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3.9. Aspects of Perception

• Illusion and Hallucination [6]
• Transparency [9]
• Perceptual Reports [1]
• Sensation and Perception [2]
• Aspects of Perception, Misc [0]

Illusion and Hallucination

• Bill Brewer (2008). How to account for illusion.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The question how to account for illusion has had a prominent role in shaping theories of perception throughout the history of philosophy. Prevailing philosophical wisdom today has it that phenomena of illusion force us to choose between the following two options. First, reject altogether the early modern empiricist idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience. Instead we must characterize perceptual experience entirely in terms of its representational content. Second, retain the early modern idea that the core subjective character of experience is simply constituted by the identity of its direct objects, but admit that these must be mind-dependent entities, distinct from the mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. I argue here that the early modern empiricists had an indispensable insight. The idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience is more fundamental than any appeal to perceptual content, and can account for illusion, and indeed hallucination, without resorting to the problematic postulation of any mind-dependent such objects
• Jason Brown (2004). The illusory and the real.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This contribution explores the psychological basis of illusion and the feeling of what is real in relation to a process theory (microgenesis) of mind/brain states. The varieties of illusion and the alterations in the feeling of realness are illustrated in cases of clinical pathology, as well as in everyday life. The basis of illusion does not rest in a comparison of appearance to reality nor in the relation of image to object, since these are antecedent and consequent phases in the same mental state. The study of pathological illusions and hallucinations shows that the feeling of realness in an object depends on its coherence within and across perceptual modalities. Illusion is shown to be not the taking of the phenomenal for the real, but the overlooking of the real in the phenomenal, since all things exist, i.e. are real, as categories of intrinsic relations in the unique mode of their conception. Finally, the implications of the account are discussed in relation to moral conduct, self-realization, acceptance, and the will to enjoy a world of 'brain-born' mental phenomena
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/mm/2004/00000002/00000001/art00003
  
• York Gunther (2001). Content, illusion, partition.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Philosophers of mind have recently sought to establish a theoret- ical use for nonconceptual content. Although there is disagreement about what nonconceptual content is supposed to be, this much is clear. A state with nonconceptual content is mental. Hence, while one may deny that refrigerators and messy rooms have conceptual capacities, their states, as physical and not mental, do not have nonconceptual content. A state with nonconceptual content is also intentional, which is to say that it represents a feature of the world for a subject. It may be tempting to think of qualitative states as having nonconceptual content since they can be experienced by indi- viduals independently of their possession of the requisite concepts, e.g. someone could experience pains, itches or tingles without possessing the concept pain, itch or tingle. But on such a view, one would have to assume that qualitative states are representational since mental states cannot be candidates for nonconceptuality unless they have intentional properties.2
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=254434&PDF=1
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=254434&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J7172022QP642685.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2001/00000102/00000002/00254434
  
• David Hilbert (2004). Hallucination, sense-data and direct realism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/x3m578hm43772833/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5143507&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/X3M578HM43772833.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2004/00000120/F0030001/05143507
  
• Ian Phillips (online). Illusion and content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: How should the Na¨ıve Realist who eschews representational percep- tual content account for illusions? Bill Brewer has recently proposed that illusions should be treated solely in terms of post-experiential misjudgement
• Brad Thompson (2008). Representationalism and the argument from hallucination.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Phenomenal character is determined by representational content, which both hallucinatory and veridical experiences can share. But in the case of veridical experience, unlike hallucination, the external objects of experience literally have the properties one is aware of in experience. The representationalist can accept the common factor assumption without having to introduce sensory intermediaries between the mind and the world, thus securing a form of direct realism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121384124/PDFSTART
  

