Epistemology as Metaphysics

 

 

We usually teach epistemology as a separate field from metaphysics. On the one hand, there is reality, the subject matter of metaphysics, and on the other there is knowledge of reality, the subject matter of epistemology. It is sometimes said that Descartes made epistemology the foundation of philosophy, ahead of metaphysics, which would only be possible if epistemology were not a species of metaphysics.  [1] But how could it be, given that the world is separate from our knowledge of the world? The thing known is not the same as the knowing of it. However, this way of carving up the terrain ignores an obvious point, namely that knowledge is also something inthe world—part of reality. If the world is the totality of facts, then knowledge is part of the world, because there are facts about knowledge. Given that facts are the instantiation of properties by objects, we can say that knowledge is the instantiation of an epistemic property by a subject. Each of us instantiates many such properties, because we know many things. There are epistemic facts alongside other types of fact. Compare the philosophy of mind: this is not something separate from metaphysics but a branch of it; it is not somehow opposed to metaphysics. Philosophy of mind (as distinct from scientific psychology) is precisely the metaphysics of mind, and is often so described. Well, epistemology is the metaphysics of knowledge (as distinct from cognitive psychology)—the study of one type of property or fact. If we equate metaphysics with ontology (the “study of being”), then epistemology is a branch of ontology, simply because it investigates a region of being—the epistemic region. Thus metaphysics subsumes epistemology.

            It is the same with ethics. Ethics is not independent of metaphysics but a department of metaphysics (I am talking about so-called meta-ethics). Moral philosophy is just the metaphysics of morals (as Kant entitled his famous book). It seeks to answer general questions about the status of moral value—whether it is subjective or objective, relative or absolute, a matter of emotion of cognition, etc. Similarly, epistemology concerns itself with such general questions about knowledge: whether we have any, what types of knowledge there are, whether knowledge is the same as true belief, what the nature of justification is, etc. We might helpfully divide the philosophical study of knowledge into three areas to be labeled “practical epistemics”, “normative epistemics” (or “epistemic theory”), and “meta-epistemics”. Practical epistemics deals with specific questions such as whether the belief in God can be justified, or whether we have good reasons to accept Darwinian theory, or whether we really know that global warming is real. These are analogous to the ground floor questions dealt with in practical ethics (abortion, animal rights, capital punishment, etc.). Normative epistemics deals with the general nature of justification (an epistemic norm): is it a matter of consequences, as with pragmatism, or is it constituted by conformity to rules of inference such as induction, deduction, and abduction? This is analogous to normative ethics, which deals with the general notion of right action (giving us consequentialism and deontology). Then there is meta-epistemics, which addresses itself to the analysis of knowledge, the possibility of knowledge (skepticism, epistemic limitation), the objectivity of justification, etc. Just as not all of moral philosophy is rightly described as metaphysics, though some certainly is, so epistemic philosophy is not all metaphysical in nature, though some certainly is. The standard questions of a university course on epistemology are in effect metaphysical questions about knowledge. For example, asking after the general nature of knowledge (the “analysis of knowledge”) is a metaphysical (ontological) inquiry—it wants to know the nature of a certain type of fact. Is knowledge reducible to true belief? Is knowledge constituted by a certain sort of causal connection to the world? Is justification a matter of coherence or indubitable foundations? These are all questions about a certain sort of property, not different in kind from questions about belief or meaning or sensation. We might even say that epistemology is one branch of the philosophy of mind, being concerned with certain attributes of mind (epistemic attributes); and we already know that philosophy of mind is a branch of metaphysics.

