Inconsistent Perception

Inconsistent Perception

There are two aspects to our concept of perception and hence to perception: an intentional object aspect and a causal object aspect. There has to be an object you directly perceive and an object that causes your act of perceiving. To see (say) an object x is for x to be both the immediate object of your seeing and the cause of your seeing it. To see a red patch is to have an experience as of a red patch and for a red patch to cause that experience—and these must be the same red patch. If you have the experience of a red patch but no red patch causes it, then you don’t see a red patch; and if a red patch causes you to have an experience as of a blue ball, then you don’t see the red patch. Seeing is both a causal concept and a phenomenological concept. The sense-datum theory of perception supposes that you see internal mental objects, irrespective of causal history; the causal theory of perception supposes that you see external causes of perceptual states. Neither of these theories is plausible, because sense-data are not causes of perceptual states and external material objects are not intentional objects of perception. Causal objects are not intentional objects because we don’t see them as they objectively are in experiencing perceptual intentional objects. The objects we directly see are not identical to the remote causes of our acts of seeing, any more than stages in the causal chain are. And yet both objects are essential to seeing: the intentional object and the causal object must coincide. The former objects play a psychological role in determining the direction of the mind’s processes (belief formation etc.); the latter objects exist outside this nexus and serve only to trigger the organism’s inner states. These are evidently not the same objects. The proximal phenomenal object is not the distal physical object.

What should we conclude from these familiar points? The only conclusion we can draw is that we don’t see anything: in experiencing an intentional object we don’t see a causal object, and in being caused to have an inner perceptual state (with an intentional object) we don’t see a remote causal object (a bunch of atoms). Seeing requires that we see both, but we see neither. We would only see an object if it were both a direct object of seeing and the cause of the seeing, but that is false. We no more see the remote object than we see the intermediate stages that lead to the percept; and intentional direct objects of seeing are not causes of seeing. The concept of perception imposes impossible demands on perception, rendering it impossible in principle. A distal cause cannot be a proximal intentional object. The ordinary concept of perception lumps these indiscriminately together, thereby hoping to create a coherent story of perception—viz. that we see remote causes in conscious acts of seeing. The causal theory of perception tries to inject the remote cause into the perceiving mind, while the sense-datum theory must claim that immediate objects of seeing cause episodes of seeing. We don’t see the intentional object (a sense-datum) and we don’t see the causal object; we see nothing. The intentional object must be the causal object in order for seeing to occur: this object must be identical to that object. But it isn’t. Perception is therefore impossible. The concept places impossible demands on visual systems. True, we can apprehend intentional objects, like hallucinated red patches, but we can’t literally see them, because they aren’t the cause of our seeing. And true, physical objects can cause us to have visual experiences of various kinds, but we don’t strictly see them either, because they are not immediate intentional objects. We don’t see either, for the familiar reasons given. No single object can occupy both roles, so perception is impossible. The concept of perception tries to pack two jobs into one object, but that cannot be done.[1]

[1] This has really been evident for a long time. According to classical empiricism, we perceive ideas in the mind, while material objects act as unperceived causes. But ideas can’t be external causes of perceptions, as our ordinary concept of perception requires; so, we don’t see them. On the other hand, the true causes of perception in the external material world are removed from the mind and not directly apprehended by it; so, they cannot act as direct objects of perception. But these are the only candidates for the status of perceptual object, so perception is a myth as we naively conceive it. Of course, we can talk this way as a matter of convenience (cf. “the Sun rises in the east”), but as a matter of hard fact there is no seeing going on in “seeing”. There may be a whole lot of shaking going on, but there is zero seeing going on. I can be said to “see” a tree because I have a sense-datum as of a tree and this sense-datum is caused by an actual tree (a certain configuration of atoms); but I see neither thing. The actual physical tree is too far removed, while the phenomenal object of my seeing is too close to be identifiable with the cause. Sense-data are not identical to distal causes of sense-data, and neither is an object of sense perception in the ordinary sense.