Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Research in Phenomenology) [1 ed.] 9781032265896, 9781032265902, 9781003288985

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Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the enduring value of Merleau-Ponty’s insights for philosophy of perception today. The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author tackles debates about the content of perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception. Peter Antich is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Dominican University New York, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge (2021).

Routledge Research in Phenomenology Edited by Søren Overgaard, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, University of Sheffield, UK, and David Cerbone, West Virginia University, USA

Philosophy’s Nature Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics Emiliano Trizio The Bounds of Self An Essay on Heidegger’s Being and Time R. Matthew Shockey Towards a Phenomenology of Values Investigations of Worth D.J. Hobbs Mechanisms and Consciousness Integrating Phenomenology with Cognitive Science Maren Pokropski Phenomenology as Critique Why Method Matters Edited by Andreea Smaranda Aldea, David Carr, and Sara Heinämaa Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity Norms, Goals, and Values Edited by Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception Peter Antich

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/RoutledgeResearch-in-Phenomenology/book-series/RRP

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception Peter Antich

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Peter Antich The right of Peter Antich to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-26589-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-26590-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-28898-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

For my father, a lover of the cosmos and its perplexities

Contents

List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgementsxi Introduction1 PART 1

The Sense of Perception9 1 Perceptual Sense

11

2 Rich and Thin Contents

45

3 Practical Perception

70

PART 2

Perception and World99 4 Perceptual Presence

101

5 Realism and Idealism

134

6 The Problem of Perception

164

Bibliography199 Index209

Abbreviations Used for Merleau-Ponty’s Works in Translation

N PhP PrP SB SWWE VI

Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2003). Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald Landes (New York: Routledge, 2012). The Primacy of Perception, trans. William Cobb (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964). The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden Fisher (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2015). The Sensible World and the World of Expression, trans. Brian Smyth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020). The Visible and The Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968).

Acknowledgements

Many people had a hand in shaping this book. Thank you to the scholars, colleagues, and friends who helped form my understanding of MerleauPonty or provided feedback on various stages of certain ideas presented here, such as Kym Maclaren, Eric Sanday, Taylor Carman, Bryan Smyth, Edward Mark, and many more. Thank you to my colleagues at Trinity College and Dominican University New York for their support and reflections on some of the work presented here. And I am also thankful to everyone on the editorial team at Routledge who helped make this book a reality.

Introduction

I open my eyes and, after an almost indiscernible moment of floating on a sea of vague colors and patterns, I find myself immersed in a world of determinate forms and characteristics. I blink, but I do not for a second fear that it is the world – and not simply my eyelids – that has gone down; my connection to the world is not severed but punctuated. Perhaps I find the light too bright and close my eyes. The world retreats from vision. Do I still see? If I care to notice, my visual field is yet teeming with ­activity – a gradient of browns and reds is stretched over my eyes, interspersed with the highlights of afterimages, and immersed in ever-shifting lights and darks, indeterminate shapes pulsing across my eyes as they shift in their sockets. But even if I let myself go in these sensations – which are at least on the absolute margin of the world – I am not lost to the world: for example, I still feel the heat of the sun on my skin and the hot plastic strap of the lawn chair as I shift my arm. I still smell cut grass and sunscreen. The world seeps in through my senses. I hear a sharp noise that I immediately identify as a blue jay on the tree just behind me. Or no … the sound is coming from farther away and to the left. I become uncertain, and my hearing oscillates back and forth between these locations as I shift my head in the hope of attaining greater conviction. I allow my eyes to drift open once again, and I look past my knees to the tree trunk a few yards away. I look at my knee and then the trunk again, letting them take turns doubling, then reuniting, redoubling, in my eyes. Perception is my primary presence in the world. Before philosophy, before a world of carefully constructed judgments about the character of the world, perception opens me to a meaningful environment, which I can interact with, immerse myself in, enjoy, fear, desire, and generally live out my life within. And yet this presence is fragile and searching. I don’t doubt the trunk is one, even when it doubles under my gaze; nor that the world persists, even as I blink and the curtain goes down momentarily; nor that the bird calls from a definite location, even when I cannot place it. ­Perception is our presence in the world, but its character is not identical to DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-1

2 Introduction the world’s. Somehow, I scarcely notice these interruptions of my senses, except in such moments of leisure, when loosening my engagement with the world, I take time to play games with perception. And yet these interruptions are not unfamiliar to me. I know the tricks I can manage with my senses, even though ordinarily I look past my senses to the world they deliver. Indeed, they hardly surprise me until I try to think what these punctuations in my presence to the world entail about this presence, and then I begin to lose my grip; then perception becomes a sort of riddle or perhaps koan. I might describe this book as an attempt to think this, so to speak, trouble of perception; to think perception’s fragile presence to the world. There are many ways we might try to analyze this “fragile presence.” Philosophers have variously attempted to define perception as the direct awareness of objects existing independently of us, or as mental representation; as intentional states with unique phenomenal characters, or as sense data that we interpret in meaningful ways; as the way in which the world appears, or (denying that a world exists independently of the mind) as the presence to us of mind-immanent objects. In pursuing a nuanced and precise description of perceptual presence, this book will challenge these familiar accounts of perception. To do so properly, though, we first need an appreciation for the character of perceptual presence and how it differs from other kinds of relations we bear toward the world. Whether we think of perception as more akin belief or to sensations like pain or pleasure makes a significant difference to how we conceive of perceptual presence. To perceive, though, is markedly unlike to think, to believe, to imagine, to remember, to hope, or to fear: perception carries us into the world in a manner that is experientially unique. Perception is abundant, brimming with colors, smells, sounds, feels, and in general a profusion of experiences that can be captured only obliquely in words – thus, there is indelibly a sense for us in which to know a thing is to perceive it; to know an apple, for example, is to taste it; to know a melody is to hear it. And yet perception is scarce, revealing only a narrow range of the world, both in terms of its limited spatial and temporal scope, and in what it reveals within that scope – neither vision nor taste can tell me the molecular composition of the water I am drinking (nor even that there are such things as molecules), for example, though the world of thought very well can. To understand perceptual presence, we need to work through this abundance and scarcity. These, then, are the two guiding concerns of this book: What kind of relation to the world does our perception provide us with, and what is the unique character of this relation? Through an exploration of these two questions, we will gain a vantage on the unique character of perceptual presence.

Introduction  3 The central resource I draw upon in following these questions is the phenomenological work of 20th-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty offers a unique and profound description of perception, one which I argue does more to illuminate our actual experience of perception than many of its current alternatives. I intend this book to introduce – and take an interpretive view of – Merleau-Ponty’s thought about perception. I do this, not in the form of comprehensive overview of the latter but through the lens of my two guiding questions. I argue that Merleau-Ponty offers an illuminating description of perception as providing a richly structured, meaningful mode of access to the world, which following Merleau-Ponty, I term “perceptual sense.” Further, Merleau-Ponty suggests a nuanced and promising approach to perceptual presence, which helpfully challenges the predominant accounts of perception available today. In the first part of this book, I provide an exposition of MerleauPonty’s account of perceptual sense as it informs contemporary debates. In the second part, I turn to his account of perceptual presence and demonstrate its enduring value. My two guiding questions are obviously very much contemporary questions, and I will take them up in their contemporary context; but they are also perennial questions, and I will try to show how Merleau-Ponty suggests novel and compelling lines of thinking with respect to these matters of enduring consequence. The project of this book is not simply systematic or historical, then. My explication of Merleau-Ponty’s work aims to render more acute our insight into the nature of perception. Given this project’s aim of fluency with both Merleau-Ponty and contemporary debates and the meaningful differences between these two contexts, I will often have to take up the lines of thinking developed by Merleau-Ponty beyond his own explicit words. On the other hand, the claims in this book are meant to be faithful to – and so to forward a particular reading of – Merleau-Ponty’s work. I intend what results to be a genuinely Merleau-Pontian program for the philosophy of perception. I should say a few words about the orientation of this work, both philosophically and interpretively. The primary method employed in this study is phenomenology, by which I mean the elucidation of experience as it appears to us. There are various lenses through which one could look at perception. For example, one could ask what account of perception best accords with available psychological or neurological evidence, which account best fits certain metaphysical commitments, or which account is most useful for answering epistemological questions about the relationship between perception and knowledge. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s work is primarily concerned with the phenomenology of perception, and likewise this study is primarily responsible not to these other desiderata but to our experience of perception. This is not

4 Introduction to deny that these other lenses are animated by legitimate concerns, nor even necessarily to insist that phenomenology be the ultimate arbiter of perception research. But it is to insist on the relevance of phenomenology to perception research. We understand perception first of all through our experience of it, and even if this experience is not decisive, it remains a vital resource to which our other commitments should speak. If these commitments are to engage in meaningful dialogue, we need carefully to explore this experience and work out what it has to teach us. Note, however, that elucidation of our experience should not be confused with simple adhesion to common sense. Our experience is far from perfectly transparent to us, and discerning its character requires careful philosophical work and engagement with multiple lines of evidence. In contrast, common sense often names a set of philosophical clichés with which we interpret experience and the world around us, clichés that can do more to obscure the true character of these subjects than to honor it. Though this work is intended to introduce Merleau-Ponty’s thought to contemporary debates in the Philosophy of Perception, rather than as a technical treatise on the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty, I also need to say a few words about how I read Merleau-Ponty. First, I take MerleauPonty’s thinking about perception to be relatively continuous throughout his career. This is not necessarily an obvious move. Barbaras, for example, argues for a “developmental hypothesis” on which Merleau-Ponty’s thinking undergoes an ontological turn from a “phenomenology of perception” to a “philosophy of perception.”1 Gardner points out that The Phenomenology of Perception is read in two ways: a first treats the book as making primarily psychological claims, allegedly in conformity with Merleau-Ponty’s early work, The Structure of Behavior; a second treats it as making primarily transcendental claims, allegedly in conformity with his later work.2 If one reads the Phenomenology as a transcendental project, one could also argue that Merleau-Ponty’s final unfinished work, The Visible and the Invisible, breaks with this transcendental attitude; for example, Merleau-Ponty writes in a working note that “The problems posed in [Phenomenology of Perception] are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction” (VI, 200). While I won’t adequately defend this thesis here, it nevertheless seems to me that the core impulse of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to perception – namely, its ongoing commitment to capturing the unique character of perceptual sense and to describing our perceptual presence in nuanced terms that resist Realism, Idealism, and Representationalism – is present right from the Structure of Behavior (published in 1942) to the working notes of The Visible and the Invisible (published in 1964, three years after Merleau-Ponty’s death).3 However, I will avoid certain interpretive problems by focusing my reading on The Phenomenology of Perception (published in 1945) – which occupies

Introduction  5 a central place in Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre – and will borrow concepts and articulations from other works where they serve to illuminate ideas from the Phenomenology. Again, given the intention of this work, I won’t engage as exhaustively with the Merleau-Ponty literature or defend my readings in the technical manner I would were I undertaking a straightforwardly interpretive project. Still, it will be helpful to say something about the predominant ways of reading Merleau-Ponty available today. While there are no set schools of Merleau-Ponty interpretation – Merleau-Ponty invites being taken up for distinct projects and with distinct interests – perhaps the broadest interpretive contours we can draw are between Realist, Idealist, and Enactivist readings of Merleau-Ponty. While these views will be discussed more in the following, basically, Realism about perception holds that perception gives us direct access to mind-independent objects; Idealism holds that these perceptual objects are ultimately not mind-independent; and Enactivism holds that perception arises through the dynamic interaction of an organism and its environment. Given the nuance of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking and his dialectical method – his process of suggesting a view, following it through to its limitations and then proceeding to its opposite, subsequently developing his own account out of the limitations of this alternative – his corpus makes room for each of these readings.4 At the same time, as we will see in Part II, Merleau-Ponty takes himself to be moving beyond either Realism or Idealism, and in order to maintain either of these readings, we would have to suggest that either he misunderstands his own thinking or his project is confused. There are different ways to define Enactivism but consider Noë’s: the basic claim of the enactive approach is not that perception is for acting but that “the perceiver’s ability to perceive is constituted (in part) by sensorimotor knowledge (that is, by practical grasp of the way sensory stimulation varies as the perceiver moves).”5 This is a view that, as we will see, ­Merleau-Ponty is very much sympathetic to: he undeniably agrees that perception is mediated by a kind of bodily sensorimotor “knowledge.” But once we get into the weeds of each view, it becomes unclear how closely tied they are. For example, for better or worse, we don’t find Merleau-Ponty arguing for the claim – important to Noë – that every perception involves variation with movement, such that a totally paralyzed subject could not perceive.6 While Merleau-Ponty does a great deal to illuminate the deep connection between action and perception – part of what Merleau-Ponty wants to correct, already in the Structure of Behavior, is the absence of “the thought of relating the content of human perception to the structure of human action” from the study of human perception (SB, 165) – I doubt that he insists on this connection in quite the same way Enactivists do, nor does action play the central role in all aspects of his thinking that we

6 Introduction might expect from an Enactivist. Consider one of the central claims of the Phenomenology of Perception, namely that perception is underpinned by an “intentional arc,” i.e., a function that “projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships” (PhP, 137). The deep connection between action and perception is clearly at stake here, but equally important to MerleauPonty is a more encompassing set of relationships (the cultural and moral world) within which human perception unfolds. Thus, though Enactivist readings of Merleau-Ponty have significant merit (and we will return to Enactivist ideas throughout this work), I will not present his work along straightforwardly Enactivist lines.7 This response to Enactivism invites me to say a few words about “the body.” Merleau-Ponty is often credited with doing more than other Phenomenologists to elucidate the role of the body in our experience. This body is not so much the body as viewed in, e.g., a physical or anatomical sense, but the body as we experience or live it. This is the body, in short, as subject of perception. Merleau-Ponty often speaks of the subject of perception as anonymous, i.e., as operating beneath the explicit decisions, beliefs, and goals which characterize our personal engagement with the world. When he does so, he is speaking of the body: beneath our explicit awareness, our body organizes or makes sense of the world given to us in perception.8 When I turn my eyes to the left and the perceptual scene suddenly transforms, I don’t suspect for a second that the world has moved to the right; on the other hand, if a subject’s eyes are paralyzed and she has the intention of moving her eyes to the left, when the visual scene does not appropriately transform, she suddenly has the sense that the scene before her has moved to the left (PhP, 48–9). What has happened here is not a matter of conscious reasoning, but of the body’s familiarity with the interaction between it and the world; its “understanding” of the fit between ocular movement and the world before our eyes (PhP, 239–42). This bodily familiarity deeply mediates our perceptual experience. For example, though I have two eyes, I largely perceive the world before me as one and with one visual field – a unity which, as pointed out in our opening example, can be played with or suspended. This unity is not brought about through my thinking that the two ocular images are the same, since I can very well do that without visual images uniting, but through the bodily capacity to coordinate two eyes with the world. While I will not explicitly say a great deal about the body in the following, this bodily familiarity with the world is implicitly at stake throughout the book. Here the body will figure as the anonymous subject that “makes sense” of our experience, or in other words, as our perceptual capacities. A reader who is surprised by my relatively sparse discussion of the body

Introduction  7 should keep in mind that wherever I speak of perceptual capacities, in this sense, I am speaking about the body as Merleau-Ponty understands it. As mentioned above, I will treat the two groups of questions with which this book is concerned in two parts. Part I will focus on characterizing the presence we have to the world in terms of perceptual sense, while Part II will attempt to define what kind of relation to the world this perceptual presence amounts to. Each part is composed of three chapters. Chapter 1 provides an exposition of Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception’s content, namely, perceptual sense. The core of the chapter involves arguing that perception’s content is irreducible to the content of other states, namely, sensations, beliefs, or judgments: perception’s content is neither merely sensory nor conceptual nor propositional. Following Merleau-Ponty, I bring this uniquely perceptual sense into view by appealing to phenomena such as gestalt effects and agnosia. Once I have made it clear that perception must have its own kind of content, I describe the major features of this distinctive type of content. In Chapter 2, I turn to debates about rich perceptual content, namely whether perception can present rich properties like natural or artificial kinds and emotions, in addition to the thin sensory properties it is widely allowed. Merleau-Ponty evidently holds that we do perceive rich properties, and my aim in Chapter 2 is to support this view. After explaining and developing a phenomenal contrast argument, I defend it and flesh out my description of perceptual sense by demonstrating that five major alternatives are phenomenologically inadequate. It is common to try to explain phenomenal contrasts in perceptions in terms of differences in cognitive states, affective states, attentional patterns, gestalt contents, or thin contents. I show that none of these alternatives can be made to explain the relevant contrasts. Chapter 3 extends these arguments to the practical sphere, arguing that we can perceive things like affordances and moral properties. Here too I employ a phenomenal contrast argument but substantiate my argument through contemporary work in Critical Phenomenology on the experiential and perceptual dimensions of racism. I argue that racism includes a perceptual dimension which should be understood as a failure of moral perception. Part II of the book begins, in Chapter 4, by outlining Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of perception’s relation to the world, centering around his distinctive notion of appearance. Following Drummond and others, I argue that perceptual appearance presents, rather than represents, the world to us, in the sense that perception is an intentional relation to a transcendent, really existing thing. I compare this view to a variety of alternatives, including Classical Representationalism, Sense Data T ­ heories, Indirect Realism, and Intentionalism, arguing that none of them does ­justice to perception.

8 Introduction In Chapter 5, I argue that this Merleau-Pontian view is also distinct from, and preferable to, Direct Realism. On the view I have developed, perception is an intentional accomplishment and cannot be understood simply in terms of the relation between a perspective and a worldly object. Neither is Merleau-Ponty’s view Idealist, though, since perception is conceived as a relation to a mind-transcendent thing. Drawing on color perception, I argue that the character of perceptual experience cannot be determined independently of either perceiver or perceived. In my final chapter, I turn to the problem of perception, explaining how Merleau-Ponty’s view handles cases of illusion and hallucination. I first argue against Disjunctivist solutions to this problem and then explain ­Merleau-Ponty’s solution. I argue that when viewed holistically and in terms of its ultimate rather than proximate objects, perception’s openness to the world is inalienable, even in cases of hallucination and illusion. My hope is that, taken together, these six chapters will provide a precise and illuminating description of our perceptual presence to the world as we experience it. Notes 1 Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), xxi. Note that Barbaras too rejects any choice between “continuity and rupture,” though, maintaining ­instead that Merleau-Ponty’s thought while far from static is nevertheless “profoundly united” (xxx). 2 Sebastian Gardner, “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” in The Transcendental Turn, eds. Sebastian Gardner and Matthew Grist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 3 I join Martin Dillon, for example, in thinking of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking as a deepening, rather than a reversal. Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), 51. Or Morris shows that there is an ontological element in Merleau-Ponty’s work right from the beginning, though “often downplayed or overlooked” by Merleau-Ponty. David Morris, Merleau-­ Ponty’s Developmental Ontology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 58. Cf. “Nature, Consciousness, and Metaphysics in Merleau-Ponty’s Early Thought,” Ergo, Forthcoming. 4 See Chapter 5 for an overview of these options. 5 Alva Noe, Action in Perception (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 9. 6 Noe, Action in Perception, 9–13. 7 For other concerns, see Hayden Kee, “The Surplus of Signification: MerleauPonty and Enactivism on the Continuity of Life, Mind, and Culture,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 28, no. 1 (2020): 27–52. 8 E.g., PhP, 167–8, 223–4, 247, 265, 369.

Part 1

The Sense of Perception

1 Perceptual Sense

Perception provides us a unique opening to the world around us. There is an obvious difference, for example, between thinking about coffee and smelling its aroma in a grinder. But how exactly should we characterize this perceptual opening, and how does it differ from other kinds of relations to the world around us? Part I takes up these questions. In this chapter, I get Merleau-Ponty’s description of the unique sense of perception into view. Merleau-Ponty starts his Phenomenology of Perception with this very question: the first sustained arguments of that book take up familiar accounts of perception as composed of either sensations or judgments. According to Merleau-Ponty, neither of these notions are sufficient to describe what it’s actually like to perceive. Perception, he argues, is sui generis and must be situated on its own terms. What I want to do here is to capture the gist of these arguments (which are quite complex and, admittedly, in many cases do not bear straightforwardly on contemporary discussions).1 Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, what the following sections will seek to show is that the content of perception – the unique set of meanings by which perception intends the world – cannot be described in terms of either sensation or judgment. Properly situating perception with respect to sensation and judgment will then allow us to describe perception’s own content, which I will call perceptual sense. To be clear, though, the question that I’ll be asking here is not so much whether perception is sensation or judgment (which, I think, is MerleauPonty’s question), but in keeping with contemporary debates, whether the content of perception can be characterized in terms of sensation and judgment. Perception could, for example, turn out to be a different kind of mental state than judgment, while nevertheless sharing its kind of content.2 Admittedly, posing the question this way involves some assumptions, since there are different ways in which we can define “content” and some views deny that perception even has content (a question to which I’ll return in Part II of this book). For now, I want to avoid these presuppositions as much as possible, letting “content” serve as a kind of placeholder. Provisionally, we DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-3

12  The Sense of Perception can simply say that perception presents the world as being some way and let “content” refer to the way in which perception presents the world.3 To ask what contents perception can have is to ask what features of the world it can present; to ask what kind of content perception has is to ask in what mode perception presents the world.4 Perception Is Not Mere Sensation One way to approach the distinctive content of perception is in terms of its sensory nature. When I perceive a sunset, I enjoy a host of sensations – vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows – that I do not when I merely think about a sunset. It is one thing to discuss Beethoven’s Fifth, and quite another to hear it played, in part because of the unique tones, pitches, and timbres that characterize the latter experience. Perhaps the distinctive content of perception is to be found in sensation, then: the wide range of colors, smells, tastes, feels, sounds, etc., that our sensory capacities provide to a varying degree. But while perception certainly has a sensory character that mere thinking lacks – and no account of perception can deny its sensory content – this does not entail that sensory contents suffice to define the content of perception. Indeed, in this section I will argue that they do not. It is common to think of the sensory aspect of perception in terms of sensation. The trouble, as Merleau-Ponty points out in the first chapter of the Phenomenology, is that it’s far from clear just what sensations are supposed to be, or what kinds of contents they have, if they have contents at all. Three options we might try are the following. Sensations are either (1) intrinsic, non-intentional features of experience, (2) relations to properties of objects, or (3) intentional relations to sensory properties of objects.5 In what follows, I suggest some considerations that weigh against the first two options and argue that not even the third will suffice to describe the contents of perception. A precaution: treating these three interpretations will carry us into debates about the relation between perception and its world that I will mostly avoid until Part II of this book. All I mean to do here is to point out the insufficiency of any of these interpretations to account for our experience of perception. Sensations as Intrinsic and Non-Intentional

On a first interpretation, sensations are non-intentional mental events. For example, on Peacocke’s account of sensation, perceptual experiences differ from sensation in that the former are representational, whereas the latter are intrinsic properties of experiences – i.e., “properties which help to

Perceptual Sense  13 specify what it is like to have the experience” – that are “explicable without reference to representational content.”6 Or, Husserl seems to have something similar in mind when he posits a non-intentional hyle of perception.7 But there are good reasons to doubt that our perception is characterized by such non-intentional mental events. In brief, the problem with this view is that it conflicts with the deeply world-directed nature of perceptual experience (note that a parallel issue, according to Butchvarov, redounds to Adverbialist accounts of sensation, which I return to in more depth in Chapter 4).8 Even if I am not intending some familiar, worldly object, such as an apple or leaf, in a sensation, I can nevertheless intend sensory properties as features of my environment. As Merleau-Ponty points out, just in virtue of differentiating two sensations of two colors, red on the left and green on the right, these two colors form a spatial scene before me (PhP, 3)9; insofar as my experience presents two colors alongside each other in space, it intends them as occupying some at least vague location. Something similar could be said for the experience of touch, say, which locates feelings along my body.10 One might respond that to situate colors spatially is not necessarily to situate them within the environment: perhaps we can imagine these two colors as occupying some subjective space, a sort of visual screen composed of colors and shapes which are not yet distributed into an objective threedimensional space. Certainly, there is no basis for positing this kind of visual screen if we turn to our experience; we ordinarily experience objects and properties as spread out before us in depth: as forming a spatial milieu around us, according to which the various features of the world are situated in greater or lesser proximity to ourselves.11 Even if I  am not born with this sophisticated capacity for depth, the fact is that for mature perceivers (without perceptual impairments) depth is a primary output of the visual system, and nowhere in my experience can I find some sort of visual screen in which sensory properties are experienced without depth. Even if I cannot identify that red dome over there as the kettle, it is ­nevertheless presented to me or intended as occupying a particular place in my spatial milieu. Experiences (and their intrinsic properties) don’t occupy a place in my spatial milieu, but color and shape do, and so this non-intentional account seems inapt. Nor could one contest Merleau-Ponty’s point that visual sensations enter into a common visual scene; there is no room to object that red and green are given in entirely separate presentations and so needn’t be presented as spatially distinguished within a common visual field. Sensations are never given atomistically, since, on the contrary, perception operates holistically: every sensation is defined by the whole of sensations to which it belongs. For example, in Figure 1.1, square A initially appears to be darker than square B, though in fact they share the exact

14  The Sense of Perception luminance. This occurs because their luminance is perceived relative to the shadow cast by the cylinder and their location on the checkered board. The perception of luminance is holistic in that the perception of the luminance of any particular part of a scene is influenced by those of the others. Further, this suggestion seems to conflict with perception’s constancy. As I move around a circular plate, I maintain a perceptual awareness that the shape before me is not itself changing, though the appearance of that shape is. Should we say that, when I see a circular object at an angle, I have a sensation of an ellipse? Of course, there is a sense in which I am, or at least can become, aware of an ellipse. In Chapter 5, I will argue that such awareness is actually an abstraction, but for now we can note that, at the very least, the awareness of an ellipse does not exhaust the content of my perception: a visually mature subject perceptually presents a circle at an angle, i.e., in depth. The same can be said with respect to color constancy. A colored object actually looks to be the same color through changes in lighting; Merleau-Ponty points out that a piece of blue paper placed under yellow light looks blue, rather than brown (which is not to say that we don’t perceive a difference when we move it from white to yellow light – it just looks like blue paper under a yellow light).12

Figure 1.1  The Checker Shadow Illusion.

Perceptual Sense  15 In both cases, if sensations were simply intrinsic features of experiences, it’s hard to see why we have constancy (in fact, this seems to me equally a problem for Sense-Datum and Adverbialist views).13 Our experiences of properties like shape and color are governed by constancy because they present us with features of objects, rather than features of experience. In Burge’s terms, “constancies are expressions of objectification,” i.e., of the process by which a perceptual system outputs presentations of objects in an environment on the basis of proximal stimulation of sensory organs.14 If we thought that perception was exhausted by non-intentional sensory states, then we would lose sight of the function of perceptual constancy.15 Sensations as Properties of Objects

Let us try the second option then: perhaps sensations should be understood not in terms of intrinsic features of mental states but in terms of the properties of objects. Of course, the suggestion is not that sensations are themselves properties of objects, since sensations are straightforwardly dependent on a perceiver that has them in a way that (at least some) properties of objects are not: objects can be red, but presumably no one would claim that objects can be sensations of red. Rather, the suggestion is that to have a sensation is to stand in a kind of relation to a property of an object: to have a sensation of red, say, is to stand in a particular kind of relation to an apple’s property “red.” This is a kind of Direct Realism about sensation, on which sensation is fundamentally an openness to a specific aspect of the world. If the trouble with the view of sensations as non-intentional mental states is that it fails to capture the world-directed character of sensation, then realism about sensation marks an improvement, since it claims that when I have a sensation, I stand in a direct relation to some sensory features of my environment. This view, however, faces problems of its own, since sensations don’t act much like properties of objects. For example, as has often been noted, sensations are indeterminate in a way that the properties of objects are not. Merleau-Ponty invokes peripheral vision to make this point: there are no precise edges where the visual field stops, as if it were framed.16 This means that the visual field is not composed of fully determinate sensations surrounded by a region fully devoid of sensation. Rather, there must be a zone of ambiguous or indeterminate presence. For example, if a colored object is introduced at the periphery of one’s vision, one may be able to tell that the object is there without being able to identify its color. Certainly, the object is not determinately perceived as colorless; rather, it is perceived as indeterminately colored (up to about 20 or 30 degrees from the center of vision).17 But the object itself doesn’t have an indeterminate color: only the sensation does.

16  The Sense of Perception Thus, we cannot think of sensations in terms of simply receiving the properties of objects. Merleau-Ponty calls the view that we can read off the character of our experience by identifying the properties of objects the “Constancy Hypothesis” – according to which there is “a point-by-point correspondence and a constant connection between the stimulus and the elementary perception” – and rejects it (PhP, 8). This is in part because, as we have already seen, sensations operate holistically. The sensation of a particular color, for example, is mediated by other colors in (and the lighting of) the environment. The properties of objects themselves do not operate holistically, however. In the example above, square B does not depend for the wavelengths of light it emits on the colors around it, even while the sensation of its shade does. So, while sensations are world-directed, they cannot consist only of relations to sensory features of the environment. Admittedly, we might say that the purpose of such holistic mediation is to put our senses in touch with our environment – but this does not entail that sensation can be accounted for simply in terms of receiving sensory features of the environment.18 Sensation as Intentional

None of these arguments rule out a third kind of view: namely, that sensations are a kind of intentional state. On this view, sensations are neither intrinsic properties of mental states nor properties of objects; rather, they are a species of intention, with its own species of content.19 On this view, both thoughts and sensations of things like colors and shapes intend those properties, they just do so in different ways, with markedly different experiential characters. If sensation is intentional, then it is obviously immune to objections rooted in the intentional character of experience, which burdened the account of sensation as intrinsic and non-intentional. Further, it will be no surprise that we cannot explain our sensations simply by reporting the properties of objects, since intentions need not be fixed solely by their objects. For example, if a picture represents an object blurrily, we explain the blurriness by appeal not to the object but to the properties of the picture. While Merleau-Ponty rejects the notion of “sensation” as confused, he also provides a detailed analysis of “sensing” throughout that work and often describes it in intentional terms. For example, he writes that When I am certain of having sensed, the certainty of an external thing is included within the very manner in which sensation is articulated and developed in front of me: it is a pain in my leg, or it is some red,

Perceptual Sense  17 and an opaque red upon a single plane, for example, or rather a threedimensional red atmosphere. (PhP, 393) When I feel pain, I intend it as in my leg, and when I see red, I see it not as a detached qualia but as a specific red occupying a specific space of my environment. This is my preferred way of talking about sensation as well: a sensation is a kind of intentional state that presents sensory properties. And indeed, to the extent that we do perceptually intend sensory properties, I think we do have sensations. But we have to be careful with this language, which might invite a familiar, stark division between two layers of perceptual experience: one sensational and the other genuinely perceptual. This division loses much of its motivation if sensation, like perception, is intentional, and I doubt it is phenomenologically practicable. However, if by “sensation” we just mean the perceptual presentation of sensory properties, then I don’t think we need any sharp division. To my mind, this view doesn’t even need a sharp distinction between sensory and other, “richer” properties (and I think we have good reason to question such a distinction: shape, for example, is often identified as a sensory property, despite the fact that shape perception can amount to quite a sophisticated organization of perceptual space). Thus, I don’t mean to draw any sharp division between two layers of perception; rather, my aim here is just to argue that perception is intentional right through, including in its presentation of sensory properties (however, and indeed whether, we choose to define these). Admittedly, this view of sensation is controversial and breaks with certain familiar ways of construing sensation. Part of the reason this view may be uncomfortable is that traditionally sensations have been posited to do explanatory work in accounting for perception: sensations are supposed to be the basis on which I can impose an interpretation that allows perception to be intentional. Merleau-Ponty’s point, though, is that nothing like a purely sensory layer of perception is attested to by our experience. Ordinarily, our sensory experiences of features like color, shape, and sound are intentional from the first, differentiated and located perceptually within our environment. It might be natural to suppose a layer of sensations as a first effect upon consciousness of the environment’s interaction with our sensory organs; but the fact that sensory stimuli effect our organs in a simple and unmixed manner hardly entails that the first element in consciousness will be simple and unmixed sensations. One might recall here one of Husserl’s reasons for identifying a nonintentional layer of sensation, hyletic data: namely, that the same sensations can be given different interpretations.20 This argument doesn’t

18  The Sense of Perception work, however. I can give different interpretations to the same intentional data as well, as when I perceptually intend someone as running but interpret the running as either fleeing, say, or jogging. So, the mere fact of admitting multiple interpretations doesn’t entail non-intentionality. Hopp has demonstrated the tensions that such a view introduces into Husserl’s thinking and argues that the better Husserlian view would admit no non-intentional hyletic data.21 So, I think we do the best job of describing the phenomena if we allow that sensation is a kind of intentional state that presents sensory properties (such as color and shape). However, not even on this view can sensations suffice to account for the content of perception. This is because perception presents to us a much broader range of the world than just sensory properties.22 It is often observed that we perceive a world of things, not only of sensory properties. When I turn my head to look in the kitchen, I see, among other things, coffee beans and wine on the shelf, not just small brown ovals and an elongated dark cylinder. Of course, I do see the colors and shapes, but I perceive them as the color and the shape of what I perceptually recognize to be the coffee and the wine bottle. It is no part of my conscious experience that I inhabit a world of only colors and shapes: rather, the colors and shapes are the colors and shapes of things. Doubtless, we at times struggle to recognize what is before us – I may be uncertain whether I am seeing a rock or a log, for example. Perhaps in such cases we struggle to interpret a mass of sensations. But the mere fact that these sensations could, upon closer inspection, resolve themselves into a stable perceptual interpretation already presupposes that perception goes beyond mere sensation: having uninterpreted sensations is the abnormal stance and is marked by a tension in which we seek the appropriate interpretation, or else – in certain aesthetic experiences – momentarily cede the movement of perception in order to inhabit sensation. Perhaps at times we can even immerse ourselves into a single homogenous sensation, the blue of the sky, say. But as soon as a wisp of cloud interrupts this blue, it is no longer possible to imagine this as mere sensation: we do not see just blue, we see the sky. This point needs to be substantiated, however. Following MerleauPonty, I will appeal to the gestalt properties of perception in order to demonstrate its meaningfulness. I’ll consider five gestalt phenomena: grouping, figure-ground, closure, reversibility, and what Gurwitsch calls “functional significance.” While, of course, Gestalt Theory does not today enjoy the prominence it did when Merleau-Ponty wrote the Phenomenology, the existence of gestalt effects – like grouping, figure-ground, and r­ eversibility – is uncontroversial.23 The evidence I use does not require Gestalt Theory to be right in every regard: it only requires the existence of such gestalt effects.24

Perceptual Sense  19 Grouping

It is a well attested phenomenon that certain elements of, e.g., the visual field are perceived as going together more strongly than others, i.e., as grouped. Consider the below series of dots (Figure 1.2): As one moves from a to d, the appearance of grouping gradually ­dissolves (and the scale could be continued such that ultimately the groupings reverse), until at d there is no perceived grouping at all. The contrast between a and d lies not just in the spatial position of the dots but also in the perceptual sense of grouping that is present in a but absent in d. But we do not, I argue, have a sensation of grouping. Certainly, if we thought of sensations as features of objects, grouping is unlikely to count, since there is no grouping in the dots themselves: of course, a1 and a2 (the first and second dots in the A line) are objectively more proximal than a2 and a3, but this alone does not entail that a1 and a2 are a pair. More importantly, a grouping is quite unlike a sensory element like a shape or color; being a group is not a sensory property but instead a relation between sensory properties. The grouping does not introduce a new sensation alongside the black or the roundness of the dots: it is just a relation between the dots that pairs some but not others.25 Or, we might say that the grouping is an organization of those sensory elements; it is a structure that can remain relatively constant despite changes in sensory properties like color, shape, and (as the B line shows) even to some extent location. Because grouping is not a sensation but an organization, I can imagine a perceptual system that grouped a2 and a3, rather than a1 and a2, without that perceptual system having any different sensations than mine.26 If one wanted to explain the grouping in terms of sensations, one might try to do so in terms of location, since it is the near dots that are grouped. But proximity is not the same thing as belonging to a group, even if normally proximate items are grouped. For example (Figure 1.3): Here the two central vertical lines are nearer to each other than the outer vertical lines, but they are perceived as grouped with the outer lines rather than with each other, since the operative feature here becomes closure rather than proximity. Various features motivate grouping, some of which seem like they can be accounted for by sensation (similarity of size, color,

Figure 1.2  Grouping by Proximity.

20  The Sense of Perception

Figure 1.3  Grouping by Closure.

or orientation, for example), others less so (such as parallelism, symmetry, and closure).27 But even if the relevant features can be accounted for by sensations, to say that various sensations prompt or motivate grouping is not to say that the grouping is a sensation; explaining a grouping in terms of sensation does not entail equating grouping with a sensation. On the other hand, if the grouping is not a sensation, one might doubt whether it is genuinely perceived. Perhaps we merely perceive the sensation and then form a belief that certain dots are grouped? I’ll respond to this kind of objection in more depth later but consider that it is just as possible to form a belief that d1 and d2, are grouped, or a2 and a3, as that a1 and a2 are. These beliefs differ only in the extent to which they are attested by our perceptions. So, it seems very plausible that we do perceive grouping and that grouping is not itself a sensation.28 Figure-Ground Structure

Let us turn to another gestalt phenomenon: figure-ground structure. It is a characteristic feature of perception that it organizes sensations in such a way as to distinguish between a figure (or foreground) and a ground (background) against which it stands out. For example, the well-known Rubin’s Vase (Figure 1.4) is a reversible figure in which one either perceives two contraposed white faces on a black background or a black vase on a white background. Nothing about the sensations involved in the image requires one to take either vase or faces as the figure. Indeed, nothing in the sensations excludes seeing the pattern as a mosaic, without figure-ground distinction. And when the figure and ground reverse, it does not seem as if the sensations themselves have changed.29 Rather, what has changed is the organization of those sensations. When the vase becomes the figure, for example, it is suddenly grouped as a determinate shape, whereas before it existed as an indeterminate background continuing underneath the faces. The perception of depth changes: whereas the black region was seen as distant, now it appears to be in front of the white region. Further, the border changes ownership: now it appears as the border of the vase, i.e., as the limit that belongs to the vase.

Perceptual Sense  21

Figure 1.4  Rubin’s Vase.

One might try to explain these changes in terms of a sensation of depth, if one allows depth to count as a sensation. This might explain some of the organizational changes undergone by the figure in reversion, but it doesn’t seem to explain all of them: for example, while a change in sensation of depth might prompt the change in grouping a determinate shape or in border-ownership, a change in depth is not itself a change in grouping or border-ownership. Moreover, there is something it quite clearly does not explain by itself: closure. Closure

Perception also exhibits closure, the effect that we tend to perceive grouped objects as complete wholes, even when our sensory information about those objects is incomplete. For example, we perceive the below objects as a circle and rectangle partially occluded from view, rather than as a random series of lines (Figure 1.5). But while the shapes are perceived as complete (i.e., as a circle and rectangle), the requisite sensations are not complete. We perceive a circle, even though we don’t have all the sensations of a complete circle. Thus, completion seems to carry us beyond the sensory givens. Consider the Kanizsa Triangle (Figure 1.6). When I see this image, there looks to be a white borderless triangle superimposed on a white black-bordered triangle and three black circles. We cannot account for this perception simply in terms of sensation, though: I perceive three black circles covered by a triangle, but presumably no one would say I have the sensations of three black circles. If we consider only the properties sensorially presented in this figure, we have no circles at all but rather three black “pacmen.” I have no sensation of the black wedge

22  The Sense of Perception

Figure 1.5  Closure.

Figure 1.6  Kanizsa Triangle.

under the triangle, then, even though I genuinely see the shapes as circles continuing underneath the triangle. Nor do I merely think the shapes are circles: if I carefully attend to the black shapes in isolation from the rest of the image, I can succeed in seeing them as “pacmen.” But when I again see them as part of the image, they appear again as circles, occluded by the figure. In both cases, I can think that I am merely seeing “pacmen;” nevertheless, there is a perceptual difference.30 And the same goes for less contrived perceptions. If I see a cat behind a picket fence, for example, I do not merely see cat slices and fence posts: rather, the cat looks to continue

Perceptual Sense  23 behind the fenceposts, even though I have no sensations of white, fluffy cat shapes in those regions. Thus, I can be perceptually aware of more sensory properties than those of which I have sensations. For I am perceptually aware of the black circle, but I don’t have a sensation of a black circle. Color and shape, though, are sensory properties. Can we somehow insist that I do have sensations of circles, here? I doubt there is any account of sensation on which we can. For the notion of sensation is supposed to capture that phenomenal character that goes with being, so to speak, directly presented with sensory properties. While we do perceive the black shapes as occluded circles, there is nevertheless a difference between the Kanizsa Triangle and an exactly similar image where the missing wedges of the circle are filled in. It is natural to account for this difference in terms of sensation: while in both images we perceive black circles, only in the latter do we have all the sensations of a black circle. Thus, there is a perceptual awareness of sensory properties that should not be reduced to the sensation of sensory properties. Reversible Figures

Next, consider reversible figures – images which can be perceived in more than one way – such as Rubin’s Vase, the Necker Cube, or the DuckRabbit. The differences between the two percepts in such cases are not well explained by differences in sensations, which seem largely constant through perceptual shifts. For example, one can perceive the Necker Cube (Figure 1.7) in two different orientations, with either the lower left or the upper right square in front. Certainly, the figure looks differently depending on which orientation perceptually appears, even though the sensations of lines and shapes themselves seem constant between the two appearances. Therefore, neither perception is reducible to the available sensations. One might object that, in the case of the Necker Cube, it is not entirely clear that the sensations are the same. The relevant difference between the two perceptions here lies in the depth of the surfaces and orientation of the figure. But perhaps such features do figure in sensations, and so we can explain the ambiguity of the image simply in terms of the ambiguity of the sensations. This explanation appears less plausible, however, when we turn to other reversible figures, such as the Duck-Rabbit (Figure 1.8). Here, both percepts largely share the same sensations (there is no considerable difference in color, shape, location, size, etc.), but as in the Necker Cube, there seems to be an undeniable perceptual difference depending on which percept appears. What explains this difference? One obvious explanation is that in one case one perceives the figure as a duck and in the other as a rabbit. If this is true, then

24  The Sense of Perception

Figure 1.7  The Necker Cube.

Figure 1.8  The Duck-Rabbit.

clearly more than sensation is involved, since presumably one cannot have a sensation as of a duck or rabbit: sensations only present sensory properties, and being a duck is not a sensory property. But this claim is contentious, and I don’t need to make it here – all I need at this point is the thought that the two percepts differ without differing primarily in sensations.