            Viewing the geography this way is not, as they say, purely semantic, a matter of mere labeling. For including epistemology in metaphysics opens up ways of thinking that might prove helpful in epistemology. For instance, the analysis of knowledge has been confined to specifying conceptual constituents for the concept of knowledge, as with the classic analysis into truth, belief, and justification. But applying apparatus developed in the metaphysics of mind yields other options: what about the idea that the property of knowledge is a simple primitive property that is nevertheless supervenient on truth, belief, and justification (or whatever else needs to be added)? That is, we adopt a non-reductive but dependent view of the property of knowledge. We thus take the concept of knowledge to be non-derivative yet not divorced from other facts about the knowing subject. Knowledge would then resemble goodness as Moore conceived it, or as some metaphysicians view color: dependent but conceptually irreducible.  Also, we could treat the topic of epistemic norms as part of a general metaphysical issue concerning norms in nature, as with moral norms and linguistic norms. What we ought to believe is one kind of “fact” that needs to be located in a world of purely natural facts; or it is held not to be a kind of fact at all—depending on your metaphysical views. Naturalizing epistemology is thus like naturalizing ethics or semantics. We can’t really consider the question with respect to epistemology without taking on the broader metaphysical question, construed as such (Quine should have called his much-cited paper “Metaphysics Naturalized”  [2]). Third, the question of skepticism can be recast in ontological terms: do the facts about our reasons for our beliefs necessitate the truth of those beliefs? Just as we can ask whether facts about, say, constant conjunction necessitate (entail) causal facts, so we can ask whether facts about our perceptual reasons for belief necessitate facts about the external world. The brain in a vat scenario seems to show that they do not—there is no such entailment, necessitation, supervenience. The problem then has much the same form as other metaphysical problems: we can’t get one kind of fact to add up to another kind of fact. Truths about the external world always go beyond truths about sensory experience—hence skepticism. Skepticism thus reflects the logical arrangement of facts. It would be different if our reasons for belief actually included the facts we believe (“naïve realism”)—and that is a possible metaphysical view. Again, metaphysics is driving the argument.

            If this position is correct, it is impossible to claim that epistemology could be basic in philosophy, if that means more basic than metaphysics. It is metaphysics. What Descartes really did was make one branch of metaphysics more basic than other branches of metaphysics (if we accept the initial claim); more exactly, he made the method of doubt basic in epistemology, which is a branch of metaphysics. He didn’t suppose that epistemology is somehow free from metaphysics—above the metaphysical fray. Indeed, his epistemology is rooted in his metaphysis of mind, because he held that only an immaterial substance could have thought as its essence, which is what knowledge consists in. He didn’t derive his dualism from his epistemology; his view of knowledge rests on a prior metaphysical conception. Whatever knowledge turns out to be, it must be consistent with the fact that the knowing subject is an immaterial being. Nor did anyone else ever make epistemology prior to metaphysics, because that would be to deny that knowledge is an aspect of being, i.e. part of reality. Knowledge is a property that certain objects (subjects) have; and like all properties it has a nature, which can be investigated as such. That is a metaphysical undertaking. We call it epistemology. If someone were to claim that philosophy of mind or philosophy of language were prior to metaphysics, the reply would be the same: these are domains of fact too, and therefore subject to ontological inquiry. Maybe the metaphysics of mind or language could be more basic than other kinds, but they are not more basic than metaphysics in general. It would be the same if someone were to claim that ethics is more basic than metaphysics; the reply would be, “But what about meta-ethics?”

            Two metaphysical approaches to epistemology can be distinguished: classical empiricism and Quinean materialism. The ontology of the former includes such items as impressions and ideas, sense data and qualia, while the latter rejects those items and seeks to get by with retinal irritations and the triggering of assent behavior. If someone were to claim that epistemology precedes metaphysics, we could ask him to tell us what kind of epistemic ontology he favors—empiricist or materialist. Then it would be obvious that he already harbors substantive metaphysical commitments. Nowadays people tend to speak of cognitions, data structures, computational operations, informational flow, etc., but again this is metaphysics—claims about what there is. (They might be said to be scientific claims, but then you are adopting a science-based metaphysics.) You can’t get away from ontology in any theorizing, and epistemology is no different. All theories are theories about what there is. The only question is what kind of entity you are going to traffic in, in epistemology and elsewhere. There have indeed been a number of “turns” in philosophy—the linguistic turn, the conceptual turn, the scientific turn, the biological turn, the epistemological turn. But these cannot be characterized as turns away from metaphysics towards some less maddening domain of inquiry, since they are all of them species of metaphysics, i.e. ontologically committed areas of thought. In fact, they all raise thorny metaphysical problems, so they offer no respite from the travails of metaphysics. There is thus no firm ground outside of metaphysics from which to survey the old metaphysical problems. So far from being eliminable metaphysics is inescapable.

            Is there any area of philosophy in which metaphysics disappears, no matter whether that area might lay claim to foundational status? What about aesthetics or philosophy of logic or philosophy of science? Brief reflection shows that the answer is no. Aesthetics must face the question of the ontological status of beauty; philosophy of logic must deal with the nature of logical necessity; philosophy of science must reckon with the status of unobservable entities and the nature of laws. Maybe we can do some medical ethics without confronting metaphysical questions (though the question of moral objectivity is never far away), or perhaps legal philosophy (though the nature of law is ultimately a metaphysical question); but philosophy in general is actually permeated with metaphysical questions. The idea that we can avoid metaphysics is a dream born of frustration—pure wishful thinking.