Transparency

• Rocco Gennaro (2007). Representationalism, peripheral awareness, and the transparency of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is an interesting and somewhat curious fact that two claims based on phenomenological observation are at the heart of contemporary defenses of some forms of representationalism. Representationalism is, generally, the view that pheneomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of the intentional features of experience. More precisely, a representationalist will typically hold that the phenomenal properties of experience (that is, the “qualia” or “phenomenal character” or “what it is like of experience”) can be explained in terms of the experiences’ representational properties. The first phenomenological assertion is that, in addition to our frequent focused (or attentional) awareness of outer objects, we also have peripheral (or inattentional) conscious experience at the “edges” of consciousness. It is often said that some kind of peripheral conscious awareness accompanies our focal consciousness. Indeed, it seems reasonable to suppose that conscious awareness is broader than those aspects of conscious experience to which one is paying conscious attention. The second claim is that there is what has been called the “transparency of experience;” namely, that when we try to introspect, say, our visual experiences we “look through them” only to find the outer objects of those experiences. I say that it is a ‘curious fact’ because many representationalists are motivated by a desire to reduce consciousness to intentionality without any reference to phenomenal terms, or at least to render consciousness explicable in naturalistic terms. This desire is often accompanied by a decided third-person

  1

  approach to consciousness and sometimes even a disdain for introspective or phenomenological methods
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.assc.caltech.edu/archive/00000218/
  http://eprints.assc.caltech.edu/218/01/repperiph.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/c628645863404p3q/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/c628645863404p3q.pdf
  
• Benj Hellie (2007). That which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact: Moore on phenomenal relationism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I interpret the anti-idealist manoeuverings of the second half of Moore's 'The refutation of idealism', material as widely cited for its discussion of 'transparency' and 'diaphanousness' as it is deeply obscure. The centerpiece of these manoeuverings is a phenomenological argument for a relational view of perceptual phenomenal character, on which, roughly, 'that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact' is a non-intentional relation of conscious awareness, a view close to the opposite of the most characteristic contemporary view going under the transparency rubric. The discussion of transparency and diaphanousness is a sidelight, its principal purpose to shore up the main line of argumentation against criticism; in those passages all Moore argues is that the relation of conscious awareness is not transparent, while acknowledging that it can seem to be.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2007.00253.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2007.00274.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2007.00274.x
  
• Amy Kind (2003). What's so transparent about transparency?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Intuitions about the transparency of experience have recently begun to play a key role in the debate about qualia. Specifically, such intuitions have been used by representationalists to support their view that the phenomenal character of our experience can be wholly explained in terms of its intentional content.[i] But what exactly does it mean to say that experience is transparent? In my view, recent discussions of transparency leave matters considerably murkier than one would like. As I will suggest, there is reason to believe that experience is not transparent in the way that representationalism requires. Although there is a sense in which experience can be said to be transparent, transparency in this sense does not give us any particular motivation for representationalism—or at least, not the pure or strong representationalism that it is usually invoked to support
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phil-rlst.claremontmckenna.edu/akind/Transparency.doc
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/q220810l8k517482/fulltext.pdf
  
• Pierre Livet (2005). What is transparency?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Opacity, in Metzinger’s sense, is access to processed information _as_ processed, while transparency is only access to the _content _of our phenomenal states. I suspect that transparency conflates different notions. First I show that every conscious experience has a “transparent” core (involving intentionality, directedness and assumption of existence, insensitivity to some unconscious process). Anyway, to be sensitive to earlier processing steps does not imply to take the representation “as modeled by our simulator”. There are other ways of being sensitive to this processing experience: experience of gaps in perceptive synthesis, experience of incompleteness, queerness of experience, phenomenal incoherence, searching consciousness. Many of them implies only to put in abeyance incoherence or incompleteness (to be laterally aware of a conflict without dealing with it), or even to put this abeyance into abeyance (not to take into account the absence of solution). But if the conflict becomes serious, we revise our assumption, and this requires the assumption that the conflict is about existing things. The self has a peculiar property here. Even when I revise one aspect of my self, I have to presuppose a self, in the sense that I put in abeyance other revisions of this presupposed self. Self is not a simulation, even if we have only this peculiar access to it.
• Michael Martin (2002). The transparency of experience.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymfm/Background Readings/transparency of experience.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00205/abs/
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00205
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2002/00000017/00000004/art00205
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2002/00000017/00000004/art00002
  