Perceptual Sense  25 One might try to resist this argument in various ways. For example, we might try to say something similar to what we said about the Necker Cube: perhaps the differences between the two percepts lies in a sensation of orientation, given that in the “duck” percept the face points left, while in the “rabbit” it points right. Even if we suppose that orientation can be a sensation, though, I doubt it alone will explain the perceptual contrast, for surely orientation is not the only difference between the two percepts. The case is not like the Necker Cube, in which we had the same cube in two different orientations: the duck and rabbit percepts don’t look like the same face pointing in different directions.31 Functional Significance

Finally, I want to clarify an important aspect of gestalt phenomena, namely that, in Gurwtisch’s terms, the parts of a perceptual whole possess a “functional significance” relative to the perceived whole to which they belong. Consider the various ridges on Rubin’s Vase that make up the features of the two opposed faces. If one were to remove these ridges or vastly alter their locations, it would have little impact on one’s ability to perceive a vase; however, it would preclude the perception of two faces. Thus, those ridges play a vastly different role in the two percepts: accidental to one and essential to the other. Or, the divet on the right hand side of the Duck-­Rabbit plays an important role in the rabbit perception, suggesting a mouth, but has no significance for the duck perception. Thus, as ­Gurwtisch puts it, Each constituent of a Gestalt has a certain function within its structure …. The functional significance of each constituent derives from the total structure of the Gestalt, and by virtue of its functional significance, each constituent contributes towards this total structure and organization.32 That is, the parts of a gestalt are determined by (and contribute to determining) the overall gestalt to which they belong. In this sense, we can speak of the parts of a perception as having a functional significance or as having a certain function within the overall perceived structure. Thus, we might say that when a perceptual shift occurs in a perceptual figure, each part of the whole undergoes a transformation of functional significance. Here too, we see that sensation is inadequate to describe perception. Nothing in the relevant sensations of the parts (e.g., the white protrusions in Rubin’s Vase) contains the functional significance they exert, since the functional significance derives from the parts’ relation to a whole. Thus, no transformation is required in the sensations themselves for a dramatic

26  The Sense of Perception transformation to occur in the overall percept. Of course, it is also true that sensations, as we have seen, operate holistically or are relative to the whole of the perceptual field. But the two effects are not the same, as can be seen by the fact that in Rubin’s Vase, the sensations of the divets are largely the same between the two percepts, even while the functional significance of the parts changes dramatically.33 To conclude, all of these gestalt phenomena suggest that even if we take the best view of sensation – on which sensation is a perceptual intention of certain features of the world – we cannot account for perception in terms of sensation alone. Instead, perception is characterized by features such as grouping, figure-ground structure, completion, reversibility, and functional significance, none of which have ready or plausible explanations in terms of sensation alone. So let us allow that perception is “richer” than what sensation alone could explain. Let us allow, then, that perception has sensory content (it has content that intends sensory features of the world in a distinctively sensory manner) but that perceptual content is irreducible to sensory content.34 But what then is perception? Since the most obviously rich mental states are conceptual, such as judgments or beliefs, let us now ask – if we cannot explain perception in terms of sensations – whether we can better explain perception in terms of judgments, beliefs, or their contents, namely, concepts. Perception Is Not Judgment Can perception be understood in terms of judgment? The first, obvious point is that perception is not itself a judgment. As Merleau-Ponty points out, judgment is active in a way that perception is not: Between sensing and judging, ordinary experience draws a very clear distinction. It understands judgment to be a position-taking; judgment aims at knowing something valid for me across all the moments of my life and valid for other existing or possible minds. It takes sensing, on the contrary, to be the giving of oneself over to the appearance without seeking to possess it or to know its truth. (PhP, 35–6) This fact comes out most obviously in optical illusions: one can stably judge the lines in the Zöllner Illusion to be parallel without thereby being able stably to perceive them in parallel (Figure 1.9). But there is a deeper question here: not whether perception is a judgment, but whether it has the kind of content that judgments have, namely, propositional content (that is, the sort of content that could be expressed

Perceptual Sense  27

Figure 1.9  The Zöllner Illusion.

in a “that” clause). For example, can the content of perception be properly expressed by saying “I perceive that the cat is on the chair”? Of course, entertaining a proposition may be experientially quite unlike perceiving. We can perceive an object and even perceptually explore it – walking around it, attending to its color or texture, say – without consciously weighing any proposition at all. As Husserl puts it, to entertain a proposition, one must simultaneously attend to a subject and a predicate and then synthesize them; in Husserl’s terms, propositions are doublerayed, while perception is single-rayed, attending to things, qualities, and events without synthesis of subject and predicate.35 But to say that perception has propositional content is not to say that it is experientially like entertaining a proposition. Rather, the thought is that perception involves intending or representing the world in a propositional manner, whether or not we are consciously attending to propositions or to subjects and predicates simultaneously.36 My perception represents the lemon in the bowl to be yellow, such that we can correctly say “I perceive that the lemon is yellow,” whether or not I am consciously entertaining this proposition. But there are good reasons to doubt that perception has propositional content. Husserl points out that for any perception, the statements (or propositions) we can use to express that perception are underdetermined by it.37 If I see the cat sitting on the chair, say, I express this perception with the proposition, “The cat is on the chair,” equally well as, “The chair is under the cat.” These propositions are perhaps logically equivalent or, if one wanted, extensionally equivalent (they represent the same state of

28  The Sense of Perception affairs). But they are not the same and they do not have the same meaning, even though the perceptual experience they describe is one and the same. There is a perceptual relationship between cat and chair that is not identical to either of these propositions (whether actively formed by me or not), but which is expressed in both. Perhaps one could respond that one or the other of these propositions is the content of one’s perception. But then it is entirely arbitrary which proposition the perception has as its content. Or are both the content of the perception? But this would seem to entail that one perception involves two representations of the same state of the world. Such views strike me as contrived. It would be more apt to allow that perception has a single content of its own, which we can then express in various propositions. There is a further problem for the propositional view, though.38 For propositions are composed of concepts: there are different ways to define “proposition” of course, but I think any recognizable view on which the contents of perceptions are propositions will entail the thought that concepts are contents of perceptions. However, as I will now argue, perception does not have conceptual content. And if this is true, then a fortiori perception does not have propositional content. Non-Conceptual Content It is natural to think of perception as having conceptual contents. I seem to see a world not just of colors and shapes but of things, and things which largely conform to my conceptual repertoire. For example, if I see not just brightness and orange but the cat lying in a sunbeam, quite plausibly it is my possession and perceptual application of the concepts “cat” and “sunbeam” that enable this, so to speak, “rich” perception. Many philosophers have taken just this tack. Sellars, for example, famously advocates such a view, writing that “it is, I suppose, as non-­ controversial as anything philosophical can be that visual perception involves conceptual representations.”39 But in this section, I will argue that on the contrary, perception’s content is not conceptual. Perception certainly exhibits a rich organization and cohesion, but as Merleau-Ponty puts it, this is “a cohesion without concept” (VI, 152). One reason to think that perception does not have conceptual content is that, as Hopp points out, conceptual contents are “detachable” from perceptions, i.e., I can occupy a mental state with conceptual content for which the object intended by that state is not perceptually present.40 ­Suppose that when I perceive a head of garlic on the windowsill, a content of my perception is the concept “garlic.” This concept can equally well figure in the content of a belief (e.g., “There’s more garlic on the windowsill”) when I am working at the stove with my back turned to the windowsill. Thus, perception clearly

Perceptual Sense  29 cannot be defined simply in terms of conceptual contents, since ­having ­conceptual contents is not sufficient for having perception.41 One might, of course, still suggest that conceptual contents are necessary for perception, and for a perception to come about some additional condition must be met. One version of such a view, what Hopp terms a “dual component theory,” holds that perceptions are composed of both concepts and some non-intentional sensations or qualia (this is basically Peacocke’s view, for example, touched on above).42 But Merleau-Ponty suggests a compelling argument against such a view. Consider the following, from the “Primacy of Perception”: The meaning which I ultimately discover [in perception] is not of the conceptual order. If it were a concept, the question would be how I can recognize it in the sense data, and it would be necessary for me to interpose between the concept and the sense data certain intermediaries and then other intermediaries between these intermediaries and so on. It is necessary that meaning and signs, the form and matter of perception, be related from the beginning and that, as we say, the matter of perception be ‘pregnant with its form’.43 As a regress argument, this argument is not immediately convincing: why, if we think of perception as combining sensory and conceptual content, are we forced to interpose intermediaries between intermediaries, and so on? Kant, for example, agrees with Merleau-Ponty that we need an intermediary between the manifold of intuition and concepts, namely, schemata: but why think that Kant would need to introduce an intermediary between schemata and concepts, or schemata and the manifold of intuition? Still, the core idea of this argument is compelling. Concepts and sense data do not ordinarily specify each other: within certain limits, any concept is compatible with an infinite variety of sense data, and conversely any sense data can in principle (rightly or wrongly) be conceptualized in infinite ways.44 The best way to see this is to consider that possessing a concept does not suffice for recognizing that concept – to use Merleau-Ponty’s terms above – in the sense data. I can have a very well-articulated concept of Theaetetus, say, and yet if I have never seen him before I could fail to recognize him even though he is standing right before me.45 Similarly, I could be looking at two randomly arranged clusters of dots, one with 27 dots and the other with 28. I can hardly tell, simply by looking, which is which (though of course I can discover the difference if I count carefully). If someone now tells me which is which, the only thing that has changed is that I know which has 27 dots and which has 28. But I do not see this difference: the one does not look to have 28 dots and the other 27. In other words, I can entertain the appropriate concept and the

30  The Sense of Perception appropriate sensations without visually recognizing the concept in those sensations. That is, entertaining a concept of X and entertaining the appropriate sensations are not jointly sufficient for perceiving X. Once I become perceptually familiar with Theaetetus, things may be quite different: when presented with the appropriate sensations, I recognize him. What has changed in this case? If we still want to explain the perception in terms of recognizing a concept in sense data, then presumably what has changed is that we have acquired some intermediary between the concept and sense data that correlate them. Could we instead explain the difference in terms of a change in my concept of Theaetetus – perhaps that, after meeting him, my concept of him has changed to specify certain sensory features? This strikes me as implausible. First, whatever enrichment my concept has undergone will presumably itself be conceptual: e.g., I learn that Theaetetus has a snub nose and protruding eyes, and this allows me to recognize him. But this only defers the problem, since now we need to explain how I recognize a snub nose or protruding eyes (and this is perhaps what Merleau-Ponty means when he says we would have to introduce intermediaries between intermediaries). Further, this explanation is a clear failure in many cases. No matter how many times I perceive 27 dots, if I am presented with a novel arrangement of 27 dots, I will not be able to perceptually distinguish it from 28 dots. On the other hand, I have no trouble recognizing any variety of groupings of five dots. But it seems wildly implausible to attribute this difference to my grasp of the concepts “5” and “27.” I have equally sophisticated concepts of “5” and “27” (aside, say, from a greater familiarity with “5’s” multiplication table). More, you will never be able to teach me something about the concept “27” that enables me to recognize it in a random distribution of “27” dots without counting. What I have in the case of “5” but not of “27” is not conceptual clarity: rather, what I have is a distinctly perceptual capacity, which extends to “5” but not to “27.” “5” is, so to speak, a number that I have met before, and I am familiar with how “5” looks – but no introduction to “27” will make me equally familiar with it. The explanation would also seem to fail in cases of agnosia, e.g., prosopagnosia (or “face blindness”), the inability to recognize faces. A prosopagnosic is more or less in the situation I am with respect to Theaetetus before I meet him: though they possess the relevant sensory features and concepts, they can’t see the person before them as Theaetetus. As Pallis’ patient A.H. put it, “I can see the eyes, nose, and mouth quite clearly but they just don’t add up.”46 Of course, the prosopagnosic can infer who they are seeing, by identifying unusual facial features, by voice, or by context cues. Sacks writes, in part describing his own condition: Many prosopagnosics recognize people by voice, posture, or gait; and, of course, context and expectation are paramount—one expects to see

Perceptual Sense  31 one’s students at school, one’s colleagues at the office, and so on. Such strategies, both conscious and unconscious, become so automatic that people with moderate prosopagnosia can remain unaware of how poor their facial recognition actually is, and are startled if it is revealed to them by testing (for example, with photographs that omit ancillary clues like hair or eyeglasses).47 Sacks describes this kind of inference becoming so automatic that the prosopagnosic often doesn’t explicitly experience a perceptual deficit; ­ nevertheless, in at least many cases, they cannot properly be said to visually recognize faces, as becomes clear when the grounds of inference (e.g., ­distinguishing features) are removed. Thus, Sacks points out how he especially struggles to recognize people outside of contexts in which he would expect to encounter them. There is no conceptual problem here – indeed, prosopagnosics may have richer concepts of the visual features of a friend, since they are forced to rely on them – but instead the absence of a perceptual intermediary between sensation and concept. So, if we wish to say that perception involves recognizing a concept in sense data, there must be some intermediary that makes this recognition possible. This alone is no threat to the concept view, of course, since it still explains perception in terms of recognizing a concept. But consider what kind of intermediary would be appropriate here. Let us imagine, for example, the intermediary as some hidden schema that does not show up in conscious awareness at all. In this case, conscious perception would have the following character: I perceive a set of sense data, and a corresponding concept pops into my head. Further, I am presumably aware that the concept is instantiated in the sense data: that yellow crescent there instantiates “banana.” But do I perceive a banana in this case? Not at all. What is in front of me still does not look like a banana; it looks like some sense data, which I entertain while entertaining the concept of banana.48 For example, imagine one has exactly one’s current perceptual capacities, but is given this kind of sub-personal schema, such that whenever one perceives 27 dots, one forms the concept “27” and is aware of the dots instantiating “27.” What has not changed at all, with the addition of this schema, is how the dots look: they still look like a bunch of dots, which I happen to conceptualize as “27.” In this case, I  have the sensations and I have the concept, but I don’t recognize the concept in the sensations in the way I do with “5.” The case would be rather like a prosopagnosic “recognizing” a person by a name tag, say: the recognition is conceptual rather than perceptual (of course, the name is perceived, and then the person inferred, but the person is not directly perceived). Whatever our intermediary is going to be, then, it will have to be itself a content of conscious perception. Short of this, it will only succeed in correlating sensation and concepts without recognition. When something,

32  The Sense of Perception for example, looks like a banana, we don’t just have the concept “banana” in conjunction with yellow and crescent-shaped sensations: perception has some content that mediates between sensation and concept. Moreover, this content will have to be “rich” or meaningful enough to serve as an intermediary. If we imagine that my perception of 27 dots has some content in virtue of which it is correlated with the concept “27,” but that this content doesn’t actually involve presenting the scene before me as containing 27 dots (i.e., if it doesn’t in some sense have the relevant quantity as a content), then once again I will not see 27 dots. The scene before me will only look like a large quantity of dots, which I happen to connect with the concept “27”. Even here we cannot properly speak of perceptual recognition, since what is missing is precisely the perceptual awareness of quantity, which (in contrast) I possess when I see only 5 dots. That is, whatever perceptual content is supposed to function as an intermediary will have to be rich enough to present the world in the manner corresponding to the concepts it is supposed to mediate. In sum, to perceptually recognize is not to have a concept correlated with some sensations, even were the correlation thoroughly regular. Something else is present when we perceive, something that is not itself a concept or a sensation. Whatever this intermediary, this third thing is, it must itself be a content of perception and “rich” enough to explain perceptual “looks,” e.g., how five dots look to be five, or how Theaetetus looks to be Theaetetus. Now, a “three-component view,” on which perception consists of sensations, intermediary, and concepts, is certainly possible. But it isn’t very tempting. For we introduced conceptual content precisely to explain this rich character of perception. If, in order to explain the rich character of perception, concepts require recourse to some intermediary that itself allows perception to be rich, then there is no need for conceptual content at all. Far from explaining the richness of perception, concepts can only be mistaken for perceptual contents because perception is already rich. Thus, it is superfluous – indeed, needlessly complex – to posit concepts as part of the content of perception. We should reject, then, a view on which perception’s content is conceptual. If we do reject this view, then our “intermediary” between sensations and concepts is not an intermediary at all. Instead, it is itself responsible for perception’s richness: perception has its own kind of content, not reducible to sensations or concepts. Again, though, to be clear, my view does allow that we have sensations and that these figure in perception. On the other hand, my argument does not absolutely exclude concepts from the content of perception (though I very much doubt that concepts are the sorts of things that could ever be contents of perception). All I have shown here is that neither “sensations” nor “concepts” suffice to describe the contents of

Perceptual Sense  33 perception. Moreover, neither is the latter necessary to this description (at least, we don’t need to posit concepts as contents of perception in order to account for perception), which leaves a conceptual account of perception unmotivated. Instead, I think we need an account of perception’s own kind of content, perceptual sense. Perceptual Sense We have seen that perception has a sense of its own, one not reducible to propositional or conceptual meanings. In this section, I begin to characterize this distinctive kind of sense. As mentioned above, in speaking of sense, I am referring to MerleauPonty’s term sens, which could be alternately translated as sense or meaning (I use both interchangeably). This term has generated significant scholarly interest and inspired a number of impressive works in recent years,49 but instead of providing a detailed interpretation here, I will simply draw on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking as appropriate to articulate a few essential features of perception’s distinctive genre of sense. In fact, we have already tacitly encountered Merleau-Ponty’s notion of sense in speaking of the organized and holistic character of perception. Merleau-Ponty, in his argument against construing perception in terms of atomistic sensations, writes: Consider a white patch against a homogenous background. All points on the patch have a certain common ‘function’ that makes them into a ‘figure.’ The figure’s color is denser and somehow more resistant than the background’s color. The borders of the white patch ‘belong’ to the patch and, despite being contiguous with it, do not join with the background. The patch seems to be placed upon the background and does not interrupt it. Each part announces more than it contains, and thus this elementary perception is already charged with a sense [sens]. (PhP, 4)50 Perception has a sense, according to Merleau-Ponty, insofar as each part of a perceptual whole “announces more than it contains,” i.e., insofar as it is relative to a perceptual whole that is not reducible to the sum of the parts considered in themselves. In other words, perception is meaningful insofar as it exhibits structuration or organization; it is in terms of such organization that perception, so to speak, “makes sense” to us. In grouping, for example, we have – beyond isolated sensations – the perceptual sense of certain portions of the perceptual field going together. A grouping is more than just the sum of parts, a set of determinate regions of the perceptual field, say. This can clearly be seen by the fact that it is entirely

34  The Sense of Perception possible to isolate a given region of the perceptual field without perceiving that region as grouped. Instead, grouping is a structuration or organization of the perceptual field, which sets certain portions of the field together and apart from others. It is, in other words, a way in which a perceptual scene begins to “make sense” for us, i.e., to acquire a meaningful articulation. The same can be seen with figure-ground structure, which organizes the perceptual field in such a way that we perceive depth, the grouping of a figure that becomes focal relative to a background, and the continuity of the background beneath the figure. In this way, figure-ground is another manner of organization of the perceptual field in virtue of which the latter makes sense to us. Is it proper to speak of this kind of perceptual “sense” in terms of meaning? I think so. I don’t want to embark on an extended discussion of m ­ eaning in general, but I assume that meaning is at least irreducible to reference. In Frege’s classic example, the terms “morning star” and “evening star” share a referent but not a meaning. Perceptual meanings observe this same characteristic. For example, all possible percepts of the Necker Cube or the DuckRabbit refer to the same images but with difference senses. It is for this reason that perception, like other forms of intentionality, fails of substitutivity of identity.51 According to the principle of the substitutivity of identity, any two expressions that are extensionally but not logically equivalent can be substituted for each other without loss of truth value. For example, we can substitute “morning star” in any statement involving “evening star” without a change in truth value (e.g., we can take the statement, “The evening star is actually the second planet from the sun,” and substitute for it “The morning star is actually the second planet from the sun,” without any change in truth value, since the two statements are extensionally equivalent). But the principle fails in intentional contexts. If we use statements about intentions of morning and evening star, it is entirely possible that substitution will produce changes in truth value. For example, if a person does not understand that the morning star and ­evening star are the same, we cannot conclude from “She believes that the evening star is actually the second planet from the sun” that “She believes the morning star is actually the second planet from the sun.” Exactly the same happens with perception. If I look in my glass, I see water. Of course, “water” and “hydrogen dioxide” are more or less extensionally equivalent, but it does not follow that I see hydrogen dioxide in my glass. My perception tells me nothing about the kinds of molecules that populate my glass; indeed, it doesn’t even present its object as being composed of molecules, which is why molecular theory is a discovery. Similarly, in the case of the Duck-Rabbit, it does not follow from the fact that I see an image of a duck that I also see an image of a rabbit. Quite to the contrary, the one percept positively excludes the other.

Perceptual Sense  35 Thus, as with other forms of intentionality, we can distinguish between the object of perception and the meaning under which we perceive that object. When I perceive the water, I perceptually intend the water, or the water is the object of my intention. But my perception is not exhausted by its reference; I do not perceive a bare “that.” Rather, I perceptually intend “that” under the meaning “water.” One way to express this is by attributing an “as-structure” to perception. When I perceptually intend the substance in my glass under the perceptual sense “water,” we can say that I perceive it as water; that as which I perceive something is the meaning under which I perceive it. Perception, then, much like thought, is an intentional “act” with a sense and a reference. Sometimes we think that when we speak of perceiving-as we are speaking about perceptually attributing concepts. But, as I argued above, the kind of meanings perception has as its contents are not conceptual or propositional meanings but distinctively perceptual. I may have a conceptual awareness that water is hydrogen dioxide: it does not follow that when I see something as water, I see it as hydrogen dioxide. And again, on the other hand, no conceptual meaning that I entertain will suffice for me to perceive the face before me as Theaetetus’. This is because the two are simply different orders of meaning; perceptual sense is a sui generis order of meaning. Again, part of what distinguishes perceptual sense is that it involves organization of the perceptual field. The perceptual sense of a scene lies not in the sensory properties presented, but in the way in which those properties are organized in terms, e.g., of grouping, completion, figure and ground, and functional significance. Again, the difference between the duck-percept and rabbit-percept isn’t a difference in the sensory features available to us, but in the way those features “make sense,” i.e., in the way they are organized and especially in the functional significances of the parts. “Rabbit” here figures as a perceptual meaning that gives structure to the sensory features, requiring particular relationships between the parts. Perception presents us with a richly organized field, which is what I mean when I say that perception “makes sense.” Concepts, on the other hand, are not organizations of the perceptual field. I can entertain the concept “rabbit” without any particular set of relations being instantiated within the perceptual field. Indeed, I can even think “That’s an image of a rabbit” while only succeeding in seeing an image of a duck. Concepts generally do not entail any specific functional relations between the parts of the perceptual field, while perceptual sense very much does. For this reason, perceptual and conceptual meaning need not coincide. Again, I can have the concept “Theaetetus” without knowing at all what he looks like. In contrast, if I am to have the perceptual sense of Theaetetus, a very particular set of relations will have to be instantiated

36  The Sense of Perception in the perceptual field, even a relatively slight modification of which could result in the loss of recognition. Or, I might have a clear and distinct concept of “morels,” and yet be quite unable to recognize them in the wild. At the same time, I could have a perceptual sense for “morels,” such that I recognize each instance of a morel as sharing a common perceptual structure, without connecting this perceptual sense to my concept (i.e., without realizing that this type of mushrooms is in fact the one picked out by my concept “morel”).52 Perceptual and conceptual meanings need not, then, entail each other. Merleau-Ponty expresses a similar point in describing perceptual sense as “bound,” rather than “free-floating” (or detachable, in Hopp’s terms): Perceptual sense is not a statement … it is tacit; it is not made of freefloating significations that exist for themselves and for their own sake – E.g., a green put into a face counts as a ‘smile’ … like a word placed into a sentence changes its affective inflexion. … The perceived world is a world where the properties of an element depend upon its situs. The signification of this element is therefore bound, not free-floating, tacit, not spoken, and … structure.53 (SWWE, 20–1) Merleau-Ponty cites Cézanne for this example, presumably referring to his statement to Gasquet, “God help them if they can’t see how you can make a mouth look sad or a cheek smile by joining a green shade to a red one.”54 For Merleau-Ponty, the efficacy of these colors if correctly placed demonstrates a sort of perceptual logic or syntax, in which a certain element (the green) acquires its sense through its position within the perceptual whole. This sense is thus bound to the perceptual scene: if you tore the green portion from the canvas, for example, it would acquire quite a different meaning and the perception of the smile would be lost. Whereas a conceptual sense is free-floating (I can think the concept “smile” with my eyes closed, for example), perceptual sense is bound. We might also say that perceptual sense is integrated with sensation (in the specific sense of “sensation” allowed above). Again, it is through just the right green, in just the right location, that we have the perceptual sense of a smile, for example. Gestalt organizations depend on the sensory features of which they are the organization: e.g., if there were no colors or shapes to group, there could be no grouping. Thus, perception is sensory; it lives within a world of colors, shapes, sounds, smells, etc. What I argued above is that perception is not exhausted by such sensory properties, since it also involves the rich organization of the field of such properties. However, in doing this, I tried to leave open a legitimate sense in which we perceptually intend sensory properties – or, we might also say,

Perceptual Sense  37 in which perception has sensory contents. I continue to refer to the perceptual intention (as opposed to a conceptual one, say) of sensory properties or to the sensory content of perception, as sensation, not to maintain the dubious accounts of sensation rejected by Merleau-Ponty but to preserve and denominate this sensory aspect of perception. So, in this specific sense, we should say that perceptual sense and sensation are integrated. A few other points may be worth making here. First, while the organization of the perceptual field determines the sense of perception, it also determines its reference. Organizational features like grouping, closure, continuity, and completion pick out a “that” which I can perceive under different meanings: for example, I cannot perceptually refer to a “that,” without some region of the perceptual field having been grouped, and if the perceptual field had been grouped differently, my perception would refer to a different “that.” Second, while I am describing perceptual sense and reference in terms of gestalt effects, I don’t mean to suggest that what we intend in perception are gestalten. Such a conclusion would destroy the central phenomenological fact that what we perceive is a world of things: a world of ducks, driftwood, faces, etc., not a world duck-gestalten, driftwood-gestalten, face-gestalten, etc. Even when I see the Duck-Rabbit, what I see is not a gestalt of a duck, say, but a drawing of a duck. What is presented to us perceptually are things, not gestalten. Of course, when I perceive a flower, for example, there is a grouping of a portion of the perceptual field that comes about according to gestalt principles (the contiguity of the dark red color of the petals, for example). But it does not follow that what I perceive is just a grouping of the perceptual field. This would be a little like concluding from the fact that propositions operate according to semantic laws that what we intend in propositions are semantic entities. In both cases, the problem lies in confusing sense with reference: the organization of the perceptual field is the sense by which my perception refers to something; it is not itself what is referred to. Really, we need to draw a distinction between three aspects of an intention: the object intended, the meaning or sense of the intention, and the genre of meaning had by the intention. Suppose I am seeing a duck. Here, the object intended is just the duck, and I intend it as a duck, i.e., the meaning or sense of the interpretation can be expressed as “duck.” But the genre of meaning that I express with “duck” is perceptual: a perception of a duck has the perceptual sense of being as of a duck. In contrast, when I merely think about the same duck, the object is the same, and again I intend it as a duck (which is not to say that the perceptual and conceptual meanings for “duck” are identical, just that they possess a certain unity or parallelism of sense, which is why the concept “duck” expresses a perception as of a duck). But now the genre of meaning has changed: it is no longer perceptual but conceptual. What we are trying to understand here is the genre of

38  The Sense of Perception meaning I am calling perceptual sense. So (as I will argue in more depth in the following) when I claim that perception exhibits gestalt phenomena, I am not claiming that what I perceive are gestalten or that I intend things in the world as gestalten. Rather, the thought is that gestalt phenomena play a role in the genre of meaning that perception has, i.e., they contribute to the organization of the perceptual field in virtue of which I perceptually intend worldly things as worldly things. Let this suffice for an initial account of perceptual sense. I turn now to the question of what range of contents perception has. Notes 1 For a more thorough exposition of these arguments, see Taylor Carman, “­Sensation, Judgment, and the Phenomenal Field,” in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, ed. Taylor Carman and Mark Hansen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 50–73; Taylor Carman, Merleau-Ponty (New York: Routledge, 2009), 45–61; Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of P ­ erception (New York: Routledge, 2011), Chapter 2. 2 Part of the difficulty of a project like this, in which I am trying to put two traditions (Phenomenological and contemporary Philosophy of Perception) in dialogue, is that it is often challenging to find a shared language. For example, Merleau-Ponty challenges the language of perception as a “mental state” (PhP, viii). I will often have to use terms initially in an imprecise way and refine them over the course of discussion. Here, let me just note that I don’t mean to use “mental state” in a way that entails special metaphysical commitments: I don’t mean to presuppose anything about what perceptions, judgments, etc., are. Here, “mental state” serves as an available and familiar shorthand (and the alternatives, e.g., “intentional acts,” face concerns of their own) until I can take up the nature of perception more exactly in Part II. Another concern throughout this work will be my use of the term “object.” Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between “thing” and “object” (PhP, 335–6), but for the sake of translating between the different views I will discuss, I will avoid this distinction. There is an important philosophical point at stake in Merleau-Ponty’s distinction, but I think it will be captured in Part II of this work without requiring this potential linguistic barrier to dialogue. 3 As in my Introduction, I let the notion of presentation remain unanalyzed here (a task I take up in Chapter 4). For example, I do not mean it to decide for a “Content View” as opposed to an “Object View” of perception, to use ­Brewer’s terms. Bill Brewer, Perception and Its Objects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Again, I mean “presentation” in a neutral sense that we could analyze as representation or as direct relation to the world. 4 I face another terminological choice in employing the word “content” in relation to Merleau-Ponty. It is not obvious the term is apt with respect to his account of perception. Merleau-Ponty does often speak of contents of consciousness (e.g., PhP, 29) or experience (ibid., 307), perceived contents (ibid., 278), and sensory content (ibid., 350); in some cases, he challenges specific uses of this language, e.g. (Ibid., 271 and 436–7). In Part II, I turn to the question of

Perceptual Sense  39 what perception is and how it relates to the world, but for now I think we can allow the general sense of the word “content,” identified above, with respect to Merleau-Ponty: certainly, for him, perception presents the world as being some specific way, and in this minimal sense, we can speak of perception’s content. 5 The first two options mirror those considered by Merleau-Ponty in the “Introduction” to the Phenomenology. There, he considers understanding sensations as (1) impressions, i.e., experiences of inner states effected by the outside world; (2) qualities of objects; (3) immediate consequences of stimulation (PhP, 3–10). While I largely follow Merleau-Ponty with respect to the first two options, I diverge with respect to the third, since I think many of the important ideas covered in Merleau-Ponty’s argument against the third option are expressed in my arguments concerning the first two, and the replacement allows me to address a broader swath of philosophical options. 6 Christopher Peacocke, Sense and Content: Experience, Thought, and Their Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 8. 7 See, for example, Edmund Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy; First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. Daniel Dahlstrom (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014), §85. 8 See Panayot Butchvarov, “Adverbial Theories of Consciousness,” in Language Structure, Discourse and the Access to Consciousness, ed. Maxim Stamenov. My arguments in this section are designed more to address a Sense-Data view than Adverbialism, but Butchvarov nicely collects a number of concerns about Adverbialism under the rubric of it failing to capture object-directedness. 9 For a critique of this argument, see A. D. Smith, The Problem of Perception (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 133. 10 Cf. Smith, The Problem of Perception, 127. 11 Of course, we do have some experiences that seem characterizable in such terms, e.g., afterimages or phosphenes. My approach to these phenomena is that, first, even if they are well characterized as non-intentional intrinsic properties of experiences, it would be a mistake to turn to them for a general description of perception. Such phenomena are not experienced as the norm in perception and have an importantly different phenomenological character than our familiar three-dimensional sensory awareness. Second, there is a great deal of complication in describing such phenomena philosophically. After all, we seem to intend afterimages perceptually, rather than, say, simply having regions of the visual field filled. See Moore’s reply to Ducasse, “It seems to me evident that I cannot see the sensible quality ‘blue’, without directly seeing something which has that quality—a blue patch, or a blue speck, or a blue line, or a blue spot, etc., in the sense in which an after-image, seen with closed eyes, may be any of these things.” G. E. Moore, “Reply to My Critics,” in The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, ed. Paul Schlipp (Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1968). 12 Cf. PhP, 320–1. 13 This view would also fail to make sense of perceptual illusions about color. See Smith, Problem of Perception, 75–6. 14 Tyler Burge, Origins of Objectivity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 410. 15 Peacocke provides three counterexamples to a view on which perception has no nonrepresentational content: (1) if I see two trees of the same height at different distances, I do not represent the trees as being of different height, but

40  The Sense of Perception my experience of the one occupies a greater portion of the visual field than does the other; (2) when I view the same object with one eye as opposed to two eyes there is not a difference in how I represent that object to be, but there is an experiential difference; (3) when I switch between seeing a wire cube as in one orientation and another, how I represent the cube to be has changed, but some aspect of the experience has remained the same (Sense and Content, 12–6). Note that my main conclusion here – that perception does not contain only nonrepresentational content – is not at all incompatible with Peacocke’s. Still, I should briefly address these examples, since I do end up preferring an intentional account of sensation. Each example has unique features and could be discussed in considerable depth. But the main issue I have with these examples is that there is a difference between what I intend something to be and how I intend it to be that way. It is plausible that when I open my other eye there is not much change in what I intend the scene before me to be (what objects I intend and what properties I intend them to have), but there is a change in how I intend it to be that way. The change is not non-intentional: it is a change in my intention, though not in what I intend. Similarly, when I compare a blurry and a clear picture, there is no difference in what the two represent, but there is a difference in how they represent it as that way; the difference is not just in the properties of the photo, but in how well it represents its scene. So, we needn’t account for these examples by positing some non-intentional sensations. 16 Cf. PhP, 6. 17 Cf. Alva Noë, Action in Perception (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 49. 18 There is room for defenders of this sort of realist position about sensations to define them not simply in terms of the properties that objects have but in terms of the relation between a subject and an object (including features such as position). But the problem we are considering – that sensation is holistic and indeterminate – will not be addressed simply by pointing out facts like position. They will have to specify the relation in terms of quite deep facts about the subject’s perceptual systems. The advocates of realism with whom I am most familiar might allow that sensations are specified in part in terms of a subject’s perceptual system but tend not to invoke features of the system more complex than, e.g., facts about environmental conditions or features of perceptual organs. Cf. Hopp, Perception and Knowledge, 162–3. This will certainly not explain holism, though. In any case, I avoid a lengthier discussion here, since my goal is just to point out that we can’t define perception solely in terms of receiving properties of objects. 19 To be clear, though, I don’t necessarily mean to argue that all sensations are intentional. Certain sensations occur very much on the margin of the world, e.g., the vague shapes and colors that ripple before my eyes when I shut my eyelids and press my hands against them. Smith (Problem of Perception, Chapter 4) provides a compelling set of examples. Again, my point is just that some are intentional, and we could not adequately capture the character of perception without acknowledging this. 20 See, e.g., Edmund Husserl, Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, vol. 7, Husserliana (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 39. 21 Walter Hopp, “Husserl on Sensation, Perception, and Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38, no. 2 (2008): 219–46. 22 I use the term “rich” loosely in this chapter, simply to indicate the sense in which perception exceeds sensation. The more technical usage of the term,

Perceptual Sense  41 involved in debates about whether perception has “rich” or “thin” content, will be employed in Chapter 2, when I stake a claim in those debates. 23 For a more recent assessment of Gestalt Theory, see Johan Wagemans and et al., “A Century of Gestalt Psychology in Visual Perception: I. Perceptual Grouping and Figure-Ground Organization,” Psychological Bulletin 138, no. 6 (2012): 1172–217. Merleau-Ponty’s own assessment of Gestalt Theory is measured, suggesting that much of Gestalt Theory not only represents certain important advancements in the psychology of perception but also faces serious shortcomings, in general because of lack of philosophical rigor. In part, Gestalt Theory fails to adequately notice the deep challenge that its findings pose for its scientistic worldview, according to which perception operates on mechanistic causal laws (cf., e.g., PhP, 48). Merleau-Ponty is also critical of the methodology employed by Gestalt Psychology (VI, 21). 24 And note that while I will concentrate on visual perception, gestalt effects are hardly exclusive to vision. For grouping effects in tactile perception, see Alberto Gallace and Charles Spence, “To What Extent Do Gestalt Grouping Principles Influence Tactile Perception?,” Psychological Bulletin 137, no. 4 (2011): 538–61; for gestalt effects in auditory perception, see Albert Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990). 25 See Peacocke (Sense and Content, 24–6) for an argument that we do have sensations of groupings. I don’t find his argument compelling. For example, Peacocke argues that there can be groupings in experiences which have no representational properties, e.g., in listening to rhythms produced by a drum player. It’s not clear to me why such experiences should be considered non-intentional (not to mention the general challenge posed above to such non-intentional experiences). 26 Perhaps we can have sensations of certain kinds of relations, e.g., being to-theleft-of or being far-from plausibly count as spatial relations, and one might think we can have spatial sensations. But these relations are of the same type as their relata (they are all spatial), whereas a grouping is not plausibly of the same type as color, location, shape, etc. So, I doubt that all such perceptual relations can be given by sensations. 27 See Wagemans (“A Century of Gestalt Psychology,” 1180) for an overview of classical types of grouping. 28 Note that the claim that grouping is not reducible to sensation does not entail that sensation can occur without grouping. Indeed, even our familiar language for a sensation, such as a red “patch,” involves a kind of grouping. 29 There is an important point here that will come up throughout the following. Part of Merleau-Ponty’s objection to the distinction between content and form is that there can be no transformation in form without some transformation in content. This would seem to undermine my claim – here and in the ­following – that instances of reversibility are not primarily instances of changes in s­ ensations. But a lot depends on how exactly we interpret MerleauPonty’s rejection of this distinction: does he mean that the colors and shapes themselves change or that their role in perception is transformed? I tend to prefer the l­atter interpretation, along the lines of Gurwitsch’s claim – soon to be ­considered – that the functional significance of the parts is transformed when reversion occurs. See Aaron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aaron Gurwitsch; ­Volume III. The Field of Consciousness: Theme, Thematic Field, and Margin, vol. 3 (New York: Springer, 2010), 111–13. It may be that there are some differences in sensations between the two percepts (and certainly there is a difference in functional significances). But I very much doubt that

42  The Sense of Perception the difference between the vase percept and the face percept can be chalked up entirely to differences in sensation. 30 Note how closure corresponds to the black shapes appearing as the ground on which the white triangle stands out as figure. When I take something to be a figure, I perceive its ground to continue underneath it. For example, in Rubin’s Vase, it does not look like two faces on a black ground that happens to end right where the faces do. Indeed, if it looked like the background ended there, I would no longer perceive a figure-ground structure at all, but rather a mosaic. For there to be figure-ground structure, the ground must look to continue under the faces. 31 Further, to identify a difference in orientation, there must be something that is oriented. But the orientation here is not like that of the Necker Cube, which was based on the ambiguous depth of the cube’s surfaces. The ambiguity of orientation in the Duck-Rabbit is not a matter of depth at all. It is simply a matter of whether the face is oriented to left or right. The orientation here is not that of a shape: a simple shape like an oval cannot have a left or right orientation in themselves. Even an asymmetrical diamond (unless we interpret the more acute end as pointing) doesn’t have an orientation. But a face does, since it has a front and back, a frontal region where the eyes point. If we wish to explain the difference in terms of orientation, I think, we will have to admit there is a rich perception here, namely of an animal face. 32 Gurwitsch, Field of Consciousness, 112–3. 33 To be clear, I am not arguing that we necessarily perceive the functional significance of the parts. For example, I don’t usually (or perhaps cannot) perceive that the ridges are essential to the face percept. Instead, the idea is that the functional significance of the parts determines (and is determined by) my perception: to perceive the two faces is for the divets to maintain the relevant functional significance. Thus, even if I do not perceive this functional significance, it is essential to my perception that the parts have this significance. And insofar as functional significance and its results are not reducible to effects that occur between sensations, the functional significance of parts within a perceptual whole also demonstrates the difference between perception and sensation. 34 I should also point out that none of the foregoing arguments against sensation are meant to deny anything about the physiology of how perception comes about. There is presumably a legitimate sense in which our sensory organisms only take in sensory “information” about the world: the eye, for example, receives light rays (rather than, say, gestalten) and transmits certain electrical signals to the brain. But none of this entails that the outputs of the brain’s perceptual processing – what we are primarily aware of in conscious perception – are only sensations. 35 See, e.g., Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans. James Spencer Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Northwestern University Press, 1975), §50. 36 Cf. Daniel Dennett, “On the Absence of Phenomenology,” in Body, Mind, and Method: Essays in Honor of Virgil C. Aldrich, ed. Donald F. Gustafson and Bangs L. Tapscott, Synthese Library (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1979), 93–113. Cf. Smith, Problem of Perception, 45 for discussion. 37 See Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Routledge, 2001), 195. 38 There are other ways of objecting to the propositional view as well. See, for example, Tim Crane, “Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?,” Philosophical Quarterly 59, no. 236 (2009): 452–69; Arnaud Dewalque, “The Normative

Perceptual Sense  43 Force of Perceptual Justification,” in Normativity in Perception, ed. Maxime Doyon and Thiemo Breyer (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 178–195. 39 Wilfrid Sellars, Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes (New York: Humanities P., 1968), 12. 40 Walter Hopp, Perception and Knowledge: A Phenomenological Account (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 103–6. 41 There are a variety of other arguments one could adduce to this effect. See, e.g., Smith, Problem of Perception, Chapter 3. 42 I am less compelled by Hopp’s arguments against this view (see especially Hopp, Perception and Knowledge, 116–8), namely that a dual component theory can’t explain perceptual misidentifications. In Hopp’s example, he looks out his window at what, unbeknownst to him, is Commonwealth Avenue and thinks “Beacon Street is wet.” If we thought the concept “Beacon Street” were part of the content of his perception, then this would be a case of perceptual illusion. But Hopp says it isn’t an illusion: he has a perfectly veridical experience of Commonwealth, accompanied with a mistaken belief that he is looking at Beacon street. The error, then, is not perceptual – it is one of conceptual misidentification. And if he is to err in identifying what he sees with Beacon street, he must have some independent mode of intending what he sees in order to misidentify it. This intention can’t be explained by the concept “Commonwealth Avenue,” since he could perfectly well have this perception while lacking that concept; nor can sensations or qualia explain it, since they are non-intentional. It follows we must have some other sort of intentional content which explains his perceptual intention. In my view, the problem with this argument is that many other concepts could do this work, e.g., “street.” “Street” could perfectly well explain the perceptual intention, as well as its veridicality (since what is before him is a street). The error would only come in at the stage of identifying the street with “Beacon Street.” The problem is different with Hopp’s other example, of confusing a duck and a duck decoy, since here I suppose there is no common concept that could really explain the character of the perceptual intention: “object,” for example, is hardly sufficient to describe the perceptual intention of the decoy. Here the problem is that it really is a matter of perceptual illusion. True, the decoy appears to me to appear like a duck, and that is just what a decoy is supposed to do – but it does not look to be a decoy, it looks to be a duck, even though it is a decoy. It is, then, a perceptual illusion. See Smith (Problem of Perception, 74–90) for some additional considerations against a dual-component theory (albeit focused less on concepts than beliefs). 43 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, trans. William Cobb (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 15. 44 Perhaps we should allow that some concepts specify sense data. For example, perhaps the concept “triangle” picks out certain parameters on sense data. If I know that a triangle is an enclosed three-sided figure, I should be able to reason my way through the sense data in order to pick out whether what I have before me is a triangle. But ordinary perception does not work this way: even if all concepts could be so neatly defined, I do not begin perception from a definition of a concept and then seek to confirm it in the sense data. Further, can we really say that we can specify the sense data that would correspond to a triangle merely by reading off the concept “triangle”? One would have to know, then, for example, what a side or a figure looks like. It is hard to see how we do not end up with a regress down this line.

44  The Sense of Perception 45 I leave the concept of perceptual recognition relatively loose here. I assume the term describes a familiar phenomenon, for example, that it is possible to perceive a person without recognizing them, even if one knows the person very well. If we think of recognition in the context of a dual-component view, as connecting a concept with sense data in an appropriate manner, then recognition amounts to the relevant concept becoming the content of a perception, rather than just a thought. Ultimately, I reject the dual-component view and think instead that recognition is more like the organization of the perceptual field such that a perceiver has a certain perceptual sense. But all I mean to say about perceptual recognition at this point is that, whatever exactly it entails, it involves more than possessing a concept in conjunction with some sense data. 46 Christopher Agamemnon Pallis, “Impaired Identification of Faces and Places with Agnosia for Colours: Report of a Case Due to Cerebral Embolism,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 18, no. 3 (1955): 219. 47 Oliver Sacks, “Face-Blind,” The New Yorker, 2010, https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2010/08/30/face-blind. 48 I don’t want to give a formal account of what such looks are here, so much as to appeal to the phenomenon they express. There is something it looks like to see 5 dots, which is different from what it is like to see 4 dots, whereas there is not something it looks like to see 27 dots as opposed to 28, say. I certainly don’t have in mind Chisholm’s comparative or epistemic uses of “looks” – when I say those look like a large number of dots, I don’t mean they look similar to a large number of dots, nor do I simply mean that I have evidence to believe that those are a large number of dots – or Jackson’s phenomenal use if narrowly construed in terms of things like color, shape, and size. Rather, I mean that they are perceptually presented only as a large number of dots, not as 27 dots, say. 49 See, e.g., David Morris, Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology (­Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018); Don Beith, The Birth of Sense: Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2018). 50 Cf. “A ‘figure’ on a ‘background’ already contains more than the currently given qualities. It has ‘contours’ that do not ‘belong’ to the background and that ‘stand out’ from it; … the background continues beneath the figure. The different parts of the whole – such as the parts of the figure closest to the background – thus possess, beyond a color and some sensible qualities, a particular sense” (PhP, 13). 51 See John Drummond, Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism: Noema and Object (Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 18. 52 Obviously, one could respond here that the concept corresponding to perceptual sense is not “morel,” but something like “that kind of mushroom,” and the error lies in not conceptually identifying the two. But the mere fact that the conceptual sense “morel” exists in separation from its corresponding perceptual sense is enough to demonstrate the difference of perceptual and conceptual sense, which in a redesigned example could equally well be applied to “mushroom” say, and so on. 53 This quote is taken from lecture notes, and I have elided some passages to smooth it out. 54 Joachim Gasquet, Joachim Gasquet’s Cezanne: A Memoir With Conversations, trans. Cristopher Pemberton (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991), 212.

2 Rich and Thin Contents

With a basic account of perception’s genre of content, namely perceptual sense, we are now in a position to ask what aspects of the world perceptual sense can reveal to us. At a minimum, perception presents us with various sensory properties, such as color, brightness, texture, odor, pitch, and so on. It is also generally agreed that perception presents us with spatial properties, such as size, shape, distance, location, and motion. Call these universally admitted contents of perception “thin” (also sometimes termed “low-level” in the literature), and the properties they present, “thin properties.” Certain other kinds of properties manifestly do not figure in perception. Again, for example, I do not perceive that water is composed of hydrogen dioxide molecules, and I cannot perceive a chiliagon as such. But there are many other kinds of properties the capacity of which to figure as contents of perception is controversial, such as natural and artificial kinds, causation, emotions, moral properties, and aesthetic properties. Call these other properties “rich” (sometimes “high-level”). Call the view that perception can present us with only thin properties the “Thin View,” and the view that perception can present us with at least some rich properties the “Rich View.” Note that the Rich View could come in many forms: one could, for example, think that perception presents us with natural kind properties but not emotion properties. The debate about whether perception has rich or thin properties does not exactly map onto the question, considered in Chapter 1, about whether it has sensational, conceptual, or some other kind of content. For example, we can have both sensations and concepts about thin properties like color. Consequently, even a Conceptualist could maintain the Thin View, if she held that perceptual contents are conceptual but limited to sensory concepts, such as “red” or “rough.”1 Similarly, at a first approximation, nothing about my account of perceptual sense entails the Rich View. For example, I argued that a phenomenon like completion demonstrates that perception exceeds sensation: in the Kanizsa Triangle I perceive three black circles, though I only have sensations of three black “pacmen.” But “black DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-4

46  The Sense of Perception circle” is not a rich content in the sense considered here, even if it isn’t the content of a sensation. Still, as I’ll argue shortly, the way I developed and argued for the notion of perceptual sense – in terms of recognizing faces or kinds, for ­example  – does seem to entail a Rich View. And Merleau-Ponty clearly thinks of perceptual sense as rich, speaking, for example, of seeing a face as smiling, perceiving a certain patch as a stone or sunlight, and perceiving ashtrays, persons, emotions, etc.2 The heart of Merleau-Ponty’s argument for this idea lies in the arguments I considered in Chapter 1, namely, the differences between perception, sensation, conception, and judgment. What emerges through that set of distinctions is that perception has a unique manner of rich content. However, as I’ve just pointed out, the two ­questions – what genre of content perception has and what aspects of the world it can reveal – are not identical, even if closely related, and contemporary debates about rich content introduce legitimate concerns not well addressed by the arguments considered in Chapter 1. So, in this chapter I provide a supporting argument, responding to contemporary literature, for the Merleau-Pontian thought that perceptual sense is rich. I take this argument to be Merleau-Pontian in current and in many of its claims, even if it is not directly drawn from Merleau-Ponty. I should note that a reader of Merleau-Ponty will expect some discussion of perception’s practical engagement with the world in an examination of its rich content. Perception’s practical sense will be the subject of Chapter 3. Treating rich content like kinds in isolation from rich practical properties is no doubt something of an abstraction from the phenomena but is, I think, phenomenologically permissible and helpful for clarifying the phenomena at hand. Now, we certainly speak as if we sense many rich properties. We say that we can “see” the anger on someone’s face, for example, or “smell” rain. But a phenomenological argument for the Rich View clearly requires more than an appeal to usage, especially given that not all these expressions should be taken at face value. For example, I might see smoke rising behind some trees and claim, “I see there is a fire.” But it is not obvious that this is a strictly correct way of speaking: the fire is not in any obvious way a content of my current perceptual experience. Or, if I know that there are 97 toothpicks on the floor, I might say “I see 97 toothpicks” – but it is quite unlikely that “97” is in fact a content of my perceptual experience. So, the phenomenological line between what figures as a content of experience and what does not cannot be drawn by our linguistic customs. On the other hand, one might think it simply intuitive or obvious that experience presents us with rich properties: I seem to perceive trees and clouds, rather than green or white shapes. But phenomenology should not be mistaken for the advocate of the intuitive or obvious, and it does not rest content with immediate appearances. What “appears” upon first

Rich and Thin Contents  47 inspection is often only the pre-conception of the phenomena derived from “common sense.” And when an advocate of the Thin View objects that this appearance can be explained in terms not of seeing these things, but of tacit inferences to concepts, the common sense interpretation of the phenomena is flummoxed. It cannot respond other than by insisting on appearances, since it never grasps the truth of the phenomenon it insists upon. What we need is not the “obvious,” but a careful inspection of the phenomena themselves. Some have suggested this question can be answered simply by determining the outputs of perceptual modules.3 I don’t think this option will work either. First, there is no valid inference from the claim that perceptual modules output certain contents of perception to the claim that if a content is perceptual, then it is an output of a perceptual module. As Siegel puts it Nothing in the functional characterization of a module can speak to whether its outputs exhaust the conscious representations that constitute perceptual experience. … Even if all the outputs of perceptual ­modules were thin, that conclusion would not entail the Thin View.4 Second, I doubt that (at least in the context of this debate) it makes sense to think of perceptual modules independently of our experience of perception. In analyzing ambiguous figures, Wittgenstein writes that when we ask whether or not one really “sees” the figure differently under the two percepts, “our problem is not a causal but a conceptual one.”5 Appeals to causal factors, like brain physiology, cannot solve this issue; rather, they “screen [it] from view.” This is because, while physiology can offer criteria for seeing, any such physiological criteria is itself guided by a pre-existing concept “seeing.” The ultimate issue, then, is a conceptual one. Something similar could be said about perceptual modules. We would have to ask on what grounds we know that perceptual modules output certain contents of perception. We know this, I take it, only by consulting our perceptual experience, for which afterwards we can seek an explanation in terms of things like perceptual modules.6 No methodological insight can be bought more cheaply than the dismissal of armchair philosophy, and it is true that phenomenology does not isolate itself from empirical evidence. But in this case, I do not think we can decide what the evidence means independently of what Wittgenstein calls the “conceptual” question or, as I would prefer to put it, independently of careful consideration of our experience. Unfortunately, as pointed out above, the Rich View does not clearly follow from the arguments made in Chapter 1. For example, I argued against a view of sensations as intrinsic properties of experiences on the grounds that sensations exhibit a kind of holism. But this hardly entails that perception has rich content. That a color, for example, is modified when it

48  The Sense of Perception enters into a perceptual whole of colors and lighting does not show that the experience presents anything over and above colors and lighting. Indeterminacy is irrelevant here for the same reason. It’s not even clear that the arguments I made against intentional accounts of sensation will give us the Rich View. I argued that phenomena like grouping, completion, and figure-ground structure require perception to have some other kind of content than sensation. But there is no need for this content to be rich, e.g., to include natural kinds. Again, if I perceptually complete a colored shape obscured by some other shape, I still only perceive a colored shape. So, the mere fact that perception, as involving the organization of a perceptual field, goes beyond sensation does not demonstrate that perception has the kind of “rich” content this debate asks about. However, the arguments considered in Chapter 1 do suggest a Rich View. Many of my examples involved a kind of perceptual recognition that seems naturally analyzed in terms of rich content.7 The experiential difference between my and a prosopagnosic’s experience of a face, for example, or between the different percepts of the Duck-Rabbit seems best accounted for in terms of a difference in rich contents: my perception has a rich content (an individual’s face) that the prosopagnosic’s lacks, and two percepts differ in presenting a duck-image and a rabbit-image, respectively.8 In Chapter 1, I argued that there is no obvious difference in the sensory contents in either case, but neither can conceptual contents explain the contrast. Instead, the experiences differ in the structural organization of the perceptual whole in question. In the parlance of debates about rich contents, in both of these cases we have a phenomenal contrast between two experiences. Following Siegel, one of the most common forms of arguments in these debates is to use such contrasts to argue in favor of perception having certain kinds of content. Such arguments are called “Phenomenal Contrast Arguments.”9 The idea is that if a contrast is best explained by perception having a certain kind of content, then we have good reason to believe that perception does indeed have that kind of content. The plan I will pursue in this chapter essentially has the form of such an argument: I will start from a contrast and then seek to understand what best characterizes that contrast.10 My contention is that certain phenomenal contrasts can only be properly characterized in terms of at least one of the experiences possessing rich perceptual content. The general form of a Phenomenal Contrast Argument is as follows: P1. There is a phenomenal difference between two perceptual experiences, E1 and E2. P2. The phenomenal difference between E1 and E2 lies, at least in part, in a difference in the presentational content of those perceptions (i.e., in how it presents the world to be).

