Perceptual Paradigms

Everyone would agree that contemporary philosophical thinking and theorizing about perception should both be aware of, and consistent with, the findings of visual science. Yet despite this consensus, there is little discussion—and even less agreement—about how this should work in practice. This chapter proposes that we can gain useful insights by bringing some tools from the philosophy of science to bear on this question. Focusing on the disagreement between Burge and McDowell as to whether or not disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception is ‘directly at odds with scientific knowledge’ (Burge 2005, 29), the chapter suggests that interesting insights can be gained by seeing this debate through a Kuhnian lens—as a clash of paradigms (or, more strictly, Lakatosian research programmes)—and then investigate the methodological consequences that flow from this. It contends that looking at this debate through this lens not only sheds light on why it can seem so intractable, but also provides us with reassurance that this might be a good thing.

Merleau-Ponty

A methodology is a theory of method. In asking for a methodology, one wants to know which method(s) we should use for investigating some topic, and why. Merleau-Ponty is a phenomenologist who is famous for his analyses of perception. Phenomenology is not a unified movement—it’s more like a tradition, where figures are linked by historical lineages: the inheritance and taking up of particular themes and ideas. Whilst it explicitly bills itself as having a distinct method, different phenomenologists interpret it in various ways. This chapter explains how Merleau-Ponty understands the phenomenological method, and how he applies it in his study of perception.

Phenomenology as Radical Reflection

What does it mean to adopt a phenomenological approach when doing philosophy of perception? What form should such an approach take? This chapter addresses these questions by first distinguishing three different kinds of phenomenological approach: ‘Humean’ phenomenology, which attempts to discern the structure of perceptual experience via reflection on its surface properties; ‘Kantian’ phenomenology, which aims to provide a priori arguments about the structure perceptual experience must have if it is to possess manifest properties; and ‘Husserlian’ phenomenology, which aims to achieve an intuitive grasp of the essential properties of perceptual experience via imaginative variation. It then argues that the shortcomings of each of these approaches motivate a ‘Merleau-Pontian’ conception of phenomenology as ‘radical reflection’—a mode of reflection on perceptual experience that simultaneously attempts to understand the origins and authority of reflection itself. The methodology that results is thoroughly interdisciplinary, aiming to reconcile philosophical conclusions about the necessary structures of perceptual experience with our best empirical knowledge of the contingencies that shape both our experiences and our reflective capacities.

Experiential Pluralism and Mental Kinds

This paper offers a new argument in favour of experiential pluralism about visual experience—the view that the nature of successful visual experience is different from the nature of unsuccessful visual experience. The argument appeals to the role of experience in explaining possession of ordinary abilities. In addition, the paper makes a methodological point about philosophical debates concerning the nature of perceptual experience: whether a given view about the nature of experience amounts to an interesting and substantive thesis about our own minds depends on the significance of the psychological kind claim made by it. This means that an adequate defence of a given view of the nature of experience must include articulation of the latter’s significance qua psychological kind. The argument advanced provides the material to meet this demand. In turn, this constitutes further support for the argument itself.

Sensation and the Grammar of Life

Anscombe’s published writings, lectures, and notes on sensation offer material for a sophisticated critique of philosophical theories of perception and a novel analysis of the concept of sensation. Her philosophy of perception begins with the traditional question, ‘What are the objects of sensation?’, but the response is a grammatical rather than ontological enquiry. What, she asks, are the characteristics of the grammatical object of sensation verbs? Anscombe’s answer is: sensation verbs take ‘intentional objects’, where an ‘intentional object’ is a description which has the characteristics of the concept of intention—characteristics elucidated in detail in her Intention. This allows Anscombe to reject two opposing positions—that the objects of sensation are sense data, and that they are ordinary objects. Both views, she argues, fail to recognize the grammatical fact that verbs of sensation take intentional objects. This chapter sets out Anscombe’s analysis and outlines the case for a grammatical methodology. Along the way, it will be shown that Anscombe’s philosophy of perception should not be read as forerunning contemporary representationalism.