            Why is this (elementary) point about epistemology not generally recognized? I think it is because we have a tendency not to think of ourselves objectively—as one element in a wider world. We feel we stand apart from the world. So it is natural for us to assume that our knowledge of the world is not something in the world. In epistemology we study ourselves qua knowing subjects, and so it is easy to think that we are not studying a part of the world—the world that includes us and our knowledge. We think there is us over here and the world over there—me versus it. But this way of seeing things ignores the fact that we are part of the world; and our epistemic states and faculties are just properties of that part. It is true that we can only know the world in virtue of our cognitive faculties, but that doesn’t imply that those faculties aren’t facts of nature among other facts of nature. Once we ascend to a more objective conception of our place in the world, we see that the study of human knowledge is just the study of a certain kind of fact, a kind that concerns the human mind, which itself is just a part of nature. So this aspect of human nature is one kind of being beside others, and so falls within the general theory of being. That theory is just metaphysics or ontology: hence epistemology as metaphysics.  [3]

 

Colin McGinn                

 

  [1] This claim is often made by Michael Dummett, summarizing what he takes to be a standard view.

  [2] To be more exact, “Part of Metaphysics Naturalized”, the epistemological part. (The original paper was of course entitled “Epistemology Naturalized”).

  [3] Of course, there is a lot of metaphysics that is not epistemology—in no way is metaphysics in general to be assimilated to epistemology. The point is just that epistemology is a branch of metaphysics—subsumption not identity.

 

 

Dispositions and Perception

 

 

Let’s start with something easy, before we get to more difficult questions. Namely: dispositions cannot be seen. You can gaze at salt for as long as you like and you will not be able to see its disposition to dissolve in water. It has that disposition, and it has it at the time you are gazing at it, but the disposition will not reveal itself to your senses no matter how much you scrutinize the salt. Nor will using a microscope help. The only way to find out if salt is soluble in water is to place it in water and observe the outcome. Solubility is not a manifest property of salt, unlike its whiteness or salty taste—the senses can’t resonate to it. Why is that? Because solubility is a property that concerns the future and possible situations: salt will dissolve in water and it would if it were now placed in water—and we can’t see what will happen or would happen in certain possible circumstances. These facts are absent from your field of vision as you stare at the salt, involving other times and circumstances. If salt had only dispositional properties, it would be imperceptible; but it has various manifest properties as well as dispositional properties—as we are inclined to put it. Dispositions imperceptibly coexist with other non-dispositional perceptible properties. It is, indeed, in the very nature of dispositions not to be perceptible, since they bring in the temporally remote and merely possible. The same goes for powers, capacities, tendencies, aptitudes, and propensities. The merely potential is not a possible object of perception.

            Puzzlement begins when we consider color. It has been widely held that colors are dispositions to produce sense experiences, but dispositions are not perceptible and colors are. You can no more see a disposition to produce color experiences than you can see solubility, and for the same reasons—yet you see objects as colored. Doesn’t that prove that colors aren’t dispositions? But isn’t the dispositional view of color plausible? The key to resolving this puzzle is to distinguish the perceptible color property itself from the disposition upon which it depends (supervenes)—the latter being invisible.  [1] We can call these two properties “perceptual color” and “objective color” (the terms are not ideal), thus distinguishing two things that might be called color: color as we perceive it, and color as it exists in objects. The color property we perceive is not a disposition, and hence is perceptible; but the color property that objects have is a disposition, and hence is not perceptible. There are two things that are called “red”! Dispositional color doesn’t enter perceptual content, while perceptual color does (by definition). The latter is a kind of primitive monadic property deployed by the mind in perceiving the world, while the former is a complex relational property that cannot feature as a perceptual constituent. We could accordingly say that color terms are systematically ambiguous. The important point is that the dispositional theory cannot work as a theory of what we see when we see color—the quality that we see is not a disposition. Of course, the two properties are closely connected, but they are not identical, on pain of rendering color imperceptible.

