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The debate between general and singular contents of perceptual experiences of external particulars. The author discusses arguments for and against singular contents, addressing concerns such as intuitively non-veridical experiences, representation of space and time, and the role of experience in making objects available for de re thought. The text also touches upon related issues like fallibility and conditions for de re perceptual representation.
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1 What are the contents of visual experiences of external particulars?....... 1 1.1 Perceptual experiences have only general contents............. 1 1.2 Perceptual experiences sometimes have singular contents......... 3 2 Under what conditions does one visually represent an external particular?... 4
There are (at least) two fundamental questions about perceptual representation of ex- ternal particulars. One is the question of what the contents of the relevant perceptual experiences are. The second is the question of the conditions under which a subject can have experiences with the relevant contents (whatever they are).
1 What are the contents of visual experiences of external particulars?
The options for answering our first question are canvassed in Tye (2009). These basically boil down to two: the view that such experiences have general contents which would be expressed by sentences involving quantifiers, like definite descriptions; and the view that experiences have singular contents which (on a Millian view) have the relevant objects as constituents. We’ll discuss these in turn.
1.1 Perceptual experiences have only general contents
Imagine that I am looking at a dog, Fido. On this view, the content of my experience does not have Fido himself as a constituent, but rather has a content which might be expressible as follows: ‘there is something in front of me which is brown and furry and
... ’
The main arguments for this view are really arguments against the opposing view that experiences have singular contents. (We will be delaying our consideration of arguments against the existence of singular propositions as such, and focus for now on arguments directed specifically against the idea that such propositions can be contents of visual experiences.)
The intuitive case against singular contents can be put like this: imagine a pair of experi- ence of Castor and Pollux which have just the same phenomenal character. Then the way Castor visually seems to be in the first is the same as the way in which Pollux visually seems to be in the second. But then the contents of the visual experiences must be the same, contra the singular proposition view, which would make the first about Castor and the second about Pollux.
This argument seems to rely on the following inference:
In E1, o is visually represented as F (and nothing else is repre- sented as being any other way). In E2, o* is visually represented as F (and nothing else is repre- sented as being any other way). E1 and E2 have the same content.
But this seems to require (at least) the further premise that o=o*. There is a difference between two experiences sharing the way they present their respective objects and two experiences representing the world as being the same way.
Here are some arguments against the ‘purely general’ view:
Fallibility*: if an experience can represent objects x, y,... as instantiating R, then it can do so even if x, y,... do not instantiate R.
Suppose (though this is not obvious) that perceptual experiences represent external particulars as existing. Then the content of a perceptual experience might be (in part) the singular proposition that o exists. But we can give two arguments that one can’t have such an experience unless it is veridical:
2 Under what conditions does one visually represent an external particular?
Two of the worries above – the one about Fallibility* and the one about veridical hal- lucination – involve the question of the conditions under which one’s visual experience involves a singular proposition about o.
This question is not much discussed; a much more discussed question is the question of the conditions under which object-seeing is possible. Object-seeing is evidently factive, in the sense that one cannot see o unless o is around to be seen. Causal, or partly causal, theories of object-seeing are the orthodoxy. (For an interesting argument that the best theory of object-seeing will involve phenomenological as well as causal constraints, see Siegel (2006).)
Our question is whether the perceptual representation of o as F requires that the subject see o. If so, then the worries about veridical hallucination and Fallibility* are reinforced.
But it is not obvious that this is the view that we should take. No one thinks that having a singular thought or belief about o requires that that thought actually be caused by o, even if some more indirect causal connection between o and the state underwriting the thought is required. So why should we think this in the case of visual representation?
This still leaves unanswered the question of what could make it the case that a given visual experience involves a singular representation of o. This is a very hard question which I’m not sure has an answer. One interesting case to think about is the case of a hallucination of a former acquaintance – what makes the hallucination of that person? This is a case (I concede) in which it is natural to appeal to the relations between perception and thought, as it seems that such cases are only possible when one has an antecedent capacity to have a thought about the object hallucinated. As Johnston (2004) says, it is hard to see how we could have a hallucination of an object with which we have no prior acquaintance.
References
Ben Caplan and Tim Schroeder, 2007. On the Content of Experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75(3):590–611.
Mark Johnston, 2004. The Obscure Object of Hallucination. Philosophical Studies 120:113–183.
Susanna Siegel, 2006. How Does Visual Phenomenology Constrain Object-Seeing? Aus- tralasian Journal of Philosophy 84(3):429–441.
Michael Tye, 2009. The Admissible Contents of Visual Experience. Philosophical Quar- terly 59(236):541–562.