• Paul Raymont (online). Some experienced qualities belong to the experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper, a criticism of representationalist views of consciousness is developed. These views are often supported by an appeal to a transparency thesis about conscious states, according to which an experience does not itself possess the qualities of which it makes one conscious. The experience makes one conscious of these qualities by representing them, not by instantiating them. Against this, it is argued that some of the properties of which one is conscious are had by the conscious state itself. Only by adopting this view can we account for certain perceptual incompatibilities, such as the fact that one cannot see a stick as being both bent and not bent. This sort of experience is impossible because it would require that an experience have, and not just represent, incompatible features
• Daniel Stoljar (2004). The argument from diaphanousness.   (More)
• Michael Tye (2002). Representationalism and the transparency of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Representationalism is a thesis about the phenomenal character of experiences, about their immediate subjective ‘feel’.1 At a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character. So understood, the thesis is silent on the nature of phenomenal character. Strong or pure representationalism goes further. It aims to tell us what phenomenal character is. According to the theory developed in Tye 1995, phenomenal character is one and the same as representational content that meets certain further conditions. One very important motivation for this theory is the so-called ? transparency of experience.? The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the appeal to transparency more carefully than has been done hithertofore, to make some remarks about the introspective awareness of experience in light of this appeal, and to consider one problem case for transparency at some length, that of blurry vision. Along the way, I shall also address some of the remarks Stephen Leeds makes in his essay on transparency
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.00365
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2002/00000036/00000001/art00365
  
• Kenneth Williford (ms). The logic of phenomenal transparency.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ceps.com.tw/ec/ecjnlarticleView.aspx?atliid=1000417&issueiid=58567&jnliid=3226
  

Perceptual Reports

• Reinhard Muskens (1993). Perception Verbs.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The semantics of a sentence containing a perception verb such as see or hear depends to a high degree on the exact syntactic form of the perception verb’s complement. Let us compare sentence (1), where the complement is tenseless, with (2), where the complement is a tensed clause
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/muskens93perception.html
  http://let.uvt.nl/general/people/rmuskens/pubs/percepverbs.pdf
  

Sensation and Perception

• Christopher Peacocke (online). Sensational properties: Theses to accept and theses to reject.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The subjective properties of an experience are those which specify what having the experience is like for its subject. The sensational properties of an experience are those of its subjective properties that it does not possess in virtue of features of the way the experience represents the world as being (its representational content). Perhaps no topic in the philosophy of mind has been more vigorously debated in the past quarter-century than whether there are any sensational properties, so conceived. The existence or otherwise of sensational properties is pivotal in assessing functionalism, representationalism, and many other conceptions of mental states and the nature of our ability to think about them. Instead of engaging in extended sentence- by-sentence dissection of these many discussions, I hope that the theses I formulate will, taken together, comprise a positive conception of sensational properties that can be drawn upon in assessing those debates. My main aim is to articulate that conception
• Teed Rockwell (2001). Experience and sensation: Sellars and Dewey on the non-cognitive aspects of mental life.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Sellars and Dewey each isolated and critiqued different aspects of the atomistic epistemology of the logical positivists: Dewey labeled his target "Sensationalistic Empiricism", and Sellars labeled his "the Myth of the Given." The main theme of this paper will be the similarity and differences in their responses to this kind of philosophy, and how both responses can be clarified and strengthened by considering recent discoveries in Cognitive Neuroscience. What we have recently learned about neural architecture accounts for a distinction between knowledge and experience that is a recurrent theme in both Sellars and Dewey. Dewey, however, made a sharper break from the positivists by seeing all experience as shaped by skills and abilities which were designed to acheive certain goals and were colored by emotions. The connectionist architecture used in Cognitive Neuroscience supports this view, as does the psychological research of J.J. Gibson. Once we consider the ways in which connectionist cognitive abilities differ from linguistic ones, Sellars' distinction between thoughts and sensations, and Dewey's distinction between knowledge and experience, can both be plausibly accounted for
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://users.california.com/~mcmf/sellarsdewey.html
  

Aspects of Perception, Misc