            Now consider shape and other so-called primary qualities. Suppose we are attracted by the view that such qualities are best analyzed as dispositions (or powers).  [2] That view has its appeal because of the intimate connection between shape (say) and dispositions—what kind of holes things can fit into, et cetera. There is little daylight between such a property and the dispositions or powers that come along with it, so an identity thesis seems indicated. What is it to be round, say, but to be capable of rolling along a flat plane, fitting into a round hole, and so on? But now there is a question about perception: how can such properties be perceived if they are dispositions? Shouldn’t everything be invisible if the world consists au fond of dispositions? But the world is not invisible, so doesn’t that refute the dispositional theory?  Taking our cue from color, we can reply that this doesn’t follow once we distinguish perceptual shape from objective shape: there is the shape we see and the shape things are—the latter being dispositional, but not the former. We spread perceptual shape on the world as a primitive “categorical” property, but objective shape consists in an array of dispositions to act in certain ways: we perceive what we spread, but we don’t perceive objective shape. Objectively, shape is dispositional; subjectively, it is categorical. There are actually two sorts of shape property; “square” is systematically ambiguous.

            In the case of primary qualities we can say that objective shape properties come from the world (and are dispositional) while subjective shape properties come from the mind and are imposed on the world (and are not dispositional). Thus we can accept the dispositional view of primary qualities while agreeing that dispositions cannot be perceived, without rendering the world invisible—by postulating two levels of shape property. The shapes we see are not the shapes things objectively have; in fact we don’t see objective shape at all (except in some derivative sense).  [3] It isn’t that primary qualities are secondary qualities, since the dispositions that constitute them are not dispositions to produce shape experiences; but they are alike in that perceived shape is imposed on the world like perceived color. And it is fortunate that this duality of properties exists or else the world would be invisible to us, what with dispositions being invisible.

            It might be thought that the dispositional theory of shape (etc.) is not plausible because all dispositions need a “categorical basis” in virtue of which they hold. But this doctrine is not as pellucid as it may seem: for how cannon-dispositional properties give rise to dispositions? By what magic is this accomplished?  (Compare mind and body.) How can dispositions obtain “in virtue of” a categorical basis if that basis has no modal nature—if it concerns merely the present and actual? This isn’t to say that macro dispositions don’t have a basis in micro properties—as solubility has a basis in the properties of molecules—but this basis consists in turn of dispositionsof molecules not merely “structural properties”, as if mere geometry could give rise to power. The molecules are disposed to move and disperse in certain ways when salt is placed in water: that is the “categorical basis” of solubility—except that it isn’t “categorical”. Maybe there is some ultimate basis for all dispositions in nature that is not just another disposition, but the usual so-called categorical bases are really tacitly dispositional (they are about behavior not mere form or substance). It is true that perceived shape, like perceived color, is not dispositional, but that doesn’t stop objective shape from being dispositional; and the two are closely connected. It is as if perceived shape gives rise to dispositions but really the underlying objective shape properties are the things that operate as dispositions. Put simply: the world is the totality of invisible dispositions, but the mind imposes non-dispositional qualities on the world that render it perceptible. The mind supplies what is necessary in order to make the world perceptually accessible to us; if it did not, the world would be as invisible as solubility is.

            The position we have arrived at is distinctly Kantian. There is an objective reality of imperceptible dispositions (the noumenal world) and superimposed on that a layer of sensible qualities whose origin is the mind itself (the phenomenal world). The reason for the divide is the mismatch between dispositions and perception. The world consists of dispositional facts that cannot be experienced (metaphysics), but we gain perceptual contact with things by imposing from our own resources a layer of facts that are not dispositional (epistemology). There are thus two worlds tightly joined together. Think of it like this: when the physical world came into existence it consisted entirely of invisible dispositions; when conscious beings came along that needed to know about the world they overcame the problem of invisibility by inventing a whole new range of properties that they used to mediate between their minds and reality. They penetrated the cloak of invisibility by painting the world in colors they could recognize; or rather, they dealt with the inevitable invisibility of the world by substituting properties they could see. Perceptual systems didn’t make the dispositions visible (that would be impossible); instead they created another world connected to the first world that suited their receptive apparatus better. These beings then imagined that the world they created was the world that exists objectively, instead of being a proxy for it; but the world never became truly visible, because dispositions in their nature cannot be seen. We imposed our a priori geometry on the world along with our color space (and other sensory qualities), but we never gained perceptual access to the underlying realities. To repeat, it is not possible to see what would happen if  (or what is happening in close possible worlds), but that is what a disposition is. We have the illusion that we experience real shape and color, because we impose non-dispositional qualities that we do perceive; but really objective reality is perceptually closed off to us.

