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Studying Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2008

Olli Lagerspetz
Olli Lagerspetz
Affiliation:
Åbo Akademi University, Finland
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Abstract

Empirical studies of perception must use the logic of everyday non-technical conceptions of perception as their unquestioned background. This is because the phenomena to be studied are defined and individuated on the basis of such basic understanding. Thus the methods of neurobiology exclude reductionist accounts from the outset, implicitly if not explicitly. It is further argued that the concepts of neural and mental representation, while not confused per se, presuppose a general picture where perception as a whole is viewed in the light of teleology. References are made to discussions by Bennett and Hacker, Paul Churchland, and Peter Winch.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 193 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2008

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References

1 E.g., Paul M. Churchland (1981), ‘Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes,’ Journal of Philosophy 78, pp. 67–90; Peter Carruthers (2000), Phenomenal Consiousness: A Naturalistic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 119, 185 (fn 3).

2 Robert A. Sharpe (1991), ‘Minds Made Up,’ Inquiry 34, pp. 91–106; Robert A. Sharpe (1988), ‘The Very Idea of a Folk Psychology,’ Inquiry 30, pp. 381–393.

3 Peter Winch (1990), The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; original year of publication 1958), pp. 86–87. Italics in the original.

4 Also see Winch's introduction to the 1990 edition of his book (ibid., ix–xviii).

5 C. A. J. Coady (1992), Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 134.

6 This is not to say that ‘see’ and ‘hear’ are never used in other ways. For the present argument it is sufficient to recognise that perception verbs have success grammar in many central cases. – See Coady, loc. cit.

7 Antonio Damasio (1996), Descartes' Error (London: Macmillan), pp. 96–97.

8 Ibid., pp. 96–97.

9 Questions raised by David Cockburn.

10 However, on the idea of a causal chain, see Norwood Russell Hanson (1958), Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 50–69.

11 By ‘mental criteria’ I refer to the fact that descriptions of what a person sees, hears, etc., belong to descriptions of what goes on in that person's mind. This is not to contrast ‘the mental’ with ‘behaviour,’ as arguably these categories are internally related. See e.g., Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell), I: §§ 244, 257, 281, 293–294, 304).

12 A related point on the status of reduction is made in Thomas Nagel (1974), ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ The Philosophical Review 83, pp. 435–450, p. 445.

13 An expression by Hannes Nykänen, in discussion.

14 Jan Slaby, Graham Katz, Kai-Uwe Kühberger, & Achim Stephan (2006), ‘Embodied Targets, or the Origins of Mind-Tools,’ Philosophical Psychology 19:1, pp. 103–118, p. 105; e.g., Damasio, Descartes' Error, pp. 90, 98–100.

15 M. R. Bennett & P. M. S. Hacker (2003), The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Basil Blackwell, Oxford), p. 143; cf Paul M. Churchland (2005), ‘Cleansing Science,’ Inquiry 48:5, pp. 464–477, p. 469.

16 Bennett & Hacker, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, p. 80.

17 Churchland, ‘Cleansing Science,’ pp. 470–471.

18 Ibid., 469–470.

19 Ibid., 470.

20 For Bennett & Hacker's replies to objections of this type, see M. R. Bennett & P. M. S. Hacker (2005), ‘Reply to Professor Dennett and Professor Searle.’ Lecture, APA Eastern Division, New York, 28th December 2005. Downloaded from Professor Hacker's web page, http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Reply%20to%20Dennett%##20and%20Searle.pdf.

21 René Descartes (1999), ‘The Passions of the Soul,’ in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume I, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff & Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; original year of publication 1649), pp. 325–404. See I: 31.

22 The picture, from Roger Tootell, is reproduced in Churchland, ‘Cleansing Science,’ p. 467 and in Damasio, Descartes' Error, p. 104.

23 See Bennett & Hacker, ‘Reply …,’ p. 6.

24 Damasio, Descartes' Error, p. 90, italics added. – In Chapter 6 (ibid., pp. 114–126), the role of the brain is described in terms of ensuring the animal's survival. See esp. pp. 116–117.

25 Cf.: ‘As long as we use technical models in biology without being fully aware that by applying these models we just imply that nature performs according to the projected human requirements and guidelines, we are “blind for the significance” (bedeutungsblind) as Jakob von Uexküll expressed it.’ Thure von Uexküll, in Jakob von Uexküll (1980), Kompositionslehre der Natur. Biologie als undogmatische Naturwissenschaft. Ausgewählte Schriften Jakob von Uexkülls. Hrsgg. u. eingeleitet von Thure von Uexküll (Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein), p. 42. Quoted and trans. in Torsten Rüting (forthcoming), ‘Jakob von Uexküll – Theoretical Biology, Biocybernetics and Biosemiotics,’ to appear in: European Communications in Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ECMTB).

26 See Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, p. 68 for an analogous argument on causal chains.

27 Slaby et al., ‘Embodied Targets …,’ p. 105.

28 I argued above that this process is implicitly seen as goal oriented. However, the official idea is that neural representations can be identified independently of this. Alternatively, it is assumed that goal orientedness can somehow be accounted for in terms of functional, and ultimately causal, concepts (see Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness, pp. 97–101).

29 Damasio, Descartes' Error, p. 106.

30 Ibid., p. 90. Italics added.

31 A question by Michael McGhee (discussion 18th July 2007) has occasioned the following clarification.

32 M. A. Goodale & A. D. Milner (2004), Sight Unseen: An Exploration of Conscious and Unconscious Vision (Oxford: Oxford University Press); M. A. Goodale & A. D. Milner, ‘One Brain – Two Visual Systems,’ The Psychologist, Vol. 19 No. 11 (November 2006), pp. 660–663.

33 Supposed philosophical implications are discussed in Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness, pp. 148, 155–161; Antti Revonsuo (1995), On the Nature of Consciousness: Theoretical and Empirical Explorations (Turku: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Ser. B Tom. 209), pp. 19–21, 25.

34 Here I am departing from Goodale & Milner, ‘One Brain …,’ p. 661. The authors simply speak of ‘vision for perception’. I wish to signal the possibility of including Goodale & Milner's two aspects of vision as belonging to ‘perception’. This is a choice of terminology that should not prejudice the further argument in any way.

35 Goodale & Milner, ‘One Brain …’.

36 The question is answered in the negative in Ralph Schumacher (1998), ‘Blindsight and the Role of the Phenomenal Qualities of Visual Perceptions,’ Paper presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts, August 10–15, 1998 (Downloaded from The Paideia Archive, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mind/MindSchu.htm, February 2007). On the other hand, Carruthers, in Phenomenal Consciousness, p. 148, claims the results show that perception does not necessarily involve conscious experience.

37 Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, p. 7. Laurence Goldstein reminded me of this quote (discussion 18th July 2007).

38 See Coady, Testimony.

39 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), § 167.

40 Ibid., § 105.

41 Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, p. 2.

42 This paper was originally presented at the Finnish-Welsh Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Wales at Lampeter, 19–20 October 2006. It was presented again in 18 July 2007 at Wittgenstein, Literature and Other Minds Conference in memory of Dick Beardsmore, the University of East Anglia, 16–18 July 2007. Participants are gratefully acknowledged for their comments, including the written comments by Charles Pickles, Eric Franklin, and David Cockburn.