Bridging the Gap? Naïve Realism and the Problem of Consciousness

How should we decide between philosophical theories of perception? This paper addresses this question by considering the debate between naïve realists and their opponents, and in particular the claim that naïve realism provides a distinctive way of resolving the Problem of Consciousness. I argue that the naïve realist’s solution requires rejecting what many consider to be a ‘fixed point’ in theorizing about perception: a commitment to physicalism. In light of this, I consider different ways of understanding naïve realism and its motivation, suggesting that naïve realism might be best understood as a transcendental theory of perception.

Perceptual Experience and Physicalism

Although there is much disagreement within the philosophy of perception, there is one thing that the majority of philosophers agree on: our philosophical account of perceptual experience should be compatible with physicalism. The aim of this paper is to explore the impact this has had within the philosophy of perception, and to point out some of the problems a physicalist approach must face. Representationalism is the leading account of perception, and was developed precisely to meet the physicalist’s criteria. This chapter supports and expands on an existing argument that representationalism fails in this aim. It then points out a problem with the new view—non-relationalism—which has arisen as a result of the failure of standard representationalism to qualify as a genuinely physicalist view. Non-relationalist accounts have difficulty doing justice to the idea that our perceptual experiences are assessable for accuracy or veridicality.

High-Level Perception and Multimodal Perception

What is the correct procedure for determining the contents of perception? Philosophers tackling this question increasingly rely on empirically oriented procedures. This chapter argues that this strategy constitutes an improvement over the armchair methodology of phenomenal contrast arguments, but that there is a respect in which current empirical procedures remain limited: they are unimodal in nature, wrongly treating the senses as isolatable. The chapter thus has two aims: first, to motivate a reorientation of the admissible contents debate into a multimodal framework. The second is to explore whether experimental studies of multimodal perception support a so-called Liberal account of perception’s admissible contents. The chapter concludes that the McGurk effect and the ventriloquist effect are both explicable without the postulation of high-level content, but that at least one multimodal experimental paradigm may necessitate such content: the rubber hand illusion. One upshot is that Conservatives who claim that the Liberal view intolerably broadens the scope of perceptual illusions, particularly from the perspective of perceptual psychology, should pursue other arguments against that view.

The Tractability of the Debate on Relationalism

The debate between relationalism and representationalism in the philosophy of perception seems to have come to a standstill where opponents radically disagree on methodological principles or fundamental assumptions. According to Fish (this volume) this is because, not unlike Kuhnian scientific paradigms, the debate displays some elements of incommensurability. This diagnosis makes advancing the debate impossible. I argue that what is hindering progress is not a clash of research programmes, but a series of misunderstandings that can be avoided by disentangling the different questions each theory is invested in and by making explicit the hidden assumptions at play in the debate. One such central assumption is what I call the Superficiality Constraint. This is the idea that the phenomenal character of experience is superficial with respect to introspection. I argue that we can make progress in the debate by assessing to what extent and at what cost relationalism can accommodate this constraint.

Neopragmatism and Philosophy of Perception

Neopragmatism is an anti-metaphysical approach to philosophical problems. It addresses such problems by taking the focus off of metaphysics, and turning it onto language. That is, the neopragmatist seeks philosophically uncontentious explanations of the sort of talk that often gives rise to the sense that there is a deep philosophical puzzle to solve. In the domain of perception, reflection on apt ways of describing perceptual experiences have led to various metaphysically committing theories, including (i) sense data theory, (ii) representationalism, and (iii) naïve realism. This chapter uses neopragmatist techniques to undermine the case for the last of these. The attack is two-pronged. First, some of the metaphysical commitments of naïve realism are criticized. Second, neopragmatism is used to explain some of the ideas that were thought to lend naïve realism support. These include the idea that perceptual experience has a peculiar sort of openness or presentational character, and the related idea that such experience gives insight into the mind-independent character of the world. Beyond forming the basis for criticizing other views, neopragmatism also suggests a positive view of perception. This is a form of adverbialism that relies on the idea that our sensory states are information-bearing, but not, in any robust sense, representational.