Rich and Thin Contents  49 P3. The difference in presentational content between E1 and E2 lies, at least in part, in one of those perceptions possessing a rich content that the other does not.11 C. Thus, at least some perceptions have rich content. Consider two of Siegel’s cases. First, compare what it is like to hear someone speaking in a language one does not understand (E1) to hearing someone speak in that language after one has become fluent in it (E2). Second, suppose you have never seen a pine tree but are contracted to cut down pine trees. Shown a pine tree, you will not recognize it at all (E1). A guide teaches you to identify pine trees, and after a while, you gain the ability immediately to recognize pine trees on your own (E2). In both cases, it seems like there is a significant phenomenal difference between the two experiences, and the difference between the two intuitively lies in some rich perceptual content (perceptually recognizing a word or pine tree).12 I have tried to do something similar with the cases of prosopagnosia and gestalt reversibility above. Both prosopagnosia and the gestalt switch set up a perceptual contrast, but not one that is well explained in terms of thin properties. For example, it is not necessary that the prosopagnosic’s perception presents her with different thin properties than does mine. More to the point, even if it did, the presence of additional thin properties would hardly suffice for her visually to recognize the face: we can imagine her scrutinizing the details of the face, without any recognition occurring. On the other hand, it would be quite implausible to characterize the transformation in the Duck-Rabbit case simply in terms of changes in lowlevel properties. Even if there are such changes, they will hardly suffice to describe the phenomenal shift I undergo. Instead, we ought to characterize these contrasts in terms of perception’s rich content. There are many ways of objecting to this roughly sketched argument.13 There has been much discussion of these objections over the past ten years, and I don’t wish to address all of them. What I will do is to consider a handful of what I see as the most important alternative explanations of these phenomenal contrasts, and the ones that most clearly bring out the character of my view by contrast. I will be centrally interested here only in the phenomenological adequacy of these alternatives; I shall go through each and show why they cannot possibly suffice to describe the contrasts in question. The alternatives I will consider can be roughly grouped in terms of which premise they challenge in the above argument, and I will go through the five alternatives I consider – differences in cognitive states, familiarity, attention, gestalt properties, and thin properties – in order of the premise they contest. While superficially this procedure is largely n­egative, my hope is that it will allow me to clarify the phenomenological considerations underpinning this Merleau-Pontian view.

50  The Sense of Perception Cognitive Differences First, it is common to challenge P1 by denying that the relevant p ­ henomenal contrast really has to do with perceptual experience at all.14 Instead, we may be able to explain the difference in terms of post-perceptual cognitive states, like beliefs. In speaking of the fact that faces can look angry or fearful, for example, Block asks: Can we be sure from introspection that those ‘looks’ are really perceptual, as opposed to primarily the ‘cognitive phenomenology’ of a conceptual overlay on perception, that is, partly or wholly a matter of a conscious episode of perceptual judgment rather than pure perception.15 Certainly, we experience certain faces as angry, others as fearful, but is this difference in the presentation of emotions really perceptual, or is it a distinct conceptual response to our perception? On the latter view, perception itself would have thin contents, and the rich character that perception seems to have actually lies in cognitive states that are implicitly inferred from, associated with, or otherwise connected to thin perceptions. On this view, what distinguishes the expert is not her perceptual experience but her capacity to form the appropriate non-perceptual cognitive states in response to her perceptual experience. For example, it’s entirely plausible that the expert forms the belief “That’s a fir” upon encountering a fir tree, whereas the novice doesn’t. To be clear, this is a different view from that considered in Chapter 1 that perception has conceptual content. If perception had rich conceptual content, this would certainly form no objection to the Rich View. Instead, the idea is that a thin perceptual state motivates a non-perceptual state (e.g., a belief) with rich conceptual content. This is an alternative to the Rich View, since it denies rich content to perception itself. Nevertheless, we can ask whether the same considerations employed in Chapter 1 against conceptual content also challenge an explanation of the phenomenal contrast in question here in terms of non-perceptual cognitive states. The two main considerations I provided there were (a) that conceptual content is detachable and (b) that concepts can’t account for perceptual recognition. Detachability is not an obvious problem for the present view, since it does not attribute detachable content to perception: it attributes detachable content to a different state (a belief, say), that is associated with a perception. The question, then, is whether the rich content that goes with perception is experienced as detachable. If it isn’t, then it doesn’t belong to a non-perceptual cognitive state. And I very much doubt that it is. Say I am seeing the Duck-Rabbit with a duck image percept. What disappears from my view when I close my eyes are not just the shapes and colors but also the image of a duck. Of course, I can still think about the image or

Rich and Thin Contents  51 entertain the concept “duck,” but I can no longer see an image of a duck. Siegel has pointed out that there is a felt unity between the presentation of the shape and color of a lemon and the presentation of that lemon.16 In the last chapter, I developed this thought in terms of “integration”: the rich sense of perception is not just arbitrarily felt to be unified with perception but is in fact part of the structure that the perceptual field takes. Because perceptual sense lies in the organization of the perceptual field, it (unlike conceptual sense) is bound to the perceptual field. Insofar as there are ways of organizing the perceptual field that comprise the perceptual sense “rabbit,” “vase,” “angry,” etc., and such organizations of the perceptual field are obviously not detachable from that field, perception has a rich sense that is non-detachable. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, A ‘form,’ such as the structure of ‘figure and ground,’ for example, is a whole which has a meaning and which provides therefore a base for intellectual analysis. But at the same time it is not an idea: it constitutes, alters and reorganizes itself before us like a spectacle. (SB, 224) Such a form is nothing other than “a visible or sonorous configuration (or even a configuration which is prior to the distinction of the senses) in which the sensory value of each element is determined by its function in the whole and varies with it” (VI, 168). The rich content we have when we perceive is not just felt to be unified with the sensory; it is integrated into the latter, since it lies in the organization or structuration of the sensory. One could try to work around this non-detachability, e.g., one could stipulate that the connection between perception and cognitive states is such that when perception ends, so does the associated cognitive state. This would seemingly explain the unity described by Siegel. Not only does this response seem ad hoc (since associations between perceptions and ­cognitive states do not generally appear to work this way: if I associate a belief that there is fire with the perception of smoke, I do not stop believing that there is a fire when I close my eyes), though, it also still misses the deep integration of rich content with perception. The mere conjunction of rich non-­perceptual contents with thin perceptual contents does not suffice to describe the non-detachability of perceptual contents, if this non-­detachability amounts to a structuration or organization of the perceptual field. Second, the argument from recognition is even more decisive here. In Chapter 1, following Merleau-Ponty, I argued that the mere conjunction of sensations and concepts would not suffice for perceptual recognition. In the present context, this means that this conjunction would also not explain the distinctive kind of richness at stake in the phenomenological contrasts

52  The Sense of Perception I am considering. Again, there are certain properties I can ­perceptually recognize, and others I cannot: there is a difference between seeing 5 dots and 27 dots, for example, namely that I perceptually recognize what I am seeing in the first case (I see the image as 5 dots) but not the latter (I see the image as many dots but not as 27). Further, I argued this difference does not depend on conceptual capacities. The crucial point now is that this is true whether we imagine those conceptual capacities as part of perception’s content or as part of post-perceptual processing. We can perfectly well imagine altering our capacities such that whenever I stand before 27 dots and have the appropriate sensations, some non-conscious processing occurs that regularly outputs the concept “27.” But this experience would be markedly unlike the perceptual recognition of 27 dots: the image still looks like a large but indeterminate number of dots. Again, perceptual recognition occurs when the sensory contents presented in perception are appropriately organized and this organization is familiar. Of course, this organization will (at least generally) be accompanied by appropriate cognitive states, but this accompaniment does not suffice for, and is not itself, perceptual recognition. Given that there is such a phenomenon as perceptual recognition (I can perceptually recognize “5” in a way that I cannot “27”) and that this recognition cannot be explained simply as the conjunction of thin perception with post-perceptual cognitive states, we can set up any number of phenomenal contrasts between experiences that involve perceptual recognition and those that do not, and these contrasts will not be describable in terms of differences in post-perceptual states alone. For example, the difference between the expert and novice arborist needn’t lie in their concepts of “fir” or “spruce” alone, since one’s knowledge of these can be quite extensive without one ever having perceived a fir or spruce, really or in image, or having the capacity to perceptually recognize a fir or spruce. Nor does the difference lie even in the capacity to associate concepts with sensory perceptions. Again, we can imagine altering the novice’s perceptual and cognitive capacities such that whenever she stands before a fir, she entertains the concept “fir.” This would obviously be an important difference from her encounter with the tree without these capacities. But it is not the difference we are considering. We are considering a difference in her perceptual recognition of, e.g., a fir, and merely entertaining the concept “fir” in conjunction with the appropriate sensations does not suffice for this difference. Note that nothing about my argument here relies on overly intellectualizing inference or association.17 The kind of connection between sensations and concepts I am considering could very well be automatic and implicit. Again, we can have the novice standing before a fir tree entertaining the concept “fir” or equally a prosospagnosic standing before their

Rich and Thin Contents  53 friend Adrian while thinking “Adrian,” without either recognizing the thing or person they are standing before. It makes no difference whether their concepts were arrived at explicitly or in a manner that is implicit, automatic, and encapsulated. A prosopagnosic can reliably infer who the person before them is from facial features or context, without thereby seeing them as that person. It would not constitute any change in their perception if this inference were to become implicit, automatic, or encapsulated. The prosopagnosic still does not have the familiar experience of perceptual recognition that non-prosopagnosics have regularly and that prosopagnosics can have with voice, for example. Conceptual content is just not the appropriate kind of content for describing perceptual recognition, whether we place it within or without our perceptual states. Affective Differences One could also deny P2, namely, that the phenomenal difference between E1 and E2 has to do with the presentational content of those experiences, since relevant differences in the non-presentational character of the two experiences might explain their phenomenal contrast. One common candidate for such a non-presentational difference is a feeling of familiarity.18 If E1 and E2 are, respectively, a novice’s and an expert’s experience, then presumably at least part of the difference between the two experiences is that the expert will feel familiar with what she sees, whereas the novice won’t. This is not an especially promising option, however. While the novice’s and expert’s experiences undoubtedly will differ in this manner, not just any difference between the two experiences will suffice to describe their contrast, and the feeling of familiarity seems clearly not up to the challenge. Take again the prosopagnosic, who can correctly infer that they are looking at their friend, Adrian. Nothing prevents them from feeling familiarity upon conducting this inference, but this feeling is obviously not the missing ingredient for them to perceptually recognize Adrian, since they persist in not recognizing him perceptually. Of course, in this example the feeling of familiarity is not tied especially closely to perception itself, and it may be that this is an important difference from the expert’s experience. But I doubt that this is a relevant difference: you can install the feeling at whatever stage you want, and it still won’t give you perceptual recognition. Imagine that the prosopagnosic feels familiarity upon having certain sensations or recognizing a distinctive trait in a person’s face; this still won’t give us perceptual recognition. Sacks too, in discussing prosopagnosia, distinguishes between recognition and familiarity, noting that neither entails the other. He points out that it is possible to have the latter without the former, for example, in déjà vu or in instances of “hyperfamiliarity,” where a person may feel familiar

54  The Sense of Perception with every stranger they see on a street. On the other hand, one can have the former without the latter. For example, patients with Capgras syndrome can recognize faces of loved ones while lacking emotional familiarity, leading to a sense that they must be impostors.19 It might be worth noting at this point that much of my analysis depends on admitting there is such a phenomenon of perceptual recognition, which one might be tempted to deny. But really, all I am trying to point out is that there is a difference between, e.g., the prosopagnosic’s experience of faces and my own, and that this difference is not captured in terms other than those of perceptual recognition – it is not captured in terms of post-perceptual cognitive states, for example. Part of perceptual learning is acquiring differentiated gestalten, distinctive organizations of the perceptual field, that one can use to organize one’s experience. The feeling of familiarity cannot be substituted for this kind of organization; rather, we experience perceptual familiarity precisely because we perceptually recognize.20 Attentional Differences Another way to deny P2 would be to argue that E1 and E2 differ in the attentional patterns of perceivers, rather than in any presentational content. A novice and expert, for example, will likely attend to different features of a perceived object: no doubt, a skilled glassblower, for example, will attend to subtle patterns or features of a glass sculpture that my eyes gloss over. Our experiences then will differ phenomenally, without it necessarily following that they differ in presentational content. Speaking of Siegel’s example of learning to read a language, Prinz writes that within vision, there will also be changes, but these need not be changes in content. For example, we may attend to the words differently, ignoring serifs and other extraneous decorative details, and our eyes may flow effortlessly across the page.21 But the suggestion that attention introduces no changes in presentational content is dubious.22 Merleau-Ponty argues that attention is a creative or transformative capacity, introducing changes, such as determination, in that to which it attends.23 Similarly, Nanay argues that while the expert’s and novice’s perceptions may be similar pre-attentionally, it seems very likely that the thin properties presented in their experience post-attentionally differ.24 For this reason, Nanay argues that E1 and E2 differ not in rich but in thin contents, an alternative I consider below. Even leaving this point aside, however, attention is phenomenologically inadequate to describe many of the perceptual experiences under consideration. Consider a simple example, such as the Necker Cube. Attention

Rich and Thin Contents  55 cannot fully describe the shift in percepts in this case. Plausibly, shifting my attention brings about the shift in percepts, but the key point is that it is not itself the perceptual shift. To describe the shift here, we need to talk about a change in contents, namely, a change in the presented orientation of the cube. The same seems to be true if we consider more sophisticated cases, e.g., cases of perceptual recognition. In such cases, the expert presumably does attend to a different set of thin properties than does the novice, but we cannot describe her perceptual recognition solely in terms of attending to different sets of thin properties. If the view is that attending to a different set of properties just is perceptual recognition, then it clearly fails, since attending to thin properties by itself can’t explain the possession of a rich content, such as a natural kind, involved in recognition. The view has to be joined to some other account of how we possess a rich content, e.g., a cognitive one: the expert and novice differ perceptually in their attentional patterns, and this allows for a divergence in their post-perceptual processing, such that the expert activates the relevant concept while the novice does not. Burge makes basically this point: “Expertise-guided attention to specific thin attributes can help form generic thin attributives that constitute a refined perceptual applicational basis for non-perceptual higher-level attributives. No new, perceptual higher-level attributives need be acquired.”25 But adding attentional differences to the cognitive account really does nothing to get recognition in view. It helps us understand how the relevant concept is activated for the expert, and it explains some phenomenal difference between the two experiences. But we have already seen that the cognitive view fails as a description of the phenomenal difference. On the other hand, attentional differences can describe a phenomenal difference only in the salience of thin properties: attending to different thin properties can only produce a change in my experience of thin properties. Combining a cognitive account with attentional differences might sound more plausible than either held independently, but it is in no better position to describe the phenomenal difference involved in recognition. Again, the prosopagnosic can perfectly well direct their attention to relevant features of a face, e.g., a person’s bushy eyebrows, small round glasses, and grey hair. But this is clearly not perceptually to recognize a face. It doesn’t matter which features they attend to: no set of features by itself suffices for such recognition. Such attention might allow them correctly to infer – either as a conscious inference or as some unconscious post-perceptual processing – from the bushy eyebrows that the face is Adrian’s. But once again, to make such an inference would not be perceptually to recognize Adrian. Again, attentional differences may activate a different percept. Attending to different features of a multi-stable image can motivate me to see it

56  The Sense of Perception under a different gestalt. For example, attending to the ridges in Rubin’s Vase may motivate the faces-percept. But if all I had were attentional differences, there would be no perception of a face, only differences in the salience of certain thin properties. Rather than a substitute for perceptual recognition, then, attention should be conceived as playing an important role in facilitating the latter. Gestalt Differences Finally, one could reject P3, maintaining that E1 and E2 differ in content but not in a rich content. For example, it has been suggested that E1 and E2 differ in the gestalt properties they present, where gestalt properties are considered thin. Given the centrality of gestalt phenomena to my argument so far, this option also has a special relevance for my account, and I’ll need to treat it with greater care than the other alternatives. Consider Siegel’s discussion of an objection to her view, on which expert and novice differ not insofar as the expert’s perception has “pine tree” as a content, but instead insofar as it has “pine-tree-shape-gestalt” as a content.26 In other words, when the expert recognizes a pine tree, her experience presents some complex of shapes – which we can term a “pine-treeshape-gestalt” – that constitutes the shape of a pine tree, rather than the natural kind “pine tree.” Byrne formulates a similar objection: a rival explanation of the phenomenal contrast involved, e.g., in learning to perceptually recognize a teacup, is that a thin or ‘low-level’ property is presented, a complex shape/size/… property or a ‘teacup gestalt.’ This complex property, which we can call teacuphoodG, is not teacuphood. Teacups are only found embedded in the social practice of tea-drinking; a teacupG may be found in the natural environment. A rock that by chance has the shape and size of a stereotypical teacup (and so is a teacupG) is not a teacup; conversely, there may be unorthodox or damaged teacups that do not have the distinctive teacup shape.27 Siegel responds to this objection by pointing out that it would be implausible to claim that there must be changes in shape-color complexes (gestalten) before and after developing recognitional abilities, and there would have to be such changes for gestalten to explain the contrast.28 This response does seem to mitigate against a view on which presenting a complex of thin properties is all that is required for perceptual recognition. If a teacupG is supposed to be just a certain (complex) shape property, then I presumably have a teacupG from the moment I first see a teacup, and there is nothing to learn. The problem is that having a teacupG can only explain developing

Rich and Thin Contents  57 a recognitional capacity if having a teacupG is itself a capacity that can be developed – and if having a teacupG is just presenting a thin shape complex, then it is not a capacity that can be developed (or, at least, is one that is developed well before the sort of mature perceptual learning this debate concerns). But I’m not sure the objector is really committed to this view of gestalten. For example, perhaps the objector is thinking of a gestalt as a sort of pattern one can recognize. To have a teacupG, then, is to recognize a complex of thin properties as going together, as forming a recurring pattern. I can learn that certain shapes (e.g., the shape that goes with a handle and the shape that goes with a cup) occasionally go together in the world, and the next time I see such a shape complex I can apply this pattern (e.g., teacupG) to it. But this suggestion is ambiguous. Is this pattern, e.g., teacupG, supposed to be presented in perception? If not, then presumably one is saying that one can conceptualize the pattern and apply the concept “teacupG” when one sees a teacupG. But then very little is added to our understanding of perception: we merely hypothesize an additional layer of concept application between perceiving thin properties and conceptualizing rich ones. Instead of seeing a shape complex and conceptualizing it as a teacup, I am now supposed to see a shape complex, conceptualize it as a teacupG, and on this basis conceptualize the object as a teacup. On the other hand, suppose that teacupG is supposed to be presented in perception. Then it cannot be merely the conjunction of certain shapes and sizes, since I already saw those very shapes and sizes beforehand, and the gestalt, adding nothing at all to perception, would hardly help us understand it. The gestalt must be more than the thin properties presented in perception. And if this is the case, it will not avail the objectors to rich perception. A gestalt, then, is either just a complex of thin properties – in which case it does no more work than do those properties – or it is something more – in which case it seems to prove we perceive more than thin properties. The problem with all of these arguments, then, is that they lack a sufficient understanding of gestalten, taking them to be mere complexes of thin properties. This, though, is an unusual and uncompelling understanding. As described in Chapter 1, the change we experience between the two gestalten in the Duck-Rabbit figure is not primarily a change in thin properties. Rather, it is something like a transformation in the perceived structure of thin properties. Thus, Gurwitsch defines a gestalt as “a unitary whole of varying degrees of richness of detail, which, by virtue of its intrinsic articulation and structure, possesses coherence and consolidation, and, thus, detaches itself as an organized and closed unit from the ­surrounding field.”29 Put simply, a gestalt is a perceptual whole, defined by

58  The Sense of Perception a structure, and as a delimited whole is distinguished from its background. The ­structure of a gestalt will include various features, such as shapes and colors, as well as relations (such as spatial relations) between the parts of the whole. In virtue of these structural relations, the parts of the whole have what we called above a “functional significance” (e.g., being the left member of a pair of ears). As long as these structural relations are maintained to a sufficient degree, the same gestalt can be instantiated in a variety of perceptual conditions, such as where size, orientation, or color are changed consistently across the figure. We might say, then, that a gestalt entails a certain set of perceptual norms: in other words, there is a set of structural relations that are normal for a duckG, say, which differ systematically from the set of structural relations that are normal for a rabbitG, and the more those norms are violated, the less viable will be the duck percept. So, a gestalt is not just a collection of thin properties, but also a structure involving various structural relations between its parts. Of course, not all of these relations need be perceptually presented. But if perception presents us with a gestalt and a gestalt cannot be defined solely in terms of thin properties, it follows that we perceive more than thin properties. The objection will not secure the objector’s goal, then. Still, I think it carries real force. For it nevertheless threatens the claim that we perceive rich properties like natural kinds. One might think that instead of being perceptually presented with natural kinds, such as “rabbit,” one is presented only with natural kind gestalten, e.g., rabbitG. If this were true, then while the contents of perception would not be exclusively thin, they would not get us beyond gestalt properties. Consider Majeed’s distinction between two ways of thinking about gestalten: On a modest reading, the gestalten which emerge or ‘pop out’ are certain organized shape properties. For example, in the Duck-Rabbit case, what emerge are the shape-properties being organized like a duck and being organized like a rabbit. By contrast, on an immodest reading, what emerge are something above and beyond organized shape properties. They might be artificial kind properties, for example, being a duck image and being a rabbit image, or being a duck representation and being a rabbit representation.30 On the former picture, gestalten are rich in one sense, since as organized shape properties they depend on simple shape properties, but they are certainly not paradigm rich properties like natural or artificial kinds. Thus, the mere existence of gestalt effects will not settle the debate in favor of rich content.31 Phenomenologically, the objection is confused, though. To see why, consider first that it is as if the objector expects the natural kind somehow to

Rich and Thin Contents  59 appear alongside the gestalt and is disappointed when it cannot be found there. The objector seems to say: “imagine I see a rabbitG. Now, imagine I add to my perception of the rabbitG also the natural kind ‘rabbit.’ But if I did this, things would look no different; the figure would be unchanged. Therefore, I cannot see the natural kind ‘rabbit,’ but at most a rabbitG.” There would be something absurd about this line of reasoning, like standing before a rabbit and asking “I see the rabbitG, but where is the rabbit?” The question is absurd, I think, because it makes a category mistake: one cannot see a rabbitG and a rabbit in the same sense of the word “see.” Merleau-Ponty writes, in speaking of gestalten, “form is the very appearance of the world.”32 In other words, a gestalt is not so much what we see as how we see it; a rabbitG is how we see a rabbit, or, to see something as a rabbit is to see that thing with a rabbitG. Conversely, it would not even make sense to want to see the natural kind “rabbit” without seeing a ­rabbitG; this is not just because seeing a rabbitG is a condition for seeing a rabbit, but because we do not see rabbits and rabbitGn in the same way, and there is no question of seeing either the one or the other. Let me clarify this thought. The claim that gestalten, but not natural kinds, can be contents of perception is ambiguous. For what aspect of the content of perception is being referred to here – the reference or the meaning? Perhaps it is the reference. In this case, the claim would be that I can only perceptually intend gestalten, not things. This view is not appealing. It clearly violates our intuitive sense of perceptually intending a world of things (understood as worldly objects), given that gestalten are not things (perception does not seem to reveal to me that a carG is hurtling toward me, but that a car is; I do not look over and see my catG on my bedG, rather, I look over and see my cat on my bed; and it would be absurd to report my experience, as I walk through the garden, as “The roseGn are wonderful this morning”). This intuitive sense has important phenomenological support. First, while I perceive according to gestalt principles, such as grouping, completion, figure-ground structure, and functional significances, the object of my perceptual intention is not itself governed by these principles. For example, the perceived object itself does not undergo completion when parts of it are hidden from my view; the protrusions in Rubin’s Vase have an enormous functional significance for my perception of faces, but – momentarily leaving aside the image character of the setup – they would not play any functional significance for face that I perceive (e.g., if the head were rotated, I would not see those divets and so perhaps not perceive a face, but the face would not thereby cease to exist). Further, I can perceptually intend the same object with different gestalten. When I perceptually intend some object on the beach now as a rock, now as driftwood, for example – that is, now with a rockG, now with

60  The Sense of Perception a driftwoodG – I intend the same one thing with changing gestalten. When this happens, it does not occur to me that one object has replaced another; rather, I am aware that my previous perception was mistaken and that the object of my perceptual intention was not how I perceived it to be. But if I can perceptually intend the same object with different gestalten, it follows that what I intend is not a gestalt, even though I intend it with a gestalt.33 We could also point out that this account makes it hard to see how we make perceptual mistakes. On this account, when I mistake a rock that has a suitable form for a teacup, what is really happening is that I am perceiving a teacupG. But since the rock actually has the relevant complex shape and size properties, there is actually a teacupG. If all that is happening is that I am seeing a teacupG that is in fact a teacupG, then I have not made an error.34 There are other options one might try here. For example, one might argue that the objects of perception here are not things but properties. To perceive a gestalt, then, is to perceive things (or the environment) as having a certain kind of property, namely, a pattern of thin properties (or “pattern-property” for short). On this account, when I visually recognize a face, for example, I perceive a face-gestalt in the sense that I attribute a face-pattern-property to a certain region of my environment and then must associate this pattern with a face-concept, or something along these lines. Aside from problems with such a conceptual analysis of recognition considered in Chapter 1, though, such a view will be inadequate to account for perceptual recognition: there is a massive phenomenological difference between attributing a pattern-property to the environment and perceptual recognition. I can see notches in wood or eddies in waves as manifesting face-patterns for example, without therefore recognizing the fence or the sea as a face.35 To see a face-pattern is not to see a face. There is more to perception, then, than attributing pattern-properties. Further, this option too sits uncomfortably with perceptual error for much the same reasons.36 Perhaps, then, the claim refers to the meaning of my perception. But this claim is also ambiguous, since the meaning component of an intention is itself complex on the view I am developing. Recall my distinction at the end of Chapter 1 between meanings and genres of meaning, such as percepts and concepts. Supposing that we have rich perceptual contents, then – a bit like how I can perceive yellow or I can think “yellow” – I can perceive something as a rabbit or I can think “that’s a rabbit.”37 Here we can distinguish between what I’ll now call the meaning “matter” (e.g., rabbit) and the genre of meaning (perceptual or conceptual).38 The objection could be interpreted in terms of either meaning-matter or meaning-genre. If we interpret the claim in terms of the meaning-matter, it says not that I perceptually intend gestalten but that I can perceptually intend things only

Rich and Thin Contents  61 according to gestalt meanings, not natural kind meanings. P ­ resumably, this second option is closer to the objector’s intent than the first. But really it fares no better. Put in other words, to perceive an object with a certain meaning-matter is to perceive it as some way, and to perceive it as some way is to attribute a certain property to it. For example, to perceive something according to the meaning “rabbit” is to perceive it as a rabbit, and this is to perceptually attribute the natural kind property “rabbit” to it; to suggest that I perceive things as gestalten, then, is to say that I perceptually attribute gestalt properties to things. But this is as uncompelling as the previous option, for it amounts to saying that I perceive things to be gestalten: I perceive that which is hurtling toward me as a carG, that over there as my catG. But again, while I perceive with a gestalt and according to gestalt principles, I do not perceive things to be gestalten, or as themselves governed by gestalt principles, for the same reasons we have just been considering. Aside from those problems, though, this account also risks making all perception erroneous. For if, as argued above, the objects of perception are not gestalten, but we perceive all objects as gestalten, then we constantly err in our perceptions. Thus, let us try the remaining option: the only genre of meaning under which I can perceptually intend things is gestalten. On this view, gestalten would comprise a genre of meaning, akin to concepts. The concept “rabbit” has a particular genre of meaning (a conceptual one) with a particular “matter” (having to do with the natural kind “rabbit”). Similarly, a rabbitG on this view would involve a genre of meaning (perceptual) with a particular matter (again, having to do with the natural kind “rabbit”). But this version of the claim poses no threat to my view. We would hardly expect a natural kind to be the genre of meaning had by a perception. When I think of a rabbit, I have a particular natural kind as the meaningmatter of my thought; but the natural kind is not the genre of meaning had by my thought, which is of the conceptual genre. On this view, concepts and gestalten are different genres of meaning that a meaning-matter could have. Similarly, then, when I perceive a rabbit or I perceive something as a rabbit, this would mean that I perceive with the gestalt of a natural kind. So, it is entirely to be expected that no natural kinds can be the genre of meaning perception has and no threat to the Rich View. In fact, I think this is probably the right way of thinking about gestalten. Gestalten are not the referent of a perceptual intention, nor the meaning-matter of a perception (except in certain cases). Rather, gestalten are part of the distinctively perceptual genre of meaning, as we saw in Chapter 1. Gestalten are, as it were, part of the syntax of perception; gestalt principles provide rules according to which perceptual sense can emerge. We might say then that, as when I think of a rabbit I have

62  The Sense of Perception a  rabbit concept, similarly when I perceive something with a rabbitG, I have a rabbit percept.39 Now we can identify the category mistake made by the objection: it confuses the meaning-genre of a perception with either meaning-matter or reference. I cannot perceive a cat and its catG in the same way; the catG is rather the meaning – having something like the type “perceptual” and the content “cat” – by which I see the cat. The objection, then, should not dissuade us of perception’s richness. Quite to the contrary, insofar as we can have gestalten for many rich properties (for natural kinds, artificial kinds, emotions, etc.) and we now think of gestalten as the genre of meaning had by perception, we have quite a clear sense in which perception can have rich content. Before moving on, I ought to consider one other objection couched in the language of gestalten. Byrne has argued that perceptual learning of natural kinds cannot involve the development of rich perceptual contents. Byrne’s argument runs as follows. He points out that humans are able to learn to perceptually recognize the abstract 3D objects psychologists term Greebles. On Byrne’s definition of gestalten, GreebleG is a complex of thin properties. But Greebles are just complexes of thin properties; they are not natural kinds, for example, just abstract collections of thin properties created by psychologists to study perception; i.e., as Byrne puts it, Greeblehood is equivalent to GreeblehoodG. So, when I learn to recognize Greebles, I am learning to recognize a complex of thin properties. But suppose it turns out that Greebles are in fact Groobles, a type of fungus, which is to say that they turn out to comprise a particular natural kind. It seems obvious that there is no difference in how we learn to perceive Groobles now that we know they are in fact Groobles and not Greebles. Thus, learning to recognize a natural kind, such as Grooblehood, will just involve learning to recognize a complex of thin properties. And so when we recognize Groobles we do not have a rich natural kind content, just a gestalt content.40 Aside from concerns about Byrne’s framework, I’d like to note a few points of disagreement. First, it is far from clear to me that Greebles aren’t a kind, namely, an artificial kind. Second, even if they aren’t, perception could present them as a kind: once I’ve learned to recognize Greebles, if you show me a new one, I will likely perceive it as of the kind Greeble. So, the equivalence of Greeblehood with a complex of thin properties is unjustified and implausible. Now, if it turns out that Greebles are Groobles, is there a problem that I perceive a natural kind as an artificial one? Not at all: there is no necessity, if I am having a rich kind content, that perception present an object as the natural kind it in fact is, just that perception present the object as of some kind.41 Similarly, to perceptually recognize something as of a natural kind, rabbit say, I needn’t perceptually recognize it as possessing some particular sequence of DNA.

Rich and Thin Contents  63 Thin Differences Another way to deny P3 – that the difference in presentational content between E1 and E2 is due to one of those experiences possessing a rich content that the other does not – would be to insist that the two experiences differ in the (non-gestalt) thin properties they present. For example, perhaps the expert’s visual experience of a pine tree differs from the novice’s in the shapes, colors, and textures it presents, and this is enough to explain the contrast quite independently of a content like “pine tree” being presented. Consider Tye’s argument about conceptual content: Consider … phenomenal differences in what it’s like to hear sounds in French before and after the language has been learnt. Obviously there are phenomenal changes here tied to experiential reactions of various sorts associated with understanding the language (e.g., differences in emotional and imagistic responses, feelings of familiarity that weren’t present before, differences in effort or concentration involved as one listens to the speaker). There are also phenomenal differences connected to a change in phonological processing. Before one understands French, the phonological structure one hears in the French utterance is fragmentary. For example, one’s experience of word boundaries is patently less rich and determinate. This is because some aspects of phonological processing are sensitive to top-down feedback from the centres of comprehension. … My claim is that the phenomenally relevant representation of phonological features is non-conceptual … .42 I agree with Tye’s conclusion about this perceptual content being nonconceptual. But one could imagine the same argument being used against perception having non-conceptual rich content. On such a view, a nonperceptual state would cause top-down changes in the thin properties presented in perception. Such changes in thin properties might then be taken to explain the phenomenal contrast in question, quite independently of any rich contents. There is much to recommend the idea that the expert’s and the novice’s perceptual experiences differ in their thin contents. It seems to me phenomenologically correct that, for example, an experienced wine taster has a broader flavor profile to which her perception can respond and that she has acquired a discriminatory capacity that enhances the thin content of her perception. But I don’t think changes in thin content adequately describe the phenomenal contrasts in question. Bayne has argued that it is “highly implausible to suppose that we shall be able to find such low-level differences in all contrast cases.”43 For example, it’s unclear to me what thin differences are supposed to be present in the gestalt shift

64  The Sense of Perception experienced in the Duck-Rabbit. But whether or not every contrast case is accompanied by differences in thin properties seems to me a difficult question, and the answer is not obvious. What does seem obvious to me is that differences in thin properties are inadequate to describe the contrasts in question. Even if thin transformations are induced by the move from the rabbit percept to the duck percept, they will not suffice to characterize the shift that takes place. For example, differences in thin properties don’t explain the transformations in functional significance that occur in the shift from one gestalt to another. Or, note that you can imagine adding any thin qualities you want to the prosopagnosic’s experience, but that no such alterations will suffice for perceptual recognition. No change in color or alteration in shape will make the prosopagnosic perceptually recognize a face. So, while transformations in thin contents go along with perceptual recognition, they are not themselves recognition. Thus, I see no compelling alternative to perception having rich content. Many of the alternatives we have considered draw our attention to important aspects of perceptual learning: acquiring perceptual expertise does involve an enriched relation between sensory contents and post-­perceptual cognitive states, but only through the intermediary of perceptual sense; it does involve the feeling of familiarity, but we experience familiarity because we are experts, not the other way around; there are attentional differences between the expert’s and novice’s perception, but these are in addition to, not alternative to, perception’s coming to have rich content; expertise entails acquiring perceptual gestalten, but gestalten are precisely how we have rich perceptual content, not substitutes for the latter; finally, I think the expert does have a different sensory experience than does the novice, but neither will this allow us to understand the full difference between expert and novice. Thus, each of these alternatives plays an important role in explaining our phenomenal differences: for example, a difference in thin contents is indeed a phenomenal difference, even if unnoticed by the ­perceiver. But they simply cannot describe the relevant phenomenal difference because none of them (individually or together) describe the kinds of ­differences that characterize the range of our perceptions. Perceptual sense is rich, then: the organization of the perceptual field carries us beyond mere sensory properties and into a world of things, persons, actions, emotions, etc. Notes 1 The opposite arrangement is implausible, however: perception cannot be composed only of sensations and still have rich content. There is no sensation of natural kinds, for example. 2 Cf. for these specifics (SWWE, 20–1), (PhP, 310, 333, 361–83).

Rich and Thin Contents  65 3 See, e.g., Alex Byrne and Susanna Siegel, “Rich or Thin,” in Current ­Controversies in Philosophy of Perception (New York: Routledge, 2017), 65; Michael Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 141. 4 Siegel, “Rich or Thin,” 73; Susanna Siegel, “Replies to Campbell, Prinz, and Travis,” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 163, no. 3 (2013): 852. 5 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 212, Cf. Ibid., 203. 6 Of course, one can monitor for behavioral responses to stimuli. But here I am focused on the contents of conscious perception, and behavioral responses alone will not decide this question. 7 To be clear, when I speak of perceptual recognition in the following, I don’t mean to presuppose any controversial account of what such recognition is (e.g., that it involves rich perceptual content). I only presuppose the non-controversial claim that we recognize items in the world around us on the basis of perception. In principle, the fact of recognition is compatible with the actual rich content occurring post-perceptually, e.g., in a non-perceptual concept. I  will argue that the phenomenon of recognition cannot actually be accounted for in this way in the next section, but no part of my argument involves simply assuming a particular account of perceptual recognition. 8 For a general argument for rich content from agnosia, see Time Bayne, “Perception and the Reach of Phenomenal Content,” The Philosophical Quarterly 59, no. 236 (2009): 385–404. See Brogaard’s response: Berit Brogaard, “Do We Perceive Natural Kind Properties?,” Philosophical Studies 162, no. 1 (2013): 35–42. She argues that agnosia shows only that kind properties do not occur only in belief, but this is not sufficient to demonstrate the richness of perceptual content. For we can still explain the difference in terms of non-experiential content of visual processing (2013, 39). Of course, there probably is some difference in non-experiential processing. But why think this is sufficient? It is not enough to show that there is some difference; one has to show that there is the relevant difference. Specifically, I don’t see how a non-experiential difference is supposed to explain the kind of phenomenal contrast in question. A difference in non-experiential processing needs some experiential output to set up this phenomenal contrast. What output should this be? One option would be that differences in non-experiential processing output a difference in the rich contents presented in experience. In the following sections I rule out what I see as the most plausible alternatives to this option. 9 See Susanna Siegel, “How Can We Discover the Contents of Experience?,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2007): 127–42. Cf. Susanna Siegel, The Contents of Visual Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Chapter 3. 10 Note that I characterize the argument as carefully describing the contrast in question, rather than explaining the existence of just some vague contrast. Thus, I will not try to argue that there are no phenomenal differences between two target experiences other than those accounted for by rich contents – just that certain phenomenal differences can only be described in terms of a difference in rich contents. 11 Note that my formulation differs slightly from, but is I think consonant with Siegel’s (Contents of Visual Experience, 101) and Helton’s: Grace Helton, “Recent Issues in High-Level Perception,” Philosophy Compass 11, no. 12 (2016): 854.

66  The Sense of Perception 2 See Siegel (Contents of Visual Experience, 99–100). 1 13 See Helton (Ibid., 854–7) and for an overview Jesse Prinz, “Siegel’s Get Rich Quick Scheme,” Philosophical Studies 163, no. 3 (2013): 827–35. 14 See, e.g., Brogaard’s reply to Bayne (“Do We Perceive Natural Kind Properties?,” 39); Prinz, “Siegel’s Get Rich Quick Scheme”; Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness. 15 Ned Block, “Seeing-As in the Light of Vision Science,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89, no. 3 (2014): 566. 16 Susanna Siegel, “The Visual Experience of Causation,” The Philosophical Quarterly 59, no. 236 (2009): 534–35. 17 For a critique of intellectualized conceptions of inference, see Susanna Siegel, The Rationality of Perception (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), Chapter 5. 18 See Brogaard (“Do We Perceive Natural Kind Properties?”, 36–7); Helton (“Recent Issues in High-Level Perception”, 855) for overview. 19 Sacks, “Face-Blind.” 20 Brogaard allows that familiarity makes no difference to the contents of perceptual experience but suggests that it does make a difference to “states of seeming.” The two differ: for example, Brogaard claims that perception can represent 17 people in a room without it thereby visually seeming to me that there are exactly 17 people in a room (“Do We Perceive Natural Kind Properties?,” 37). We can say that the expert and novice differ in their “states of seeming,” without thereby differing in perceptual content. But it is not at all clear to me how two experiences can differ in what “visually seems” to be the case without differing in perceptual content. Perhaps there can be differences in perceptual content without differences in states of seeming, but the converse does not follow. Of course, everything depends on the deeply ambiguous terms “visually seems.” When something visually seems to be an apple, does this mean we associate the concept “apple” with our sensations, for example? If so, then I have addressed this option above. If visual seeming amounts to what I am calling perceptual recognition, then it quite clearly does make a difference to perceptual content, since it introduces structural relationships within that content. 21 Prinz (“Siegel’s Get Rich Quick Scheme,” 830). 22 Cf., e.g., Noë’s discussion of attention and the virtuality of perceptual representation: Alva Noe, Action in Perception (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 49–55. 23 Merleau-Ponty (PhP, 28–34). 24 Bence Nanay, “Do We See Apples as Edible?,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92, no. 3 (2011): 308–11. 25 Tyler Burge, “Reply to Block: Adaptation and the Upper Border of Perception,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89, no. 3 (2014): 582. 26 Siegel, The Contents of Visual Experience, 110–11. 27 Byrne, “Rich or Thin,” 70. 28 Siegel, The Contents of Visual Experience, 110–12. She also argues that shapegestalten that are abstract enough to apply to all recognizable members of a kind will often apply to other kinds as well (e.g., handguns, drills, and hair dryers share a similar shape), and this abstraction undercuts our motivation to think that we cannot present the relevant gestalt prior to developing a recognitional ability for the matching kind. As Prinz objects, though, “the very fact that we can recognize a kind by its appearance would suggest that recognizable kinds have configurational properties that are, at least, highly diagnostic” (“Siegel’s Get Rich Quick Scheme,” 831).

Rich and Thin Contents  67 29 Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, 112. 30 Raamy Majeed, “Do Gestalt Effects Show That We Perceive High-Level Aesthetic Properties?,” Analysis 78, no. 3 (2018): 445. 31 I think we can re-read Byrne’s argument with this understanding of gestalten as organized shape properties. With respect to learning natural kinds, like fruits – specifically two hypothetically quite different species of lemon, A and B – Byrne writes, “If learning to recognize A and B fruits involves acquiring perceptual contents concerning different gestalts … one’s perceptual contents change, but not by including propositions about lemons as such.” Alex Byrne, “Experience and Content,” The Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2009): 450. 32 The Sensible World and the World of Expression, 62. 33 Someone might try to turn around this reasoning as follows. Admittedly, physical objects do not exhibit gestalt effects, for example, completion. There is nothing missing in the object to be completed; there is only something missing for my perception. But what I see does stand in need of completion; I perceive a set of disconnected shapes, which I must then complete. So, what I see are just gestalten, not physical objects. This is an instance of a more general mistake to be considered in Chapter 5, which confuses properties of my perception with properties of the perceived. It is true that my perception exhibits gestalt effects, but it would be a mistake to conclude that what I perceive does. To do so would be to confuse the object of perception with the process by which I perceive that object. If I perceive a cat behind a picket fence, I perceive it by completing the obscured sections of the cat. My perception is completed, not the cat itself. To say that what I perceive is completed would be like saying that what I perceive is a perception. 34 One might reply that there is no error in perceiving a “teacupG,” only in subsequently applying the concept “teacup.” Of course, if the idea is that this concept application is perceptual, then the Rich View will be vindicated, since perception can include rich conceptual contents like “teacup.” If it is meant to be post-perceptual, then it is pretty unappealing, intuitively, since we really do take ourselves to make a perceptual error: if you tell me that what I am seeing is a rock, but not a teacup, I will not simply revise my concepts, and I will also experience a discordance between my perception and my concepts. 35 One way to respond to this argument would be to suggest that we can explain this distinction in terms of concept application. When I see an object merely as face-like, but not as a face, what has happened is that the sensory properties of that object do not fully match the familiar organizational features of a facegestalt, and so I do not apply the concept “face” to the object before, instead conceptualizing the object as having a (limited) face-pattern; whereas when the object does fully match these organizational features, I do attribute the concept “face” to this object. The problem with this suggestion is that the degree of match won’t explain the switch between conceptualizing an object as having a face-pattern and being a face. If, when the object has a limited match with the face-gestalt, I conceptualize an object as having a limited face-pattern, it’s not at all clear why increasing the degree of fit would trigger conceptualizing the object as a face. Instead, it would be much more plausible that the object is conceptualized as having a more fully realized face pattern. If we want to explain how objects get conceptualized as being some way, rather that just as having some pattern, then this distinction will have to show up in vision itself: vision has to be able to show an object to us, e.g., as being a face, and not just as manifesting a face-pattern. Either a) gestalten can allow us to perceive what an object is, i.e., the rich property of kind, or if they don’t, then b) we can

68  The Sense of Perception perceive more than what gestalten allow us to perceive. The norm in perception is to present its object as being some way. When perception fails to do this, it does not look to be a face, for example, but “like” a face: it partially but does not fully realize the appropriate gestalt for a face. Even here, notice, perception does not so much present its object as having a pattern of sensible properties, but as looking like, e.g., a face. Perception does not live at the level of patternproperties at all. 36 Suppose I come across a teacup-shaped rock on the beach and mistake it for a teacup. In this case, we might say that the rock actually has a teacup-pattern, and if I am familiar with teacups, I may well attribute a teacup-pattern property to the relevant portion of my environment when I come across the rock. Even as I come close to the rock and recognize that it is not a teacup at all, I may persist in seeing it as having a teacup-pattern. But if all that happened in this case is that I perceptually attributed a pattern-property to my environment, I would not have the experience of error or correction at all, since there is a teacup-pattern in the vicinity. 37 To be clear, I am not begging the question here; I am not presupposing that we have rich perception in order to show that an objection to rich perception is false. I am just showing that if the Rich View is properly developed, the objection gets no traction. 38 Of course, the meaning-matter of a perception of a rabbit and of the thought of one is not identical, but they must share something in common, since the concept “rabbit” expresses our perceptual experience as of a rabbit and since the concept “rabbit” can be formed out of the perception of a rabbit. 39 Note that my account requires a shift in the language we sometimes casually use to talk about gestalten. For example, we might say in the Duck-Rabbit case that “Now I see a rabbitG” and “Now I see a duckG.” This language suggests that what I see are gestalten. But strictly speaking, on my account, this way of speaking is incorrect. Even in this case what I see are not gestalten, but images: I see that now as an image of a rabbit, now as an image of a duck. On the analysis I am offering, perception has gestalt properties insofar as it involves properties like grouping, functional significance, and structuration of the perceptual field; but to say that perception has gestalt properties is not to say that it is of gestalten; my perception is structured, but it is not of a perceptual structure. Again, if to say that my perception has a duckG structure entailed that it was of a duckG, then my perception would never be in error about its object, since its object would just be the gestalt it contains. Instead, we should say that my perception, in this case, is structured by a duckG, which would amount to saying that the perceptual sense or structure I have is that of a duck, or in other words, I see that as a duck. The gestalt defines the meaning of my perception, but it is not what I perceive. 40 See Byrne, “Rich or Thin.” 41 Byrne’s other related arguments also seem not to work to me. His first argument is from cases of visual illusion, say, mistaking a bar of soap for a lemon. In such a case, we might suppose that the soap shares all relevant visual characteristics with a lemon. But since the soap isn’t a lemon, it follows that being a lemon is not a visual characteristic (“Experience and Content”, 449–50). The problem with this argument is that it is irrelevant that the soap isn’t a lemon. What is relevant is only that our vision presents it as a lemon. There would only be a problem if we accept a premise along the lines: “If perception presents X as a Y, then X is a Y.” But perception is far too fallible to tolerate such a claim.

