
P sees x = df. (i) There is a causal chain of events C
which ends with P’s having an experience of a visual sensum S; (ii) within C
some event involving P’s eyes causally intervenes between some event involving
x and p’s experiencing S; (iii) x’s position in C is such that it is in
principle possible to vary each M-property of x…and thereby produce a systematic
variation in the corresponding spatial property of S, assuming all other
factors are either (a) held fixed, if leaving them alone would result
in…significant differences between the way in which x brings about S is C
originally and the way in which x brings about S as the M-properties of x…are
varied, or (b) left alone, if leaving them alone would not have that result.
Tye 1982, p. 322.
[18] Just what sort of counterfactual dependence is supposed to suffice for object-seeing is a bit hard to pin down. The pattern should not predict that every change in an object o is registered by a change in phenomenology. This would in effect require object-seeing to have super-sensitive phenomenology. And that would undergenerate, leaving out cases of object-seeing where some change in the object seen goes un-noticed—even a change in visible properties. Nor should the pattern of counterfactual dependence predict that every change in phenomenology accurately reflects whether there has been a change (of any sort) in o, let alone accurately reflecting what the change is. This would in effect require object-seeing to have super-accurate phenomenology. That too would undergenerate, since there are cases of object-seeing where the subject's visual experience mistakenly represents that the object seen has changed in some way.
[19] It might be suggested that when S faces Franco in the sky, S sees Franco without noticing him, so that the case is analogous to a sort of situation I said I wanted to set aside—the sort illustrated by the mustard jar case described in section 1. The two cases, however, are not analogous. By the description of the case, no matter how much you attend to the sky when Franco is in it, you won’t be able to discern his boundaries. You will be able to discern boundaries of the mustard jar, in contrast, if you look more carefully.