            Compare phenomenalism: for a table in the other room to be square is for certain counterfactual conditionals to be true, to the effect that I would have an experience of a square table if I had experiences of moving into that room. But such conditional facts cannot be perceived, so they cannot be what I see when I look at the table. So is the table invisible according to phenomenalism? Yes, if that is all there is to say: I cannot see a square table if that fact consists in having a disposition to appear in a certain way to perceivers, since I cannot see any such disposition. Likewise, if we decide on metaphysical grounds that reality is best understood as consisting entirely of dispositions (powers, potentials), then we face the question of how it can be perceived—and we are led to the kind of two-worlds Kantian view I have sketched.  [4]

            Ever since Plato we have been schooled to accept a realm of universals that serve to constitute reality as we experience it. The idea of a basic duality of universals is not part of that tradition. But our current reflections suggest that universals divide into two quite distinct groups: those that reduce to dispositions and hence are not perceptible, and those that are perceptible but don’t reduce to dispositions (I leave aside other categories such as the abstract and the moral). The latter have their source in the mind (“universals of the mind”), while the former exist in objective reality (“universals of the world”). The mind constructs a world by exploiting the first kind of universal, while the other world exists by dint of its own devices and is entirely dispositional. The two sorts of universal run in parallel while never merging and each belonging to a different layer of reality.      

 

  [1] See my “Another Look at Color”.

  [2] I am thinking of Sydney Shoemaker’s work on properties as powers.

  [3] This allows us to say such things as that perceptual geometry is Euclidian while physical geometry is not—the two dealing with different classes of geometrical properties.

  [4] Actually the view sketched is closer to Schopenhauer than to Kant, since it posits an active world of powers (“Will”) as constituting objective reality; what Schopenhauer would call “Ideas” corresponds to the level I am calling perceptual properties. Other variants of the general bipartite structure are conceivable: the noumenal as constituted by natural laws (also imperceptible) or supernatural spirits (ditto).

                                               

 

 

Consciousness and Qualities

 

 

There are good reasons to suppose that the qualities we perceive the world to have do not belong to it objectively. The most obvious example is color, but it can also be argued that perceived shape is not an objective property of things.  [1] I am concerned here with the consequences of this position for the nature of consciousness and for the general veracity of our view of reality. So suppose that color and shape, as we perceive them, are indeed projected qualities of things, not belonging to the austere objective conception of reality; in particular, suppose that we do not derive such perceptual categories from the antecedently existing physical world. What does that tell us about the powers of consciousness and about the relation between appearance and reality?

            It tells us, first, that the sensible qualities of things originate in the mind: consciousness is the cradle of these qualities. Consciousness creates these qualities; it doesn’t find them existing already in the observable world (nor are they handed down by God). The qualities are projected outward, but they have an inward origin. This is a remarkable power: qualia (if there are such) depend for their existence on consciousness, but so too do the qualities that we sense in the external world. How does consciousness generate these qualities? It doesn’t itself instantiate them, but it manages to conjure them from somewhere—or nowhere. If it is puzzling how the physical world generates consciousness, it is also puzzling how consciousness generates the external world of color and shape (and other qualities). Before consciousness came to exist there were no such qualities, but with consciousness they blossomed into being—as flowers once did in evolutionary history. If physical reality consists wholly of powers, which are not themselves perceptible, then qualities were introduced by the mind in order to render the world perceptible; but how is this achieved—how are qualities manufactured? Whatever theory of consciousness we develop, it needs to explain how consciousness has this originative power. I don’t think we have even the beginnings of such a theory.