Rich and Thin Contents  69 Consider this argument: suppose I see a square at an angle, without realizing it, and mistake it for a trapezoid. Here, we might say that the square shares the relevant visual characteristics with the trapezoid. Since the square isn’t a trapezoid, though, it follows that “square” is not a visual characteristic. But this conclusion is unacceptable. The argument mixes a relevant consideration (what our vision presents) with an irrelevant one (what something actually is). Byrne then tries another argument. Imagine that lemons grown on one island (A) look like normal lemons, and those grown on another island (B) look like cucumbers. If one develops a recognitional capacity for both, without knowing they are the same fruit, then both will be visually represented as lemons, entailing that (i) one will believe the two fruits to be of the same kind, and (ii) they will appear more visually similar when one learns to recognize them by sight. This argument faces different problems. It would work only if we accepted the premise: “if X is Y, and I perceptually recognize X, then I perceptually recognize X as Y.” But this is not entailed by the Rich View (which only requires that I can, at times, perceptually recognize something as being of some kind) and is not compelling. The following, much more plausible option, is also compatible with the Rich View: I perceive fruit of the A-kind as A-kind fruit and fruit of the B-kind as B-kind fruit. Here I recognize each as having a natural kind property. There is no need for me to identify A-kind fruit with B-kind fruit. Surely I can believe they are of the same kind of fruit if I am taught they are both lemons, but there is no need for this conceptual identity to be present in perception itself. So part (i) of Byrne’s object seems like no problem to me, but obviously true (as long as the belief is not based on perception). Now, I don’t want to rule out that quite different objects can be perceived as of the same kind, e.g., when certain large wooden shapes and certain small metal shapes are both perceived as spoons. I’m just saying the Rich View doesn’t require this identification to occur. But, if such identification can occur, does part (ii) of Byrne’s objection pose a problem? I think not. For what does it mean to say large wooden shapes and small metallic ones will appear more visually similar when both recognized as spoons, for example? Does it mean their thin properties are altered, such that the wooden spoons appear more metallic or the small spoons look larger? I doubt this occurs. Or, does it simply mean that in both perceptions the same artificial kind is presented? In this case, I have no objection, but there is no problem for the Rich View. 42 Michael Tye, Consciousness, Color, and Content (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 61. Cf. Tye (Ten Problems of Consciousness, 140). 43 Bayne, “Perception and the Reach of Phenomenal Content,” 393.

3 Practical Perception

We’ve seen that perceptual sense provides a deep opening on the world, not just in its sensory properties but through them to a broad range of features of the world. What I want to argue in this chapter is that this range includes a variety of practical features. One of Merleau-Ponty’s (and, more broadly, the phenomenological tradition’s) guiding insights is that we perceive the world around us not just as a disinterested set of properties and objects, but in terms of its practical significance for our interaction with it. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, for example, for a soccer player the field is perceived not as a neutral object but as “pervaded with lines of force (the ‘yard lines’; those which demarcate the ‘penalty area’) and articulated in sectors (for example, the ‘openings’ between the adversaries) which call for a certain mode of action … ” (SB, 168). When I hear the tea kettle whistling, for example, I don’t merely become aware of a noise: I become aware that the water is ready and of a certain urgency that I remove the kettle from the stove. I see an ice patch on the sidewalk, and I recognize not just that the sidewalk has the property of being icy but also the danger the ice presents for my walking and that the dry patches surrounding it better support my intention of movement. When I see my friend cup her ear to indicate that she can’t hear me, I am aware not only of her hand gesture but also that I need to modulate my voice appropriately. And if I am rock climbing, I don’t merely perceive shapes and distances; rather, I have a sense of how well these shapes and distances, such as a protrusion slightly out of reach of my current position, welcome or refuse me. In all of these cases, the close tie between perception and action is manifest. Perception does not merely locate properties and objects around us, and action is not an arbitrary intention imposed on these properties and objects. I speak up because I see my friend cannot hear, and I bear left because I am aware of risk posed by the ice. In other words, our action responds to the practical significance of the world around us. What I want to claim in this chapter is that this practical significance is

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-5

Practical Perception  71 (at least in part) revealed to us perceptually: the practical significance of the world in which we negotiate our intentions is (again, at least in part) a perceptual sense. In other words, part of the content of perception is the practical significance of the world around us, e.g., I perceptually experience (correctly or incorrectly) that certain holds will allow me to climb or that the tea kettle must be moved. To be clear, the question I am asking in this chapter is not the familiar question about whether perception is for action, nor the Enactivist question about whether all perception is mediated by sensorimotor knowledge. Instead, the question here is whether we can perceptually intend practical features of the world – i.e., features of the world relevant for action, or what Nanay has called “action-properties.”1 I will argue that we can and that these perceptually intended features range all the way from a­ ffordances, or possibilities for action, up to moral requirements. A Criterion for Perception Rather than centering my account here around a Phenomenal Contrast Argument (which would largely rehash the arguments of Chapter 2), I want to identify a criterion for properties being perceptually presented. If we locate such a criterion, then we can bypass the lengthy process of ruling out alternative explanations and simply consult this criterion. An existing debate about this criterion within literature about moral perception provides a helpful starting point. Consider first Chudnoff’s view, on which if I am perceptually aware of X, then (1) X contributes to the phenomenal character of my experience, (2) the overall phenomenology of the experience differentiates X from a background of other things, and (3) my experience enables me to entertain simple demonstrative thoughts about X.2 For example, Chudnoff argues when I hear my oven chime, indicating that it has heated to 450°F, we cannot say that I hear – i.e., that I am perceptually aware – that the interior of my oven is at 450°F, since the interior of the oven by itself has no impact on the phenomenal character of my experience. Instead, certain background beliefs – e.g., that the chime indicates that the oven is finished preheating and that I set the dial to 450°F – must intervene and mediate our perceptual awareness, in order for me to have the intention, “the oven is heated to 450°F.”3 While I don’t deny these features of perceptual awareness, I think Chudnoff’s own examples of what we are not perceptually aware of exhibit these very features. For example, Chudnoff argues that in cases of completion – e.g., the Kanisza triangle – our experience makes it seem that an object is complete, but we are nevertheless not visually aware of the hidden

72  The Sense of Perception region of that object. In Figure 3.1, for example, our experience makes it seem that the figures are completed in the manner depicted in B rather than that in C. But Chudnoff would claim that we are not visually aware that they are completed in this manner. This strikes me as a strange conclusion, given that completion exhibits the very features defined above. First, there is “something it is like” to perceive the figure as completed in manner B rather than in manner C, and my experience does have the first character but not the second, just as there is a real difference in what it is like to see A and what it is like to see B. Second, the phenomenology of perceiving the figure does differentiate it from the white background, even in its hidden portion: my perception distinguishes figure from ground in the B manner rather than in the C manner. Consider, for example, how surprised I would be if the white triangle were removed and there were no figure and ground in this region, i.e., if there were no lines completing the triangle at all. And third, my perception of the lines enables me to form simple demonstrative thoughts about them, e.g., “those black circles.” So, though Chudnoff’s account of the features of perceptual awareness is largely compelling and a helpful starting point, the conclusions he draws from these features are artificial. Consider next Werner’s account, on which, If a subject S is perceptually aware of a particular instantiation of a property N, then there is no set of facts F such that (i) F is not part of S’s [perceptual field], (ii) had F not obtained, N could have failed to be instantiated, and (iii) had F been different, S’s perceptual experience would have been phenomenologically identical.4 On this account, we are not perceptually aware that the interior of the oven is heated to 450°F, since there is a set of facts which (i) are not a part of our perceptual field – namely, facts about the interior of the oven – without which (ii) the oven would not be 450°F, and the absence of which (iii) would make no difference to the phenomenal character of my experience (since they are not even present in my perceptual field). According to

Figure 3.1  Completions of the Kanisza Triangle.

Practical Perception  73 Werner, this is a way of spelling out the basic idea that if I am perceptually aware of some feature of my environment, then it cannot be altered without a change in the phenomenology of my experience: facts outside of my perceptual field can’t change whether that feature is instantiated without changing the phenomenology of the experience.5 Again, I am not auditorially aware of the interior of my oven, because the oven could just as well be room temperature without any difference in my auditory experience. For example, the bell might malfunction and chime though the oven has failed to heat. But I think this view faces significant problems. First, it has rather extreme consequences, e.g., that we cannot be perceptually aware that a ball is an enclosed three-dimensional figure. Werner defines the perceptual field as, “The set of objects and properties that impinge on a sensory organ as a result of a non-deviant causal chain and contribute to some aspect of a subject’s perceptual phenomenology,”6 i.e., in terms of impingements on sensory organs.7 But the backside and the interior of a ball do not impinge on my sensory organs, and were there no surface on the back-side of the ball (say, the surface is merely hemispherical) this would produce no change in the phenomenal character of my experience. So, on Werner’s account of awareness, I could not at any moment be perceptually aware of a ball as an enclosed three-dimensional figure. And yet I very much seem to perceive a ball as having a backside and interior.8 Abstracting slightly, I think the problem with accounts like Chudnoff’s and Werner’s is that they ask us to fix a firm limit to the perceptual field (or to what we can be perceptually aware of), whereas in fact there is no way to specify in advance what will show up within the perceptual field (as we saw when we tried to apply Chudnoff’s own account of the features of perceptual awareness to his examples). A three-dimensional object can show up in the perceptual field just as well as an object that extends well beyond the field, like a road or a street. When I see smoke rising from behind a hill and I am aware there is fire, can I strictly deny that this awareness is perceptual? I’m not sure there is a clear answer to this question. Rather than attempting to affix a set limit to the perceptual field, we need an account that allows perception a kind of plasticity and that allows it to be expansive in the sense that it stretches to make room for the world. Here, the notion of integrability developed in Chapters 1 and 2 is helpful. There I argued that, according to Merleau-Ponty, if I perceive X, X must be integrated with some properties that are given sensorially. By properties given sensorially, I intend the full range of properties that can be given sensorily, e.g., color or shape. For example, in the Kanisza triangle, I think it is right to say that we perceive a black circle. But the black region and the “covered” slice of the circle are not given visually in the same way; there is an important difference between seeing a black circle

74  The Sense of Perception and seeing a black circle partially obscured by a white triangle. Part of this difference is that, in the former case, the slice is given sensorially in a way that it is not in the latter. This difference shouldn’t lead us to set up the sort of abstract distinctions between hyle and morphe criticized by MerleauPonty, but we also shouldn’t shy away from acknowledging it as a real aspect of our perceptual experience. For example, to argue that some properties are given sensorially is not to presuppose the constancy hypothesis: sensorially available properties are not unmediated results of the objective properties of the world; rather, they are very much mediated by the operation of our perceptual capacities, e.g., a color will be given sensorially in terms of the context (e.g., lighting) in which it is perceived, and more generally the holistic character of perception discussed in ­Chapter 1. My claim is that, for something to be perceived, then, it must be suitably integrated with sensorially given properties. We can say that the black circle is genuinely perceived, in the Kanisza triangle case, because this perception is integrated with the black region that is given sensorially; or, I do in fact perceive a ball, even though only part of it is given sensorially at any moment, because this perception is integrated with the sensory givenness of some portion of the surface of the ball. Our perceptual field is expansive, then, in the sense that it can include a wide range of rich and thin properties, from shapes and sizes to kinds and emotions, properties given sensorially and those integrated with them. What do I mean by “integration”? In the previous two chapters, we saw that a gestalt, as an organization of a perceptual field, is integrated with that field, and so seems clearly to be perceived; in contrast, concepts are “detachable” from perceptions, in Hopp’s sense, because they are not integrable with the perceptual field. In the context of practical properties, it is less obvious that gestalt organization will settle the question, since practical properties often seem not to possess a distinctive gestalt of their own. For example, if I see a vase falling as well as the corresponding need to grab it, there seems to be no gestalt of “need-to-grab” here independent of the gestalt of a vase falling. So, if I wish to employ the notion of “integration,” I will have to develop a more general account of it. In the context of moral perception, Audi suggests we think of integration as a sort of grounding: (morally) perceiving (say) an injustice yields an experiential sense of it that is integrated with—not merely added to … —perception of the base properties for this injustice. The integration may or may not involve emotion, but it must go beyond the phenomenology of merely perceiving the moral phenomenon or of that merely conjoined with a moral belief concerning that phenomenon. The integration must also appropriately reflect a relation between the felt moral element, such as

Practical Perception  75 injustice, and the properties grounding that element, such as patently unequal treatment.9 Audi’s precise meaning here is vague,10 but it is at least clear that in speaking of integration as grounding, we must be thinking of more than mere conjunction, as “reflecting a relation.” But what kind of relation? A perception of “base properties” could bring about a moral belief, for example, without the moral belief thereby being integrated with that perception: I can, for example, continue to hold a moral belief long after the perception, and I could form the belief quite absent the sensory perception at all. Mere causation or grounding will not describe integration, then. I would suggest that the phenomenological notion of foundation might prove helpful here. Husserl writes that, If a law of essence means that an A cannot as such exist except in a more comprehensive unity which connects it with an M, we say that an A as such requires foundation by an M or also that an A as such needs to be supplements by an M.11 Beliefs, as detachable, do not require this kind of supplementation by sensory perception to exist and in this sense are not founded on sensory perception. In contrast, any perceptual presentation does require this kind of supplementation by sensorially given properties and in this sense is founded on sensorial givenness. As Merleau-Ponty writes, A face in fact only expresses something through the arrangement of colors and lights that compose it; the sense of this facial expression is not behind its eyes, but upon them, and a touch of color more or less is enough for the painter to transform the facial expression of a portrait. (PhP, 336–7) A meaning arises precisely within the sensorially available: In the works of his youth, Cézanne sought to paint the expression first, and this is why he missed it. He gradually learned that expression is the language of the thing itself, and is born of its configuration. His painting is an attempt to connect with the physiognomy of things and faces through the complete restitution of their sensible configuration. (PhP, 337) We might think of integration in the terms of perceptual recognition developed in the previous chapters. Contrast the experience of perceiving Adrian’s face with that of the prosopagnosic reading a name tag and

76  The Sense of Perception forming an appropriate belief about seeing Adrian. I do not just see a face in ­conjunction with the belief “that person is Adrian.” Rather, I see the person as Adrian; I recognize Adrian. What this means is that the presentation (I use this term broadly to refer to percepts or concepts) “Adrian” is integrated with the perception of a person or a face (more importantly, both are integrated with the visual field). Or we might say, the presentation “Adrian” is localized within the visual field and co-localized with the perception of a face or person, as well as certain sensory properties. To say that a presentation is localized within a perceptual field is to say it occupies a more or less definite portion of the perceptual field, one which may change with the field (e.g., as I move my head) but nevertheless occupies a place within it. The prosopagnosic’s presentation “Adrian,” in contrast, is not localized within a sensory field. Certainly, their presentation of “face” or “person” is, and at the level of belief they identify “that person” with Adrian, but the presentation “Adrian” is not of itself localized within the field. The same extends to the sorts of cases considered above, where objects are only partially present within a sensory field. Contrast the case of the apple in the fruit bowl, partially glimpsed through other fruits obscuring it, with finding a note on my counter saying, “There is an apple in the fridge.” In the former case, we perceive the apple, whereas in the latter we do not. This is because, even though I do not perceive the entire apple in the former case, the apple is partially present within the visual field, and so the presentation apple has some more or less definite location within that field. In the latter case, the meaning “apple” has no location within the visual field. Further, this localization within the visual field allows me to entertain simple demonstrative thoughts (as Chudnoff claimed of perceptual awareness). Because in the former case the presentation “apple” occupies some definite location in my visual field, I can form a thought such as “That apple is rotten.” Of course, I can form a similar belief in the latter case, but the reference here is not guided by perception but by the linguistic reference made by the note. Similarly, in the case of face perception, the localization of my presentation “Adrian” allows me to form a thought like “Adrian is tired.” But the prosopagnosic’s presentation “Adrian” will not allow a demonstrative thought in the same way. Rather, the latter will allow a demonstrative thought either (a) in the way that a singular concept refers to its object or (b) by being identified with the presentation “person” that is localized within the visual field. This is what I meant when I said that the prosopagnosic’s presentation “Adrian” is not of itself localized within the perceptual field. So, I would suggest that integration with the perceptual field is the right criterion for determining whether some property is being intended

Practical Perception  77 perceptually or non-perceptually, and integration involves at least the three features of (a) foundation, (b) localization, and (c) demonstration. If these points are reasonably clear, I want now to apply them to practical perception. If I perceive an opportunity for action, I do more than perceive an event in conjunction with a belief or emotion; rather, the opportunity is itself integrated into the perceptual field. Rather than having a detached sense of opportunity, I perceptually recognize and localize the opportunity within the perceptual field. Or so I will now argue. Affordances A familiar place to start with the discussion of practical perception is affordances. As defined by Gibson, the affordances of an environment are “what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.”12 In other words, affordances are features of an environment or an object defined by the possibilities for action or use that object or environment provides to an animal. Such possibilities cannot be stipulated independently of the animal to which the environment affords possibilities. For example, a steep cliff might afford movement to a trained climber or a mountain goat, but not to me. There is a wide range of evidence suggesting that we perceive affordances. For example, we seem to perceive stairs as climbable in relatively stable proportion to the size of our limbs13; the “standability” of slanted surfaces of various slopes14; our capacity to step across obstacles15 or to pass through obstacles16; the reachability of objects from our current position17; catchability18; and our ability to sit on surfaces,19 walk through apertures,20 and walk up slopes.21 While of course we do entertain beliefs about each of these affordances, it’s implausible that we have only such beliefs and not also perceptions of affordances. I do not merely believe, for example, that I can move through a certain opening and not another; the openings actually look to me to be traversable or not. A stroke patient may have an impaired capacity to perceive whether their hands would fit through openings and what objects are within reach, for example.22 But nothing prevents such a patient from forming correct judgments about these questions, if, e.g., they were told by an objective observer that their hand would fit through a given opening. But even so, patients would not see that their hand fits. In contrast, normally we form beliefs about affordances on the basis of our perceptual sensitivity to features like reachability. According to our criterion, for affordances to be perceptually presented, they must be not merely caused by sensory fields but integrated with them. And indeed, affordances seem to be so integrated. Consider that if different sensory capacities yield different presentations of affordance properties, then those presentations would seem to be integrated with their respective

78  The Sense of Perception fields. For example, suppose I am driving a rental car much larger than my own car, and I don’t yet have a sense for the size of my vehicle. I have to drive through a narrow lane with cars parked on either side. In this case, I might not be visually aware of whether the road affords me passage. At the same time, if the car is equipped with an object detection system, then as I cautiously advance it may start beeping. Here I can form the belief that I cannot pass, and perhaps – if I am familiar with this noise – we might even say that I am auditorially aware that the road doesn’t afford passage. Here the affordance property (namely, being unable to pass) is not integrated with the visual field. This experience is markedly unlike the experience I have in my own car, where I clearly see where I can and cannot pass. Thus, affordance can (or can fail to) be present visually – to be integrated specifically with the visual field or not – and so passes our key test of perception.23 It would help to provide this claim with greater phenomenological depth, however. One of the key ways Merleau-Ponty gets at our practical perception is through Gelb’s and Goldstein’s study of a patient, Schneider, who, following brain damage sustained in World War I, suffered from a variety of disorders, including apraxia.24 I’d like now follow Merleau-Ponty’s strategy, relying on more contemporary evidence about apraxia in order to illuminate our distinctively perceptual access to affordances. Apraxia is comprised of a group of motor disorders, defined Rothi and Heilman as “an inability to carry out acquired, purposeful activities that is not primarily explained by motor or sensory impairment or by deficits of motivation, language barriers or intellectual dysfunctions.”25 Patients with apraxia can suffer a range of symptoms, from ideomotor issues, such as difficulty in imitating hand gestures (e.g., saluting or using two fingers to mime walking) or forming the correct hand postures to use tools, to ideational ones, such as incorrectly using an object for its function. For example, when a candle and matchbox are placed on a table in front of a patient, they may lift an unstruck match to the candle, strike the match on the candle, or rub the candle on the table.26 Importantly, apraxia is not an impairment of motor capacity (apraxics are able to perform the same range of movements as the general population) or sensation (apraxics do not generally struggle to identify an object’s size, shape, or distance, for example). And while apraxia surely involves the disruption of certain conceptual capacities, the disorder does not lie only in the latter. An apraxic can apply the appropriate concept, naming the object and even identifying its function, e.g., that a match is for lighting a candle, without being able to handle it successfully. Nor finally is apraxia reducible to agnosia, since apraxics normally recognize and name the object they misuse, e.g., lifting the match to the candle, or are frustrated with the coffee machine they can no longer manipulate in order to

Practical Perception  79 make coffee.27 The deficit lies in the ability to use the object – and not the physiological capacity to use the object but the concrete awareness of how to interact with it. What has disappeared for the patient, in other words, is the motor significance of the world around them. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, “all apraxia involves [the] erasure of a layer of signification … at the level of practical presence.”28 Consider the patient, VF, of Lesourd et al.29 VF struggles to adopt an appropriate hand posture with the use of objects, e.g., using scissors to cut paper (see Figure 3.2). When asked to match tools with the objects on which they are used, e.g., hammer and nail or scissors and thread, VF was quite successful. VF even generally succeeded in using these tools for their respective purposes, e.g., cutting with scissors, and did so without being told a specific function to perform. Thus, VF demonstrates a conceptual understanding of the tool and its function and is even aware that the blades must be pressed together with the paper between them. Where VF struggles is simply in finding the appropriate hand gestures for using the object. There is no communication for her between the tool and her hand. Thus, what we see in the images of her various hand postures is a searching for the appropriate interface between hand and tool, a series of attempts at achieving synergy with the tool. She only has to search for the appropriate formula, though, because the customary formula can no longer be read in the visual givens and the handles do not invite her grasping. Even when she does use the handles, she does so with an unusual hand posture that makes the scissors unwieldy. It seems, then, that VF’s apraxia lies (in part) in a perceptual deficit: she can no longer see the motor significance of the tool that she knows is for cutting; she cannot perceptually recognize the conventional opportunities for grasping that the scissors afford; they, so to speak, go silent for her, just as faces go silent for the prosopagnosic. To help get a sense for this experience, it might be helpful to compare our visual experience of Katerina Kamprani’s Uncomfortable Object series or Jerry Monteith’s Circular Saw. Here I can perceive certain simple affordances (as indeed apraxics often can as well), e.g., that I can grasp the handle, but how an object could actually be manipulated is perceptually impenetrable to me (Figures 3.3 and 3.4).30

Figure 3.2  Patient VF Manipulating Scissors.

80  The Sense of Perception

Figure 3.3  Katerina Kamprani’s Uncomfortable Mug

Another patient, Harry, “could not find the buttering movement when holding the knife over his bread, or he continued hacking on the cheese with the cheese slicer and could not capture the slicing movement.”31 The appropriate actions here are like a word that’s on the tip of one’s tongue or a memory one cannot quite conjure, despite knowing quite well what one is looking for. When cutting bread with a tableknife, despite a breadknife laying nearby, Harry remarks, “I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t do anything about it.” It is not that Harry cannot see the breadknife, nor that he cannot identify it – rather, it has ceased to be perceptually salient for the problem at hand. Just as a geometry student might not think to introduce a new line into a figure to enable a proof, Harry does not see the givens as calling for a breadknife; rather, the line or the breadknife must be introduced as if from nowhere – the breadknife must be invented, as it were, to open up the problem anew. I have claimed that for at least some apraxics, the perceptual interface between body and environment becomes unavailable. Notice that what goes missing for the apraxics described above possesses all the characteristic features of perception considered in the previous chapters. These apraxics do not suffer from sensory deficits, nor are they unable to infer how

Practical Perception  81

Figure 3.4  Circular Saw, Jerry Monteith.

they should use objects – indeed, apraxic patients often employ i­nference as a compensatory strategy.32 Nor do apraxics lack only appropriate beliefs. On the contrary, their awareness of affordance seems reduced to such beliefs. One patient, Isaac, had to think about the form of his hand and focus on maintaining the grip when he carried his plate to the kitchen table. The grip of his hand appeared conscious and explicit in a way it did not before the stroke.33 Isaac can explicitly identify the form of the plate and the corresponding form his hand must take. But this interface between hand and object must be actively maintained; Isaac must monitor his hand and its relation to the plate, since nothing but his explicit intention holds them together. Isaac comments that “if he did not keep his hand under surveillance, he worried that it would start to live its own life.” Apraxics can think through their relations with objects, then, but have lost the perceptual familiarity that characterizes nonapraxic action. Given my familiarity with breadknives, for example, the serration on the blade immediately stands out to me as the solution I have been looking for; I see the fit between screwdriver

82  The Sense of Perception and screw, and a particular head might look too big or too small for this ­particular screw. I do not see a different shape or size than does the apraxic, and because the apraxic does not suffer from agnosia, just like I, she sees a screwdriver and a screw. What she does not see is the practical relationship between them. And, for me, this awareness of the practical relationship does seem to be integrated with the perceptual field. When I see scissors, I do not have a free-floating sense of graspability, but rather my awareness of graspability is integrated with my awareness of the scissor handles and concerns a very specific portion of my visual field closely tied to certain other sensory properties, such as the round openings in the handles. In other words, the presentations of graspability is localized within a perceptual field and is not reducible to the mere presentation of handles with the thought of graspability. For the nonapraxic, body, motion, tool, object, and function form a tightly bound net of relationships to which perception is attuned, such that the object suggests a hand posture, that a body motion suggests a function, etc. What we have found, in the above cases, are so many kinds of rupture in this net. Whereas I see hammering or sawing when I see someone mime the relevant motions, for the apraxic these motions are opaque: they are merely a series of spatial displacements the motor significance of which cannot be seen. In contrast, VF can find the appropriate function and object for the tool, but the tool no longer speaks to her hand: while the scissors can be seen, their motor significance for her hands cannot (or at least, can only be grasped in terms of simple affordances, e.g., that blades can be pressed together). The net of relationships that perception reveals may, in principle, be severed in as many places as there are relationships, and certain relationships may persist in some cases of apraxia that are disrupted in others. In each case what we see, though, is a disruption of the references that bind one to the other and a disruption that (at least in many cases of apraxia) shows up in the perceived motor significance of the world around one. Moral Perception So, I think we have strong evidence that we perceive affordances. ­However, we should not think that our practical perception is limited to affordance properties. For example, aside from simply affording certain actions, we also seem to perceive the environment as requiring certain actions. If I see a vase falling, my experience of it may take the form of something like “tobe-caught” or “ought-to-be-caught.” Siegel argues that we experience such requirements in the form of “experienced mandates,”34 e.g., an experienced tennis player may perceive the positions on the court as mandating a certain step or swing. While I won’t take up Siegel’s notion of experienced

Practical Perception  83 mandates here, I do want to explain why we shouldn’t think our practical perception is limited to affordances. Let me start with a key phenomenological claim: following Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty argues that human perception opens onto a Welt – a world that exists in its own right – rather than just an Umwelt or private affective milieu (PhP, 89 & 341). This means that our perception does not merely open onto an environment defined by its relevance for my actions but onto a world of things.35 Certainly, our perception guides our behavior, but it does so by presenting a world to us, rather than by simply triggering reflexes. Similarly, Burge contends that “perception is where representational mind begins,”36 distinguishing representation from mere information registration, on the grounds that the latter is primarily oriented toward biological fitness, whereas perception is defined by having veridicality conditions. In a practical context, this means that I am not simply driven along opportunities for action that I perceptually detect; rather, I perceive things as affording certain actions and not others. Merleau-Ponty notes this in describing Kohler’s experiments with chimpanzee tool use. A chimpanzee that has learned to manipulate crates to reach food will not move a crate it has been used for sitting by another chimpanzee: it will lean against it, and so clearly sees the crate, but the crate has for it only the value of a support, not of instrument for reaching (SB, 114). Thus, for chimpanzee perception, the support and the instrument for reaching “are two distinct and alternative objects in the behavior of the chimpanzee and not two aspects of an identical thing” (SB, 117). Whatever the value of these claims about chimpanzees, it does highlight human perception by comparison: I can perceive one and the same thing as for sitting and as for standing. To be clear, the regard in which animal perception putatively differs from human perception here is not that animals cannot relate themselves to objects in different ways. The chimpanzee can use the box for standing or for sitting in different situations. Or as Heidegger writes of certain insects, after copulation the sexual aspect disappears, the male acquires the character of prey and is eliminated. The one animal is never there for the other simply as a living creature, but is only there for it either as sexual partner or as prey ….37 Rather, the important regard is just that the animal can relate to objects only in terms of the given situation it projects, e.g., a sexual situation or a nutritive one. It cannot, in other words, appropriately identify the object through changing situations. In contrast, I perceive the same box now as for storing, now as for standing, etc. For human perception, objects exceed any particular affordance they might hold for us – which is also why human

84  The Sense of Perception perception so readily takes the attitude of play, of freely assigning practical significance to its object, or of invention.38 In other words, human life is not simply bound to an environment; we perceptually present a world of things, in part, as affording certain actions.39 But by the same token that our perception exceeds any particular affordance, our practical perception of things exceeds affordance altogether. Merleau-Ponty writes, … We observe [morality] in an experience which is the perception of others … . Just as the perception of a thing opens me up to being by realizing the paradoxical synthesis of an infinity of perceptual aspects, in the same way the perception of the other founds morality by realizing the paradox of an alter ego, of a common situation, by placing my perspectives and my incommunicable solitude in the visual field of another and of all the others. (PrP, 26) I’ll leave aside here Merleau-Ponty’s powerful account of the perception of others, which has already been well explored.40 Instead, I want to focus on the thought that, by the same token that I do not perceive objects as defined solely by my immediate practical milieu, I am also perceptually open to the moral significance of the other: for me, an animal can be there as another living creature and a human can be there precisely as the other. In other words, my practical perception is not limited to affordances but rather involves a tacit negotiation between what I can do and what I should do. Part of what this means is that we are perceptually alive to the difference between our personal affordances and moral value. I want now to support Merleau-Ponty’s claim that we perceive the world around us, and in particular the others we encounter, as having moral significance. I will focus this discussion around a relatively simple domain of moral significance: how we negotiate space. I have already pointed out that space forms an important domain of affordance perception. We perceive, for example, certain spaces as traversable, standable or not; in other words, we perceive space as open or closed by degrees to our advances. But what I want to point out now is that we also perceive space as a site of encounter between ourselves and others: we can perceive space as open or closed in virtue of the presence of others. Suppose for example that I am pushing my cart through the supermarket. Here I find myself in a situation where I must negotiate my bulky cart through the narrow space of the aisles as a shared space. If I have paused to examine my options and someone needs to move past me, I must move my cart out of the way to make space for them; if I must get past someone who is observing options on the other side of the aisle, I pause not to

Practical Perception  85 obstruct his view or else I hurry past him; though the old man ahead of me is moving painfully slowly, I do not obtrude on his space with my cart to rush him. I think, in these cases, I perceive space as open or closed to me in various modalities. And this openness is not sheer traversability. When there is a column in the aisle, here too I perceive untraversability, but this requirement is of quite a different genre. I cannot, for example, “crowd” the column, I cannot intrude upon its space, block its view, or hurry it. Indeed, I can park my cart right up against it or lean on it as I decide upon a cereal. Other people are not inserted in space, for me, then, simply as obstacles, as filled pockets of space which literally cannot be traversed; rather, they show up as exerting a personal space around them. It is this personal space that I grapple with as I move through a crowded aisle, that leaves space open or closed to me, and not just sheer traversability. As I pointed out above, not all “should” perceptions are moral. Consider the difference between the following cases. In the first case, I see that I should move my cart to make way for someone coming through. In a second, there is a family standing in front of the cereal I am interested in, and I see that I can get a better view by moving a few feet over. Both are cases of practical perceptions, but only the former counts as moral. What distinguishes the two? In the second case, my perception is conditional: I perceive that I should move forward, but only on condition I adopt the goal of seeing the cereal; if I have no such interest, then there will be no awareness that I should move to just such a spot. But there is no such condition in the first case. I am simply aware that I should move my cart. Of course, I can fail to do so if I don’t adopt the goal of respecting others. But the “should” itself is not conditional on any particular goal I adopt. Further, the second case is subject-relative. Affordances are relations between a particular subject and their environment, and so differ from subject to subject. That I should move forward just so, for example, is premised upon my being of a certain height that I will be able to glimpse the cereal over their cart; were I shorter, the perceived “should” would be different – indeed, it might simply be impossible for me to catch a glimpse. In contrast, the “should” in the first case is not subject-relative. Obviously, the determinate features of this “should” will depend on features such as position, my being in the way, etc., but this is not a fact about the particular subject I am; it is the location, and not the subject, in this case that determines the “should.” Thus, affordance perception, unlike the perception of moral significance, seems to be contingent and subject-relative. Thus, I present certain practical features of my environment as requirements, features which are non-relative and non-contingent, and these are hallmarks of moral features.41 Moreover, such presentations are genuinely perceptual. They cannot be replaced by a conjunction of sensory p ­ roperties

86  The Sense of Perception and beliefs, for example. Suppose I am confronted by an array of thin properties and the belief suddenly pops into my head that I must move my cart. This is quite unlike my experience in the store, in which I visually recognize that I should move. Further, these moral presentations exhibit all the features of perception identified above. They are integrated with the visual field, though not reducible to sensory properties; they are localized within the field, e.g., I perceive that I should not occupy some precise location; and they enable demonstrative thoughts, e.g., “I should not stand there.” The above case should, I think, provide some phenomenological weight to my claim that we perceive moral properties. But I need to make this point in more phenomenological depth. Here too, we can clarify the perceptual character of these presentations by contrasting them with corresponding perceptual deficits. Here contemporary phenomenological work on racism proves helpful, since it demonstrates that racism involves (in part) just such a moral perceptual deficit. Racism as Moral Perceptual Failure

Obviously, racism can comprise a variety of stances, from explicitly or implicitly held beliefs to habits, affective responses, etc. But it can also shape our perceptual capacities and involves genuinely perceptual distortions. Unlike apraxia or agnosia, which are neurological conditions, racism is driven by social and cultural forces and is ultimately – I think – a held stance for which one bears a certain kind of responsibility.42 I  ­continue speak of racism as involving a perceptual deficit, however, since it involves a systematic perceptual failure, including a failure to perceive moral significance. There is a great deal of evidence that race shows up in perception. For example, our perceptual capacities are much less precise for racial outgroups, including in perception of emotion43 or the recognition of faces,44 already from quite a young age.45 Further, racial perceptions seem to involve the kind of gestalt holism discussed in previous chapters, e.g., Black faces seem to be perceived as darker than white ones even when they are matched for luminance.46 Racial priming can also facilitate the misperception of toys or tools as weapons.47 And in a phenomenological key, Linda Alcoff and others have described in detail how race operates through perceptual modalities.48 To be clear, none of this is to say that our racial perceptions track biologically essential features of race – I certainly don’t mean to suppose that our racial perceptions are veridical perceptions of objectively real categories.49 Indeed, such a view is extremely implausible, given that racial perception is learned and culturally dependent: Alcoff points out “appearances ‘appear’

Practical Perception  87 differently across cultures,” for example, a Dominican might be perceived as Black in the United States but not in their home country.50 My point is just that we do in fact perceptually intend persons as being of certain races through perceptual modalities; as Alcoff argues, the constitution of racial identities is not merely conceptual but also perceptual. Here, though, I am specifically interested in how race can influence moral perception. For simplicity, I’ll stick with the example of space and argue that racism can involve a failure to perceive the moral significance of space. Consider Shannon Sullivan’s analysis of whiteness as “ontologically expansive.” She writes, As ontologically expansive, white people tend to act and think as if all spaces … are or should be available for them to move in and out of as they wish. Ontological expansiveness is a particular co-constitutive relationship between self and environment in which the self assumes that it can and should have totally mastery over its environment.51 So, for example, it would be normal to take up public space as a shared domain in which my personal affordances are delimited by the activities and requirements of others. In contrast, an “ontologically expansive” attitude toward public space involves taking it up according to the terms that I set out for it and taking other ways of occupying this space as violent, invasive, or threatening. As a perceptual habit, then, ontological expansiveness would involve obscuring one’s perceptual awareness of limitations on one’s affordances, such that public space comes to appear as seamlessly open or one’s own, and conflicting norms appear as violations. It is not hard to see this ontological expansiveness at work in the perception of public space. Consider the numerous examples in recent years of police being called on people of color while using public spaces, e.g., napping in a Yale dorm lounge or shopping at a Nordstrom.52 Part of what is going on in such cases is that a white person tacitly perceives a shared space in an ontologically expansive manner as a white space, and it is against this white background that people of color stand out perceptually as suspicious, threatening, or obtrusive. The very same people would not stand out as suspicious or threatening in a non-white space; only because they are perceived as out of place can they be perceived as intruding on space. As Ahmed puts it, non-white bodies are made invisible when we see spaces as being white, at the same time as they become hyper-visible when they do not pass, which means they ‘stand out’ and ‘stand apart’. … Bodies stand out when they are out of place.53

88  The Sense of Perception Ontological expansiveness supplies us with a kind perceptual deficit ­corresponding to moral perception: it is an experience in which the moral value of space is partially obscured. Let me clarify why I think this deficit is perceptual, though. First, it is not primarily a matter of belief. Nothing prevents the subjects we have been considering from carefully questioning their perceptions, taking their background dispositions toward race into account, and correctly inferring that nothing suspicious or threatening was really occurring in the above cases. Indeed, Sullivan locates ontological expansiveness at the level of habit, in order to underscore how it operates beneath belief. I just want to extend this expansiveness to perception itself, following the phenomenological work of George Yancy and Helen Ngo, who argue that racism is in part a perceptual habit.54 Sometimes the mismatch between belief and habit can be overstated, but these thinkers point to a genuine phenomenon: one can accept the shared quality of public space at the level of belief, while still perceiving space as one’s own and violated along racial lines.55 On the other hand, ontological expansiveness is not plausibly a sensory deficit – there is no reason to think a sensory failure is involved in racist attitudes. Nevertheless, the difference made by ontological expansiveness is integrated with the perceptual field. Pushing my shopping cart, I don’t have an abstract, free-floating sense of untraversibility: the untraversibility is localized within a specific region of my visual field. Here, it is just such a perceptually localized closure that is absent: if I adopt an ontologically expansive stance, I do not perceive any local space as closed to me. ­Conversely, I don’t have a free-floating sense of my space being violated; rather, I present the violation in a specific region of the perceptual field; e.g., I present “threat” in the very portions of the perceptual field where I perceive a person of color. And this localization enables demonstrative thoughts, e.g. “There is a suspicious-looking person … .” One might object that it is not the moral property itself that is so integrated, but the presentation of a region of space or of a person, which then enables me to form beliefs about that space or person. For example, there is no localized presentation of suspiciousness, just a localized presentation of “person,” about which I then form the belief “That person is suspicious.” Once again, though, all we need to point out is that a person can very well entertain the appropriate moral beliefs without having appropriate moral perceptions. I might reject the belief that “That person is suspicious,” while having an unyielding perceptual sense of violation or illintent, for example. Even if we imagine the opposite belief, e.g., “That person is friendly,” immediately arising associatively upon perceiving them, the perception of suspiciousness could very well persist. Here too, belief (even in conjunction with sensory properties) does not suffice for perception, and the deficit we are dealing with is not one of belief.

Practical Perception  89 Further, notice that nothing prevents different perceptual modalities from conflicting with each other in such cases: someone might not see the car driving up to the gas station where they are refilling their car as threatening or invasive, while their ontologically expansive attitude might take the style of music being played from the car as invasive. Thus, the presentation of a morally relevant property can be integrated with a specific perceptual modality, underscoring its perceptual character. While there is obviously a great deal more to say about the perception of race, my hope is that the foregoing discussion suffices to provide some phenomenological depth to the idea that we can perceive moral significance, by contrast with experiences in which we systematically fail to pick up on moral significance. Of course, there are many ways in which one could object to the analysis of racism provided above, and I don’t want to survey all of them here. Instead, I’ll briefly discuss one especially relevant and interesting alternative explanation of the seemingly perceptual character of such moral presentations, namely, emotion. Emotion

Emotion is seemingly quite a good candidate for explaining our moral ­presentations, and rather than thinking that perception can be ontologically expansive, one might argue that emotions are ontologically expansive. For example, perhaps I do not so much perceive a man to be suspicious or friendly as I perceive a man and feel suspicion or trust. The first thing to say about this explanation is that there are accounts of emotions that construe emotion as a kind of perception, just not sensory perception. Tappolet, for example, argues that emotions are perceptual experiences of evaluative properties.56 If such an account were correct, then we could admit both that the difference in awareness of moral properties has to do with the content of their emotions and that it has to do with the content of their perceptions. Admittedly, such a view would not sit well with the way I have presented moral perception here (which suggests that I can, e.g., visually recognize the need to provide aid), but it does seem to provide a coherent construal of moral perception. However, there are a few reasons that lead me to doubt that the experiences in question can be explained in terms of emotion (and, incidentally, to doubt perceptual accounts of emotion). First, there is no one-to-one mapping between moral properties and emotions. If a friend and I are out for a walk and a slur is yelled at us, we might both perceive the slur and the wrongness or injustice of it but respond with very different emotions: my friend might feel angry about the injustice, for example, while I might feel threatened or undermined. Further, the feeling of grief or loss which I might feel in the face of an injustice, for example,

90  The Sense of Perception need not present injustice. Indeed, it need not be tied to specifically moral properties at all: I can feel loss about a death by natural disaster just as much as by murder. Further, it’s not clear that emotions are specific enough to pick out the range of moral properties we experience. I doubt there is some one emotion that picks out “criminal” from “dangerous” or “bad” for example. Second, emotions are not integrated with sensory fields, as the presentations of practical properties we have considered are. Emotions, like beliefs, are “detachable,” in Hopp’s sense: I can have an emotional response to a memory or belief or even an imagining. Thus, we can very well imagine the driver feeling secure after measuring the width of the road and her car, without thereby seeing the road as traversable by her car, or conversely as seeing the road as passable while feeling anxious when her passenger tells her the car won’t fit.57 To be clear, none of this rules out that emotions play an important (or even necessary) role in our moral experience.58 It just rules out that emotion can explain our moral experience independently of moral perception. Here, as Part I of this book draws to a close, I can acknowledge an important point. In order to bring out the unique character of perception in the preceding chapters, I have focused on demonstrating that other modes of intention – such as emotion and belief – are no substitute for perception. But a nuanced account needs to acknowledge the deep ties between these capacities. Indeed, one of the central upshots of Merleau-Ponty’s work on perception is that it is closely tied to the whole of our intentional life, e.g., with motor intentions, emotions, and judgments. Take motor intention, for example. Merleau-Ponty points out that if my eyes are paralyzed but I have the intention of moving my eyes left, then the scene before me will look to shift leftwards (PhP, 48–9). Conversely, when I succeed in shifting my eyes to the left, the world before me appears to stand still, despite the transformations occurring in my visual field. Here, motor intention informs perception. Noting the systematic character of Schneider’s deficits, Merleau-Ponty suggests that our intentional capacities are underlied by (though not reducible to) a common function, which Merleau-Ponty calls the “intentional arc.” He writes, The life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an ‘intentional arc’ that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships. This intentional arc creates the unity of the senses, the unity of the senses with intelligence, and the unity of sensitivity and motricity. (PhP, 137)

Practical Perception  91 But to say that perception is underlied by an intentional arc is not to ­confound perception with motor intention, nor to suggest that beliefs can be contents of perception, for example. It is just to suggest that perception is responsive to these other capacities, in ways which would have to be worked out precisely for each capacity. Thus, while ontological expansiveness is no doubt affective, we ought to admit that it also involves a genuinely perceptual deficit – a deficit in the capacity to perceive the moral significance of space. If I take an ontologically expansive stance, I fail to perceive public space as genuinely public, i.e., as bound to normative demands that exceed my own requirements, and so as requiring me to limit my use or expectation of space; instead, I perceive space as simply open to me, against which openness the presence of the other is an intrusion. Conclusion In Part I of this work, I have tried to get what Merleau-Ponty called the sense of perception into view. Following Merleau-Ponty, I have described perceptual sense as distinctive genre of meaning, defined by its integration with the perceptual field. And I have argued that, in virtue of this distinctive kind of sense, perception opens us onto a wide range of features of the world: not only shapes, sizes, colors, sounds, locations, and depth but also things, kinds, emotions, persons, affordances, and even moral requirements. In closing this chapter, I want to acknowledge one challenge in particular to the thought that perception opens us onto the domain of morality. This is Levinas’ argument that the face – which is the ethical revelation – “is neither seen nor touched” and that “If the resistance to murder were not ethical but real, we would have a perception of it, with all that reverts to the subjective in perception … .”59 Levinas holds this view because, in brief, he understands perception as representation: not as the revelation of the other but as the reduction of the other to the form I impose on them. Only at the level of language, for Levinas, do we encounter the radical alterity of the other.60 This objection takes us to the core of the problem that will be explored in Part II of this book, namely, the relation between perception and the world. Does perception open to the other or does it consist in the kind of representation that reduces the other to the same? As we will see, MerleauPonty offers a view that transcends the familiar options of Realism and Representationalism. For now, we can note that this alternative view of perception – if it can be made precise and proves compelling – would challenge Levinas’ dichotomy of language and perception. Levinas is no doubt

92  The Sense of Perception correct that there is no perfect perceptual encounter with the other, only the imperfect encounter that we in fact live. But this, after all, is true of language as well: language too is a tenuous, porous opening to the other. This is not to reduce ethics to the perceptual encounter. Like Levinas, ­Merleau-Ponty insists that language introduces a fundamental transformation in our relation to the other.61 However, what we will see is that perception is neither subjective representation nor coincidence: it is just such a porous opening, shaped by my own situation and failures. Racialized distortions of moral perception are a realization par excellence of such situated failures. But because perception is not just subjective representation, it always contains the possibility of confronting us anew with the alterity of the other. As Alia al-Saji describes in terms of “hesitation,” it is possible (even if only partially) to interrupt perceptual habits (or perhaps we could also say, in the vein of Simone Weil, to attend to the other).62 Merleau-Ponty writes, There is an empirical or second-order perception – the one that we ­exercise at each moment – that, because it is chock-full of previous acquisitions and plays out, so to speak, on the surface of being, hides this fundamental phenomenon from us. When I quickly glance over the objects that surround me to get my bearings and to orient myself among them, I hardly gain access to the instantaneous appearance of the world, identify the door over here, the window there, and my table over there. These latter are only the supports and guides for a practical intention that is directed elsewhere, and which are thus only given to me as significations. But when I contemplate an object with no other worry than to see it exist and to display before me its riches, it ceases to be an allusion to a general type and I realize that each perception – and not merely perceptions of scenes that I discover for the first time – begins anew for itself the birth of intelligence and has something of an inspired invention to it. If I am to recognize this tree as a tree, then beneath this acquired signification, the momentary arrangement of the sensible spectacle must begin afresh – as if at the origin of the vegetal world – to sketch out the individual idea of this tree. (PhP, 45–6) Thus, while perception can in some sense obscure the world around us through generalized representations, it is also brimming with the possibility of transformative encounters, in which the radical singularity of ,e.g., this very tree is made manifest to me. Perception can do this because, fundamentally, it is an openness, a presence, to the world. Let us now turn to describing this openness.

