Philosophy of Mind Lecture 6

The Phenomenology of Experience and the Objects of Perception

The Appeal to Introspection

Some of the arguments against physicalism we have looked at appeal to the conscious character of sensations and sensory perception. In particular they appeal to the claim that the existence of ‘qualia’ presents problems for physicalist and functionalist accounts.

But what are qualia supposed to be?

As Ned Block once said, echoing a remark of Louis Armstrong's (about jazz): if you have to ask what qualia are, you ain't never going to get to know.

The thought here is presumably that it should be obvious to introspection that our conscious perceptual experiences possess qualia.

Compare Tye: “Isn’t it just obvious from introspection that there are visual qualia? … I shall try to show not only that no good reasons have been adduced for believing in visual qualia but also that, upon proper reflection, the most natural view is that there are none.” (Michael Tye, ‘Visual Qualia and Visual Content’)

Philosophers often appeal to introspective evidence in providing accounts of the nature of conscious experience.

Sense-data theorists, Intentional theorists, Naïve realists and Qualia theorists have all made appeals to what it is like for one to have an experience to lend support to their different views.

Given that they end up with such different accounts of the conscious character of experience, how can there be disagreement about what is supposed to be obvious to introspection?

What is the status of such introspective “evidence”? And how can introspecting on what one’s experience is like lead to such different views?

The Relational View of Conscious ExperienceAccording to those who advocate this view, when you have a conscious perceptual experience it seems, from the inside, as though you are perceptually aware of various entities, and this is to be explained by the fact that when you have a conscious perceptual experience you are perceptually aware of various entities.

A distinctive kind of conscious, perceptual relation obtains between you, as subject of the experience, and various entities that you are perceptually aware of in having that experience.

This relation of conscious perceptual awareness only obtains if its relata exist, and in this case, one of the terms of the relation is the subject having the conscious perceptual experience, and the other terms of the relation are the entities the subject is perceptually aware of in virtue of having the experience.

Alternatives

According to one alternative, to have a conscious perceptual experience is to undergo a certain kind of mental event, and the occurrence of this kind of event does not in itself involve the obtaining of a relation of conscious perceptual awareness, for one can undergo an event of this kind without being perceptually aware of anything.

According to another alternative, to have a conscious perceptual experience is to be in a certain kind of mental state. We might think of this mental state as a psychological property of the subject having the experience. The obtaining of this kind of mental state does not in itself involve the obtaining of a relation of conscious perceptual awareness, for one can be in a perceptual state of this kind without being perceptually aware of anything.

When it comes to accounting for the conscious character of experience, we don’t need to appeal to the obtaining of a relation of perceptual awareness. We can instead account for the conscious character in terms of properties of a mental state, or event – a mental state or event that can obtain/occur whether or not the subject of experience is perceptually aware of anything.•  

Qualia are often thought of as qualities of the mental state/event that is your experience that determine what it is like for you to have the experience. In particular, they are regarded as non-representational qualities of experience that determine what it is like.

Motivations for the Relational View

Relationalists suggest that there is positive introspective support for the view, and an absence of introspective support for the alternative, non-relational views.

The suggestion that there is introspective support for a principle that Robinson calls the Phenomenal Principle (in Robinson 1994, p. 32):

"If there sensibly appears to a subject to be an object which possesses a particular sensible quality then there is something of which the subject is aware which does possess that sensible quality."

(1) When you attempt to introspect those qualities of your experience that determine what it is like for you to be having it, you find yourself attending to qualities that are neither qualities of some psychological event you are undergoing, nor qualities of some psychological state that you are in.

For example, as I now introspectively reflect on what it is like for me to be having my current experience I find myself attending to a blue, round thing. But I don’t think I am thereby attending to a blue, round psychological event that I am undergoing, or a blue round psychological state that I am in.

But the qualities that I seem to be attending to when I introspectively attend to my experience (blueness, roundness) appear to play an important role in determining what it is like for me to be having this experience, even if those qualities are not themselves what-it-is-like properties of my experience.

Explanation:

There is something it is like for you to have a conscious perceptual experience insofar as there is something it is like for you to be the subject of the conscious perceptual relation that obtains when you have that experience, and this is determined, at least in part, by what you are related to. So the quality of blueness, what that quality is like, while not a quality of experience itself, nonetheless determines, at least in part, what it is like for you to be consciously, perceptually aware of it.

G.E. Moore:“To be aware of the sensation of blue is not to be aware of a… ‘thing’ of which 'blue' and some other element are constituent parts in the same sense in which blue and glass are constituents of a blue bead. It is to be aware of an awareness of blue…”

“When we know that the sensation of blue exists, the fact we know is that there exists an awareness of blue. And this awareness is not merely… itself something distinct and unique, utterly different from blue: it also has a perfectly distinct and unique relation to blue. (1903: 40).