            How closely does the world of perception correspond to the objective world? Is the world the mind projects the same as the world that independently exists? No, it is not the same, since the projected qualities don’t exist in the world as it is in itself. So much is commonly accepted: the qualities that constitute appearance are not found in the reality that appears (considered independently of appearing). There may well be structural correspondences, but the two worlds diverge in what they contain. What I want to draw attention to is a point not often (if ever) noted, concerning the nature of instantiation. Our understanding of instantiation must be shaped (likely constituted) by the way qualities strike us in perception—by how things look, primarily. What it is for an object to instantiate a quality is exemplified by things looking red to us (say): this is how instantiation appears to us. But such qualities are projected from our own mode of sensibility not derived from reality, as it exists independently; so it is to be expected that instantiation, as we conceive it, is likewise projected. It is not just the quality red that is projected but being red. The mode in which objects have properties is conceived on the model of perceptual seeming, which results from the way we impose qualities onto reality. But there is no guarantee that objective instantiation will conform to this aspect of appearance—maybe the way things actually instantiate properties is remote from the way we represent such instantiation in perception. What this means is that the structure by which we grasp reality is conditioned by our mode of sensibility—the structure of objects instantiating properties. To put it differently, our notion of a fact is an offshoot of subjectively imposed qualities. The paradigm of a fact is an object being red or square, but if these facts reflect projected qualities, not objective conditions, then our whole conception of reality is shaped by our psychological make-up. The very idea of objects having properties, as we conceive of it, is infected with subjectivity, i.e. the mode of sensibility we bring to the world. We try to extend our notion of instantiation beyond the appearances, but it is bound up with appearances from the beginning, because the qualities that appear originate in us.

            Suppose the picture of the world presented by current physics is on the right lines: physical reality consists of fields of force exhibiting certain powers at certain spatiotemporal points. Does the presence of these powers in a field mirror the way objects appear to us to be red or square? Is that the way powers are instantiated in objective physical reality? Certainly we can’t sense these powers as we sense color and shape, so we can’t apprehend their mode of instantiation in that way. Powers are not qualities and fields are not perceptible objects, so the mode of instantiation involved will not mirror the kind that we perceive; perhaps we have little idea of what it involves. We vaguely think of it as like colors-as-perceived, but it may not be like that at all. Thus the physical facts don’t necessarily have the structure of the facts we perceive—facts that arise by projection. Our concept of instantiation may be as parochial and subjective as the qualities we project onto the world.

            There is something Kantian about this picture of things, but it is not committed to the total inaccessibility of the objective world. Nor does it regard space and time as merely subjectively imposed categories. It says rather that the world of appearance is constituted by qualities and structures that derive from the conscious mind not from objective reality. These qualities and structures are not “copies” of the world, derived by some sort of imprinting, as classical empiricism supposed; they are products of human consciousness (mysteriously so). The mind needs to find a way to cope with the world, to represent it, and the imposition of perceptible qualities is the way it has come up with. If the world consists purely of powers, something like the imposition of qualities is necessary, because powers cannot be perceived. The point I have wanted to make here is that consciousness must have the power to generate the imposed qualities, in addition to its other characteristics. Further, the structure in which these qualities feature inevitably reflects their status: the instantiation of projected qualities is itself projected—and whether objective instantiation fits this model is a moot point. Consciousness has to be the origin of (perceived) instantiation as well as of the qualities instantiated—form and content. The world we perceive is thus an upshot of consciousness not of antecedently existing reality—which can only be described as a type of idealism. I don’t doubt that there is an objective world and that it stands in some sort of correspondence relation to how things appear to us, but the constituents of our perceptual experience—of the world as we perceive it—derive from the mind’s own resources (ultimately from the brain). In this respect perceptual representation resembles language: language is a product of the mind, constrained by the mind’s inner nature, not some sort of imprint of objective reality—similarly for the structured qualities that form our perceptual world.

 

Colin McGinn

    

  [1] This has to do with the geometry of space, relativity theory, and so on; I won’t get into this now. I will only say that there is really no a priori reason to suppose that how we perceive extension and its modes coincides with the actual structure of matter (though there may be a correspondence of sorts). Do other species perceive the real objective nature of matter and space accurately? Are the qualities that mice attribute to the world in their perceptual experience the very qualities that feature in the correct objective conception of reality? Is the correct geometry of the universe already written into the forms of animal experience?

                                               

 

 

Colored Surfaces: A Puzzle

 

 

Colors appear to be on the surfaces of things. The surface seems saturated with color, as if the color has been painted on. Colors seem as much an intrinsic property of surfaces as textures. They are not experienced as properties of the perceiver’s body or of the intervening medium. They coincide with the object spatially.  [1] Yet, according to tradition, they are projections of the mind, arising from the perceiver’s inner resources: they are transferred from inside to outside—from “in here” to “out there”. In the cinema we experience the film image as on the screen in front of us, though it emanates from somewhere behind us in the projection room. Similarly we see color as inhabiting the surface of objects while in fact it issues from somewhere in our minds (unlike shape or texture). According to some views, colors are dispositions to produce experiences; but dispositions are not perceived as if they are on things, so there is a mismatch between appearance and reality. Colors are creatures of the mind and yet are perceived as distal features of objects.