Practical Perception  93 Notes 1 Nanay defines these as properties that “can’t be fully characterized without reference to one’s action” (“Do we perceive apples as edible,” 311). 2 Elijah Chudnoff, “Moral Perception: High-Level Perception or Low-Level Intuition?,” in Phenomenology of Thinking, ed. Thiemo Breyer and Christopher Gutland (New York: Routledge, 2015), 288. 3 Chudnoff’s aim is to argue that moral features, instead of being perceived, are better described as intuited. He argues that perception can never function as a “whole basis” for moral knowledge, because even if moral features are in some sense part of the content of perception, we can never be “perceptually aware” of the truth-makers for these features (since part of the truth-maker for such features will include, e.g., a prima facie duty to beneficence, which is just not the sort of thing that can be perceived). I find Chudnoff’s distinction between contents of perception and what one is perceptually aware of problematic. Why couldn’t the mere fact that something is a content of perception suffice for prima facie perceptual justification of the relevant belief? If part of the content of hearing my oven chime, to use Chudnoff’s example, is that the interior of the oven is heated to 450°F, then even if I am not thereby made perceptually aware of the oven’s interior (though I doubt this is right to say), I have prima facie perceptual justification to believe that the interior of the oven is heated to 450°F. No background beliefs about the chime, e.g., “when the oven chimes, the interior of the oven is heated to 450°F,” are required here. Of course, if I am unfamiliar with the oven, I may need such background beliefs to infer that the interior of the oven is indeed 450°F. But this amounts to denying that the interior of the oven being 450°F is a content of my perception at all and asserting instead that that content arises at the level of belief alone. If perception does have such a content, then background beliefs about the chime are no longer required. No doubt, one’s perceptual capacities (here, a perceptual familiarity with the meaning of the chime) will be required to get that content into perception. But such perceptual capacities are not a matter of background beliefs: there is no set of beliefs that translates information received from one’s eyes into a perception of depth, for example, there is just a perceptual capacity for depth perception, which yields prima facie perceptual justification for beliefs about depth without the support of background beliefs about depth. Note that this is not to deny that some background beliefs are requisite for perceptual justification (e.g., that I have not taken a hallucinogen), just that those Chudnoff is discussing are. 4 Preston Werner, “Which Moral Properties Are Eligible for Perceptual  Awareness?,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 17, no. 3 (2019): 10. 5 Ibid., 12. 6 Ibid., 10. 7 Aside from the one I’ll develop here, we could also point out that on this definition hallucinations can never be present in the perceptual field, since they do not involve impingements on our sense organs. 8 Werner could respond that I am misconstruing his definition of the perceptual field, since he does define it as “the set of objects and properties” that impinge on sensory organs, and so perhaps we could say that the object (the ball) is present in the perceptual field. But this response is ad hoc, since if the core idea here is to define the perceptual field in terms of sensory impingement, objects do not as a whole show up in the perceptual field. It would also make the

94  The Sense of Perception borders of the perceptual field quite unclear, in ways that I think Werner and Chudnoff would find uncomfortable. For example, when one is viewing the New Haven town green, one might say that New Haven is in one’s perceptual field, since New Haven is the object of one’s perception. Or, if one allows that the backside of the ball is in some sense within one’s perceptual field, I don’t see a criterion for denying that the interior of one’s oven is in that sense within one’s perceptual field. 9 Robert Audi, “Moral Perception Defended,” in Evaluative Perception, ed. Anna Bergqvist and Robert Cowan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 68. 10 As Dancy points out, Audi does not do much to clarify this notion of integration for us and suggests it must mean either that a) moral and sensory perception are supposed to be one thing rather than two, b) two necessarily connected things, or c) they are otherwise intermingled without being necessarily connected. Jonathan Dancy, “Moral Perception,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary 84 (2010): 99–113. Audi adds that “an important constituent in this phenomenal integration is the perceiver’s felt sense of connection between, on the one hand, the impression of, say, injustice or (on the positive side) beneficence and, on the other hand, the properties that ground the moral phenomena.” Robert Audi, Moral Perception (Princeton University Press, 2013), 39. This is right so far as it goes, but not precise enough. 11 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, 25. Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s definition of foundation: “The founding term (time, the unreflected, fact, language, perception) is primary in the sense that the founded term is presented as a determination or a making explicit of the founding term, which prevents the founded term from ever fully absorbing the founding term; and yet the founding term is not primary in the empirical sense and the founded is not merely derived from it, since it is only through the founded that the founding appears” (PhP, 414). 12 James Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 127. 13 William Warren, “Perceiving Affordances: Visual Guidance of Stair Climbing,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 10, no. 5 (1955): 682–703. 14 Tony Regia-Corte et al., “Perceiving Affordances in Virtual Reality: Influence of Person and Environmental Properties in Perception of Standing on Virtual Grounds,” Virtual Reality 1, no. 17 (2013): 17–28. 15 Sabine Cornus, Gilles Montagne, and Laurent, “Perception of a SteppingAcross Affordance,” Ecological Psychology 11 (December 1, 1999): 249–67. 16 John M. Franchak, Emma C. Celano, and Karen E. Adolph, “Perception of Passage through Openings Depends on the Size of the Body in Motion,” Experimental Brain Research 223, no. 2 (November 1, 2012): 301–10. 17 Claudia Carello et al., “Visually Perceiving What Is Reachable,” Ecological Psychology 1, no. 1 (March 1, 1989): 27–54. Interestingly, this perception seems to respond relatively quickly to changes in bodily capacities. For example, Finkel et al. performed a study in which they require subjects to judge whether they would be able to fit their hand through a horizontal opening. They then equipped patients with a splint that enlarged their hands. They found that while judgment abilities were significantly impaired initially, after a 24-hour habituation period they regained normal performance levels. Lisa Finkel et al., “Does It Still Fit? – Adapting Affordance Judgments to Altered Body Properties in Young and Older Adults,” PLoS One 14, no. 12 (2019). 18 Dees B. W. Postma, Koen A. P. M. Lemmink, and Frank T. J. M. Zaal, “The Affordance of Catchability in Running to Intercept Fly Balls,” Journal of

Practical Perception  95 Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 44, no. 9 (2018): 1336–47. 19 L. S. Mark, “Eyeheight-Scaled Information about Affordances: A Study of Sitting and Stair Climbing,” Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 13, no. 3 (1987): 361–70. 20 William Warren and Susan Whang, “Visual Guidance of Walking Through Apertures: Body-Scaled Information for Affordances,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 13, no. 3 (1987): 371–83. 21 Jeffrey M. Kinsella-Shaw, Brian Shaw, and Michael T. Turvey, “Perceiving ‘Walk-on-Able’ Slopes,” Ecological Psychology 4, no. 4 (1992): 223–39. 22 Jennifer Randerath and Scott H. Frey, “Diagnostics and Training of Affordance Perception in Healthy Young Adults—Implications for Post-Stroke Neurorehabilitation,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 (2016): 674. 23 Of course, one might object that it is not so much that, ordinarily, I can be visually aware of affordances, but rather that visual properties ordinarily allow me to form correct beliefs about affordances. When I am driving the rental car, I simply lack the capacity to make this inference. But here we can employ the same response used in previous chapters: even if we imagine my brain altered in such a way that, when presented with the appropriate low-level properties, I immediately formed the appropriate belief, this would still not suffice for visually recognizing passibility: driving my own car is not like driving the rental with correct beliefs; in the former case, I visually recognize passibility and impassibility. 24 Cf. PhP, Part I, Chapter 3. 25 Cited in Cathrine Arntzen and Ingunn Elstad, “The Bodily Experience of Apraxia in Everyday Activities: A Phenomenological Study,” Disability Rehabilitation 35, no. 1 (2013): 63–72. Leslie Rothi and Kenneth Hielman, Apraxia: The Neuropsychology of Action (New York: Routledge, 1997). 26 Ennio De Renzi and Federica Lucchelli, “Ideational Apraxia,” Brain: A Journal of Neurology 111, no. 5 (1988): 1178. 27 Handbook, 435. 28 Merleau-Ponty, The Sensible World and the World of Expression, 116. 29 Mathieu Lesourd et al., “Using Tools Effectively despite Defective Hand Posture: A Single-Case Study,” Cortex; A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior 129 (2020): 406–22. 30 To be clear, it is not that apraxics don’t perceive any affordances. Indeed, there is significant evidence that some apraxics rely heavily on simple affordances, and one could take such results as evidence in favor of affordance perception in its own right. For example, unlike VF, many apraxics struggle to produce a gesture in the abstract or to mime tool use without the actual tool, but do much better with the tool in hand and better still when actually using the tool. For example, Randeranth et al. conducted a study in which they had patients pantomime using a hammer and a spoon, demonstrate use with those tools, and actually use the tools to hammer and ladle. They found that patients with left brain damage (typically associated with apraxia) performed dramatically worse at pantomiming than in actual use compared to controls, and somewhat worse in demonstration with the tool. Jennifer Randerath et al., “From Pantomime to Actual Use: How Affordances Can Facilitate Actual Tool-Use,” Neuropsychologia 49, no. 9 (2011): 2410–6. 31 Arntzen, “Bodily Experience of Apraxia.” 32 For example, in one of Evan’s experiments – in which subjects are required to balance differently weighted objects – patient JA employs compensatory

96  The Sense of Perception strategies like explicitly noting which end of the object lands first and draws an inference about how the object must be handled. What JA lacks is the relatively immediate familiarity perception provides. Carys Evans et al., “Impaired Communication between the Dorsal and Ventral Stream: Indications from Apraxia,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (2016). 33 Arntzen, “Bodily Experience of Apraxia.” 34 Susanna Siegel, “Affordances and the Contents of Perception,” in Does Perception Have?, ed. Berit Brogaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 35 Cf. Heidegger’s argument that while animals do relate themselves to their surroundings, they do so only in the terms established by their organism, i.e., only to the extent they are driven by instinct. Martin Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), Part II, Chapters 4 & 5. They do not, according to Heidegger, relate to beings as beings. For example, a bee relates itself to honey and behaves responsively to the existence of honey in its environment, but it does not apprehend honey as honey. As Heidegger points out, a bee will normally drink a certain quantity of honey and then return to its hive. But if its abdomen is severed, such that it cannot store honey, it will continue to drink indefinitely. This indicates that the bee does not take itself to be storing a certain quantity of honey, but rather is driven by its instincts. Thus, when its instinct to drink honey is not inhibited by satiation (which can no longer occur when its abdomen is severed) it continues to drink indefinitely. 36 Burge, Origins of Objectivity, 396. 37 Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts, 250. 38 Interestingly, these very capacities withdraw in apraxia. 39 As Merleau-Ponty puts it in a late course note, perception is not a “fusion with an Umwelt but rather… means or occasion of the projection of a Welt” (N, 222). Cf. his claim in the Phenomenology that “man” is not “enclosed within the envelope of the syncretic milieu in which the animal lives as if in a state of ecstasy,” but rather is “conscious of a world as the common reason of a milieus” because “he” has a “distance between himself and that which solicits his action” (PhP, 89). In other words, “each momentary situation must for him cease to be the totality of being, and each particular response must cease to occupy his entire practical field,” and this distance is the “mental and practical space that will free him, in principle, from his milieu and thereby allow him to see it” (Ibid.). 40 See, e.g., Susan Bredlau, The Other in Perception (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2018). 41 One might object that the distinction between contingent and necessary, relative and non-relative, is too sophisticated for perception itself to draw. But what I  want to claim here is not that non-contingent and non-relative are explicitly attributed to objects in perception, but that these are implicitly built into to the difference between perceiving an affordance and a moral property. Similarly, I am perceptually attuned to the difference between my vision being blurry and the object itself being fuzzy: I am constantly attuned to the difference between what I attribute to objects, and so take to be non-subject-relative, and what I attribute to my perception, and so take to be subject-relative, even though I do not make this explicit in my perception. 42 Of course, the question of responsibility here is nuanced, but at least the question makes sense here, in a way that it does not with agnosia. Helen Ngo, “­Racist Habits: A Phenomenological Analysis of Racism and the Habitual Body,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 42, no. 9 (2016): 862–6.

Practical Perception  97 43 See, for example, Hillary Anger Elfenbein and Nalini Ambady, “On the Universality and Cultural Specificity of Emotion Recognition: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 128, no. 2 (2002): 203–35. 44 Simone C. Tüttenberg and Holger Wiese, “Recognising Other-Race Faces Is More Effortful: The Effect of Individuation Instructions on Encoding-Related ERP Dm Effects,” Biological Psychology 158 (2021). 45 Kang Lee, Paul C. Quinn, and Olivier Pascalis, “Face Race Processing and Racial Bias in Early Development: A Perceptual-Social Linkage,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 26, no. 3 (2017): 256–62. 46 Lewis J. Baker and Daniel T. Levin, “The Face-Race Lightness Illusion Is Not Driven by Low-Level Stimulus Properties: An Empirical Reply to Firestone and Scholl (2014),” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 23, no. 6 (2016): 1989–95. 47 B. Keith Payne, “Prejudice and Perception: The Role of Automatic and Controlled Processes in Misperceiving a Weapon,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 2 (2001): 181–92. 48 Linda Martn Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Here too, it is not as if we note a person’s facial features and infer race; rather, we more or less immediately perceive race. More, this intention seems to have Gestalt properties characteristic of perception. As Clara Rodriguez notes, white people, upon finding out that a person they had perceived as white is Latinx, may suddenly begin to hear an accent. Clara Rodriguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 20. 49 I certainly don’t take myself to be making any sort of realist or essentialist claim about the metaphysics of race. Instead, I think Alcoff’s “Contextualist” approach – according to which race is “socially constructed, historically malleable, culturally contextual, and reproduced through learned perceptual practices” – does the best job of capturing the perceptual life of race (2006, 182). As opposed to a nominalism about race, which denies the lived realities of race, and essentialism, which fails to account for the fluidity of racial perceptual meanings, Alcoff’s contextualism allows us to understand how race operates within perceptual life: not as veridical perception of biologically fixed categories but as presenting mutable, socially constructed (including, in part, perceptual) meanings. 50 Visible Identities, 269. With respect to perceptual learning, Alcoff claims for example that “Although perception is embodied, it is also learned and capable of variation” (Visible Identities, 126). 51 Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 10. 52 Christina Caron, “A Black Yale Student Was Napping, and a White Student Called the Police,” The New York Times, 2018. Rachel Siegel, “Nordstrom Rack Apologizes after Calling the Police on Three Black Teens Who Were Shopping for Prom,” The Washington Post, 2018. 53 Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” Feminist Theory 8, no. 2 (2007): 159. Even when black bodies are not inherently perceived as intruding on white space, ontological expansiveness often establishes the norms of public space as white norms. Failures to meet these norms then become perceived as suspicious or obtrusive. In 2018, for example, a neighbor called police on three black film-makers who were staying at an Airbnb. According to police, the neighbor became suspicious after the guests didn’t wave at her when she looked at them. The AirbnB owner later claimed, “If the kids had simply smiled at

98  The Sense of Perception (my neighbor) and waved back, acknowledged her and said, ‘We’re just Airbnb guests checking out,’ none of this would have ever happened. … But instead, they were rude, unkind, not polite. Leticia Juarez, “Rialto PD Release Bodycam Video of Controversial Stop Outside Airbnb Rental,” ABC7 Los Angeles. Here people of color occupy a shared space, but because they don’t do so according to white norms, they stand out perceptually for some white people as suspicious or intrusive. 54 George Yancy, “Elevators, Social Spaces and Racism: A Philosophical Analysis,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 34, no. 8 (2008): 843–76; Ngo, “Racist Habits.” 55 Väyrynen, for example, has argued that we may be able to perceive high-level properties, but when it comes to moral properties, we do not perceive them, but infer them. Pekka Väyrynen, “Doubts about Moral Perception,” in Evaluative Perception, ed. Anna Bergqvist and Robert Cowan (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press, 2018), 109–28. We may not explicitly run an inference like that suggested above, but Väyrynen argues we can explain the seeming immediacy of our moral reactions in terms of habitual implicit inferences. As we have seen, though, an inference, even if implicit, cannot explain the integration of practical properties with perceptual fields. 56 Christine Tappolet, Emotions, Value, and Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 57 Note that if perception is presentational, but emotions aren’t, then this is an important mark against perceptual accounts of emotion. 58 Both Al-Saji and Lee have compellingly argued that emotion plays an essential role in our race perceptions. Alia Al-Saji, “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing,” in Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, Emily S. Lee ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), section 2; Emily Lee, “A Phenomenology of Seeing and Affect in a Polarized Climate,” in Race as Phenomena (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Note that their view does not take emotion to be a species of perception or as able to replace perception as explaining our experience of race, so I see their work as compatible with (and an important complement to) the view I am developing here. 59 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 194 & 199, respectively. 60 Levinas writes that the relation to the other “can not be properly speaking a representation, for the other would therein dissolve into the same: every representation is essentially interpretable as a transcendental constitution. … the relation between the same and the other… is language” (1991, 38–9), where language is not just the reporting of beliefs but conversation. 61 See, e.g., “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other” in Prose of the World. Even here though, Merleau-Ponty clearly does think that, in some sense at least, we can perceive the other. For example, he writes, “In the perception of the other” our differences become explicit when “the other organism, instead of ‘behaving’ like me, engages with the things in my world in a style that is at first mysterious to me but which at least seems to me a coherent style because it responds to ­certain possibilities which fringed the things in my world” (1973, 142). 62 Alia Al-Saji, “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing,” in Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, Emily S. Lee ed. Emily S. Lee ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014): 133–172.

Part 2

Perception and World

4 Perceptual Presence

I started off this book by describing the “fragile presence” to the world with which perception provides us. In Part I of this book, I tried to articulate what Merleau-Ponty calls the sense of perception: What is perceptual sense and what features of the world can it convey to us? In Part II, following Merleau-Ponty, I describe just what kind of presence to the world perception allows: What does it mean to say that perception is an openness or presence to the world and is such a statement really tenable? As I argued in my Introduction, a phenomenological account of perception begins not with metaphysical, psychological, or epistemological considerations but with our experience of perceiving. The goal of such an account is to take perception on its own terms, to describe the experience as it gives itself, rather than to define perception simply in a way that accords with theoretical considerations. This is not to say that phenomenology is the only valid method, that phenomenological considerations exert privilege over all others, or enjoy ultimate rights over our philosophical beliefs. But my supposition is that, at a minimum, we should take the phenomenology of perception seriously; phenomenology is a fundamental consideration that should factor into our beliefs, and at the very least, other things being equal, we should strive for an account that fits the phenomenology. So, it is incumbent upon us to determine what the phenomenology of perception is. It is this task that I attempt here: What account of perception is required by our experience of perception? I will start from the insight with which I began this work: perception presents the world to us, or we might also say, perception is our presence in the world. When I walk down my street, the cars, signs, and trees I pass are perceptually present to me; perception engages me with this dynamic world of things and people, allowing me to explore and navigate it. Along with this enveloping world, I perceive my own body, anchor of my presence, and while I know well that the perspective of my perception emerges, so to speak, from my body, I am aware that the world I perceptually engage through this body is not within my body: rather, my body comports itself DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-7

102  Perception and World perceptually within that world. Perception is my site of presence to the world, the site within which the world presents itself to me. This is the core phenomenological datum that must be worked through. There is a fundamental difference, for example, between perceiving my neighborhood and looking at a picture of it. What I see when I look at the picture are not cars, signs, and trees but images of cars, signs, and trees. That is, when I see the picture, these objects are not present to me – only the images can really be said to be present; the things themselves are represented. Conversely, the picture is of my neighborhood, but the trees I see as I walk down the street are not of anything. Certainly, my perception is of the trees, but the trees themselves simply are. Perception involves the presence of worldly things to me, rather than the representation of them. Consider that, in perception, my senses gear into each other in gearing into the world, and when this happens, I have the sense of perceptual presence in the world. Looking out over a field, I see the wind in the tall grass, I feel it across my skin, and I hear it blowing through the trees behind me. When this happens, the wind is perceptually present to me; no rumor or conjecture, it is part of the world I inhabit.1 This perceptual presence is the norm for perception and is usually invisible to us precisely because it is the very element of normal perceptual life. The normalcy of presence may be more salient when the sense of presence fails, e.g., were I in the disorienting situation of hearing wind in the trees, only to look around and see everything around me entirely still. More, as we saw in Chapter 3, perception and action gear into each other. When I hike along a trail, I am exploring the forest – my perception guiding my footsteps and my motion elaborating my perception – not shuffling through a series of representations; when I grab a tree for support as I make a narrow descent, I see my hand on the tree and feel the tree in my hand. Here I don’t merely imagine or represent a tree to myself; instead, my perception is actively engaged with the tree, as a support for my bearing in the world. What these experiences are meant to bring out is the sense in which perception is our presence in the world or in which perception presents the world to me. The primary aim of this chapter is just to enumerate the features of an account that can do justice to this datum, as described by Merleau-Ponty. According to Merleau-Ponty, on a phenomenological conception, describing our relation to the world is not a matter of restricting ourselves to phenomena, of locking consciousness in its own states by reserving the possibility of another being beyond apparent being …; rather, it is a matter of defining being as what appears to us … (PhP, 418–9)

Perceptual Presence  103 What I will try to describe in this chapter is a view on which perception is a mode in which being appears to us; what this description will try to preserve and express is the “perceptual presence of the world” (VI, 28). What Is Perceptual Presence? Intentionality

We can start with the relatively vacuous thought that appearance, presence to, is a kind of relation. But there are many kinds of relations two entities might bear toward each other. For example, when a glass bowl falls to the floor, such that the floor shatters the bowl, the floor stands in a kind of relation to the bowl, namely, one of resisting or breaking. But this relation is obviously unlike the one I bear toward the bowl when I perceive it: for one thing, my perception is about or of the bowl, whereas the shattering is not in any sense about the bowl; perception has an object (or rather, an environment, a world) at which it is directed, whereas the shattering does not. We can express this by describing perception as an intentional relation; perception intends or is of some object. Intentionality obviously plays a central role in any phenomenological account of consciousness. Following Brentano, Husserl centers his analysis of consciousness, in Logical Investigations, around the notion of intentionality.2 For Husserl, mental acts or experiences are intentional insofar as they are “directed upon,” “referred to,” or “aimed at” objects, i.e., mental acts are a “consciousness of something.3” And while Merleau-Ponty does contest certain accounts of intentionality, intentionality nevertheless plays an important role in his thinking about perception. He concludes the Structure of Behavior for example by writing that “the intentional life which constitutes [behavior] is not yet a representation” or intellection (SB 224),4 and we’ve seen that intentionality is weaved throughout key notions of the Phenomenology, e.g., the “intentional arc” (PhP, 137) or the intentionality of sensation (PhP, 221). It’s worth noting, though, that Merleau-Ponty does not think there is anything distinctively phenomenological about the notion of intentionality I have developed so far: he writes that intentionality is “too often cited as the principal discovery of phenomenology” and that “there is hardly anything new in the claim that ‘all consciousness is consciousness of something’” (PhP, lxxxi). Merleau-Ponty claims that Descartes and Kant could perfectly well advocate such a view and that “Husserl’s originality lies beyond the notion of intentionality,” namely in describing a form of intentionality – as mentioned above – “beneath the intentionality of representations” (PhP, 520ftnt57).5 So, Merleau-Ponty thinks that perception is an intentional relation (a perceptual appearance is of or

104  Perception and World about something), though this is not distinctive of or sufficient for a phenomenological view of perception.6 In part, this is because there are many kinds of intentional relation. Action is intentional: it has some goal or object it pursues. Hoping is intentional: hope (at least usually) is for some state of affairs. What distinguishes perception is that it is a type of intentional relation in which being “appears,” i.e., reveals, shows, manifests, or presents itself. If I smell freshly baked bread, the bread is perceptually present to me. In contrast, if I merely hope for bread, the latter is far from presenting itself to me, or if I remove the bread from the oven, my action is not itself a mode of the things presenting itself to me, even though it is closely integrated with the thing perceptually presented to me. On the other hand, there are many kinds of objects that perception cannot intend. For example, I cannot perceptually intend a past event. Presumably, I cannot perceive a universal law, like gravity (of course, I can perceive effects of this law, like an apple falling, and perhaps there is even a sense in which I can perceive such events as effects of gravity, but I do not perceive the law itself). As will become clearer in the next section, neither do I perceive my mental states, at least in the sense I am using the term “perception.” No doubt, I can be reflectively aware of mental states, like hopes, thoughts, or volitions, but these are not presented to me through perception. Rather, what I perceptually intend is my surrounding world, and the things, people, and events that populate it. This includes my own body, not just in vision or touch but also in the proprioceptive sense of my body’s position. Perhaps we can even classify a pain as a distinctive kind of perception, since a pain is generally intended as localized somewhere in my body, rather than as a simple awareness of my emotional states. But I don’t want to set definitive boundaries to perceptual experience here – my point is just that perception intends not inner events but the world and our body with it. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, perception is a “relation between the subject and its body and its world” (PrP, 4–5). Perhaps there are different modes in which being can present itself. One might think of knowledge as a kind of appearance of being or of some sort of intellectual intuition as a mode in which being “shows” itself. Perception is, at least, one such mode in which being appears, and the distinctive manner in which it does so was the topic of Part I of this book. So, we have a first point about perception: 1 Perception is an intentional relation. Transcendence and Immanence

A second distinctive feature of perception is that the object of a perceptual intention transcends that perception. I use “transcend” here in the sense

Perceptual Presence  105 indicated by Husserl’s distinction between immanent and ­transcendent intentional objects. According to Husserl, some intentional objects “belong to the same stream of experiences” as the acts intending them, while others do not.7 Husserl terms the former “immanent” and the latter “transcendent.” For example, when I desire the cold, crisp apple in my refrigerator, the apple “transcends” my act of desiring, since the apple itself, as a worldly thing, does not exist within my stream of experience. In contrast, if I now direct my attention to my desire for the apple, then my intentional object is “immanent” to my experience, insofar as the desire is just part of the same stream of experience as my intention of it. Both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty insist that the object of a perceptual intention is not itself part of the stream of experience, and so “transcends” that intention.8 That the object of a perception transcends that perception is no mere metaphysical assertion: it is part of the character of our experience. We experience the objects of perception as in principle exceeding any perceptions in which they are given. Merleau-Ponty writes that every appearance is experienced as “an invitation to perceive more,” such that “the perceived object always presents itself as transcendent” (PhP, 242). Consider, for example, the perspectival character of our perception: no matter from what angle I perceive a cube, I will not perceive more than three of its sides, and the other sides can only be given by repositioning myself and the cube with respect to each other. But I do not experience the changes in my experience that result from this repositioning as changes in the object – rather, I experience them as changes in my relation to the object. For me, then, the object is not an item of experience but more a site of ongoing exploration and engagement: something outside of my experience to which my experience is responsive. This gives us the second feature of perceptual appearance: 2 The objects of perception transcend perception. Real Existence

When Brentano defined intentionality as an essential characteristic of mental activity, part of the distinction he had in mind between real and intentional relations was that relations of the former type require the real existence of both of their relata, whereas those of the latter type do not.9 For the floor to shatter the glass bowl, both the floor and the bowl must really exist; in contrast, for me to intend a unicorn, e.g., imaginatively, does not require that unicorn to really exist. Husserl contrasts intentional and real relations in the same way, writing for example that “an experience may be present in consciousness together with its intention, although its object does not exist at.”10 Doubtless at least some kinds of intentional relations don’t require the real existence of their objects:

106  Perception and World wish, for example, intends an object but doesn’t require that object really to exist. But what about perceptual appearance? Does the type of intentional relation we stand in when we perceive require the real existence of the object it intends? Merleau-Ponty thinks that it does. He writes: Perception is just that kind of act where there can be no question of separating the act itself and the term upon which it bears. Perception and the perceived necessarily have the same existential modality, since perception is inseparable from the consciousness that it has or rather that it is of reaching the thing itself. (PhP, 393) If the object of a perceptual intention does not exist, then we cannot – properly speaking – call it a perception, but instead should call it illusion or hallucination. Perception is a kind of intention that requires the existence of its object. In other language, we might say that perception is factive (at least about the existence of its object) or that “to perceive” is a “success term”: to say that I see something is to say that it really exists and stands in an appropriate relation to me. Merleau-Ponty writes, If I see an ashtray in the full sense of the word ‘see,’ then there must be an ashtray over there, and I cannot repress this affirmation. To see is to see something. To see red is to see an actually existing red. (PhP, 393) Again, My vision essentially refers not merely to an allegedly visible thing, but rather to a being that is actually seen. Reciprocally, if I raise a doubt as to the presence of the thing, this doubt bears upon vision itself; if there is no red or blue over there, then I say that I have not really seen them, I concede that at no moment has this adequation taken place between my visual intention and the visible, which is vision in actuality. (PhP, 393–4) Vision, for Merleau-Ponty, requires a certain kind of adequation between a visual intention and the visible. Of course, this does not mean adequation in the sense of the object being completely given in perception, of “adequate intuition” in Husserl’s sense.11 Nor does Merleau-Ponty mean to deny that perception can mis-present its object. Instead, I’ll take it s­ imply to mean that if I perceive something, then that thing must exist.

Perceptual Presence  107 Indeed, our core phenomenological datum – perceptual presence – seems to require just this claim. For to say that the bowl is present to me when I perceive it entails that the bowl exists. No object which no longer exists or does not yet exist can be perceptually presented; such an object can only be represented, e.g., in a memory or a hope. Similarly in the case that I am imagining a presently existing unicorn: since no such animal exists, the imagination cannot be said to perceptually present me with a unicorn. Short of the real existence of its object, an intention can only represent but not present. This leaves us with a further claim about perceptual appearances: 3 The object of a perceptual intention really exists.12 Internal and External Relations

One way that Merleau-Ponty often gets at this point is to define perception as an internal relation.13 There are different ways of specifying the distinction between internal and external relations, but it is common to use something like the following terms: a relation is internal to something if it is essential to that thing, external if it is accidental; or, a relation is internal if it is fixed by its relata, external if it isn’t. I’ll say that a relation is internal to something if that thing could not exist or could not be as it is, without that relation, but external if it could. For example, a painting bears a merely external relation to its subject and could perfectly well exist just as it is if its subject had never existed and were the product of pure fantasy; nothing in the painting fixes the character of its relation to its subject. On the other hand, we might think of action as an internal relation: I cannot really be said to push a wheelbarrow if the wheelbarrow doesn’t exist. The character of the action specifies a certain kind of relation to its object, namely, a relation that requires the existence of its object. What kind of relation is perception? To make sense of perceptual presence, we seem to need a view on which perception is an internal relation to a transcendent object.14 If perception is supposed to be understood as presenting the environing world, then it cannot be a merely accidental matter whether that world exists and has the character it does. An intention can only be said to present its object if that object exists, and in this sense the relation of presenting is fixed by its relata (by perceiver and perceived). A painting can perfectly well represent a subject without that subject ever having existed, but a perception cannot be said to present the world if that world never existed. Thus, if we are to accommodate our core insight of perceptual presence, we need to define perception as an internal relation. This is a point Merleau-Ponty makes in arguing that, while the objects of perception transcend perception, we should not therefore “separate”

108  Perception and World perception from its object, meaning that the relation between p ­ erception and object is not merely contingent or accidental. Merleau-Ponty thus strives to achieve a kind of poise between philosophical extremes, ­writing that “we do not have to choose between a philosophy of immanence … that only accounts for perception and truth, and a philosophy of transcendence or of the absurd that only accounts for illusion or error …” (PhP, 308–9). The first extreme – the “philosophy of immanence”  – is any view on which the object of appearance is itself immanent to, or a content of, its appearance. Subjective idealism, such as we find in ­Berkeley’s argument that material substances cannot exist without a mind – that their esse ist percipi – is an example of such a “philosophy of immanence.” Such a view violates the transcendence of the perceived object, a fact which shows up (according to Merleau-Ponty) in the way such a view leaves no room for error: if being is appearance, then there is no way for appearance to mispresent being. This is absurd, though. Appearance often mistakes being, as when I perceptually mistake an owl for the knob of a tree. If there were no being outside my appearance, then there is no sense in which I am mistaken: there perceptually appears only to be a tree, and therefore, there is only a tree. As MerleauPonty puts it, “I am not protected from error since the world that I aim at through each appearance, and that rightly or wrongly gives it the weight of truth, never necessarily requires this particular appearance … Consciousness is distant from being … ” (PhP, 311). We cannot avoid the fact that perception intends an object which is not itself a content of consciousness. But at the other extreme, Merleau-Ponty wants to reject a particular way of understanding what it means for objects to be transcendent, which he calls the “philosophy of transcendence.” Merleau-Ponty equates the “philosophy of transcendence” with a philosophy of the “absurd,” which only accounts for error or illusion. Of course, against the “philosophy of immanence,” error is part of our experience, and our account of appearances needs to leave room for it. But it is not the whole story about appearances, and we also need an account that leaves room for perceptual truth. A “philosophy of transcendence,” for Merleau-Ponty, is any philosophy that does not do this, because in one way or another it separates beings from their appearances. Merleau-Ponty asks, … The reality of an act of consciousness [whether it is an illusion or in fact a perception] must be beyond its appearance. Shall we thus separate [couper] appearance from reality in the subject? But once this break is made, it cannot be repaired. The most clear appearance can from then on be deceptive, and this time it is the phenomenon of truth that becomes impossible. (PhP, 308)15

Perceptual Presence  109 What exactly would it mean to separate being from appearance? What ­Merleau-Ponty has in mind here is not a view on which perception happens to consistently mispresent its objects. Instead, what he has in mind is a view on which having a perceptual appearance is not a matter of an object perceptually presenting itself, but of entertaining a private mental event. On this view, when I see a caterpillar crawling along a railing, the caterpillar is not itself being presented to me; instead, I am entertaining an inner event, namely, a representation of a caterpillar. This inner event might be related to the caterpillar in some sense, perhaps of intending or representing it. But this would be a merely external relation: the inner event can perfectly well intend or represent the caterpillar in the manner it does without the latter having the character it is represented as having, and indeed, without it existing at all. If the relation between my perception and the caterpillar is purely external, then they exist, in an important sense, separately from each other: there are two separate spheres, an inner, mental one and an outer, extra-mental one. In calling this a philosophy of the “absurd,” then, Merleau-Ponty is not objecting to a view on which perception consistently mis-represents the world but more fundamentally to a view on which perception only represents, rather than presents the world. On such a view, there may be truth in the sense of correspondence between the outer world and our representations, but there cannot be truth in the sense of the world perceptually presenting itself. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty wants to secure a conception on which being itself is what appears, on which the object of perception transcends that perception without being separate from it, or in other words, on which an object presents itself in the very perception it transcends. This means we need to define perception as an internal relation: one on which the existence and character of appearance is, at least partially, dependent on the existence and character of its object. Again, none of this means denying that the object transcends perception, it just means that perception is dependent on a factor that is not itself a content of perception. What we need, then, is an account that allows for transcendence without separation. In other words, illusion and error demonstrate that any given appearance can fail to present its object as that object in fact is, but we should not conclude from this that the object of a perception can never present itself in a perception. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, …The illusion does not separate [sépare] me from truth. But, for the same reason, I am not protected from error, since the world that I aim at through each appearance, and that rightly or wrongly gives it the weight of truth, never necessarily requires this particular appearance. There is an absolute certainty of the world in general, but not of any particular thing. Consciousness is distant from being and from its own being, and at the same time united to them, through the thickness of the world. (PhP, 311)

110  Perception and World I will discuss Merleau-Ponty’s response to cases of illusion and ­hallucination in more depth in Chapter 6, but for now we need only note that MerleauPonty thinks making sense of the tenuous kind of truth we have requires us to say both that the object of perception transcends perception (otherwise we could not err) and that the object of perception presents itself in perception (otherwise we would not have truth). Thus, we can note a fourth feature of perceptual appearance: 4 Perception is an internal relation, i.e., the existence and character of a perceptual appearance is at least partially dependent on the existence and character of its object. Mere Appearance

Perceptual presence requires us to describe perception as an internal, intentional relation to a really existing, transcendent object. Nothing about this description requires us to think of this relation as direct or indirect, though, and it is to this qualification that I turn in this section. I will call a relation indirect if its relata are mediated by some third term, direct if not. For example, if I leave a message for my doctor with her receptionist, then we might say this communicative relation with my doctor is indirect, because mediated by the receptionist; in contrast, if I speak with my doctor face to face, it would be natural to describe this relation as direct. So, is perception a direct or an indirect relation? The language of appearance that I have employed so far might seem to suggest that perception is an indirect relation. This is because in ordinary language we often use “appear” to denote uncertainty, e.g., we might say “He appeared discontent, but I can’t be sure.” In this sense, an appearance is a sort of sign or tenuous indication of what has not presented itself definitively. None of this is built into the phenomenological way of talking about “appearance” I have employed, though: when Merleau-Ponty says that being is what appears, he means that being presents or shows itself in perceptual experience. What we often understand by “appearance,” a misleading or false appearance, Merleau-Ponty sometimes calls “mere appearance” [simple apparance]. For example, as we have seen, Merleau-Ponty claims that phenomenology is not a matter of “locking consciousness in its own states by reserving the possibility of another being beyond apparent being” and contrasts this with a view on which “the phenomenon is cut off [on coupe] from being, and … is demoted to the level of a mere appearance [simple apparence]” (PhP, 418).16 Perhaps we can better appreciate how I use the term “appearance” by contrasting it with “mere appearance.” Something of this distinction can be captured in terms of our ordinary ways of talking about appearances as opposed to mere appearances. For

Perceptual Presence  111 example, if a dog is cold and I see it shivering, I might say “That dog appears to be cold.” If, however, I later discover that the dog was not cold, but just, say, thrilled to make a new friend, we would say “the dog was not cold, but merely appeared to be cold.” In this sense, appearances differ from mere appearances, insofar as the former meet a success condition. But the deeper distinction here – and the reason for the more familiar one – has to do with the kinds of things appearances and mere appearances are. The distinction I have in mind here is basically that drawn by ­Heidegger between phenomenon (Phänomen) and appearance (­Erscheinung) in §7 of Being and Time, and so I think we can clarify the important difference here by reviewing Heidegger’s distinction. There, Heidegger defines a “phenomenon” (Phänomen) as “that which shows itself in itself, the manifest.17” In Heidegger’s terms, when I experience a tea kettle, for example, the tea kettle shows itself, or manifests itself, to me; to have an experience of a tea kettle is just for that tea kettle to manifest itself. That which shows itself, e.g., the kettle, Heidegger calls the phenomenon. Now, the kettle, in showing itself, could show itself as something it is not, i.e., it could “seem” to be something it is not. It might, for example, seem to be black when it is in fact red. In this case, we could say that I have not a manifestation of the kettle’s color as black but a mere semblance (Schein) of its being black. So, we can distinguish between phenomena and semblances. Even so, Heidegger claims, the kettle can only show itself as something it is not if it shows itself in the first place: a thing’s showing itself otherwise than it is, is still a kind of selfshowing. Thus, according to Heidegger, the very notion of “semblance” is founded on the notion of “phenomenon.” Further, Heidegger distinguishes both phenomena and semblances from “appearances” (Erscheinungen). An “appearance,” as Heidegger describes it, is precisely not a showing. Rather, an appearance is “the announcingitself by something which does not show itself, but which announces itself through something which does show itself.”18 Heidegger conveys this distinction by analogy to an illness and its symptoms. A symptom announces an underlying illness, without actually manifesting that illness directly. For example, if I have a fever, it may be a symptom of a flu. In this case, we do not actually experience the flu directly – after all, the fever could be a symptom of all sorts of other illnesses – but infer it from its symptoms. On the other hand, for the fever to “announce” the flu, the fever must show itself, i.e., be manifest. Thus, a symptom, in showing itself, announces something that does not show itself. Similarly, Heidegger claims an appearance is a showing-itself than announces something that does not show itself. The notion of “appearance” is not quite like the notion of “phenomenon,” then, since what announces itself in an appearance does not in fact show

112  Perception and World itself, is not manifest. On the other hand, the notion of “appearance” is founded on the notion of “phenomenon,” since for the announced to announce itself, it requires something which does show itself, namely the appearance. Strictly speaking, the only thing that shows itself in an appearance is the appearance, not the thing of which the appearance is an appearance. The thing is only “announced” or referred to by the appearance. Thus, Heidegger writes, “phenomena are never appearances, though on the other hand every appearance is dependent on phenomena” (Ibid., 53). By the same token, semblances are not appearances, since a semblance is something that does show itself, just not as it is. As I read the two, what Merleau-Ponty calls “appearance” here plays the role of what Heidegger calls “Phänomen”19 and what Merleau-Ponty calls “mere appearance” the role of what Heidegger calls “Erscheinung.” For Merleau-Ponty, then, a thing appears when it shows itself; an “appearance” is just a thing’s showing itself. We can distinguish appearance from a representation – a “symptom” – of a thing, what Heidegger calls “appearance” and Merleau-Ponty calls “mere appearance.” In a “mere appearance,” the thing of which the appearance is an appearance does not actually show itself: what shows itself, what we directly experience, is just the mere appearance, which stands for – represents or refers to – the object. This is not to say the “phenomenon” and “appearance” are interchangeable. In the language I will use, the phenomenon is that which appears. An appearance does not itself normally appear (or rather, an appearance only itself appears for reflection, and then not in an act of perception but of reflection on perception). For example, a thing always appears perspectivally: I see a tree from a certain angle. What appears from an angle is just the tree; the perspectival appearance does not appear from an angle. The “appearance” is just the fact and manner of the thing’s appearing (just as, for example, when someone guides me, it is not the “guidance,” but the guide, that guides, and the “guidance” is just the fact and manner of what the guide does). When I say that “appearance” is analogous to “Phänomen” in Heidegger, I mean that here it is the thing itself that appears or shows itself and not the “appearance” (which would thereby merely announce the thing). In other words, then, in the case of appearance, the direct object of perception is the thing itself; in contrast, in the case of mere appearance, the direct object of perception is just the appearance. When the caterpillar “appears” or “shows itself” to me, I am directly related to the caterpillar, and the caterpillar’s appearance is just this direct relation. In contrast, were I just entertaining a “mere appearance,” I would not be directly related to the caterpillar at all; instead, what would show itself, or what I would be directly related to, is just the mere appearance, and through this mere appearance I would be indirectly related to the caterpillar.

Perceptual Presence  113 Further, we cannot do justice to our core insight of perceptual presence if we think of perception as mere appearance. The core insight of perceptual presence is that being itself is what appears; that when I perceive, the thing itself shows itself or presents itself to me; or again, that when I perceive I  am directly related to the object of my perception. Short of this, the world cannot properly be said to present itself to us in perception. If I am directly related only to a mental state, say, and indirectly through that to a mind-independent object, then it is not the object that is present to me, and I  could perfectly well entertain my mental state without the mindindependent object existing at all. In no sense is such an object present in perception. We can say then, 5 The direct object of perception – what we perceive, what presents itself in a perception – is the worldly thing itself. Presentation and Representation

I have been trying to distinguish “appearance,” as Merleau-Ponty understands it, from “mere appearance.” A significant portion of this distinction is captured in the distinction between direct and indirect objects, but we have not yet gotten to the core of what it would mean to “lock consciousness in its own states” or to “cut off” the phenomenon from being. For there are some views – what in the following I will address as Intentionalism – that can allow the direct object of perception to be the worldly thing and, still, to Merleau-Ponty’s mind count as separating appearance from being. This is possible because these views think of perception not so much as being about or of a representation but as itself being a representation. If perception just is a representation, then plausibly its direct object is the worldly thing it represents. However, even this view would “lock consciousness in its own states” for Merleau-Ponty, since it understands perception fundamentally in terms of occupying a mental state of representation. To understand this point, we need a more precise distinction between presentation and representation. Unfortunately, distinguishing the two is no easy task. For example, we might wish to use Heidegger’s distinction between phenomenon and appearance to shed light on this matter. But Heidegger’s distinction does not map onto the present problem in any clear way. To say that perception is a representation is not necessarily to say that what shows itself to us is a representation that “announces” a worldly object; instead, it can be to say that we are directly aware of worldly objects in virtue of our representations. Thus, we need to mark out a more fundamental distinction between the two.