H.H. Price:

“When I say ‘This table appears brown to me’ it is quite plain that I am acquainted with an actual instance of brownness.... This cannot indeed be proved, but it is absolutely evident and indubitable…. It is impossible from the nature of the case to prove that there are sense-data or data of any other sort. The utmost we can do is remove misunderstandings which prevent people from searching for them and acknowledging them when found. After that, we can only appeal to every man’s own consciousness. (Price, Perception, p. 6)

(2) When you have a conscious perceptual experience and you introspectively reflect on the experience you are having, it doesn’t seem to you as though you are in a position to introspectively focus in on and discern some conscious psychological element that is insufficient for perceptual contact with something.

Introspective reflection does not appear to reveal something meeting the following description: some conscious element of your current situation – e.g. some conscious event or state – that isn’t in itself enough to make you perceptually aware of something – which isn’t in itself sufficient for the obtaining of that conscious perceptual relation.

G.E. Moore:“The moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see what, distinctly, it is, it seems to vanish: it seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous.” (1903: 41)

The Problem of Hallucination

When a subject has a complete hallucination we do not want to say that the subject is aware of the objects in the external world that we ordinarily take ourselves to be aware of. So what should we say about such cases? Two options open to us.

Option (I) is to claim that the subject is aware of objects that are not part of the external world.

Option (II) is to claim that there are no objects of which the subject is aware.

Option (I)

Why choose option (I)?

Any introspective evidence that you now have for the claim that your current experience has a relational structure would equally be present in the case of a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination. So if you think that your current introspective evidence is sufficient to warrant the claim that the experience you are having now has a relational structure, you should hold that the same conclusion is warranted in the case of a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination.

According to the sense-datum theorist:

The notion that conscious perceptual experience has a relational structure is a commitment that is supposed to be motivated by introspective reflection, prior to, and independently of, a consideration of cases of illusion and hallucination. Hence the existence of ‘sense-data’ – entities we are consciously related to when we have a conscious perceptual experience – is supposed to be assured prior to, and independently of, a consideration of cases of illusion and hallucination.

Further theoretical reflection on the existence of illusion and hallucination does not undermine the independently motivated claim that experience has a relational structure. But it does reveal something surprising about the nature of the entities we are consciously related to whenever we have a conscious perceptual experience. For it undermines the idea that these sense-data are the material objects that we ordinarily take ourselves to be aware of when we consciously perceive.

If one adopts option (I) can one consistently claim that a subject can be directly aware of objects in the external world that we ordinarily take ourselves to be aware of?

“even if we make the prior concession ... that in 'abnormal' cases we perceive sense-data, we should not be obliged to extend this admission to 'normal' cases too. For why on earth should it not be the case that in some few instances, perceiving one sort of thing is exactly like perceiving another?” (Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, p. 52)

The Causal Argument

1. It is theoretically possible by activating some brain process that is involved in a particular type of perception to cause a hallucination that exactly resembles that perception in its subjective character.

2. It is necessary to give the same account of both hallucinatory and perceptual experience when they have the same neural cause. Thus, it is not, for example, plausible to say that the hallucinatory experience involves a mental image or sense-datum, but that the perception does not, if the two have the same proximate - that is to say, neural - cause. (Robinson 1994, p. 151)

These two propositions together entail that perceptual processes in the brain produce some object of awareness which cannot be identified with any feature of the external world - that is, they produce a sense-datum. (Howard Robinson)•

Questions to ask about the sense-datum theory

What is the ontological status of sense-data? E.g. are they mind-dependent entities? Are they non-physical entities? What is the relation between sense-data and the physical world?

What is the difference between genuine perception and hallucination, according to a sense-datum theorist?

How can we be perceptually aware of, and have epistemic access to, the material world if the sense-datum theory is true?

Objections to the sense-datum theory

The charge that it is ontologically profligate.

The charge that it creates problems for an account of the epistemic role played by perception.

The charge that it there is phenomenological evidence against it.

So the suggestion that a view that was initially supposed to be motivated by phenomenological considerations ends up being in conflict with the deliverances of introspection.

“…if we are open to our experience, all we find is the world.” (J.J. Valberg, The  Puzzle  of Experience)

Responses to the causal argument for sense-data

A typical response from opponents of sense-datum theorists: accept premise 2, but take option (II), rather than option (I) – i.e. claim that there are no objects of which the subject is aware in the case of hallucination.

Consequence of adopting this response

Accept that when it comes to accounting for the conscious character of experience, we don’t need to appeal to the obtaining of a relation of perceptual awareness. We can instead account for the conscious character in terms of properties of a mental state, or event – a mental state or event that can obtain/occur whether or not the subject of experience is perceptually aware of anything.

An alternative response: take option (II), and also reject premise (2) of the argument.

Naïve Realism

Accept that when it comes to accounting for the conscious character of experience of genuine cases of perception, we should appeal to the obtaining of a relation of perceptual awareness – a relation that obtains between the subject of experience and the ordinary material mind-independent objects that we ordinarily take ourselves to perceive.

Accept further that one cannot give this sort of account of the conscious character of hallucination.

Deny that it is necessary to give the same account of both hallucinatory and perceptual experience when they have the same neural cause. Genuine perceptions are relational. Hallucinations merely seem to be but aren’t.