            The point I want to make is that they are unique in being thus outwardly perceived: among so-called secondary qualities they are the only ones experienced as being literally on the object of perception. They are the only secondary qualities experienced as objective features of things (in one sense of “objective”). This is puzzling. Why aren’t they experienced as the subjective phenomena they really are, like other secondary qualities? Couldthey be so experienced? We don’t perceive smells and tastes as on things: smells are experienced as in our nose not in the remote object, and tastes only coincide with the object tasted because it is typically in our mouth (it would be different if we tasted things remotely). Likewise we don’t hear sounds as if they are on objects—we don’t project the sound out onto the source of the sound (the noise is loud not the object making it). We hear sounds as in the proximity of our ears (consider the flash of a distant cannon followed a few seconds later by the sound of the shot). Indeed, we hear sounds not objects, so we don’t experience sounds as remote qualities of objects. In the case of heat and cold we locate these qualities in our body not in the object. It is true that hot and cold objects are typically touching the body, so that the qualities are experienced as spatially coincident with the object, but again that is a contingent circumstance—and there are cases in which we have such sensations emanating from remote objects (e.g. the Sun). When I feel the heat of a remote object I don’t project the hotness onto the object; I feel the hotness in the region of my body. The object causes my body to feel this way, to be sure, but I don’t perceive it as having the sensory quality in question on its surface. Thus we are not so inclined to make an error about the status of such secondary qualities: we recognize that they are subjectively constituted (unless we are philosophically opinionated). There is no illusion of objectivity for these cases. Someone might be of the opinion that objects are intrinsically hot or cold, independently of perceivers, but it would be pushing it to claim that they experience these qualities to be on objects, as they perceive colors to be on them. I perceive the Sun as yellow on its surface, but I don’t perceive it as hot on its surface.

            It is an interesting question whether this is a contingent truth or a necessary truth. Could there be a perceiver that experienced color as he experienced other secondary qualities? Is the perception of color necessarily outward in the way it actually is? Here are two reasons to doubt that. First, we can ask whether all organisms that perceive color perceive it as intrinsically qualifying the surface of objects. Do insects see colors as intrinsic properties of surfaces? Might they not have sensations of color that are detached from sensations of surfaces, perhaps because they have deficient spatial perception? Color sensations are triggered in them by external objects, but they don’t engage in full-blooded projection onto distal surfaces, so that they perceive color rather as we perceive smells or sounds. This seems logically possible. Second, not all of human color experience involves distal projection onto physical surfaces—consider mental images, after-images, and those sensations you get when you press your eyeball or close your eyes. In these cases you don’t experience a remote surface as suffused with color, alongside shape and texture; the experience is felt as more internal, more subjective. If so, it would be possible for objects to elicit such color sensations without the perceiver painting their surfaces with color. So color could be perceived in the way other secondary qualities are perceived, not as it is now for us in ordinary color vision.

            And herein lies the puzzle: why is color perceived as on surfaces, suffusing and saturating them, as if it were an objective property like texture, when it could be perceived as other subjective qualities are? Why is it accorded special treatment? Why is the projection so extreme? One possible answer is biological utility: it is more effective or convenient to experience color in this external objectifying way. But why is that—why does color differ from other secondary qualities? Why don’t they follow the model of color if it is so effective and convenient? And what does this biological utility consist in—what selective advantage does it incur? Another possible answer is that vision has a special kind of phenomenology that requires the qualities that are perceived to be perceived as distal. But why should that be, given that not all of visual experience involves projection onto remote surfaces? It is perplexing why we perceive color as a property of surfaces in the way we do—why we perceive colors as onobjects. Colors are not really on surfaces, objectively speaking, so why make an error in color perception when other secondary qualities involve no such error (or not one of the same magnitude)? Why paint the world with color it doesn’t have when you could stick to a mode of experience that involves no such effort and illusion? Why not see the world more as you feel it or smell it, without the projection of secondary qualities beyond their proper sphere? This is the puzzle presented by colored surfaces.

 

Colin McGinn   

 

 

 

  [1] If you place a colored filter in front of a white surface you will see the surface as having the color of the filter. The eye projects the color from the proximal filter onto the remote surface. Thus you see the surface as being (say) pink in virtue of an act of projection performed by the visual system. But projection operates even in cases where there is no such intervening medium.