114  Perception and World The matter is further clouded by the fact that presentation is often thought as a mode of representation. Pautz, for example, defines perception as being a “presentational” rather than merely “cognitive” representation.20 And Searle distinguishes between presentational intentionality, such as we have in perception and intentional action, and representational intentionality, such as we have in memory. At the same time, however, he holds that all intentions involve representation.21 Presentations thus appear as a species of representations, which are distinguished, e.g., by being (a) directly caused by the object itself, (b) of the “here and now,” (c) non-detachable from their conditions of satisfaction (when I see something, I can’t shuffle around my experience of it at will, as I can in imagination).22 I do think these points capture something of the unique phenomenology of perceptual experience. But none of them suffice to distinguish presentation from representation, as any of these features could describe merely a distinctive form of representation (as, indeed, they do for Searle). If we wish to distinguish presentation and representation as two distinct genera – and not just as two species on the genus “representation” – we need to find a more fundamental description of the difference. Let us return to the phenomenon of presence, then, and see if we can find a fundamental sense to the distinction there. Suppose I look out the window, and where I know the birch tree at the end of the field should be, instead I see only a bank of fog. I still believe the tree is there, I can remember its shape and character, imagine its white, curling bark and fluttering leaves, but I cannot see it. But now the fog rolls back, and there is the birch tree, not as imagined or remembered, but in the flesh, so to speak. When I merely think about the tree, entertain certain beliefs or memories about it, I am merely representing it to myself; but when I behold the tree, it shows itself to me and is given in my actual experience. Here I am not dealing with just a private mental event, but with the thing itself, as it presents itself in my experience. Of course, if the fog doesn’t lift, I could pull up a picture of the tree on my phone, and perhaps I even have a particularly good photo, one that copies the features of the trees faithfully and in great detail. But to see this photo is not to have the tree present to me: in viewing the picture, at no point is the tree itself given. It is merely referred to by something else that is given, namely, the picture. The tree, though, is only represented: there is nothing I can point to before me and truly say, “There, that is the tree itself.” This simple example illustrates an important difference. If there is a representation of some Y, then there is some X that bears this representation. A representation must have a bearer, e.g., a screen, a mind, a text, etc. This is because, fundamentally, a representation is a state of something

Perceptual Presence  115 that bears that representation. Pictorially representing a tree is a state of a screen or a canvas, say, and cognitively representing a tree is a mental state. And it is for this reason that the represented need not exist for the representation to exist; for X to represent Y fundamentally consists in X occupying a certain state rather than standing in a certain relation. Of course, representation does involve some relation, namely, one of reference. But this relation is determined solely by the state that bears that reference (even if that state is itself causally determined by other, e.g., environmental factors). In contrast, presentation is not fundamentally a state of some X. Being presented with Y is not at its core a state of that to which Y is presented, say, a mental state; it is not fundamentally something that occurs within the mind. Instead, it is fundamentally a relation, in which Y reveals, shows, or manifests itself. This is not to say that presentation does not involve a mental state – if Y is presented to the mind, then there is an obvious sense in which it is true to say that the mind is in the state of having Y presented to it – just that it is not fundamentally a mental state. This, I take it, is part of what Merleau-Ponty means when writes that in perception subject and object are “two abstract moments of a unique structure, namely, presence” (PhP, 418). Perhaps we can capture the distinction here more closely by analogy. When the sun is shining on a stone, the shining is not a state of the stone. Of course, it is true to predicate “being shined on” of the stone, but the shining itself is fundamentally a relation between sun and stone, and the state of “being shone upon” is derivative on this relation: the sun is not shining on the stone because the stone has the state “being shone upon” – just the opposite is true. In other words, what is fundamental is the shining relation, and the state merely registers the relation in one of its relata. We can contrast the shining with certain states that are produced in the stone by the shining, such as heat. The heat in the stone really is a state of the stone, not a relation between the sun and the stone. Of course, neither the state nor the relation here is intentional. But consider how the case would look if heat were intentional, i.e., were it a state of the stone that referred to or was about the sun. Merely in virtue of intending the sun in this way, the stone would not be presented with the sun, since the intentional state (the heat) is merely a state of the stone. And this is true even though the heat is directly caused by the sun. Needless to say, a stone cannot be presented with anything. Being-presented-with is something only a mind can do. Should we say then that presentation happens in the mind? This doesn’t follow, in the same way it does not follow from the fact that being shone upon is something the stone can do that the shining is in the stone. No doubt, we can predicate “being presented to” (i.e., perceiving) of a mind. But it doesn’t follow that presentation is fundamentally a mental state, any more than it follows from

116  Perception and World the fact that we can predicate “being shone upon” of the stone, that the shining is a state of the stone. So, we have a basic distinction between presentation and representation: a presentation is fundamentally a relation between a mind and some object, whereas a representation is fundamentally a state of whatever bears the representation. Here we can see how representation cannot involve presentation. Suppose I occupy a mental state that refers to some object. In virtue of this alone, I am no more presented with that object than the stone’s heat, even if intentional, could present it with the sun. What if we add certain features to this mental state, namely, that it presents its object as “here and now” or being involuntary? This would still not count as a presentation, since fundamentally I am still just occupying a mental state, albeit one concerning the here and now. Even if this state is appropriately caused it won’t count as a presentation, since it is not fundamentally a relation: it is a product of a causal relation, not itself a relation. From this perspective, then, accounts of “presentational” representations seem fundamentally confused. A representation can share certain features of presentation, and so be “presentational” in some analogical sense. But no representation can itself involve presentation. Obviously, since the core datum that guides my account is perceptual presence, I will define perception as a presentational rather than representational state, i.e., as fundamentally a relation rather than a mental state. There are many familiar reasons to think that perception can’t be presentation in this sense. One has to do with the existence of hallucinations and illusions. Again, I’ll deal with this concern in Chapter 6. But at this point I should at least acknowledge another background pressure that leads us to resist the presentation account, namely, one deriving from the physiology of perception. Since we know that every perception involves a causal interaction between the world, our sensory organs, and brain states, there is a considerable plausibility to thinking that we can describe perceptions in the same way we describe brain states. In some not fully specified way, the intuition goes, perceptions correlate with and depend on certain brain states. Since brain states are states, and not relations, it seems plausible that perceptions will be states, rather than relations. The idea, in its most simple form, is that given what we know about the neurology of perception, perceptions must be something that happen inside us, inside the brain. As such, their relation to the world is merely ancillary to the kind of state they are, and they bear merely causal and intentional relations to the world outside them. Perceptions, then, can at best represent the world, not present it. For this pressure to impress us, though, we would have to make substantial assumptions about the philosophy of mind, namely, that the nature of

Perceptual Presence  117 perceptions really is identical to the nature of the brain states that underlie them. This is, to say the least, a major assumption. And, of course, one could also ask whether it is necessarily the case that brain states are representational. I won’t try to answer either of these questions here, but I think the lack of a definite answer to them leaves open the kind of approach I pursue here. In any case, we can now make the following point: 6 The most fundamental characterization of perception involves the object of that perception (namely, some worldly object(s)) presenting itself. To review, then, Merleau-Ponty offers an account of perceptual appearance characterized by the following features: 1 2 3 4

Perception is an intentional relation. The object of a perception transcends that perception. The object of a perceptual intention really exists. Perception is an internal relation, i.e., the existence and character of a perceptual appearance is at least partially dependent on the existence and character of its object. 5 The direct object of perception – what we perceive, what presents itself in a perception – is the worldly thing itself. 6 The most fundamental characterization of perception involves the object of that perception (namely, some worldly object(s)) presenting itself. Classical Representationalism, Sense Data Theories, and Indirect Realism So far, I have tried to develop a phenomenological account of perceptual appearance that allows it to count as presentation, i.e., as a direct, internal relation to a mind-transcendent worldly object. This requirement puts me at odds with a number of familiar accounts of perception, including those on which perception is:   i A direct relation to a mind-immanent object. ii An indirect relation to a mind-transcendent object. iii An external or non-presentational relation. Each of these accounts has found advocates; they are, I think, familiar to us in the Classical Representationalism, Sense Data Theories, Indirect Realism, Adverbialism, and Intentionalism. Let us briefly canvas these

118  Perception and World alternatives to the phenomenological account I have developed here, so as to more clearly understand where it diverges from them. Note that I won’t try to provide a decisive argument against each view. Instead, I will take it that making room for an account of appearance as presence, as a direct, internal relation to a mind-transcendent worldly object, is our theoretical desideratum. We will see how these views do not make room for such an account. Classical Representationalism

First, the Merleau-Pontian view clearly disagrees with the version of ­Representationalism prominent in the Early Modern period. According to this view, which I will term “Classical Represenationalism,” the direct object of perception is not a worldly object but a mental state that represents that object. Locke, for example, holds that the direct objects of perception are not worldly things but ideas: “Whatever the mind perceives in itself or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea.”23 Similarly, Hume claims that the naïve person generally presupposes that “the very images, presented by the senses, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but representations of the other,” but a little philosophy teaches us the contrary: nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object.24 According to Hume, then, all that is directly present to the mind are representations, not things themselves. As we have seen, Merleau-Ponty insists that the direct object of perception is not mind-immanent. In effect, this classical version of Representationalism “separates” being from appearance: if a representation is just a mental state that can exist in the absence of its object, then it clearly does not bear any internal relation to that object. Again, he contrasts his claim that “being [is] what appears” with a view which would have us “restricting ourselves to phenomena, … locking consciousness in its own states by reserving the possibility of another being beyond apparent being” (PhP, 418–9). To say that “being is what appears” means that appearance is not just a mental state – in which case it would indeed be separate from being – but an internal relation to being. The most obvious reason to reject this view is that it simply doesn’t get the phenomenology of experience right. As Husserl puts it, there is

Perceptual Presence  119 a  fundamental difference between perception and the presentation of a symbol (conceived as an image, signification, etc., of the thing itself). In the latter case, he claims, we intuit something, in the consciousness that it copies something else or indicates its meaning; and though we already have the one in the field of intuition, we are not directed towards it, but through the medium of a secondary apprehension are directed towards the other, that which is copied or indicated. But, according to Husserl, “There is nothing of all this in perception.”25 When we grasp a symbol, we are directly presented with the symbol and indirectly apprehend the symbolized on the basis of the direct perception. But there is nothing in perception for which the perceived could serve as a symbol: it is no part of perception to distinguish between the perceived and some other entity it symbolizes. We are simply directed towards the perceived, and not as we might be in memory or imagination, but in its bodily presence.26 Further, such a view forces us to say that the direct object of perception is not in fact transcendent to that perception. If the direct object of perception is just an inner-mental idea, image, or representation of the thing itself, then the direct object of perception turns out to be mindimmanent.27 But we experience the objects of perception as transcending our perceptions, as sites of ongoing exploration. Sense Data Theory

Like Classical Representationalists, Sense Data Theorists hold that perception is a direct relation to some other object than the worldly object itself. They differ in the kind of mind-immanent object they claim perception to be of – Sense Data Theorists, of course, hold that the direct object of perceptions is just sense data.28 According to this view, when one experiences an object as having a sensible property, there is in fact an object that has this property – just not a mind-independent physical object. Instead, sense data possess these perceived sensible properties. When I perceive a green tree, for example, I am aware of green sense data. Even if I am having a hallucination and there is no tree before me, nevertheless I am aware of sense data that really have the property “green.” What exactly are sense data? While there are different ways to answer this question, we can focus on Robinson’s definition, for example, on which a sense datum is a private, non-physical object, which possesses sensible qualities (such as color or shape), and of which we can be aware.29 Some Sense Data Theorists take sense data to be intrinsically non-intentional or non-relational, i.e., as not representing physical objects per se.30

120  Perception and World On the other hand, many Sense Data Theorists holds that while we are directly perceptually aware of sense data, we can in virtue of these sense data be indirectly perceptually aware of worldly things, through inference, association, etc. The phenomenological view clearly conflicts with Sense Data Theories. First, as we saw in Chapter 1, there are good reasons to doubt that there is any non-intentional layer of sensory experience: for example, because sensory experience already intends a spatial milieu. More, perceptual experience is characterized by its rich sense or meaningfulness, which present to us things, persons, etc. So even if there were non-intentional sense data, they would not exhaust perception, and so could not suffice to define perception. In a related vein, Strawson famously objected to Sense Data Theories that if we ask someone what they see while gazing through a window, they “might reply in such terms as these: ‘I see the red light of the setting sun filtering through the black and thickly clustered branches of the elms; I see the dappled deer grazing in groups on the vivid green grass ….’” The point is that, in describing one’s experience, one normally “does not start talking about lights and colors, patches and patterns. For he sees that to do so would be to falsify the character of the experience he actually enjoyed.”31 In other words, it’s natural to report the objects of our perceptions as things in the world, not as some other non-physical objects. Sense Data Theories get our experience wrong, then: what we perceive are not sense data, but worldly things. Of course, there are also a number of other familiar problems with Sense Data Theories. For example, it is often claimed that Sense Data Theories cannot account for the indeterminacy of our experience: when one sees a speckled hen, one will experience the hen as having numerous speckles without experiencing any determinate number of speckles. But no object is itself indeterminate. Thus, our experience cannot be described as the immediate awareness of an object, even a mental one like a sense datum.32 This is closely related to Merleau-Ponty’s claim, considered in Chapter 1, that sensations as qualities of object won’t account for the indeterminacy of experience.33 Indirect Realism

Both Sense Data Theorists and Classical Representationalists can endorse a further view: Indirect Realism. By “Indirect Realism,” I mean any view that holds that in perception we have an indirect relation to a worldly object, which we possess in virtue of standing in a direct relation to some mind-immanent object. Such a view is realist – since it holds that perception is a relation to a mind-transcendent object – but only indirectly, since our perceptual relation to mind-transcendent objects is mediated

Perceptual Presence  121 by a  mind-immanent object. As we have seen, sense data theorists, for ­example, can allow for perception to include an indirect relation to physical objects through a direct relation to sense data.34 Similarly, Classical Representationalism can allow that we are indirectly related to physical objects in virtue of our mental image, idea, or representation of that object. Even if we add Indirect Realism to Sense Data Theories or Classical Representationalism, we still do not have an account of perception that is phenomenologically apt, since these views hold that the direct object of perception is just a mind-immanent object. But what we perceive, what appears, is the thing itself. To use Heidegger’s terms, on an Indirect Realist view, the thing itself still does not show itself; instead, it “announces” itself through a representation or sense datum that does show itself. For M ­ erleau-Ponty, such a view would reduce appearance to “mere appearance.” There is another problem here too, namely, that it is far from clear how the Indirect Realist can describe the indirect relation we bear to worldly objects in a manner that is genuinely perceptual. Of course, there are different versions of Indirect Realism with competing accounts of what exactly this indirect relation is supposed to look like. But suppose, for example, we say that we infer the existence and character of the worldly object from our direct relation to a mind-immanent object. Inference, however, is not a perceptual relation to worldly objects. If I see smoke and infer the existence of fire, for example, I do not thereby perceive fire. This is no less true if we imagine this inference to be automatic or encapsulated. Or perhaps the Indirect Realist could say that we are non-inferentially, e.g., associatively, aware of the thing itself in virtue of our direct relation to a mind-immanent object. Here too, it would be imprecise to call this a “perceptual” awareness. Imagine that instead of inferring, I associate the idea of fire with the sight of smoke. This is not to perceive fire. If one wanted to persist in claiming that we are inferentially perceptually aware of the fire, this could at most signify that we are aware, in a non-perceptual way, of the fire on the basis of a perception of something other than fire. Adverbialism

So far, we have considered views that describe perception in terms of direct relations to mind-immanent objects, a view which involves considerable metaphysical and phenomenological difficulties. Adverbialism attempts to avoid these problems by pointing out that we needn’t think of perception in a way that commits us to the existence of objects, immanent or transcendent. If I have a sensation of red, for example, we needn’t describe this in terms of some mental or physical red object but could instead think of it simply as a quality of my sensing. We could express this sensing along the lines of: “I am sensing redly.”35

122  Perception and World Such a view clearly conflicts with the phenomenology I am proposing here. On an Adverbialist view, the most basic characterization of perception need not involve intentionality at all, a fortiori the intention of a worldly object, and much less the presence of a worldly object. Aside from these – on the perspective I have been suggesting – i­ nsuperable phenomenological difficulties, Adverbialism faces other problems. For one thing, there has been considerable debate about whether we can appropriately express perceptual content in adverbial expressions.36 It’s not obvious to me that these objections are phenomenologically serious, and I am more concerned about the problem identified by Butchvarov, namely, “The adverbial theory is incapable of doing justice to the most obvious and indeed essential phenomenological fact about perceptual consciousness (perhaps all consciousness), namely, its intentionality, its object-directedness.”37 Chisholm has pointed out that Adverbialism is in a strong position to deal with non-perceptual experiences, such as having spots before one’s eyes, and puzzles about the relations between appearances and things, e.g., seeing a circular coin at an angle. Adverbialism does seem to provide straightforward descriptions of these phenomena – e.g., “one senses spottily” or “one senses elliptically” – but these strengths confirm Butchvarov’s point: Adverbialism is not in a position to describe object-directed experiences. For such phenomena as sensing spottily or blurrily amount to only a certain portion of our perceptual experiences, and we as perceivers readily distinguish between a blur in our vision and a blurry object; similarly, when we see a coin at an angle, the coin does not look to be elliptical. Thus, while Adverbialism helpfully illuminates a certain region of perceptual phenomena (I think usefully advancing beyond a view of mental objects), it obscures our perceptual presence to a world around us. Let’s consider in slightly greater depth the case of perspective. When I see the coin at an angle, I could perhaps say something like “I sense elliptically.” On the other hand, the coin looks circular, i.e., I perceive the coin to be circular. If this is right, we cannot simply express my perception in terms of adverbial qualifications of my perceiving. Could I say, in this case, “I perceive elliptically-circularly,” meaning that perception has multiple components, one of which in this case has a circular quality and another an elliptical quality? After all, if I do perceive the coin to be circular, circularity seems to be some component of my perception, and so perhaps we can allow that I perceive circularly. I don’t find this response compelling. I’ll return to the problem of perspective in the next chapter, but for now, let’s allow some primitive distinction between a sort of “objective” dimension of perception (“how a thing appears to be,” e.g., circular) and a sort of “subjective” one (“how a thing appears to me,” e.g., elliptical). A perfectly natural explanation of this distinction is that perception is object-directed: as object-directed, it includes a ­dimension

Perceptual Presence  123 concerning how its object appears to be and a dimension concerning how it appears to me. But it’s unclear what satisfactory explanation of this distinction Adverbialism can provide, since by hypothesis both are supposed simply to be qualifications of my perceiving. No doubt, Adverbialists will be able to furnish some explanation, but it’s hard to see how it could be as parsimonious as the one just offered. Instead, we should follow Burge’s insight (considered in Chapter 1) that perceptual constancies (such as perceiving the shape of the coin to remain constant through perspectival alterations) are “paradigmatic marks of objectification.”38 Intentionalism Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception is also at odds with Intentionalism. As it is often used, Intentionalism is a view about the relationship between the intentional content and phenomenal character of an experience, but I am interested in it for a specific reason: for its capacity to define perception as representation without requiring that the direct objects of perception be representations.39 It is here that Intentionalism, for my purposes, differs from Classical Representationalism, and when I speak of “­Intentionalism,” I will have in mind just such a view. All an Intentionalist view requires is that the most fundamental characterization of a perceptual experience – what fundamentally explains that experience – is the way it represents its object. On this view, then, to have a perceptual experience is, fundamentally, to entertain a mental state that represents an object. Such a view is “intentional,” because it preserves the sense in which perceptual experiences are about their objects. Since perceptual experiences are representations and representations intend what they represent, it follows that perceptual experiences are intentional. When I see a tree, my perceptual experience intends that tree and does so even if no tree actually exists over there; insofar as my experience represents a green tree, I still have a perceptual experience as of a green tree. What we need in order to account for my experience then, is not a characterization of the object itself in the world, but only of my mental state of representing. Again, this is not to say that, when I have an experience, the object of my experience is just the representation (as Hume suggests); my experience is not an indirect relation to an object. Rather, the worldly thing really is the direct object of my experience, insofar as the worldly thing is the direct object of my representation, and my experience is just a representation.40 As Martin puts it, An intentional theorist does not posit intentional content as any form of intermediary between the objects of perception and us, nor … as a substitute object of awareness for mind-independent objects of awareness.

124  Perception and World Rather, the appeal to intentional content is to explain the way in which such objects can come to be objects of awareness … .41 According to Intentionalists, then, the most fundamental characterization of experience has to do with how it represents objects. Correlatively, it is the intentional contents of an experience that determines what it is like, i.e., its “phenomenal character.” What explains what it is like to have a visual experience of a birch tree, for example, is that I intend a birch tree, that I intend it as white (and green, etc.), and that I intend it as being birch tree-shaped, etc. How exactly to characterize the relation between intentional content and phenomenal character is the subject of debate.42 For example, Lycan distinguishes between a Strong Intentionalism, on which phenomenal character is “one and the same” as intentional content, and a Weak Intentionalism, on which the former merely supervenes on the latter.43 But both agree that phenomenal character is ultimately fixed by intentional content.44 How does this view compare to Merleau-Ponty’s? Since this view does not hold that the direct object of perception is a mental state, Intentionalism avoids some of the problems of Classical Representations. However, it too is unable to capture perceptual presence. First, the Intentionalist view violates my condition (6), since it holds that the fundamental characterization of a perception is given by its representational content, rather than by a worldly things presenting itself. Suppose I am suffering from a hallucination: I perceive a person standing on the stairs when there is no one there. I’ll explain how I think about hallucination in Chapter 6, but for now we can ask how the Intentionalist will characterize this kind of experience. She has two options, as I see it. She can say (a) that something does present itself: not a really existing person, but some mental object, an image or picture of a person. If she takes this tack, we are back at Classical Representationalism and certainly are not describing perception as the presence of a worldly object. On the other hand, she can say (b) that since there is no worldly object before us, nothing presents itself. This means that the presence of a worldly object does not provide a fundamental characterization of hallucinatory experience. On an Intentionalist view, though, perception and hallucination are fundamentally of the same kind: both intend the world as being some way and accompany these intentions with certain phenomenal characters. If this is true, then even in the case of genuine perception, the object of perception needn’t be present, since the combination of perceptual intention and phenomenal character doesn’t suffice for presence. Other disagreements are wrapped up in this one. Given the Intentionalist’s characterization of hallucination, she must also deny (4) that the intentional object of a perception must exist. And for just this reason,

Perceptual Presence  125 Intentionalism also violates condition (3), namely, that perception is an internal relation to its object. The character and existence of a representation is not dependent on its object, just on the state that represents that object, and so a representation bears a merely external relation to its object. As such, Intentionalism, in Merleau-Ponty’s terms, would amount to one of those views that “separates” appearance from being.45 So, Intentionalism entails that presentation does not give the fundamental characterization of perception. But could an Intentionalist nevertheless allow that when we do have a genuine perception – when the object of a perceptual intention does in fact exist and stands in an appropriate relation to our experience – worldly objects are presented to us? Such a view is somewhat unappealing, since a common motive for Intentionalism is its ability to account for hallucination without Disjunctivism (a position to be discussed further in Chapter 6). But it is not necessarily impossible: we could imagine a view on which the fundamental characterization of perception and hallucination is the same, but the two differ insofar as the former also requires the presence of its object. Of course, such a view would still conflict with my (6), since as it doesn’t make presence part of the fundamental characterization of perception. And more importantly, it seems basically ad hoc: if perception and hallucination are fundamentally characterized as perceptual intentions coupled with appropriate phenomenal characters, why posit that the object of perception must be present to perception? If Intentionalism allows that we can characterize hallucination without invoking presence (and indeed, part of its appeal is its ability to account for the perceptual intentions we have in the case of hallucination without invoking presence), why would we claim that an intention and its objects enter into a fundamentally new kind of relation when the object turns out to exist? Stipulating such a relation would be arbitrary. Of course, something has changed between the two cases, namely that, if the object exists, the perceptual experience is accurate, in a way that otherwise it isn’t. But accuracy certainly does not entail presence. A painting, for example, can represent an object that does exist (and represent it just as it is) or one that doesn’t exist. In the former case, the painting is accurate, whereas in the latter, it isn’t (in fact, it has no accuracy conditions). But in neither case does the object of the painting present itself. Similarly, because Intentionalism conceives perception fundamentally as a state (albeit an intentional one) rather than a relation, even in the case where the world is as we represent it, the world itself is not thereby presented to consciousness. So, even though Intentionalism purports to allow both that perception is representational and that the direct object of perception is just the worldly object it represents, it disagrees in important respects with the view I have offered here. However, I think there is a deeper problem for Intentionalism, namely, I doubt that it can really achieve the combination of these two ideas.

126  Perception and World To see the problem, first consider what a perceptual field, such as the visual field, consists of on this account. The visual field, for an Intentionalist, is dependent on perceptual intentions. If there is a green patch in my visual field, for example, this is because I intend some worldly object as having the property “green.” But what populates the visual field are not worldly objects, since for the Intentionalist, the visual field could be exactly as it is in the absence of any worldly objects at all. The visual field is constituted by my intention of, say, a birch tree, rather than the tree itself. But if what populates the visual field are not worldly objects, this raises the problem of what exactly we are aware of when we see: the visual field or the worldly objects? To be clear, I am not asking what we see, since by definition the direct object of vision on this view is the worldly objects. I am asking what we are consciously aware of when we consciously see worldly objects (and I am interested only in conscious perceptions here). If one answers that one is aware of the visual field, then we are back at Classical Representationalism: one is proximally aware of the visual field, and in virtue of the visual field representing worldly objects, one can be said to perceptually intend (to “see”) those objects. Of course, one could also take this answer to entail that we are not perceptually aware of worldly objects at all. But assuming that we are perceptually aware of worldly objects when we see and that we are proximally aware only of the visual field, then the visual field will have to act as an intermediary between me and the worldly objects. And this spoils the Intentionalist thought that the direct object of perception is the worldly object itself.46 On the other hand, if one answers that one is aware of the worldly objects, then the visual field becomes superfluous and ceases to play a role in my experience at all. Such a view is practically untenable, though, since I obviously am aware of my visual field when I see. Of course, I may not be aware of my visual field as my visual field, but this hardly entails that I am aware of something other than my visual field. When I see a lemon tree, I am aware (at the very least) of certain shapes and colors in my visual field. Could we say, in this case, that I am aware only of the tree itself as having certain shapes and colors, and not of my visual field?47 But what would vision even amount to on such a view? Basically, perception would just be belief: the belief, e.g., that the tree has certain green and yellow shapes. Such a view clearly mangles perceptual experience: visual awareness absent awareness of the visual field is an unrecognizable phenomenon.48 There are other ways one could try to answer this question, though. For example, one might try to argue that the visual field just is the set of my perceptual intentions of worldly objects. If this were the case, then perhaps we could say that to be aware of my visual field is to be aware of worldly objects. But I don’t think such an equation is possible: the visual field is

Perceptual Presence  127 not itself a visual intention. For example, the portion of the visual field in virtue of which I intend the lemon tree is green, but no one would say that my intention is green. Of course, the object of my intention in this case is green, but it would be a fundamental confusion to think that the intention of a green object is itself green: the visual field and indeed the world are, so to speak, shaped and colorful, but intentions are not themselves shaped or colorful. So, while the visual field may be determined by our intentions, the two are not simply identical. More, even were such an equation possible, it would still not resolve the problem. It would simply entail that when I am aware of the visual field, I am aware of visual intentions: but to be aware of visual intentions is not to be aware of the objects of those intentions. On the other hand, one might think that the answer is both: when I see, I am aware of both my visual field and worldly objects. But this doubles perceptual awareness in a way that finds no phenomenological support. I don’t experience seeing as an awareness of two distinct things: my visual field and the worldly object. Perception is not experienced like, say, a live video feed, in which I am plausibly aware of both the image on the screen and the worldly objects it depicts. Instead, perception is experienced as an awareness of just one thing: the worldly object as it presents itself in my visual field. For experience, the visual field is just the manner in which worldly objects present themselves visually, and so there is no problem of adjudicating between two objects of awareness. It is only when we separate the two, constituting the visual field by intentions rather than by the presence of their objects, that this problem becomes unavoidable. So, I see no satisfactory resolution of this problem available to the Intentionalist. This, ultimately, is because the problem becomes unavoidable once we think of perception as representation. If perception is representation, then we must ask what we are aware of when we perceive: the representation or the worldly objects it represents. It is just this question that led the Classical Representationalist to conclude that we are directly aware only of representations when we perceive. As I understand it, Intentionalism promises to resolve this problem by conceiving representation not as the object of our awareness but as our very awareness of worldly objects. Were this correct, then perception would be representation without us having to say that in perception we are aware of a representation: if our awareness of a worldly object is just the representation of that object, then the direct object of perceptual representation is the worldly object. But this identification cannot be made, for reasons we have considered: a representation has certain properties, e.g., shapes and colors, which awareness can be of but cannot itself have. To use an analogy, the Intentionalist denies that perception is like seeing a portrait and intending the subject of that portrait through the intermediary

128  Perception and World of the portrait. But it is as if she does this by making the p ­ ortrait itself aware: the portrait is not itself the objects it represents, but for any change in the portrait, there is a change in its awareness of its objects. Thus, we can say that both the portrait is intentional and the direct object of awareness is the worldly object. This innovation does not address the fundamental problem, though, which is the separation between representation and its objects. Thus, we will still have to decide of what the portrait is aware: the objects it represents or the representation, i.e., its “pictorial” field, so to speak. This is essentially the problem I have been pressing over the previous paragraphs. It is a problem that will find a satisfactory resolution only if we abandon the separation of representation and objects and allow a view on which the objects themselves present themselves in our perceptual fields.49 Conclusion Let us conclude our account of appearance here. We have established a general outline of Merleau-Ponty’s view of appearance and broadly distinguished it from a few alternatives. In brief, Merleau-Ponty advocates an account of perceptual appearance as an intentional relation to a worldly object that transcends that appearance (and consciousness generally). But perceptual appearance is a unique kind of intentional relation: unlike mere appearance, imagination, wish, etc., perception is an internal relation, one that requires the existence of its object, and is fundamentally presentational rather than representational. Before concluding, I should acknowledge that this approach to experience is obviously in the vicinity of what Alston and Langsam have termed the “Theory of Appearing.” On this view, perceptual experience and the features presented in it fundamentally consist in relations between perceivers and the world (rather than in intentional states and their intrinsic properties), and one in which worldly objects and their properties are presented to consciousness.50 On such a view, perception is not a relation to a mind-immanent object, is not merely representation, and does not bear a merely external relation to its object. In this minimal sense, we might say that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception is a version of a Theory of Appearing. But there are many different directions one might take such a theory, and we need to be more precise than simply defining perception as a relation of appearing. As we’ll see in the following, Merleau-Ponty disagrees in significant respect with Langsam’s and Armstrong’s approach to illusion and hallucination. More to the point, we need to be more precise about what exactly this relation of appearing consists in, a project I continue to pursue in the next chapter by comparing Merleau-Ponty’s view to Realism and Idealism.

Perceptual Presence  129 Notes 1 Cf. PhP, 332. 2 As we saw in Chapter 1, however, Husserl does not think that all experiences are intentional: Husserl holds that sensations are experiential contents that are not intrinsically referred to objects. Husserl, Logical Investigations II, 97. In Ideas I, he will similarly say that not every “real phase” of an intentional experience has itself the character of intentionality, again insofar as the sensational components of an experience are not intrinsically intentional (Ideas I, 68). As we have seen, Merleau-Ponty rejects this claim. He holds that a reference to an external object is already included in sensation, writing, e.g., “when I am certain of having sensed, the certainty of an external thing is included within the very manner in which sensation is articulated and developed in front of me; … it is some red, and an opaque red upon a single plane, for example, or rather a three-dimensional red atmosphere. … There is no sphere of immanence … .” (PhP, 395). 3 Logical Investigations, Investigation 5, Chapter 2; Ideas I, §36. 4 Cf. Structure of Behavior (172–3 & 189). 5 Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between “act intentionality” and “operative intentionality” (PhP, lxxxii, 440–1, 560ftnt13). 6 In other places, Merleau-Ponty will appear more explicitly hostile to the notion of intentionality. For example, he claims that “if being is to disclose itself, it will do so before a transcendence, and not before an intentionality … “ (VI, 210); or, he claims that the perception of depth “is not an act or an intentionality” (VI, 219). It seems to me what Merleau-Ponty resists here, though, is only the non-original notion of intentionality, the “intentionality of representations;” depth is not disclosed in an act intentionality – but this does not mean that it is not intentional at all. He will also repeat his claim here that intentionality for Husserl is not what it was for Kant (VI, 173), insofar as it is not a pure act but a “latent intentionality” or an “intentional life.” Cf. VI, 244. 7 Husserl, Ideas I, 71. 8 To be sure, Merleau-Ponty is skeptical of any sharp distinction between immanent and transcendent objects. He argues that consciousness is entirely related to the world (“The world is entirely on the inside, and I am entirely outside of myself” (PhP, 430)), such that an intention of any item within the stream of consciousness cannot be isolated from relation to the world itself; thus, he argues that “there is no sphere of immanence” and that “consciousness is entirely transcendence” (PhP, 395). But this is very much in keeping with the claim that perception transcends itself. 9 Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (New York: ­Routledge, 2014). See Smith, Problem of Perception, 242. 10 Cf. Logical Investigations, Investigation 5, Chapter 2, §§11–2, e.g., page 98. 11 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1977), §6. 12 When I say that something really exists, here, I mean that it doesn’t exist merely mentally, but as part of the mind-external world. 13 He writes, for example, “The sensing being [le sentant] and the sensible are not opposite each other like two external terms, and sensation does not consist of the sensible invading the sensing being” (PhP, 221); “We have seen, once and for all, that our relations with things cannot be external relations, nor can our consciousness of ourselves be the simple registering of psychical events. We  only perceive a world if, prior to being some set of observed facts, this world and this perception are thoughts of our very own” (PhP, 392).

130  Perception and World 14 To avoid confusion, let me clarify that the mere fact that the object of a ­perception transcends that perception does not entail that the two bear a merely external or contingent relation to one another. The distinction between immanence and transcendence, on the one hand, and internality and externality, on the other, do not map onto each other. If action is an internal relation, then we have a clear case of an internal relation between an act and an object that is not itself part of that act. Conversely, something can bear an external relation to its own parts: a clock does not require the existence of any particular gear wheel to operate and could function perfectly well with exactly similar ones. Thus, there is nothing contradictory in a view on which perception is an internal relation to a transcendent object. 15 We can see the same structure in Merleau-Ponty’s closely related treatment of self-consciousness. Just prior to the above quotation, Merleau-Ponty claims, “It has often been said that consciousness, by definition, does not allow for the separation [séparation] between appearance and reality, and this was understood in the sense that, in terms of our self-knowledge, appearance would be reality” (PhP, 308). It seems to me that Merleau-Ponty wants to affirm that appearance and reality are inseparable in consciousness, but to deny the interpretation of this to mean that they are identical. As he puts it on the next page, “To say that, in consciousness, appearance and reality are one, or to say that they are separated, is to render impossible the consciousness of anything, even as appearance” (PhP, 310). 16 See also, e.g., PhP, 126, 401 (“simple appearance” is the same term in French). Note that Merleau-Ponty almost always uses “mere appearance” in the context of discussing intellectualism. Further, it is worth acknowledging that MerleauPonty is not entirely univocal in this distinction: for example, he also claims that this contrasting view reduces “the evidence of the phenomenon to appearance [réduit l’évidence à l’apparence]” (PhP, 418). 17 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John MacQuarrie and Edward ­Robinson (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 51. 18 Heidegger, Being and Time, 52. 19 Note that Merleau-Ponty uses “appearance” and “phenomenon” inter changeably, in contrast to “mere appearance” (PhP, 418–9). Admittedly, ­Merleau-Ponty does not really use “appearance” in consistent contrast to mere appearance, but for clarity and simplicity I’ll use the terms to denote a consistent distinction. 20 Adam Pautz, “Representationalism About Consciousness,” in Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness, ed. Uriah Kriegel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 407. 21 Cf. “Every Intentional state with a direction of fit is a representation of its conditions of satisfaction.” John Searle, Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 45–6. 22 John R. Searle, “Perceptual Intentionality,” Organon 19 (2012): 15. 23 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: P ­ enguin, 1997), 474. 24 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 111. 25 Husserl, Ideas I, 81. 26 Ibid., 81. One might wonder whether it matters that I am not aware of grasping a symbol as a symbol in perception. I might very well perceive only a mental image without being aware that I do so. But we cannot properly say that what

Perceptual Presence  131 I perceive then counts as a representation or symbol of a worldly object, since as Husserl points out, one thing can only represent or refer to another for a consciousness that takes the one to represent the other: serving as a representation is no real predicate of the representation itself (Husserl, Logical Investigations vol. 2, 125–7). A green light, for example, does not per se represent the state of affairs that one can now drive; it could perfectly well indicate that one must stop. It is not an intrinsic property of a portrait to be an image of a person: the former is only an image of the latter for a consciousness that takes the one to refer to the other. Of course, the two do objectively resemble each other. But the resemblance between two objects does not make the one an image of the other: two blades of grass resemble each other, but we wouldn’t conclude from this that the one represents the other. Instead, one object can only serve to refer to or represent another for a consciousness that takes the one to refer to the other. 27 Husserl, Ideas I, 81. 28 Some might resist the characterization of sense-data as mind-immanent. Moore resisted the characterization of sense data as mind-dependent. G. E. Moore and G. F. Stout, “XII.—Symposium—The Status of Sense-Data,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 14, no. 1 (1914): 355–406. See also José Luis Bermúdez, “Naturalized Sense Data,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61, no. 2 (2000): 353–74. For a response, see Howard Robinson, Perception (New York: Routledge, 1994), 184–6. Even if sense data shouldn’t be counted as mind-immanent, Merleau-Ponty would disagree with this view, since it holds that perception is a direct relation to some other object than the worldly object itself: for Merleau-Ponty, seeing a tree is not matter of standing in a direct relation to a green, tree-shaped sense datum. 29 Robinson, Perception, 1–2. 30 Robinson, Perception, 2. Note that some Sense Data Theorists will attempt to supplement their account by claiming that perceptual experience also includes a representational component. 31 P. F. Strawson, “Perception and Its Objects,” in Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer with His Replies to Them, ed. G. F. Macdonald (London: Macmillan Education UK, 1979), 43. 32 Of course, it would be wrong to conclude we don’t experience an object at all in this case: rather, we should conclude that our experience cannot be characterized simply in terms of citing an object of that experience. 33 Cf. also George Pitcher, A Theory of Perception (Princeton: Princeton ­University Press, 1971), 32–3; Gilbert Harman, “The Intrinsic Quality of Experience,” Philosophical Perspectives 4 (1990): 5–6. 34 See, e.g., Frank Jackson, Perception: A Representative Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1977) J. Lowe, “Experience and Its Objects,” in The Contents of Experience: Essays on Perception, ed. Tim Crane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 79–104. Sense Data Theorists do not have to take this view, however. See John Foster, The Nature of Perception (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 35 For classic expositions of Adverbialism, see Chisholm, 1957; Ducasse, “Objectivity, Objective Reference, and Perception,” in Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research 2, no. 1 (1941): 43–78. 36 For an introduction to these, see Chapter 4 in William Fish, Philosophy of Perception: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2021).

132  Perception and World 7 Butchvarov, 1997, 264. 3 38 Burge, 2010, 413. 39 E.g., Burge defends the view that perceptions represent or intend objects but denies that what we primarily perceive are representations. Tyler Burge, Foundations of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 198–200. 40 Cf. Brewer’s claim that there is no direct object of perception on the Content View, insofar as we are not directly acquainted with any object in perception; all it means to say that the worldly thing is the direct object of perception, on the Content View, is that we are not directly acquainted with some mindimmanent entity in perception. Bill Brewer, Perception and Its Objects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 55. 41 Michael G. F. Martin, “The Transparency of Experience,” Mind & Language 17, no. 4 (2002): 397. 42 Note that Intentionalism does not fall afoul of A. D. Smith’s criticisms of “reductive intentionalism,” namely, that it reduces experience to mere belief or thought, thereby eliminating sensory consciousness altogether (Smith, Problem of Perception, 52). For the most part, Intentionalism is perfectly well content to allow experience a phenomenal character. For an experience to have a phenomenal character is not, on this view, to be directly related to some minddependent object, e.g., a sense datum, though (the view Smith, ultimately, is out to reject); rather, the experience is directly related to the worldly object it presents and does so with a phenomenal character. 43 William Lycan, “Representational Theories of Consciousness,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition), ed., Edward N. Zalta, https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/consciousness-representational/. 44 Note that while Intentionalism does not reduce perception to belief, it does conceive of perception by analogy with belief, given the obviously intentional character of belief. To have a belief is to take an attitude toward a propositional content that intends a state of affairs. When I believe “the tree is green,” I take an attitude of belief toward a proposition that intends the state of affairs that the tree is green. We might think of the representational nature of perception by analogy to belief, such that perception is a matter of representing objects in a propositional attitude. Crane, for example, defines Intentionalism as a theory which “treats perception as a kind of propositional attitude, akin to belief” (1998, Intentionalist as the mark of the mental, 233); Pautz conceives of perception as a kind of predicating, just one that is phenomenal (presentational) rather than cognitive (“Representationalism about Consciousness”); Byrne defines Intentionalism as follows: “the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is entirely determined by the experience’s propositional content – that is, by what it represents.” Alex Byrne, “Intentionalism Defended,” The Philosophical Review 110, no. 2 (2001): 199. But Intentionalism doesn’t require that the content of perceptual intentions be propositional; just that the most fundamental characterization of a perception is given by the manner in which it represents its object. 45 There are externalist versions of Intentionalism that hold that features of the environment play a role in fixing the representational content of an experience. See, e.g., “Cartesian Error and the Objectivity of Perception,” in Burge, Foundations of Mind. Such views make the existence and character of our experience at least partially dependent on the environment, and one might wonder whether consequently these views can meet condition (3). But even if the external world plays a role in fixing the representational content of an experience, it

Perceptual Presence  133 is not thereby presented in experience. What we have is still a representation, albeit it one more tightly tied to the world than otherwise; to say that the external world fixes the content of a representation is not to say that it is itself given in that representation. 46 Cf. Smith’s point (Problem of Perception, 78) that a view on which perception is composed of sensation and representation cannot shed light on how a sensation “can be in consciousness and yet not be an object of awareness.” 47 Of course, this is quite close, in a way, to my view: when we see, we are just aware of the tree itself as having certain shapes and colors. But this cannot be separate from being aware of the visual field: to be perceptually aware of the tree as having certain shapes and colors is to be aware of certain shapes and colors in one’s visual field, since the visual field consists of the presence of worldly objects. The problem is that Intentionalism separates the two, leaving no good answer to the question. 48 I think this might be something like Reid’s view that we overlook perceptual sensations. See Smith (Problem of Perception, 78–9) for an exposition and response. 49 Cf. Smith: “If sensations are brought into consciousness in addition to a distinct cognitive act that supposedly achieves perceptual ‘transcendence’ to the world, such sensations, given that Reid’s suggestion that they are simply overlooked is plainly false, are going to be sensory items of which we are aware whenever we perceive” (Problem of Perception, 81). 50 Harold Langsam, “The Theory of Appearing Defended,” Philosophical Studies 120 (1997): 183; William P. Alston, “Back to the Theory of Appearing,” Philosophical Perspectives 13 (1999): 182.

5 Realism and Idealism

One prominent theory of perception was conspicuously absent from my survey at the end of the last chapter: Realism. Realism is no doubt the most widely accepted alternative to Representationalism (I’ll refer to both Intentionalism and Classical Representationalism as Representationalism henceforth for simplicity), and debates between the two have occupied a central place in the literature on perception over the past two decades. Many working in the phenomenological tradition too have argued that some form of Realism provides the most accurate account of perception.1 While – as we have seen – Merleau-Ponty rejects Representationalism, the debate he is most concerned with is not that between Realism and Representationalism but between Realism and Idealism. And it is this debate that I will consider in the present chapter. There are at least two reasons to do this. First, the systematic reason: while Idealism has fallen out of favor in contemporary debates, to my mind it provides a live and formidable philosophical option for thinking about perception, and so merits consideration. In taking up Merleau-Ponty’s arguments, we will see how the Merleau-Pontian view I have been describing carves out a philosophical space outside of Realism, Idealism, and Representationalism. Second, an interpretive one: various commentators have read Merleau-Ponty as an Idealist,2 others as a Realist.3 Still others argue that his view is incoherent4 or at least the Phenomenology presents an incoherent account, and this is what pushes Merleau-Ponty toward the Visible and the Invisible.5 On the contrary, I think Merleau-Ponty already in the Phenomenology suggests a coherent account of perception that is neither realist nor idealist. In this chapter, I want to articulate a certain poise, struck by Merleau-Ponty, with respect to Realism and Idealism; one which does not clearly lean in either direction but also adapts itself to the weight of both. There are different views that we might name Realism or Idealism. One set of views answers a metaphysical question about the relation between mind and objects. With respect to this question, Realism basically names

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-8

Realism and Idealism  135 a view on which there are objects that exist independently of the mind, while Idealism names a view on which all objects exist only “in” or “for” minds. Another set of views – the one I will be considering here – answers questions specifically about the Philosophy of Perception, namely, about the relation between perception and perceptible objects. In this sense, Realism holds that perception consists in a direct relation to mind-independent objects, whereas Idealism holds that perceptible objects are in some sense constituted by the perceiver, and so do not exist independently of perception. The two questions are not identical (for example, both Realism in this latter sense and Representationalism amount to forms of Realism in the former sense) though neither are they unrelated (if I think that in perception I am directly acquainted with properties of mind-independent objects, then I am also committed to a Realist metaphysics, namely, that there are mind-independent objects). Merleau-Ponty is interested in both sorts of questions. In this chapter, though, I will be concerned only – or perhaps only centrally – with the latter question. Let me be more precise about how I take up the terms of this question. Consider the way in which Merleau-Ponty states his opposition to both Realism and Idealism. What is given is not the thing alone, but also the experience of the thing, a transcendence in the wake of a subjectivity, a nature that shines forth through a history. If we attempted to follow realism in turning the perception into a coinciding [coïncidence] with the thing, then we could no longer even understand the nature of the perceptual event, how the subject can assimilate the thing …, for in realism, the subject necessarily possesses nothing of the object. We must live things in order to perceive them. And yet we must also reject the Idealism of synthesis because it distorts our lived relation with things. If the perceiving subject accomplishes the synthesis of the perceived, he must dominate and think a material of perception, he must himself organize and unite all of the appearances of the thing; that is, perception must lose its inherence in an individual subject and in a point of view, and the thing must lose its transcendence and its opacity. To live a thing is neither to coincide with it, nor to think it straight through. (PhP, 340)6 What exactly is it that Merleau-Ponty rejects here under the names “Realism” and “Idealism”? First, “Realism” here is not just a view on which the objects of perception are mind-independent: it is a view on which perception provides us with a sort of raw or immediate access to mind-independent

136  Perception and World objects. Such a view is very much at stake in ­contemporary “Naïve” or “Direct Realism.” Brewer, for example, defines Realism as a view on which: perception is a matter of our standing in relations of conscious acquaintance from a given spatiotemporal point of view … with particular mindindependent physical objects themselves. The ways that things look, for example, in such perceptual experiences are precisely the ways that those very things look from that point of view and in the circumstances in question.7 There are two closely related ideas here. First, as Brewer at times puts it, the direct objects of perception are mind-independent things.8 Second, the character of perception is explained just by the object of perception in the circumstances in which it is perceived. Or, as Campbell puts it, for example, “the phenomenal character of your experiences, as you look around the room, is constituted by the actual layout of the room itself.”9 This, I think, is the idea Merleau-Ponty has in mind in defining Realism as the view that perception is a “coinciding with the thing”: when I perceive, I simply receive into my awareness the properties of the object I am perceiving. To “coincide” perceptually with a rose, in this sense, would be to have a perceptual experience constituted entirely by the rose and its properties (in conjunction with the environmental properties in which it is perceived). Second, “Idealism,” baldly speaking, names a view on which objects are reduced to our perceptions of them (cf. the “philosophy of immanence” we saw Merleau-Ponty reject in Chapter 4). But Merleau-Ponty evidently has something more specific in mind with “Idealism,” namely, a view on which the objects of perception are constituted by the synthetic activity of the subject of that perception. On this view, what is directly given in experience are some set of mind-dependent, non-intentional contents (e.g., perspectival appearances, sensations, etc.), which the subject must synthesize through its own activity into a coherent experience of an object. We might say that Merleau-Ponty is less concerned here with the Subjective Idealism of Berkeley than with the Transcendental Idealism of Kant, for example. Kant holds that what is given in experience is only a manifold of intuition that must be synthesized according to appropriate rules in order to yield a presentation of an object. Let us now see why Merleau-Ponty rejects these two views. Realism Start with Realism. Not only is Realism a widely held theory of perception, but some commentators have also identified Merleau-Ponty as a Realist

Realism and Idealism  137 (or at least, have identified Realist elements in his thinking).10 Examining ­Merleau-Ponty’s arguments against Realism will cast doubts on both points. As we saw above, Merleau-Ponty writes that we should not follow Realism in defining perception as a “coinciding with the thing,” because what is given in a perception is not the thing alone but also the experience of the thing, and because in order to perceive a subject must “live” or “assimilate” things (PhP, 340). This idea is twofold. First, it is the idea that the fundamental characterization of an experience cannot be given simply by citing the object of perception. On the contrary, perceptual experience depends on deep intentional accomplishments that do not derive from the object of perception but from the perceiver’s embodied perceptual expertise. Perceptual expertise aims to present the world around it, and to the extent that it succeeds in this, we can indicate the character of experience by citing its object. But the experience itself does not fundamentally consist simply in taking in the properties of its object.11 Second, it is the idea that what appears in an experience is not just the thing but also the experience of the thing. In other words, we might say, there are (at least marginal) aspects of any perception that are directed at that very experience. Coinciding

Merleau-Ponty’s language of coinciding here might be confusing. What would it mean to perceptually “coincide” with a thing? One could of course take the term literally, as signaling a kind of fusion: in perception, experience and its object in fact become one entity. This is not an appealing view, and Realism certainly isn’t committed to “coincidence” in this sense. Instead, I think “coinciding” is simply a way of talking about the basic commitment of Naïve Realism given above: namely, that perceptual experience can be entirely described in terms of the object of perception and its properties; in perception, we “coincide” with the object in the sense that our experience is just, so to speak, the reception of an object and its properties.12 This is perhaps a maximally naïve formulation of realism, and as stated it is clearly open to challenge. Indeed, it overlooks the perspectival character of experience. As Hume points out, as I walk around a table, the table itself does not change, though my experience does.13 Again, what I perceive the table to be does not change – I do not have the sense that the table itself changes size or shape on the basis of my motion – but there is an undeniable change occurring in my experience of the table. In this sense, the character of a perception cannot be described simply by citing its object. At a minimum, perception is perspectival: a perceptual appearance can only provide us with the sides of an object required by our position; wherever I stand, I can see only three sides of an opaque cube, and

138  Perception and World the combination of where I stand and the position of the cube determines which sides exactly these will be. This is to say that, in the phenomenological sense, we never perceive objects “adequately.” Another way to say this is that we need a distinction between how I experience a thing (its appearance) and what I experience it to be (how it appears to be). When I say that something has such and such an appearance, I do not mean that it appears to be such and such. When I see three sides of a cube, the cube does not appear to be merely three-sided; when a statue’s appearance shrinks as we move further away, the statue does not appear to be smaller; nor does the coin appear to be an ellipse, even as it cuts an elliptical appearance. How an object appears to me varies with my situation; how it appears to be need not. Thus, how an object appears and how it appears to be are different aspects of perception (remember, as discussed in Chapter 4, an appearance in this sense is not some mental entity but the manner in which an object appears, i.e., an “appearance” just is how an object appears). A perceptual appearance will vary with the subject of that appearance, even as the object itself appears to be invariable. Indeed, it is because the thing transcends our perception that it does not necessarily vary with its appearance: if the thing were just its appearance, then any change in appearance would be a change in the thing. Thus, we cannot reduce how an object appears to be to how it appears. But neither can we do the reverse: the appearance of an object cannot be entirely explained in terms of how that object is. But Realism needn’t be, and in fact rarely is, committed to any such maximally “naïve” view. There are at least two ways in which Realists can adopt more sophisticated views. First, a Realist can distinguish between intrinsic and relational properties of objects: for example, one might say that a coin seen from an angle is intrinsically circular, though it cuts an elliptical figure when seen from my current position. The Realist can then admit that in experience we are not directly acquainted with an object’s intrinsic properties, while maintaining that in perception we are directly acquainted with an object’s relational properties, e.g., its apparent size.14 Second, a Realist can maintain that the character of experience is determined not just by its object but by facts about the total environment of perception. Campbell, for example, defines consciousness as a “three-place relation between a person, a standpoint and an object.”15 Or Fish argues the distribution of objects, positions, and even the subject’s perceptual organs contribute to determining perception.16 Merleau-Ponty’s objection to Realism cuts deeper than this, though, and poses formidable challenges for both of these more sophisticated versions of Realism. With respect to the first option, Merleau-Ponty denies that in perception we are simply taking in objective properties, even relational ones.17 After

Realism and Idealism  139 all, if perception were simply taking in relational properties, then in some sense it would be false to think of perception as not being “adequate”: it would be adequately taking in relational properties, rather than inadequately taking in intrinsic properties. This, of course, is not to say that we don’t take in properties, relational and intrinsic, of objects when we perceive. Instead, Merleau-Ponty says that when we perceive things, we “live” them, in the sense that we “assimilate” them and carry them into our “history.” Merleau-Ponty explains his rejection of Realism as follows: a thing is not actually given in perception, it is inwardly taken up by us, reconstituted and lived by us insofar as it is linked to a world whose fundamental structures we carry within ourselves and of which this thing is just one of several possible concretions. (PhP, 341) In other words, as we’ll see shortly, the perceptual sense revealed in a perception is always mediated by our perceptual capacities. By the same token, with respect to the second option, Merleau-Ponty denies that the character of experience can be determined simply by citing facts about the object plus the total environment of perception. There are no facts about the total environment that will explain the perceptual experience I have when I look at Zöllner’s illusion or the Müller-Lyer lines. Here we must admit that my perceptual experience is determined by the operation of my perceptual system, and not even simply by the features of my perceptual organs – e.g., the shape and number of eyes or the types of cone cell – but by the way in which the inputs of perceptual organs are processed by the visual system. Realists, of course, have various strategies for dealing with this kind of problem – but simply admitting that my perceptual experience is also jointly determined by my perceptual capacities offers an overwhelmingly simpler explanation. In brief, neither version of Realism can do justice to the extent to which perception draws on our perceptual skills. As Hopp puts it, “Fish’s list of factors that influence the character of one’s experience is only the tip of the iceberg. There are a wide variety of intentional factors that are necessary for perceptual experiences to occur.”18 Hopp offers three examples of such intentional factors that it might be helpful to briefly canvas here, namely, time-consciousness, horizonality, and the body schema. Consider, first, our awareness of time. Our consciousness of time plays an integral role within perception itself: we perceive not just instantaneous events but temporally extended objects, e.g., motion, causality, rhythm, or melody. If I see a ball rolling across a field, I do not simply perceive the ball at a certain location during a certain moment. Nor do I merely form a belief about how the ball is changing (as when, for example, I visit

140  Perception and World a city two times over several years and form a conclusion about it rapidly commercializing). Rather, I perceive the ball as moving in a given direction with a certain speed: motion and speed are not simply beliefs but contents of perceptions. But I cannot determine my experience of motion and speed simply by citing the properties of the object at the instant I am perceiving it, since motion is a temporally extended phenomenon. If the ball is rolling from A at T1 to B at T2 to C at T3, this is not experienced simply in virtue of the ball’s location at T2. Instead, to perceive motion, I must implicitly retain at T2 my just past perception of the ball at T1 and anticipate perceiving the ball at C during T3. The experience of motion thus draws on an intentional capacity for holding together the immediate past, present, and future into a temporal event: rather than the simple reception of the object’s properties, the perception of motion is an intentional accomplishment. Something similar must be said about the horizons of experience. As I have already pointed out, any perceptual experience of a physical object presents that object inadequately. But, crucially, we experience our perception of physical objects as inadequate. If I perceive a cube, I will at any moment perceive only three of its sides. I do not perceive the cube as a three-sided object, however. Rather, I perceive it as a cube. I am aware that if I were to walk around it or turn it over in my hands, I would discover other sides, that my experience of the current sides would change, and the latter would even disappear from view. Thus, my perception tacitly includes a horizon of other possible experiences of the cube. For example, if I were to walk around the cube only to discover that it was in fact a three-sided object, I would be surprised. But this horizon cannot be given to me simply by coincidence with the object: it is not given to me by perceptually coinciding with the cube from a given perspective in certain total environmental conditions, since this only gives me the three sides. Instead, the horizon of an experience is an intentional capacity that I bring to bear on the cube. Finally, perceptual experience is mediated by the body schema. By “body schema” I mean not just an image of one’s body or its location but a tacit awareness of the body’s capacity to engage dynamically with its environment – for example, part of acquiring a bodily skill, like rock climbing, is acquiring a sense of one’s bodily capacity for engaging with the vertical space of rock wall or cliff face: through continuous bodily exploration, one gains a sense of the determinate possibilities the wall affords one, what distances one can cover, what holds one can rely on, and what paths are available to a body like one’s own. This body schema mediates not just our practical engagement with the world but also our perceptual engagement with it. Consider again the case of ocular paralysis cited by Merleau-Ponty, in which the subject, when they intend to move their (paralyzed) eyes to the left, perceives the objects before them as moving to the left. This occurs

Realism and Idealism  141 because of the subject’s bodily skill with correlating shifts in the visual field with eye movements: when I shift my eyes to the left, an object that was at the center of my visual field will now appear on its right side, for example. Conversely, when the intention to move one’s eyes leftward is accompanied by no change in the visual field, the subject experiences this as a change in the location of the objects themselves, i.e., as motion. Here the change in perception is obviously brought about not by any change in the properties of these objects or the total environment. Instead, it is brought about by the body schema, or what Noë calls “sensorimotor knowledge,” of the relationship between the dynamic possibilities of my eyes, bodily intentions, and the environment. Depth demonstrates the same phenomenon, since depth perception is mediated by our bodily capacity for binocular vision. The perceived distance of an object is determined, in part, by the angle made between the eyes and the object. Here too, then, perception draws upon a tacit awareness of the body, namely, the locations of the eyes and their significance for the situation of the world around one. It is in virtue of this perceptual capacity to coordinate sensory stimuli through the body schema that we perceive depth as we do. Depth perception is not simply receiving a property, then, intrinsic or relational, but a result of my bodily capacity to read depth in perceptual givens. In this sense, depth is “inwardly taken up by us.”19 Nor can we be satisfied with the Realist response of citing factors such as the total environment of perception: depth perception cannot be determined merely by citing such objective factors but also requires us to invoke the bodily and intentional skill that perception draws on. In each of these ways, then, Realism fails to do justice to the deep intentional accomplishments that underpin perception: if we understand perception simply in terms of the properties of its object, we fail to observe the intentional and bodily perceptual expertise that engenders our perceptions.20 Marginal Experience

We distinguished above between how a thing appears to be and how it appears. We can further note that while, in perception, our attention is ordinarily oriented toward how things appear to be, it is also possible to attend to how things appear. There are aspects of our perceptual experience – e.g., its perspectival character – that concern not just the object of perception but the way in which it is perceived, and while we are not normally focused on these aspects, we can reflectively identify them. This, I think, is what Merleau-Ponty has in mind when he says that, along with the thing, the experience of the thing is given. Though perception of the thing is not

142  Perception and World mediated by the consciousness of these, so to speak, self-referential aspects of experience, still we can reflectively attend to them. He writes, When I perceive a pebble, I am not explicitly conscious of only knowing it through vision, of only having certain perspectival aspects of it, and yet this analysis, if I undertake it, does not surprise me. I knew silently that the total perception went through and made use of my gaze, and that the pebble appeared to me in full light in front of the compacted darkness of the organs of my body. (PhP, 340) In other words, while the givenness of the thing is not mediated by the givenness of the experience and while the experience of the thing is not itself focal in our awareness of the thing, the perceptual experience of a thing implicitly includes aspects that concern not how the thing itself is but how we experience it. This implicit givenness subsequently allows me to explicitly reflect on these aspects of experience.21 In contemporary parlance, I think we can say that Merleau-Ponty disagrees with a common thesis about perception: transparency. To say that perception is transparent means that when we reflect on our experience, we can only become aware of features of objects presented in experience, not features of the experience itself. Consider a famous passage from Harman: When Eloise sees a tree before her, the colors she experiences are all experienced as features of the tree and its surroundings. None of them are experienced as intrinsic features of her experience. Nor does she experience any features of anything as intrinsic features of her experience. And that is true of you too. There is nothing special about Eloise’s visual experience. When you see a tree, you do not experience any features as intrinsic features of your experience. Look at a tree and try to turn your attention to intrinsic features of your visual experience. I predict you will find that the only features there to turn your attention to will be features of the presented tree, including relational features of the tree ‘from here’.22 According to Harman, we can attend to intentional features of our experience – namely, e.g., that I am having an experience of a tree – but not to intrinsic features of the experience. When I attend to the green I see, I am aware of it as the green of the tree, not as some non-intentional element of experience. In some ways, this view is quite close to Merleau-Ponty’s position: what is primary in perception is the intentional object, not some non-intentional elements out of which the object must be constructed. Yet Merleau-Ponty

Realism and Idealism  143 wants to insist that we can also attend to features of experience not exhausted by the features of the objects of experience. Merleau-Ponty describes a series of reductions I can perform on my experience (PhP, 339): I can attend to my experience as a private event; I can note that the object is given only through specific sensory modalities; I can attend to the fact that I perceive the object from a particular perspective, which excludes certain other perspectives; and I can attend to sensation merely as a modification of my body, rather than as a property of the object. Now, Merleau-­Ponty does not want to license these reductions as descriptions of the fundamental character of perception, but he does want to point out aspects of experience that are not given simply by citing the object of experience. Consider perspective as an example. Harman allows that Eloise can become aware of relational features of the tree, namely, that it is seen “from here,”23 and argues that this doesn’t violate transparency, because being seen-from-here is a feature of the tree, not of the experience per se. This is a daring solution, but not entirely compelling. Being seen from some location is an aspect of how we see the tree rather than of how the tree is. Of course, one can attribute the relational property of being-seenfrom-here to the tree. But this relational property just means that the tree stands in a relation – being seen – which has a further property – namely, the seeing’s perspective. It is farfetched to suggest that I become aware of my seeing’s perspective by being aware of the tree’s property of beingseen-from-here. This would be a bit like saying that I become aware that I am singing loudly in the shower by becoming aware that the shower has the property of being-sung-loudly-in. And, of course, if I notice someone else viewing the tree from a different angle, I can become aware of the tree’s relational property of being-seen-from-there without this having any import for the perspectival character of my experience. Thus, it is not the relational properties that explain my experience, but the reverse. Take our familiar example that when I see a round coin from an angle, I see it, so to speak, elliptically. I do not see the coin as being elliptical; I see it as circular. But upon reflection I can notice the difference in my experience between when I see the coin head on and when I see it at an angle.24 Am I becoming aware that the coin has the property of “looking elliptical from an angle”? This is equally backwards. The coin has this relational property only because it stands in a relation of perception, and this relation has the property of being “from an angle.” It’s not at all clear how we could be aware that the coin has this relational property without being aware of the properties of the relation itself.25 Above, we saw that perception is not just the taking in of objects’ relational properties. Here we see an important consequence of this result: I  can, to varying degrees, attend to the bodily and intentional accomplishments that mediate perception. Now, transparency is not necessarily

144  Perception and World a Realist view – both Realists and Representationalists have endorsed ­transparency.26 But objecting to transparency helps bring out the point that perceptual experience is not merely coincidence with its object. In perception, an object appears to us – but the object is not identical to the manner of its appearance. This is not to say that what we experience, i.e., what appears, is just an appearance. It is just to acknowledge that the very object that appears in an experience transcends that experience. What Merleau-Ponty’s second objection shows is that this distinction shows up in experience itself, by virtue of the fact that I can attend not just to the object of experience (how things appear to be) but to my experience of the object (how things appear). Idealism Realism lacks the resources to describe perception. But, as we will now see, neither can Idealism supply them, and Merleau-Ponty is quite clear that he does not intend his rejection of Realism to land him in the Idealist camp. There are various forms of Idealism, and so in its specifics, a rejection of Idealism cannot be a univocal gesture. Still, if we understand Idealism, at the most general level, to indicate a view on which the objects of perception are mind-immanent, i.e. that they are contents of consciousness and exist only in and for consciousness, then Idealism clearly conflicts with Merleau-Ponty’s commitment – discussed in Chapter 4 – to the view that the objects of perception transcend consciousness. But we can be more specific, since in fact Merleau-Ponty considers at least two distinct forms of Idealism: Berkeleian Subjective Idealism and Kantian Transcendental Idealism.27 Subjective Idealism

That Merleau-Ponty’s view conflicts with Berkeley’s Idealism is not hard to see. According to Berkeley, material objects – “unthinking things” – cannot exist outside of, or without relation to, a mind or thinking thing that perceives them; consequently, for such objects, their being lies in being perceived: esse ist percipi. Berkeley provides a number of lines of argumentation in favor of this claim, but the most basic is the following: For what are the aforementioned objects [namely, sensible objects, such as houses, mountains, rivers, etc.] but the things we perceived by sense? And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?28

Realism and Idealism  145 In other words: we perceive material objects, but we can never perceive anything but our own ideas or sensations, and ideas and sensations can never exist outside the mind. Therefore, neither can material objects. I call Berkeley’s Idealism “subjective,” since in this way it requires all material objects to exist within at least some particular mind. Merleau-Ponty quite clearly rejects such a Subjective Idealism. As we have seen, he insists that the objects of perceptual experience transcend that experience: experience is not a private appearance, but presence in the world. He writes, for example, that the thing “remains in itself” and that it would be false to reduce “the thing to the experiences in which we encounter it” (PhP, 336–7).29 Nor should we be persuaded by Berkeley’s argument, which at this point we can dismiss (at least for present purposes) on the grounds that it assumes that we can only perceive our own ideas or sensations. This is the same premise accepted by Classical Representationalism, except these ideas or sensations are no longer taken to represent anything outside of the mind. But, as I argued in Chapter 4, this premise is false. Moreover, even the Classical Representationalist could object to Berkeley’s argument, on the grounds that it equivocates between two kinds of perception: (i) the direct perception we have of our own ideas and sensations and (ii) the indirect perception we have in virtue of these ideas of material objects. These are two distinct senses of perception, and we cannot assume from the fact that we can directly perceive only our own ideas, and material things only indirectly, that material things are ideas. Transcendental Idealism

However, Merleau-Ponty’s primary target in the passage with which we began is not this Subjective Idealism, but what he calls the “Idealism of synthesis.” I think it’s fair to say that this view amounts to Transcendental Idealism, since it is not primarily concerned with the way in which some actual object can only exist within some actual mind, but with the way in which any possible object of experience can exist only with respect to certain forms of experience.30 Kant’s account is paradigmatic of this kind of Idealism. Kant holds that something like an object of experience is only possible in virtue of certain rules of synthesis. He writes, for example, that the “synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition” is impossible, however, unless the intuition can be produced according to a rule through a [certain] function of synthesis … . Now this unity of the rule determines all that is manifold, and limits it to conditions that make possible the unity of apperception. And the concept of this unity is the presentation of the object = x.31

146  Perception and World The object of experience, in this sense, is just the unity of the rule for the synthesis of a manifold of intuition. So, on this view, something like an object of experience is only possible in virtue of synthetic activity. Merleau-Ponty offers two persuasive reasons for rejecting such a view. The first is that it gets the phenomenology of experience backwards. As we saw in Chapter 1, it is no part of our experience of perceiving that perception is mediated by some non-objective elements that need to be synthesized into a presentation of an object. This is true however we define these non-objective elements: whether as manifolds of intuition, sensations, perspectival appearances, etc. Rather, perception begins by presenting us with an object. Merleau-Ponty writes, We do not begin by knowing the perspectival appearances of the thing; [the thing] is not mediated by our senses, our sensations, or our perspectives; we go straight to the thing, and only secondarily do we notice the limits of our knowledge and of ourselves as knowing. (PhP, 338) That is, phenomenologically, the perception of the thing comes first, and only subsequently can we abstract out such non-objective elements. As we just saw, Merleau-Ponty admits that we can perform a series of reductions on our experience. But he also argues that “the experience of the thing does not go through all of these mediations” (Ibid., 339). That is, while perceptual experiences include aspects that are not simply features of the objects of experience, we do not become aware of objects by or through the mediation of our awareness of non-intentional features of perceptual experiences. A second objection showed up in the quote with which I began this section, namely, that if the Idealism of synthesis were true, then to perceive an object would amount to “thinking it straight through,” such that perception loses its “inherence in an individual subject” and the perceived thing loses its “transcendence and opacity” (Ibid., 340). Why should this be the case? Basically, Merleau-Ponty’s thought is that if perceiving an object amounts to applying a rule for the synthesis of perspectival appearances into an object of perception, then (a) this perception is independent of the individual perceiving subject – insofar as the rule for synthesis would be a universal that anyone could in principle apply to the same perspectival appearances; (b) the object is reduced to the product of my synthetic activity, and so loses its transcendence; and (c) I possess in principle (if not in fact) every possible appearance of the object, given that I possess its rule of synthesis, and in this sense it loses its opacity. Again, as I see a coin from various angles, I experience it as possessing a circular shape despite the fact that many of its perspectival appearances are elliptical. If this is due to the fact that I synthesize these appearances according to a geometric law

Realism and Idealism  147 about the eccentricity of the ellipse as which a circle will appear from a given angle, then simply in virtue of possessing this rule, I can calculate in advance what figure the circle will cut from every possible viewing angle. And while one can of course perform such calculations, perception is not such a calculation. Merleau-Ponty writes, “The system of experience is not spread out before me as if I were God, it is lived by me from a certain point of view” (Ibid., 317). The perceived shape of the object is constant throughout the change of perspectival appearances, but to perceive is not to grasp in advance every possible perspectival appearance of the thing; it is to grasp the thing through a particular, actual perspectival appearance. To be clear, Kant does think there is a sense in which the objects of experience transcend our experience of them; Transcendental Idealism is supposed to be of a piece with Empirical Realism. Experienced objects are not arbitrary products of whim or fantasy but are governed by necessary laws for the synthesis of the manifold of experience. For example, in the “Analogies of Experience,” Kant argues that the experience of an objective temporal order requires a rule for the synthesis of distinct moments of experience, namely, a causal order. Merleau-Ponty’s objection is that this is just not the kind of transcendence we encounter in perception. For ­Merleau-Ponty, Kant’s view allows objects to transcend any particular experience I might have of them, but not to transcend my experience of them in principle, since their objectivity consists precisely in the rules of my experience. If the experience of an object consisted in grasping a necessary rule for the synthesis of a manifold, Merleau-Ponty argues, we would experience objects “straight through,” i.e., we would grasp in advance every possible valid experience of the object. But we do not experience objects this way: we experience them as having hidden aspects, as open to exploration; to be sure, we experience objects as predelineating concordant possible experiences but also as never fully given. It is in this very inadequacy that the object’s opacity consists.32 That perception is not synthetic in Kant’s sense, however, does not require us to define it as coincidence. As we saw above, perception is an intentional accomplishment that does involve a kind of synthesis. MerleauPonty captures this point in distinguishing between “intellectual synthesis” and “perceptual synthesis” (Ibid., 239).33 Whereas the former is active and assembles fully distinct particulars according to putatively necessary and universal laws, the latter is passive and operates according to the body schema. Merleau-Ponty’s favored example of this kind of synthesis is binocular vision. He writes, When my gaze is fixed on the horizon, I have a double image of nearby objects. When I in turn focus upon the latter, I see the two images come

148  Perception and World together to what will be the unique object, and disappear into it. It must not be concluded here that the synthesis consists in conceiving the two images together as images of a single object. If it were a spiritual act or an apperception, it would have to happen as soon as I notice the identity of the two images, while in fact the unity of the object keeps us waiting, right up until the moment when the focusing conjures them away. The unique object is not a certain manner of conceiving of the two images, since they cease to be given the moment it appears. (Ibid., 239–40) Here, Merleau-Ponty argues that the perceptual synthesis of two monocular images into the appearance of the thing cannot be an intellectual synthesis: he claims that this synthesis is not merely a matter of recognition or judgment but rests “upon the pre-logical unity of the body schema” (Ibid., 241).34 Perceptual synthesis does not face the problems I posed above to intellectual synthesis. To see how this is so, we need to observe the crucial phenomenological differences between the two. Whereas to synthesize the two images at the intellectual level all that is required is to recognize them as images of the same object, Merleau-Ponty points out that at the perceptual level this intellectual recognition alone does not suffice to make the images cohere into a single perception. If you press your finger against your eye so as to see two images, then recognizing them as two images of the same object will not in and of itself make the two images reunite with one another. Indeed, this kind of recognition could perfectly well take place in a perceptual system that maintained two totally separate visual images. Perceptual experience is fundamentally unlike intellectual synthesis, then: we do not experience two visual images as similar, or even as superimposed, we simply experience the presence of the unique thing. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, When I pass from double vision to normal vision, I am not merely conscious of seeing the same object with my two eyes, I am also conscious of progressing toward the object itself and of finally having its carnal presence. (Ibid., 242) Of course, the synthesis of the two images is inextricable from the unity of the body schema. It is only because of a bodily awareness of ocular position and orientation, a capacity to use these two eyes together, and the bodily intention of focusing my eyes on a particular object, that the visual images cohere. But we mustn’t get experience backwards: it is true that my body mediates and brings about my experience of the singular thing, but

Realism and Idealism  149 my experience does not begin from distinct images or profiles in need of my active synthesis. I can, at will, close one eye or the other and so attend to the differences between them, or I can attend to the distinct profiles of the object, since as I said above, what is given is not just the object but my experience of it. But I do this precisely by decomposing the perceptual synthesis from which resulted the object with which my experience began. In Merleau-Ponty’s view, the same kind of synthesis characterizes the unity of perspectival appearances. It is not, he claims, as if we are given a set of distinct perspectives, which we need to link together according to some rule. Rather, as I move around an object, the perspectives pass into each other. As he puts it, The perception of the thing and of the world can no more be constructed from distinct profiles than binocular vision of an object from two monocular images, and my experiences of the world are integrated into a single world just as the double image disappears into the single thing when my finger ceases to press on my eyeball. I do not have one perspectival view, then another, along with a link established by the understanding; rather, each perspective passes into the other and, if on can still speak here of a synthesis, then it will be a ‘transition synthesis’. (Ibid., 344) In other words, the perception of an object that we have as we move around it is not an experience of a set of distinct profiles superimposed on each other according to a concept, just as binocular vision is not an experience of two superimposed images; rather, it is a singular perception spread through various perspectives. Perceptual Relations Thus, we need a view that is neither Realist nor Idealist; a view on which perception is neither coincidence with a transcendent thing nor the possession of idea or rule immanent to the mind; a view on which perception does not begin with fragmented images or perspectival appearances in need of my synthetic activity, nor so immersed in its object that that it lacks any trace to itself or its perspective. Perception is an embodied intentional accomplishment, and one which consists in the presence to us of a thing that transcends us. Given how Merleau-Ponty has understood Realism and Idealism, these two positions are far from exhaustive, and so there is no contradiction in rejecting both. We can deny both that perception is a direct coincidence with the thing and that the perceived thing is mind-immanent. An alternative to both views is suggested by the account of appearance provided

150  Perception and World in Chapter 4: perceptual appearance is an internal relation to a mindtranscendent object. The second part of this definition rules out Idealism. But this relational account of appearance is also compatible with rejecting Realism, since relation need not entail “coinciding” in the sense developed above. A linguistic description of an event, for example, is certainly a kind of (intentional) relation to that event, but could hardly be explained solely in terms of the event itself: the description also depends on a variety of factors, such as the author’s perspective, linguistic abilities, previous experiences, and authorial voice. To make sense of Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of Realism, we will have to say something similar about perceptual appearance. Appearance is an internal relation, and so its character and existence are at least partly determined by its object. But it would be a mistake to think its character is wholly determined by the character of its object. We saw this above in terms of the intentional accomplishments that undergird our experience or in terms of the perspectival nature of appearance. That a circular object has an elliptical appearance from my location depends both on facts about the object (namely, its intrinsic shape) and on facts irreducible to the object (e.g., my position). In this way, perspective manifests an internal relation that is not a coinciding. Logue has suggested a Realist account that is quite similar to this. Rather than explaining the phenomenal character of experience solely in terms of the object of experience, Logue suggests that the Realist can hold that “phenomenal character is determined by the obtaining of the perceptual relation.”35 Such a view could explain phenomenal character in terms of both relata, including, for example, facts about the sensory systems of the perceiver. Logue’s view gets quite close to Merleau-Ponty’s – though it is not a Realist view in Merleau-Ponty’s sense, since such a view would not count perception as a “coinciding” with the object. Consider Merleau-Ponty’s remark, I go through appearances and I reach the real color or form when my experience is at its higher degree of clarity, and Berkeley can certainly counter that a fly would see the same object differently, or that a stronger microscope would transform it. (PhP, 332) Here, Merleau-Ponty holds that the visual appearance is correlative to a given perceptual system, such that the visual appearance I have is different than that a fly would have, while also maintaining that I reach the thing itself through its appearance.36 Though I have argued that these points can be made about all perceived properties, color provides an exceptional example of the perceptual

Realism and Idealism  151 dynamic I have been describing. Let us turn to color, then, and see if it can supply my interpretation of Merleau-Ponty with phenomenological depth. Color

A brief foray into color perception will, I think, prove especially illuminating of the situation I’m describing. For the phenomenology of color perception is not well described either by Realism or Idealism (in this context, it will be easier to refer to Idealism as Subjectivism), and if we consider color rigorously we are required to pursue a deeper relation between perceiver and environment. First, Subjectivism about color, while perhaps tempting on metaphysical grounds, is not an appealing phenomenological position. According to the Subjectivist view, color exists only in and for particular perceivers; color is a property of our experience, not of the objects we experience. The problem with this phenomenologically, as has often been noted, is that we do not experience color as a property of our experience. Consider the distinction that arose in our discussion of perspective between how things appear and how they appear to be. Shape perception exhibits a kind of constancy such that when I see a coin at an angle, it appears elliptically but nevertheless appears to be circular. We might describe the elliptical appearance of the coin as a feature of our experience rather than of the coin, but that which remains constant through the appearance, namely, circularity, is experienced as a feature of the coin. Color exhibits a very similar kind of constancy, however. Color changes not so much with our perspective37 as with environmental conditions like lighting. A sunlit portion of a consistently colored gray wall looks different than a shaded portion; a piece of blue paper looks differently in sunlight than it does under a yellow light. Nevertheless, the wall does not appear to be two different colors in its different parts, and Merleau-Ponty points out that we identify the paper as being the same shade of blue in both lighting conditions, despite the fact that under yellow light its reflectance corresponds more exactly to the reflectance of brown paper in sunlight (PhP, 320). As with shape constancy, this seems to be because we experience color not as a simple quality of our experience but as the property of an object, the appearance of which is mediated by environmental conditions. We might express this by saying that some portions of the wall look like they are gray-in-sunlight and some like they are gray-in-shade; when I see the paper in streetlight, it does not simply look brown, nor even blue for that matter – rather, it looks like blue paper in yellow light. Thus, color perception too exhibits constancy, and color is experienced not just as a feature of how objects appear to us but of how they appear to be.

152  Perception and World Of course, even if we experience color as a feature of objects, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we experience it as an objective feature of those objects; we could, for example, experience color as a purely subjective projection onto objects. But this response is belied by our experience of certain color perceptions as illusions or as ambiguous. If I lack a clear perception of the lighting conditions in which I’m viewing an object, my perception of its color may be unstable or vague. I don’t thereby experience the object as having an unstable or vague color. Similarly, if I undergo a color illusion that is then corrected, I don’t experience the object’s color as having changed. Indeed, it’s unclear how I could experience a color illusion as illusory if color were experienced just as a subjective projection onto objects; the object’s color would just be what I experience it to be, and there would be no room for error.38 On the other hand, Realism too lacks a promising account of color perception. Certainly, color perception cannot be described simply as taking in objective features of stimuli. Color perception relies on complex perceptual capacities, such as those involved in color constancy. When I perceive the blue paper as blue in yellow light, I do not simply record the wavelengths of light emitted by the paper: rather, my perception negotiates the color of the paper with environmental features such as the illumination, such that I have the perceptual sense of the paper as being blue. Or consider familiar color illusions in which identical shades appear distinct on the basis of how they are placed in the image (e.g., under differently colored lines or to suggest illumination or shadow). Here too, color perception is not simply a matter of recording the objective stimulus but of perceptual capacities for making sense of the visual scene before me. Nor can we identify color with any physical properties that objects really have. Among other problems, as Thompson points out, there is no single physical property to which color perception corresponds: … both across and within animal species there are fundamental differences in colour vision, and these differences do not appear to converge on the detection of any single type of environmental property. … the environmental properties detected in colour vision appear to include not only surface spectral reflectances, but also ambient lighting conditions and gradients in a source of illumination in both aerial and aquatic media.39 Thus, there is no single type of distal-property that it is the biological function of colour vision to detect. The distal properties detected in colour vision form a heterogenous collection whose type-divisions at the physical level do not match the type-divisions at the perceptual level.40

Realism and Idealism  153 Nor would a Realist Primitivism, which identifies color with a simple ­non-physical property possessed by objects, serve here. As we’ve seen, color is more a complex system of qualities correlative to environmental conditions like lighting: blue is not a single quality but more, as Noë puts it, a “color aspect profile,” such that colors are “patterns of organization in how things look” relative to color critical conditions like lighting.41 Perhaps the Realist could respond by classifying these patterns in how things look, or color aspect profiles, as objective features of the environment. Indeed, Noë seems to suggest something like this in describing his view of color as Phenomenal Objectivism.42 There are real problems in understanding color as an objective feature even in this nuanced sense, though. For example, it would seem to struggle to account for differences in comparative color vision between species. It seems implausible that other species, possessing different visual systems with, e.g., different sets of color receptors than we do, experience color in the same way – i.e., with the same patterns in how things look – that we do. This is not just a matter of sensitivity to color or of some animals being able to detect colors that we cannot, e.g., ultraviolet (since this would not challenge color objectivity any more than does color blindness). In describing the difference between the color spaces of trichromats (animals with three types of color receptors) and tetrachromats (animals with four types of color receptors), Thompson points out that the latter’s color space will possess a whole extra dimension than the former’s. Consequently, as he puts it, The difference between, say, a tetrachromatic and a trichromatic colour space is therefore not like the difference between two trichromatic spaces. Considered as dimensional types, tetrachromatic and trichromatic colour spaces are incommensurable in a precise sense because there is no way to map the kinds of distinctions available in four dimensions into the kinds of distinction available in three dimensions without remainder.43 This would even suggest that tetrachromats may experience “entirely new kinds of hue not found in our phenomenal colour space.”44 Another option here, which would respect the relativity of color to visual systems, is to identify colors with dispositions. On this view, objects can really have certain colors, in the sense that they really have dispositions to look certain ways to certain visual systems in certain conditions. This sort of Realism is no doubt the most promising. But even it famously runs into considerable phenomenological challenges: as McGinn for example points out, colors do not look like dispositions to produce color experiences in certain perceivers under certain conditions; they look like features of our environment.45 And there is an obvious confusion in attempting to define red as a disposition to look red in appropriate conditions: red figures here

154  Perception and World both as a disposition and as a look. It evidently cannot be both, however, since then we could define red as a disposition to look like a disposition to look like red, and so on.46 Phenomenologically, then, color does not seem well explained in terms of either Realism or Idealism. Color appears to be a property of objects. But it is a property objects have only in relation to specific visual systems. Color is thus a prime example of Logue’s claim that “phenomenal character is determined by the obtaining of the perceptual relation.”47 Color perception, then, amounts neither to a “coincidence” with independent properties of objects nor to simple projection onto objects of properties that have nothing to do with the actual character of those objects. Here I think Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body as “measurant” is helpful. Merleau-Ponty writes, We do not have a consciousness constitutive of the things, as idealism believes, nor a preordination of the things to consciousness, as realism believes (they are indiscernible in what interests us here, because they both affirm the adequation of the thing and the mind) – we have with our body, our senses, our look, our power to understand speech and to speak, measurants (mesurants) for Being, dimensions to which we can refer it, but not a relation of adequation or of immanence. The perception of the world and of history is the practice of this measure, the reading off of their divergence or of their difference with respect to our norms. (VI, 103) Instead of perception amounting either to an adequation (coincidence) with the thing or to a projection on the thing that would make it immanent to the perceiver, Merleau-Ponty proposes a view on which the body is a “measurant” of the thing and perception a practice of measure.48 There is a clear sense in which the concept of measure is apt here, since it too is neither a coinciding with the thing nor a mere projection. Measure is not a “coinciding,” since a thing’s measure is not an intrinsic property of that thing: whether a plot of land is one acre, 43,560 square feet, or about 4/10 of a hectare, etc., is not determined by the thing itself. It is all of these, since its size admits of being measured according to different systems, but it is not determined by any of these systems per se: its measure is a relation between the thing and a metric system. Measure cannot simply be a matter of receiving objective properties, then. Rather, as Merleau-Ponty would say, measure establishes a “dimension,” i.e., a system of determinations that differentiate between, e.g., different sizes.49 On the other hand, it doesn’t seem quite right to call measure a simple “projection.”50 The plot really is one acre; if we wish to measure in acres,

Realism and Idealism  155 there is no other way to determine its size. There is, in other words, nothing arbitrary about this designation. If one means by “projection” simply that measure is not an intrinsic property of an object, then yes, measure counts as projection. But if one means that measure is a purely subjective or anthropological designation, then measure will not fit this requirement: it is arbitrary that I measure a table in meters or feet, but it is not at all arbitrary that, given its size, the table is two meters or about six and a half feet. We might say then that the measure of the table depends on the relation between the table’s size and a given metric system. Of course, there are important differences between measurement, as we ordinarily think about it, and perceptual capacities. Measure, for example, is chosen and post-perceptual: I don’t need to measure the object to perceive its size, and I can decide upon or create a metric system. When Merleau-Ponty claims that the body is a measurant, he means that the body, by its very nature, establishes “dimensions,” that is, systems of differential determinations. Color is one such dimension. Thinking of color in these terms, we need not define it either as an intrinsic property of objects – and in this sense we can say with Merleau-Ponty that “a fly would see it differently” – or as an arbitrary and subjective determination. Rather, given a color perceptual system, there is a determinate color each object will have. In this sense, the color I will perceive is dependent on the relation between an object (or an environment) and my color perceptual system. Other important differences obtain. First, perceptual “dimensions” need not be quantitative: there is nothing quantitative about the perceptual experience of color, I suggest, even if colors can be arranged on a spectrum of measurable wavelengths of light.51 Nevertheless, the color perception is systematic: the same input, in the same conditions, will give the same output. Second, such systems can differ from person to person, or in the same person over time, whether in terms of sensory capacities or the registration of sensory information in the perceptual experience of color. In contrast, metric systems are meant to be constant between individuals. Third, perception of color depends on a range of variables, e.g., illumination, that does not mediate measuring the size of a table for example. All this is just to point out that we can distinguish between metric and perceptual systems, while allowing that there is something essentially measure-like about the latter. What exactly does color perception “measure”? I think it would be misleading to present Merleau-Ponty’s view as claiming that color simply maps onto some intrinsic property of objects, e.g., surface reflectance. As we’ve already seen, Thompson point out, correlating color to any single physical property is implausible. Of course, Merleau-Ponty’s view is compatible with the claim that color is a system that differentially determines

156  Perception and World reflectance (with the qualifications made in the previous paragraph). But color evidently serves a larger role than this. He writes, for example, In fact, each color in its inmost possession is but the inner structure of the thing manifested on the outside. The brilliance of gold presents its homogenous composition quite noticeably, and the dull color of wood presents its heterogenous composition. By opening up to the structure of the thing, the senses communicate among themselves. (PhP, 238)52 Thus, color is not simply a relation between a perceptual system and a surface reflectance; it is a relation between a perceptual system and a thing as a whole, for which reason color communicates with various qualities of the thing. Bolstering this point, there is considerable evidence that color contributes to a variety of visual tasks, of which Shevell and Kingdom note the following: segmentation of objects, perception of form or shape, perception of contour, perception of texture, object detection, object ­ identification, memorization of objects, depth perception, perception of shadow, etc.53 Merleau-Ponty’s claim is that color enables us to see these other properties because it is a power for presenting the “inner structure” of the thing. In other words, color manifests the unique style of the thing it belongs to. According to Merleau-Ponty, the unity of the thing, beyond all of its congealed properties, is not a substratum, an empty X, or a subject of inherence, but rather that unique accent that is found in each one, that unique manner of existing of which its properties are a second expression. (PhP, 333) The red of molten metal is not an accident to us but presents the very heat of the metal. It does this because this particular red is an expression of that “unique accent” of molten metal. Color “measures” the thing in this sense: it is a dimension in which the thing can present its unique perceptual structure or style.54 Color vision, for Merleau-Ponty, is not, then, simply the taking in of an intrinsic property of an object, nor even, I think, a relational property of an object. Instead, color arises in the perceptual relation between perceiver and perceived. Color vision is a way in which a body, a perceptual system, “takes the measure” of its object, so as to present the thing and its properties. Such a view, I take it, is quite close to Chirimuuta’s “color adverbialism,” according to which color is ultimately a property of the perceptual relation, rather than of the object per se. Color arises through vision, just as measure arises

Realism and Idealism  157 through measuring. And yet, once a perceptual or metric system is established, it attributes its measures to the object, since measure is finally nothing but a way of disclosing an object. Color is, then, a set of differences that allow the world to speak to us in meaningful ways.55 Notes 1 See, e.g., Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor, Retrieving Realism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015). 2 See Sebastian Gardner, “Merleau-Ponty’s Transcendental Theory of Perception,” in The Transcendental Turn, ed. Sebastian Gardner and Matthew Grist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Dan Zahavi, “Internalism, Externalism, and Transcendental Idealism,” Synthese 160, no. 3 (2008): 364; Michael Martin, “Sensible Appearances,” in The Cambridge History of Philosophy, ed. T. Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 524–5. Baldwin suggests that Merleau-Ponty’s ultimate position is at least closer to an Idealism than a Realism. Thomas Baldwin, ed., Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings (New York: Routledge, 2003), 13 & 19. Madison argues that the Merleau-Ponty of the Phenomenology, at least, does not break out of the Idealist tradition. Gary Brent Madison, The Phenomenology of MerleauPonty: A Search for the Limits of Consciousness (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981), 272. Thomas Langan, Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Reason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 186–8. 3 Kelly suggests that Phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty are sympathetic to some form of Naïve Realism. Sean D. Kelly, “What Do We See (When We Do)?,” in Reading Merleau-Ponty, ed. Thomas Baldwin (London: Routledge, 2007), 25. Mallin argues that Merleau-Ponty is not a Naïve Realist but nevertheless adopts a sort of non-dualist Realism. Samuel B. Mallin, MerleauPonty’s Philosophy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 109, 113, 118, & 120. Priest identifies a form of Externalism in Merleau-Ponty (24) and suggests that Merleau-Ponty’s notion of being-in-the-world involves a kind of Realism (255n); at other junctures he points out that Merleau-Ponty resists the kind of Realism that would help make sense of his philosophy (199). Stephen Priest, Merleau-Ponty (Routledge, 1998). 4 Cf., e.g., Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2005), 50; Tom Sparrow, The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism (Edinburgh: ­Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 73–4. 5 This is how I understand Barbaras’ view, according to which the Phenomenology, because it pursues the negative project of criticizing Realist and intellectualist accounts of perception (rather than positively describing perception on its own terms), is “simultaneously realist and intellectualist.” Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon, 6. Ultimately, according to Barbaras, the Phenomenology ends up conceiving the phenomenon in Idealist categories, i.e., in terms of consciousness (Ibid., 16). 6 Cf. PhP, 381. 7 Brewer, Perception and Its Objects¸xii–xiii. 8 Ibid., 92. Compare Logue’s claim, “Veridical experience fundamentally ­consists in the subject perceiving things in her environment and some of their properties,” rather than in representing her environment to be some way. Heather

158  Perception and World Logue, “IX-Why Naive Realism?,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society CXII, no. 2 (2012): 211. 9 John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 116. 10 Berendzen, for example, finds a “direct realism” in Merleau-Ponty. J. C. Berendzen, “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Knowledge in Merleau-Ponty and McDowell,” Res Philosophica 91, no. 3 (2014): 272–3. 11 Note, then, that we cannot simply understand Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of Realism as a refusal of an explanation of the relationship between perception and world in terms of natural causality. Cf. Charles Taylor, “Merleau-Ponty and the Epistemological Picture,” in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 47. Nor is it exactly right to say that Merleau-Ponty leaves us with an “unproblematic realism” (Ibid., 39); Romano, At the Heart of Reason, 444. This is certainly part of his refusal of Realism, but it is not the reason he gives in the passage we are considering, namely that the very experience of the thing must be given along with the thing. 12 Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s claim that “there is an experience of the visible thing as pre-existing my vision, but this experience is not a fusion, a coincidence” (VI, 123). I think Merleau-Ponty actually has both interpretations in mind when he speaks of “coincidence.” The same language recurs in The Visible and the Invisible, with plenty of room for both interpretations. In explicating an understanding of perception as coinciding, he writes, “The visible things about us rest in themselves, and their natural being is so full that it seems to envelop their perceived being, as if our perception of them were formed within them. But if I express this experience by saying that the things are in their place and that we fuse with them, I immediately make the experience itself impossible …” (VI, 122). Here, coinciding amounts to “fusion,” i.e., to us and the things becoming one being. He also writes, “… We must not define the truth by total or effective coincidence. And if we have the idea of the thing itself …, there must be something in the factual order that answers to it. It is therefore necessary that the deflection (écart), without which the experience of the thing … would fall to zero, be also an openness upon the thing itself … . What is given, then, is not the naked thing, …, but rather the thing ready to be seen, pregnant – in principle a well as in fact – with all the visions one can have of it … . What there is is not a coinciding by principle or a presumptive coinciding and a factual noncoinciding, a bad or abortive truth, but a privative non-coinciding, a coinciding from afar, a divergence, and something like a ‘good error’” (VI, 124–5). Here “coinciding” would mean the givenness of the “naked thing,” presumably the thing considered just in its non-subject-relative properties; the view would be that the character of perception is determined solely in terms of the object and its properties. We can see that in the VI as well, Merleau-Ponty wants to maintain that what is actually given in perception is not the “naked thing” but the thing such as we perceive it: the character of perception cannot be specified independently of the perceiver. 13 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 111–2. 14 See, e.g., Kulvicki for a concise articulation of this distinction between intrinsic and relational properties with respect to visual properties and an extension to audition. John Kulvicki, “Auditory Perspectives,” in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, ed. Bence Nanay (New York: Routledge, 2017). 15 John Campbell, “Consciousness and Reference,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, eds. Ansgar Beckermann and Sven Walter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Realism and Idealism  159 16 William Fish, Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Chapter 3. 17 Of course, not all relational properties are alike. The way Realists determine apparent shape or size, for example, is meant to be specifiable in entirely objective terms: merely in terms of object shape or size and objective position. Other relational properties – for example, color, on a Relationalist account – necessarily make reference to the perceptual system or the perceiver, and thus appear as a distinct kind of relational property. Still, it doesn’t seem quite right to me that say that when we perceive color, we take in a relational property of an object. Much as is often debated about Dispositionalist accounts of color, we do not perceive color as a relational property: I perceive the apple as “red,” not as “red-for-me.” Otherwise, there would be nothing surprising when I learn, for example, my friend perceives it as some other color. Rather, I perceive the apple as red in virtue of the relation between the apple and my perceptual system. 18 Hopp, Perception and Knowledge, 164. 19 The perception of depth, according to Merleau-Ponty, also forms a whole with apparent size – since an object that is further away than a second object, but takes up an equal portion of the visual field, appears larger. But here too Merleau-Ponty’s point is that the “apparent size” of the object shouldn’t be explained in terms of the physical retinal image, since the two do not covary (PhP, 271). On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty also wants to deny that apparent size should be explained in terms of an intellectual synthesis. He writes, “my perception does not turn toward a content of consciousness: rather, it turns toward the ashtray itself” (Ibid., 271). In fact, apparent size is not determinate, not measurable: there is no psychical image from which we would infer an object of a precise size, then. The error is to think that visually we are presented with a two-dimensional surface with a precise size and that then we infer actual size in accordance with our knowledge of depth. Our visual experience of a road moving off into the distance, according to Merleau-Ponty, is not that of two convergent lines (as if it would be in a two-dimensional screen), nor as two parallel lines (as if vision were totally objective) but “parallel in depth” (Ibid., 272). According to Merleau-Ponty, “the perspectival appearance is not posited, but no more so is the parallelism. I am directed toward the road itself, through its virtual deformation, and depth is this very intention that thematizes neither the perspectival projection of the road, nor the ‘real’ road” (Ibid., 272) 20 And there are other ways in which we might make this point about the object being “inwardly taken up” as well. Here, the language of “affordances,” discussed in Chapter 3, might be useful as a way to capture part of what it means to say that when we perceive things, we “live” them. If it is right to say – as I  argued in Chapter 3 – that we perceive affordances, then I perceive things in the world around me not only as bearers of neutral properties but in terms of their bodily significance: I perceive chairs as for sitting, mugs as for holding, etc. How I perceive these things depends on my body schema and motor capacities. If I perceive a chair as affording an opportunity for rest, I do so in virtue of my awareness of my bodily arrangement and capacities (that I am the kind of body that can sit in a chair), my projects (perhaps a need for rest), and familiarity with the cultural meaning of chairs. Someone much stronger than me might perceive a heavy object, which to me would read as immovable, as movable. In this way, it will not do to define perception simply as taking in properties of objects. Here too, one might try to explain the perception

160  Perception and World of affordances as simply taking in the relational properties of objects. This response is ­implausible, though. Consider that, as Merleau-Ponty points out, the way we perceive the bodily significance of things is habitual: I can perceive a mug as for-holding, for example, even if my arms are paralyzed or I have lost them. In this case I perceive an object as holdable that does not in fact have the property of being holdable-by-me. The perception of affordances is not simply a matter of receiving the properties that objects have for me, but a matter of maintaining a sense of my bodily possibilities in virtue of which I perceptually interpret the world. We might say, with Merleau-Ponty, that perceiving the affordance here is a matter of “assimilating” the chair to a personal and cultural history. See Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge, 2011), 78–81. 21 In this regard, Merleau-Ponty seems to disagree with Romano’s insistence, against Heidegger, that phenomena, understood as “modes of appearing of things,” do not appear (At the Heart of Reason, 318). In other words, Romano distinguishes between phenomena a) as the things that appear and b) as the modes of appearance of those things and claims that only in the first sense do phenomena appear. I think this way of putting things is misleading and already concedes too much to the Representationalist view. As I see it, if we adopt the Phenomenological view, there is no sense in asking “What appears: the thing or the appearance?” Only if the appearance is a separate mental entity could this question have a sense. Compare this with the case of the sun shining: here we can distinguish between (a) the sun (that which shines), (b) the verb (shines), and (c) the shining. But it wouldn’t make any sense to ask here “What shines: the sun or the shining?,” since the shining is not a separate entity from the sun. If it is a sunny day and I go outside, I can attend to all this, the sun (e.g., its shape and location) and its shining (its luminosity and hue). Similarly, we should say that it is just the thing that appears, and by the appearance we just mean its appearing. Appearing does not have the structure of a transitive verb, in which we could distinguish a subject and direct object of appearing: rather, the thing appears in its appearance. Now, when we have an appearance, we normally attend to the appearing thing, but it is also possible to attend to the appearance itself – just as I can attend to the sun or to the qualities of its shining, so in experience I normally attend to the thing but can also direct my attention to the character of its appearance (e.g., to its perspectival nature). The point is that the appearance does not appear separately from the thing; it appears only as the appearance of the thing. 22 Gilbert Harman, “The Intrinsic Quality of Experience,” Philosophical Perspectives 4 (1990): 39. 23 “Another point is that Eloise’s visual experience does not just present a tree. It presents a tree as viewed from a certain place. Various features that the tree is presented as having are presented as relations between the viewer and the tree, for example, features the tree has from here” (Harman, “The Intrinsic Quality of Experience,” 38). 24 Cf. Sean D. Kelly, “The Normative Nature of Perceptual Experience,” in Perceiving the World, ed. Bence Nanay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 25 Harman might respond that these properties are intentional properties of the perception. But they are properties of how we intend the object, not properties of what we intend the object as. 26 See, for example, Campbell (“Consciousness and Reference”) for the former, and for the latter Michael Tye, “Transparency, Qualia Realism and Representationalism,” Philosophical Studies 170, no. 1 (2014): 39–57.

Realism and Idealism  161 27 We might also be able to identify in Husserl a third form of idealism to which Merleau-Ponty replies. But Merleau-Ponty consistently reads Husserl’s position as equivocal vis-à-vis idealism, and the main concerns Merleau-Ponty has with Husserl’s view are shared by the Kantian idealism I discuss here. 28 George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1982), Part I, §4. 29 I can’t provide a decisive argument against Barbaras’ reading of the Phenomenology as ultimately Idealist, but I will note that a centerpiece of Barbaras’ argument – the claim that Merleau-Ponty understands things in terms of the teleology of consciousness – strikes me as a misreading. In the just cited passages we see that, ultimately, Merleau-Ponty refuses a definition of the thing in terms of teleology (albeit, the teleology of the body, here) or as reducible to our experiences. Of course, he does think that human life is “open to” and involves a “movement toward” the world and the object (PhP, 341), but this does not mean that the thing is just a telos of human life. Note that, while I disagree with Barbaras’ assessment that the Phenomenology ends up in some form of Idealism, I think he is right that the Phenomenology does not fully work out a positive account of its alternative to Realism and Idealism. My project here is to show that the Phenomenology’s account of appearance is not inconsistent, not that it is complete. 30 Note, though, that Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of Idealism is not simply a rejection of the Idealism of synthesis. If it were, it might be possible to accept an interpretation, like Gardner’s, on which Merleau-Ponty adopts an Idealist position, just one critical of previous forms of Idealism that intellectualized the transcendental conditions of experience, i.e., conceived them in objective terms (2015, 306). But Merleau-Ponty refuses not just an account on which the thing is constituted by the subject’s cognitive synthetic activity, but any account on which the thing is reduced to our experiences of it or defined in anthropological terms. He writes that if we define the thing in terms of our experience of it – e.g., if we define it as the “end of a bodily teleology” or as “the norm of our psycho-physiological arrangement” – then we do not “make explicit the full sense of the thing” (PhP, 336–7). Much as I have tried to do, Pollard carves out an interpretative space for Merleau-Ponty that is anti-Realist but not Idealist, critiquing Gardner’s Idealist interpretation on the grounds that it doesn’t accommodate the transformation of the subject of experience in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. See Christopher Pollard, “Is Merleau-Ponty’s Position in Phenomenology of Perception a New Type of Transcendental Idealism?,” Idealistic Studies 44, no. 1 (2014), 131–2. 31 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996), A 105. 32 Although in the passage we are considering Merleau-Ponty is focally concerned with the “idealism of synthesis,” he elsewhere rejects Transcendental Idealism more broadly for similar reasons. In the Preface, for example, he claims that “a consistent Transcendental Idealism strips the world of its opacity and its transcendence” (PhP, lxxv). In this passage, synthesis does not ostensibly figure at all: instead, Merleau-Ponty is considering Husserl’s distinction between a sensory matter – a hyle – and the meaning given to it in perceptual interpretation – the morphe. According to Merleau-Ponty, if perception is a matter of an “active signifying operation” attributing meaning to meaningless sensations, then phenomenology will be idealist in a manner that amounts to transcendental idealism, since it “treats the world as a unity of value that is not divided” between different individuals (Ibid. lxxv). Here too, the idea is that if we begin with mere sensation – a manifold of intuition – from which we would have to

162  Perception and World construct the perception of objects according to rules of the understanding, then the world loses the “transcendence and opacity” that actually characterize it. It should be noted that Husserl occupies an equivocal position here. Certainly, Husserl at times also advocates a form of Transcendental Idealism and makes the synthesis of objects as well as a hyle-morphe distinction central to his account. And there is an extent to which Merleau-Ponty is critical of certain aspects of Husserl’s thinking in criticizing the “idealism of synthesis.” But in general, Merleau-Ponty seems to read Husserl as describing just the kind of synthesis Merleau-Ponty also wants to describe: a transition or passive synthesis. 33 Cf. Merleau-Ponty (PhP, 342–9, 434–9, 441–4, 450–2). 34 In agreement with his rejection of Idealism, Merleau-Ponty claims that this is precisely why “the perceived object always presents itself as transcendent, … the synthesis appears to be carried out upon the object itself, in the world, and not within this metaphysical point that is the thinking subject” (PhP, 242). 35 Logue, “Why Naïve Realism?,” 222. 36 Note that the idea at this stage, that I reach the thing when it is at its maximum articulation, is rejected as insufficient shortly after: “The thing appearance to us above as the term or end of a bodily teleology, and as the norm of our psycho-physical arrangement. But that was a merely a psychological definition that did not make explicit the full sense of the thing defined, and that reduced the thing to the experiences in which we encounter it” (PhP, 337). 37 Though Noë has argued that colors do have sensorimotor profiles. See Noë, Action in Perception, 125–32. 38 Merleau-Ponty clearly rejects an account of perception in terms of projection, writing, “We do not mean to do anthropology, to describe a world covered over with all our own projections, leaving aside what it can be under the human mask” (VI, 136). This “anthropological” account of perception joins up with idealism in reducing the perceived thing to our experience of it. 39 Evan Thompson, Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (New York: Routledge, 1995), 182. 40 Thompson, Colour Vision, 183. 41 Noë, Action in Perception, 132 & 141. 42 Noë argues that colors, even though just looks or patterns of looks, are objective features of the environment (Action in Perception, 144). 43 Thompson, Colour Vision, 151. 44 Thompson, Colour Vision, 158. 45 Colin McGinn, “Another Look at Color,” The Journal of Philosophy 93, no. 11 (1996): 537–53. 46 McGinn, “Another Look at Color,” 543. 47 Logue, “Why Naïve Realism?,” 222. Note that this view, I think, is slightly different from the view that in color perception we simply take in a relational property of an object. This view would amount to a kind of coincidence, in my terms. On my view, the color I perceive an object to have arises through the perceptual relation between my perceptual system and the object. Certainly, we can say that the object then has the relational property “looks-red-to-me.” But the object does not look red to me because it has the relational property “looksred-to-me.” Rather, it has this property because my experience is so determined by the perceptual relation between me and the object. 48 Cf. “Is my body a thing, is it an idea? It is neither, being the measurant of the things” (VI, 152); “My body is not only one perceived among others, it is the

Realism and Idealism  163 measurant (mesurant) of all, Nullpunkt of all the dimensions of the world” (VI, 248–9); “What one senses = the sensible thing, the sensible world = the correlate of my active body, what “responds” to it------What senses = I cannot posit one sole sensible without positing it as tom from my flesh, lifted off my flesh, and my flesh itself is one of the sensibles in which an inscription of all the others is made, the sensible pivot in which all the others participate, the sensible-key, the dimensional sensible. My body is to the greatest extent what everything is: a dimensional this. It is the universal thing------ But, while the things become dimensions only insofar as they are received in a field, my body is this field itself, i.e. a sensible that is dimensional of itself, universal measurant” (VI, 259–60). 49 Cf. “When Husserl speaks of a ‘norm,’ he means precisely that one cannot presuppose such a norm as given. It is a question of a Normierung. I.e. (Heidegger) of the positing of a measurant (mesurant)” (VI, 196). 50 Cf. “It is a question of understanding that the ‘views’ at different scales are not projections upon corporeities— screens of an inaccessible In itself, that they and their lateral implication in one another are the reality, exactly: that the reality is their common inner framework (membrure), their nucleus, and not something behind them: behind them, there are only other “views” still conceived according to the in itself-projection schema. The real is between them, this side of them” (VI, 226). 51 But, it is also doubtful whether color can in fact be arranged this way. Metamers seem to show that color doesn’t bear a one-to-one correspondence with reflectance, and as Pautz points out, there is often a bad correlation between the experience of color and surface reflectance. Adam Pautz, “Experiences Are Representations: An Empirical Argument,” in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, ed. Bence Nanay (New York: Routledge, 2019). 52 Cf. “Thus the question is not of colors, ‘simulacra of the colors of nature.’ The question, rather, concerns the dimension of color, that dimension which creates—from itself to itself—identities, differences, a texture, a materiality, a something …” (PrP, 37–8). 53 Steven K. Shevell and Frederick A. A. Kingdom, “Color in Complex Scenes,” Annual Review of Psychology 59, no. 1 (2008): 143–166. Cf. Pointing out that color vision serves many functions, including presumably the perception of hue in its own right, Chirimuuta and Kingdom argue that “the function of color vision … is that it enables us to see colors and to perceive other kinds of properties of objects.” M. Chirimuuta and F. A. Kingdom, “The Uses of Colour Vision: Ornamental, Practical, and Theoretical | SpringerLink,” Minds and Machines 25 (2015): 226. 54 Cf. Samantha Matherne, “Merleau-Ponty on Style as the Key to Perceptual Presence and Constancy,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 55, no. 4 (2017): 693–727. 55 Cf. Thompson’s claim: “Rather than providing constant perceptual indicator of surface reflectance, the primary role of colour vision is probably to generate a relatively stable set of perceptual categories that can facilitate object i­dentification and then guide behavior appropriately” (Colour Vision, 196).

6 The Problem of Perception

Up to now, I have been putting off an important problem for the account of perception I have developed, a problem which looms so large that it is often termed the “problem of perception.” Simply put, the problem of perception is that for any analysis we give of perception, it seems natural to expect that we could apply this analysis equally to non-veridical perceptual experiences, such as illusions or hallucinations. Not only are perceptions, illusions, and hallucinations all species of the genus I have been calling “perceptual experience,” but we often mistake illusions or hallucinations for perceptions. In contemporary terms, non-veridical experiences can be “subjectively indistinguishable” from veridical ones: a subject undergoing a hallucination, for example, is not always in a position immediately to identify her hallucination as such. Of course, perceptions and hallucinations often differ in quite noticeable ways – but the point is just that it can, and sometimes does, happen that a subject fails to find anything within her experience that distinguishes hallucination from perception. If veridical and non-veridical experiences are so much alike that the latter can pass itself off as the former, and if they are species of a common genus, “perceptual experience,” it is natural to think they merit a common account. If this is true, however, it is hard to see how the account of perception I have offered is admissible. If perceptual experience really consists in the perceptual presence of worldly things to us, how can we have non-veridical experiences? In the case of illusions, our experience of an object disengages from its actual properties, and in the case of hallucinations, the object doesn’t even exist (and surely a non-existent object can’t be present in an experience). Non-veridical experiences seem to consist not in the presence of the world to us but rather in our mistaken representation of the world. My aim in this chapter is to provide an account of illusion and hallucination, which avoids the threat they seem to pose to my description of perceptual appearance. Because the philosophical issues surrounding them differ significantly, I’ll treat illusion and hallucination separately. But what exactly is the difference between illusion and hallucination? In philosophy, it is customary DOI: 10.4324/9781003288985-9

The Problem of Perception  165 to treat illusions as erroneous perceptions the objects of which exist and hallucinations as erroneous perceptions the objects of which do not exist. I find it simplest to retain this terminology, though admittedly these definitions are awkward at best: Some perceptual experiences that it would be natural to treat as illusions have objects that don’t exist, e.g., mirages. On the other hand, hallucinations can be of objects that really do exist, just not in the time or place where they are being hallucinated (Sacks, for example, describes a vivid and convincing hallucination of his friends Jim and Kathy visiting him for breakfast).1 Hallucinations also often take the form of perceptual distortion, e.g., one’s apartment may suddenly seem extremely large and then extremely small, or Huxley describes hallucinating a portrait of Cezanne come to life.2 Here, there is certainly a sense in which the object (the painting of Cezanne) exists, but not at all as perceived. We would not, though, comfortably refer to this as an illusion. These definitions also make it quite hard to classify a number of related phenomena, such as polyopia. Strictly speaking, then, it would probably be more accurate to distinguish illusion and hallucination in terms of their genesis, illusions occurring through the “normal” functioning of perceptual systems, and hallucinations through certain kinds of “abnormal” functioning. Nevertheless, the convenience of easily distinguishing erroneous perceptions the objects of which do and do not exist, respectively – coupled with the fact that generally speaking illusion does require the existence of its object, while hallucination does not – inclines me to retain the familiar terminology: I will use the term “hallucination” to refer to erroneous perceptions the objects of which do not exist, and “illusion” to refer to erroneous perceptions the objects of which do exist. These definitions will need some specification in the following, and I’ll have occasion to consider certain cases that challenge this neat division, but they suffice to give the distinction an initial sense. Illusion Let us start with the case of illusion: Can illusions be accounted for in terms of perceptual presence? Or we might also ask: Given that illusions mistake their objects, can those objects really be perceptually present? We can outline the challenge here with the following trilemma: A Illusions are a species of perceptual experience. B Perceptual experiences involve the presence of their objects. C Illusions do not involve the presence of their objects. In this section, I argue that my account is not threatened by this trilemma. I don’t doubt that the three theses identified here are incompatible; I just

166  Perception and World doubt that the third one is correct. Illusions do involve the perceptual ­presence of their objects. First, we should note that there is nothing phenomenologically compelling about this third thesis. Suppose I am looking at a sculpture that appears to me to be one contiguous piece. Unbeknownst to me, however, the sculpture actually comprises several discontiguous pieces arrayed in depth to produce the illusion of being one contiguous piece when viewed from a certain angle. In this case, I suffer a perceptual error: I perceive the sculpture to be contiguous when it isn’t. But it doesn’t obviously follow that what I perceive is, for example, a representation of a sculpture or a non-existent object, rather than the sculpture itself. Rather, I experience the sculpture as present to me, even if it is presented otherwise than it actually is. Consider that if I view the sculpture from a different angle, it appears to me as discontiguous: it is presented to me as it actually is. Suppose I now walk around the sculpture to the position from which it appears contiguous, and indeed, it appears to be contiguous. It would seem absurd to suppose that in each moment of my changing position the sculpture had been the object of my perception up until the last, when suddenly – because my perception was no longer accurate – it ceased to be present to me and was replaced by a mental image or representation of a sculpture. Indeed, this point allows us to be more precise about our definition of illusion: I can only suffer an illusion about an object which is perceptually present to me. I cannot misperceive the sculpture as contiguous, for example, if it is in the next room. Or, if I see a picture doctored to misrepresent its subject, I am not suffering a perceptual illusion; I am veridically perceiving an inaccurate representation of a subject. Phenomenologically, far from ruling out perceptual presence, illusion requires it. So, what motivates the thought that illusions don’t involve the presence of their objects? There are any number of reasons one might be attracted to this view, but I’ll consider two of what I see as the most important. First, there might be an intuition that, if perception can mistake its object, then it cannot consist in immediate access to the properties of that object. To my mind, this conclusion is true, even if the intuition is unsound – perception is not a “coinciding” with an object, as I argued in the previous chapter. But I have not defined presence in terms of coinciding. Even the naïve realist, as we saw, can allow that perception consists in a relation between an object, its total environment, and a perspective, rather than some sort of absolute access to an object’s properties. And this does not rule out the object’s presence: the object is just present from a certain perspective and within a certain total environment. Of course, certain illusions aren’t well accounted for in these terms. To explain, e.g.,  the Müller-Lyer lines or Zöllner’s illusion, we need to appeal not just to perspective but also to deep facts about perceptual systems like ours. Since Merleau-Ponty’s view is not

The Problem of Perception  167 a Naïve Realist one, there is no reason for this view to limit the subjective factors on which appearance depends to facts about perspective but not, e.g., deep facts about a perceptual system. Indeed, appearance will even depend on certain intentional accomplishments discussed in the previous chapter. Nevertheless, the same basic point applies here: perceptual presence does not consist in coinciding with being, but in being’s appearing to us. Indeed, this was basically the point of Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of both the “philosophy of immanence” and the “philosophy of transcendence,” considered in Chapter 4. Merleau-Ponty rejects the philosophy of immanence because, in reducing the object of perception to a mere appearance or mental object, it rules out perceptual error. The object of perception transcends perception, and consequently error is an irremediable possibility. But neither is perception cut off from its object (as per the “philosophy of transcendence”), in the sense of being a mere representation of its object. Appearance is the presence to us of a mind-transcendent object. Presence is not “coincidence,” or the kind of absolute contact that only immanence could provide, and for this reason appearance consists in presence even when it errs. Second, the most prominent thought process behind this claim lies in various permutations of the following application of Leibniz’ law: (1) When my perceptual experience is illusory, I am aware of an object that has property X. (2) The physical object before does not in fact have property X. (3) Therefore, the object I am aware of must be some object other than the physical object.3 For example, suppose I perceptually mistake an object’s color, e.g., I see a gray shirt as light blue. In this case, one might argue that what I see is light blue, but the shirt itself is gray, therefore I cannot be seeing the shirt at all. Instead, I must be seeing something else that is light blue, e.g., some mental object like a light blue sense datum. Compare again Hume’s argument: The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: but the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: it was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason.4 The problem with this argument is that it turns on an ambiguity in the phrase “the table, which we see.” We could interpret this to mean either (i) the object of perception or (ii) the manner in which that object is perceived. For the conclusion – that the object of perception is not the real thing – to go through, we need to adopt interpretation (i). But reading (i) in the first line is circular: only if we assume that the object of perception is not the real thing is there any sense in which it is true to say that the object of

168  Perception and World perception seems to diminish as we move away from it, since the real thing obviously does not thereby diminish. And this assumption is just what the argument was meant to prove. Quite to the contrary, in the terminology I have been using, the perceived table does not seem to be smaller when viewed from farther away, just as the coin does not appear to be elliptical when viewed from an angle. Undoubtedly, I can attend to my visual field and abstract the shape or size that the appearing object takes up in the visual field. But these are not facts about the apparent object: they are facts about its appearance. If we read (ii) in the first line, the argument appears much more plausible, then, but it cannot deliver its conclusion. That the appearance of an object changes as we move around that object does not prove that the object of perception is only an image. It proves only that things are not their appearances, which is certainly correct: properties of an appearance needn’t be properties of what appears. Of course, the argument looks slightly different in the case of illusion. Here perception errs not when the properties of an appearance differ from the properties of a thing, e.g., when a circular object appears elliptically, but when a thing appears to be otherwise than it is, e.g., I perceive a circular object to be elliptical. But neither should illusions dissuade us of the possibility of perceptual presence. I said above that it would be confused to conclude from the fact that things are not themselves appearances that what appears are just appearances and not things. The same confusion is at play in concluding from the fact that things can appear to be otherwise than they are that what appears are just appearances. Again, the thing is not identical to its appearance, and so there is no necessity that a thing appear to be just as it is. But it does not follow that the thing is not what appears.5 Thus, illusion is not incompatible with perceptual presence. Hallucination, however, provides us with a more difficult challenge. Hallucination The features of illusion that make it compatible with perceptual presence are lacking in the case of hallucination: the object of hallucinations doesn’t exist, and an object that doesn’t exist can hardly count as perceptually present. In this section, I take up this challenge, showing that the MerleauPontian account of perceptual experience is also not overturned by the existence of hallucinations. There are different ways that we can formulate the challenge posed by hallucination. Smith, for example, considers the challenge that hallucinations pose to Direct Realism given that hallucinations do not make us directly aware of mind-independent objects: (1) Hallucinations occur; (2) a hallucinating subject is aware of something; (3) since no ordinary, physical

The Problem of Perception  169 object exists of which she is aware, the hallucinating subject must be aware of something other than the ordinary, physical object; and (4) what holds true of hallucination holds true of perceptual experience.6 It follows from this that we cannot be directly aware of ordinary, physical objects in perception. A similar problem arises for the phenomenological tradition in terms of the intentionality of experience. Romano develops this problem in depth, arguing that the phenomenological tradition cannot maintain its commitment to the transcendence of perception – that perception is a genuine relation to the world – while allowing hallucinations the same kind of intentionality that perceptions have. I think we can summarize the problem, as Romano poses it, in the following set of incompatible positions7: (1) Intentionality is a relation, and something is a relation only if both its relata exist; (2) hallucination is intentional; and (3) it is false of hallucinations that both their relata exist. Certainly, these propositions can’t all be true. While the first, put together with the fact that perception is intentional, yields a claim we might want to make about perception, namely that its object must exist, the second and third taken together are incompatible with the first. Assuming that perception is intentional, then at least one of these claims must be denied. Either hallucinations are not intentional or the object of perception needn’t exist. But the latter would clearly violate the account of perception given in Chapter 4. One could point out here that the phenomenological tradition has conceived intentional relation as fundamentally unlike natural relation, the latter of which does presuppose the existence of its relata.8 That is, one could simply deny the first proposition, and certainly there is no problem with holding the second and third. But this response would miss Romano’s point. For Romano contrasts the intentionality of a wish, desire, belief, etc. – relations the relata of which need not both exist – with perceptual intentionality, which amounts to an “authentic relation,” namely, one in which both relata must exist.9 But it certainly seems false that both relata of a hallucination exist. Therefore, perceptual intentionality either is not an authentic relation, or hallucinations lack perceptual intentionality. Since it is hard to see how the latter could be true – the intentional content of perceptions and hallucinations seem identical – we seem forced to deny that perceptual intentionality can genuinely put us in touch with the world. Romano’s problem readily translates to the account of perception I have been describing. On this account, perceptual appearance involves the presentation of an object, and any case of perceptual experience involves a perceptual appearance. So, our problem will focus not around intentionality per se – since not all intentional relations are internal relations, to use the language of Chapter 4 – but on appearance. If this is

170  Perception and World true, Romano’s problem redounds upon my account in the following trilemma: A’ Any perceptual appearance involves the presence of an object. B’ Hallucinations are perceptual appearances. C’ Hallucinations do not involve the presence of their objects. That hallucination does not involve the presence of its object is clear: the object of a hallucination does not (or rather, need not) exist, and a non-­ existent object cannot be present. Of course, there may be (indeed, I think there is) a sense in which the absence of an object can be perceptually presented. But a hallucination is not a presentation of an absence: it is the presentation of a non-existent object as existing here and now. So, there is no good prima facie reason to deny (C’). Further, (B’) is highly plausible and my account so far has been committed to (A’). We thus face a genuine problem. Disjunctivism One way out of this problem would be to endorse some form of Disjunctivism, i.e., to claim that we need not offer parallel accounts of perception and hallucination: the two are simply radically distinct kinds of experiences. In terms of the problem as Romano develops it, perceptions and hallucinations need not be called intentional in the same sense – hallucination can be intentional in the way that wishes or imaginations are, which, unlike perception, don’t amount to “authentic” relations to objects. Or, in the terms I developed in Chapter 4, we might try to deny that hallucinations and perceptions are “appearances” in the same sense, e.g., by saying that in perception objects appear, i.e., are present, whereas in hallucinations they merely appear. In other words, we might deny claim (B’). There are various ways of developing Disjunctivism. What unites these approaches is simply the view that perceptions and non-veridical perceptual experiences differ intrinsically. A Conjunctivist view can allow that perceptions and non-veridical experiences differ, but has to explain this difference in terms of extrinsic features, e.g., whether or not the objects of experience exist, or in terms of the adequacy of these experiences to their objects. In contrast, a Disjunctivist view holds that the difference between perception and non-veridical experiences lies within the features of those very experiences. One can locate the relevant differences within any number of the features of experiences, though. McDowell, for example, writes that perceptual appearances are either objective states of affairs making themselves manifest to subjects, or situations in which it is as if an

The Problem of Perception  171 objective state of affairs is making itself manifest to a subject, although that is not how things are.10 In other words, he claims that perceptions and hallucinations are both cases of “perceptual appearance” but differ in their relation to the objects that appear in them: perceptions are constituted by objects manifesting themselves, whereas in hallucinations it is merely as if objects manifested themselves. McDowell then argues that this difference in relation (of manifestation or not) allows perception and hallucination to hold different epistemic statuses. Advocates of the Theory of Appearing (briefly considered at the end of Chapter 4) also take a Disjunctivist stance. Alston, holding that perceptual experiences are relations of appearance, accepts that some actually existing object appears in the case of hallucination. But he denies that this must be an ordinary object and identifies it instead as a “particularly vivid mental image.”11 Langsam, on the other hand, explicitly advocates a Disjunctivist response: he argues that hallucinations and perceptions simply instantiate different kinds of phenomenal features, though these features are similar in appearance, which explains their subjective indistinguishability.12 According to Langsam, when I perceive red, I have an experience that instantiates a phenomenal feature of redness that is a relation between a mind and a material object; when I hallucinate red, I have an experience that instantiates a different, though apparently similar, phenomenal feature of redness, which involves no such relation. Some phenomenologists also propose forms of Disjunctivism. Romano, for example, denies that hallucination is properly speaking intentional. He writes that “the intentionality of perception must be conceived as a relation that needs its two relata in order to obtain,” while the same cannot be said of hallucination.13 Hopp also suggests that phenomenology should endorse Disjunctivism. Hopp distinguishes perceptions and hallucinations not in terms of the type of object they intend – even hallucinations must intend worldly states of affairs, even if not ones that really exist – but in terms of their intentional contents. Hopp argues that perceptions and hallucinations simply have different intentional contents, and in virtue of this, no hallucination can intend any perceptible objects. The reason for this, in brief, is that perceptible and hallucinatory objects can never share a manifold of experiences. Since this point will be crucial for my argument in this chapter, let me stop to explain it. Following Husserl (and A.D. Smith’s argument that Husserl can be read as an Externalist),14 Hopp holds that every object has a “manifold” of experience, defined as the set of all possible experiences of that object. This concept is important for Hopp, since it allows us to determine what object

172  Perception and World a perceptual experience intends. According to Hopp, “two perceptual acts belong to the same manifold if, and only if, they are of the same object.”15 To determine what an act is of, then, we need to determine to what manifold it belongs. Phenomenological character alone cannot determine what manifold an experience belongs to. For example, an experience of the front of a house and the experience of the back of a house may differ entirely in character and yet belong to the same manifold. What can do this job? Hopp suggests the following: “Harmoniousness with any other member of A’s manifold, and synthesizability with the perceptual experiences belonging to some line L of that manifold, are good candidates for necessary conditions for belonging to A’s manifold.”16 So, to determine whether an experience belongs to a given manifold, we need to determine whether it is synthesizable and harmonious with the experiences belonging to some line of that manifold. Two experiences are harmonious to the extent that they broadly agree with each other, e.g., as I turn an apple over in my hand, my experiences will differ insofar as they present different aspects of the apple but will be harmonious with each other, presenting similar colors, shine, texture, shape, etc.: the experiences I have as I turn the apple over generally agree with what I am motivated to expect on the basis of first holding it in my hand. These experiences are also synthesizable with each other, in the sense that I can synthesize them with one another as experiences of one and the same object. Hopp then argues that no hallucinatory experience is synthesizable with a really existing, perceptible object’s manifold.17 Suppose, for example, that while in Dublin I have a hallucination of my cat, who is then in Connecticut. In this case, there is no way to synthesize my hallucinatory experience of my cat with my cat’s manifold, since my cat’s manifold includes numerous possible experiences of him then in Connecticut and so not in Dublin. Similarly, Smith argues that when an object doesn’t exist, it has no harmonious manifold, since as he puts it, “if the object of some experience is unreal, there is some possible experience of that object in which its unreality is exposed”18: the manifold of a hallucinated object contains irreconcilable conflicts within itself, whereas a perceived object’s manifold is ultimately harmonious. Consequently, a perception and a hallucination cannot share a manifold and must intend different objects. To be clear, the harmoniousness of a manifold need not be total. Hopp and Smith argue that the total manifold of possible experience of an object can include illusory experiences, which are obviously not entirely harmonious with veridical experiences of that same object. Hopp writes, The perceptual manifold of an object does not consist solely of veridical perceptions. … But they are all of the same object, and the distinctive kind of conflict that arises when one experience of a thing conflicts with

The Problem of Perception  173 another is only intelligible when the two experiences present what is recognizably the same object, or are synthesizable via a string of experiences some members of which present what is recognizably the same object.19 All that is required, then, is that this harmonious be, in Smith’s terms, “ultimate”20: every erroneous experience of an object must be synthesizable with a set of veridical experiences that corrects that mistaken experience. Thus, for Hopp, perceptions and hallucination do not differ by the kind of object which they intend (both are of normal objects) but by their intentional content: perceptions and hallucinations have different intentional contents, in virtue of belonging to different manifolds of experience, and so refer to different objects.21 This brief review should make it clear that Disjunctivism is not a univocal position: there are many ways to be a Disjunctivist, including at least Disjunctivism about the kind of object to which experience relates us (cf. Alston and Langsam), about whether hallucinations are properly intentional at all (Romano), or about their respective intentional contents (Hopp). The questions for us now are whether Merleau-Ponty takes any of these Disjunctivist options and further, whether he is right to do so. Merleau-Ponty and Disjunctivism

I have argued elsewhere that Merleau-Ponty is not an Epistemological Disjunctivist, i.e., that he doesn’t think that veridical and non-veridical perceptual experiences have fundamentally different epistemic statuses.22 But one can certainly endorse the view that perception and hallucination are fundamentally different sorts of mental states without holding that they differ epistemically. And Merleau-Ponty makes a number of broadly Disjunctivist claims. Consider again the following passage: Perception is just that kind of act where there can be no question of separating the act itself and the term upon which it bears. Perception and the perceived necessarily have the same existential modality, since perception is inseparable from the consciousness that it has or rather that it is of reaching the thing itself. (PhP, 393) Obviously, the same is not true of hallucination. For Merleau-Ponty, then, there is at least some important respect in which perception and hallucination differ. But what exactly is this difference? First, Merleau-Ponty does not seem to subscribe to Disjunctivism about the object of perception, i.e, a view on

174  Perception and World which veridical and non-veridical experiences differ in the kind of objects that appear in them. Nowhere do we find Merleau-Ponty endorsing, for example, a view like Alston’s, on which at least some non-veridical experiences are of mental images. Consider Merleau-Ponty’s description of an illusion: If I believe I see a large flat stone, which is in reality a patch of sunlight, far ahead on the ground in a sunken lane, I cannot say that I ever see the flat stone in the sense in which I will see the patch of sunlight while moving closer. The flat stone only appears, like everything that is far off, in a field whose structure is confused and where the connections are not yet clearly articulated. (PhP, 310) Here it is “the flat stone” that appears, not some mental object.23 Indeed, given the definition of “mere appearance” considered in Chapter 4, he seems to reject this form of Disjunctivism in rejecting an intellectualism on which “everything which separates us from the world – error, illness, madness … - is reduced to the status of a mere appearance” (PhP, 126). If we take this language seriously, then perception and illusion differ not in the kind of object that appears in them but in the kind of relation they bear to objects.24 Nor is there good evidence that Merleau-Ponty locates this difference in intentional content. Merleau-Ponty writes that if the objects of my perceptual experience turn out not to exist, “then I say that I have not really seen them, I concede that at no moment has this adequation taken place between my visual intentions and the visible, which is vision in actuality” (PhP, 393–4). Merleau-Ponty does not give any hint of denying that hallucinatory experiences are genuinely intentional here, per Romano, nor that hallucinations possess a different intentional content than perceptions, at least in the manner Hopp describes; instead, he is distinguishing them only in terms of (the “adequacy” of) their relations to their objects. Provisionally, then, Merleau-Ponty seems to propose a view on which perception and hallucination differ in the kind of relation they bear to their intentional objects. Perceptual experiences involve the presence of their objects and bear an internal relation toward them. Hallucinations do not involve the presence of their objects, since these objects don’t even exist. Nor do they bear an internal relation to their objects, since the existence and character of hallucinations is not dependent on the existence and character of their objects. This is not to say that Merleau-Ponty is a Conjunctivist and that the difference between perception and hallucination is merely accidental to experience, the way accuracy or inaccuracy is accidental to a representation.

The Problem of Perception  175 Instead, presence is part of the definition of perception, and where this feature is lacking, it marks a fundamental difference from genuine perception. When Merleau-Ponty writes that “the truth or falsity of an experience must not consist in its relation to an exterior reality, but must be read in it as intrinsic denominations without which it would never be recognized” (PhP, 351), he claims that the kind of relation perception bears to its object is internal to perception, and perception is defined as presence to reality. Further, Merleau-Ponty argues that there is an important difference in the phenomenological character of perceptions and hallucinations, namely, in their respective horizonal content. Normal perceptual experiences are accompanied by a horizon of protentions of possible experiences and retentions of past experiences. Merleau-Ponty writes, My perception makes an indefinite number of perceptual chains coexist, which would confirm my perception on all points and would harmonize with them. My gaze and my hand know that every actual displacement would bring about a sensible response that conforms precisely to my expectation, and I sense, teeming beneath my gaze, the infinite mass of more detailed perceptions that I anticipate and upon which I have a hold. (PhP, 354) My experience of a perceived object includes, then, a horizon of anticipations of possible perceptions I would have of an object as I walk around it, turn it over in my hand, etc., and anticipates those possible perceptions as harmonious with my current. It is just this “plenitude” – this sense of depth or explorability – of veridical perception that the hallucinatory object lacks: the hallucinatory object, like the dreamed object, does not contain in itself the depth of responses to our perceptual exploration, and such responses would have to be invented as the object is explored. For example, many report hallucinations of musical notation, and some actually try to play this music, only to discover that the notation doesn’t signify any actual melody; as Sacks puts it, upon inspection, such hallucinations “quickly reveal themselves to be unreadable, in the sense that they have no shape, no tune, no syntax or grammar.”25 While this notation may present a convincing facsimile of sheet music, Sacks’ patient, Arthur S., upon playing it discovered it to be a mere “potpourri of musical notation, without any meaning;” similarly, what may initially appear to be writing in a hallucination upon closer inspection may turn out to be mere scribbling or “letter-like runes.”26 Here hallucination reveals itself as merely putting up a show of presence but lacking the rich depth and sense of the real. Further, the hallucinatory object lacks a precise insertion in the horizon of my experience in general: it does not occupy precise causal relationships with

176  Perception and World perceived objects and can often seem to conflict with or be superimposed on them. Of course, these differences need not be explicit to someone suffering from hallucinations – indeed, to some extent they mustn’t be if the hallucinatory object can deceive. The important point, for Merleau-Ponty, is just that such differences in phenomenological character are implicitly present in experience and attention can be called to them. Precisely because my experience of the hallucinatory object is not bound by anything like the plenitude of really existing objects, as Smith and Hopp point out, the set of possible experiences I could have of a hallucinatory object need not be harmonious. The hallucinatory object can change arbitrarily and abruptly or can fail to change in response to perceptual exploration.27 Again, as Hopp and Smith argue, my experiences of a real perceptible object may contain some disharmony, e.g., if I have an illusory perception, but such illusory perceptions can be corrected by reference to the harmonious totality of possible perceptions of that object. When I see the large flat stone from far off, the horizonal nature of my experience allows me to approach the stone and discover that what I took to be a stone is not a stone at all but only a patch of sunlight: the illusion is shown up as such by reference to the totality of my experiences of the patch of sunlight. Of course, it may not happen that the illusion is ever corrected by the actual series of experiences I undertake (I may never walk over and discover the patch of sunlight). But what matters – and what differentiates the illusion from the hallucination – is that the patch of sunlight possesses a “plenitude” in virtue of which I could walk over, explore it, and discover that my initial experience was mistaken: in other words, the sunlight has a deep and harmonious set of possible experiences that the hallucinatory object lacks. So, when Merleau-Ponty writes that “The difference between illusion and perception is intrinsic, and the truth of perception can only be read in perception itself” (PhP, 310), part of what he means is that veridical and non-veridical experiences differ in their phenomenology: to perceive is to engage the plenitude of a real object, whereas hallucination offers us only a simulacrum of perceptual presence. Of course, in any given experience one can overlook the plenitude of the perceived object or the corresponding paucity of the hallucinatory one. But this plenitude or paucity is brought into focus by the ongoing totality of experience: as Smith and Hopp put it, an illusory experience of a perceived object is synthesizable with that object’s total harmonious manifold, whereas the hallucinatory object has no such harmonious manifold.28 Merleau-Ponty thus offers a unique account of the difference between perception and hallucination, one which differs substantially from other forms of Disjunctivism, while nevertheless allowing that perception and hallucination differ intrinsically, namely, in their relation to their objects

The Problem of Perception  177 and in their phenomenological character. The foregoing should have motivated this account of the difference between perception and hallucination. What I want to do now is briefly to explain why I think it fares better than the alternative forms of Disjunctivism described above. Problems with Alternative Views

Consider Alston’s and Langsam’s views, on which hallucinations have a different kind of object than do perceptions. I think Hopp correctly identifies a major problem with this approach, namely, that it makes it impossible to understand why hallucinations are errors.29 If, for example, we define perception as taking in a physical object and hallucination as taking in a mere appearance, then it seems that hallucination is not intrinsically erroneous: it simply takes in a mere appearance as it is. But something can only be erroneous if it presents something otherwise than it is – I can only be in error about something if the object of my act is that thing. I don’t make an error about Santa Claus if I believe the moon is made of cheese. The only way in which hallucinations can be erroneous, then, is if they are about worldly states of affairs. The most natural defense against this argument would be to deny that hallucinations are intrinsically erroneous. One could argue, for example, that hallucinations simply present non-normal objects as they are, and it is only when we form a belief, on the basis of this experience, about normal objects that we err. Hopp responds to this argument in depth, but I’ll briefly note that such a view would entail a highly implausible consequence: namely that if I have a hallucination without forming a belief on the basis of this hallucination, I do not err. But if I hallucinate a parade passing through my office, then I am suffering a perceptual error. This is true whether or not my perceptual experience motivates a corresponding erroneous belief about the world. Even if I do not for an instant believe that there is in fact a parade scheduled for my office today, my perceptual experience is still very much mistaken. So, we should reject a view on which hallucinations have different kinds of objects than do perceptions: hallucinations are of worldly things. In fact, though, a similar problem accrues to Hopp’s view. Recall that Hopp and Smith argue that hallucinations cannot be of perceptible objects. Hopp argues that no hallucinatory experience will be synthesizable along some line with members of some actually existing object’s manifold. If I have a hallucination of my cat, who is in Connecticut, while I am in Dublin, there is no way to synthesize my present hallucinatory experience of my cat with an actually possible experience of my cat in Connecticut at this same moment, given that they would present the same object as in different places at the same time. Thus, my hallucination does not belong

178  Perception and World to my cat’s manifold, and so we cannot say that it is really of my cat.30 But the consequence of this claim is that my hallucination is not wrong about my cat, since it is not of my cat at all. This is an unpalatable consequence, though. A natural way to express the content of my perception would be, “My cat is on the chair.” This claim is clearly false since my cat is not on the chair, and it is wrong not just about what’s on the chair but wrong about my cat. Nor is this just a matter of how I express my perception. On the analysis of perception offered in Part I of this book, my hallucination intends an object on the chair with the perceptual sense “my cat;” I intend “that thing” as my cat, and so there is quite clearly a sense in which my experience itself is wrong about my cat. To be clear, Hopp’s view does present a significant advance over Alston’s in this regard, since he can account for how hallucinations are erroneous: they are of normal objects and mistakenly present them as existing. But Hopp’s own reasoning commits him to the claim that no hallucination is wrong about any really existing, perceptible thing – a claim which is implausible at best. Still, Hopp’s view is correct in an important regard: there is a sense in which my hallucination of my cat is not actually of my cat, since the object before me is not a cat at all (in fact, it is not anything), and so occupies no place in the set of possible experiences of my cat. But there is another sense in which my hallucination intends, and is wrong about, my cat. Understanding how both of these insights get something right will be very useful in the following, and so it is worth pausing to clarify this. The way to resolve this problem is by recalling a distinction (made in Chapters 1 and 2) between two aspects of perceptual intention, namely, what we might call the “that” and “what” of the intended object. Loosely, the “that” identifies the object of my perception, whereas the “what” is the meaning under which I intend it. In our driftwood-rock example, there is something that remains the same throughout this transformation, namely, the “that” which I perceive. The transformation occurs merely in the “what” I perceive it to be. Here, I perceive one and the same object under two different meanings. Similarly, when I hallucinate my cat, I perceive some “that” – namely an object over there – as my cat. Since in this perception I identify the object of perception with my cat, there is an obvious sense in which my perception does indeed intend my cat, and so can be wrong about my cat. At the same time, because my cat is not in fact over there – indeed, nothing is – it is certainly true that the object before me is not in fact my cat. So, there is also a sense in which the object that I intend is not my cat. Incidentally, I should point out how this analysis fits with my initial definition of hallucination above, namely that hallucination differs from illusion in that the objects of hallucinations do not exist. My current claim, that the object of a hallucination can be the same as the object of a genuine perception, obviously conflicts with this. But the distinction I  have

The Problem of Perception  179 just drawn helps here. We can specify my initial definition as ­follows: the object specified by the “what” of a hallucination can exist, but the object specified by the “that” cannot. When I hallucinate my cat on the chair, there is nothing there, no “that,” that exists, even though my cat does exist.31 The foregoing was meant to show that there is a genuine sense in which a hallucination can intend the same object as perception, and so while there is something importantly true about Hopp’s account, it doesn’t fully capture perceptual intentionality. On the other hand, Hopp’s account might still seem to work for the “that” component of an experience: the “that” of an experience is best determined in terms of its manifold of possible experiences, even if the “what” is not. But Hopp’s account faces problems here as well. It’s not at all clear to me that it can genuinely provide a criterion for an intention’s being of an object at all. According to Hopp, to determine what an act is of, we need to determine to what manifold it belongs. On the other hand, we determine to what manifold an experience, E1, belongs on the basis of whether it is synthesizable with the experiences, E2, belonging to some line of A’s manifold. But this seems to result in a regress, where we must now ask how E2 counts as belonging to A’s manifold. Does E2, for example, belong to A’s manifold in terms of synthesizability with E1? Such reasoning would be obviously circular. Thus, if harmoniousness and synthesizability were all that determined membership, one could imagine two distinct sets of experience, the members of each of which were harmonious and synthesizable with the other members of its set but not with the members of the other. In this case, there would be no criterion for determining which set belonged to A’s manifold and which did not.32 One might try to respond that we can distinguish between a manifold of strictly veridical experiences of an object and a broader manifold that includes all – including illusory – experiences of an object. Hopp’s account might presuppose that an object has a manifold of veridical experiences, and we are only explaining the belonging of non-veridical experiences to an object’s broader manifold. The idea is that a non-veridical experience belongs to an object’s manifold if it is synthesizable with the manifold of veridical experiences of that object. But I don’t think this response will work, since we are asking how an experience is of an object in the first place, and an experience must be of an object in the first place to be right or wrong about it at all, i.e., to be veridical: I cannot have an experience of my cat that is a veridical experience of my neighbor’s dog. We cannot explain an experience’s being of some object by pointing out that it is synthesizable with veridical experiences of that object – we will have to ask how those veridical experiences are of their object, and here the account becomes circular.

180  Perception and World So, I don’t think that a Disjunctivism like Hopp’s will serve us much better in accounting for hallucination. Veridical and non-veridical experiences do not differ in intentionality or in the kind of object that appears in them. Rather, they differ in relation to that object and in the phenomenological character with which they present it. But this formulation of Disjunctivism hardly solves the problem with which we began: we have simply affirmed that perception involves the presence of its object, while hallucination does not. Specifically, we have not argued that perceptions and hallucinations are not both appearances, for example, nor denied that appearance involves the presence of its object. And so while there is a clear sense in which Merleau-Ponty endorses a specific form of Disjunctivism, we are still left with the problem: A’ Any perceptual appearance involves the presence of an object. B’ Hallucinations are perceptual appearances. C’ Hallucinations do not involve the presence of their objects. However, there is another way to resolve this problem, one that does not rely on Disjunctivism. Proximate and Ultimate Objects It is often noted that Merleau-Ponty articulates a kind of perceptual holism that forms the basis for his response to skepticism.33 In this section, I formulate my own version of what exactly this holism amounts to and how it disrupts the problem of perception. In my view, Merleau-Ponty’s “holism” allows him to draw a distinction between the proximate and ultimate objects of a perceptual experience. This forms the basis of a response to the problem of perception because even if a perceptual experience does not involve the presence of its proximate object, it does involve the presence of its ultimate object. Consider the following long passage: I put my confidence in the world. To perceive is suddenly to commit to an entire future of experiences in a present that never, strictly speaking, guarantees that future; to perceive is to believe in a world. It is this opening to a world that makes perceptual truth possible, or the actual realization of a Wahr-Nehmung, and permits us ‘to cross out’ the preceding illusion, to hold it to be null and void. I saw a large shadow moving on the periphery of my visual field and at a distance, I turn my gaze to this side and the phantasm shrinks and takes its proper place: it was only a fly close to my eye. I was conscious of seeing a shadow and now I am conscious of having only seen a fly. My belonging to the

The Problem of Perception  181 world allows me to compensate for the fluctuations of the cogito, to displace one cogito in favor of another, and to meet up with the truth of my thought beyond its appearance. In the very moment of illusion, this correction was presented to me as possible because the illusion itself makes use of the same belief in the world, only contracts into a solid appearance thanks to this contribution, and hence, being always open to an horizon of presumptive verifications, the illusion does not separate me from truth. But, for the same reason, I am not protected from error since the world that I aim at through each appearance, and that rightly or wrongly gives it the weight of truth, never necessarily requires this particular appearance. There is an absolute certainty of the world in general, but not of any particular thing. (PhP, 311)34 What emerges in this passage, in the terms I have developed, is this pair of ideas: (a) not all perceptual experiences, taken by themselves, present their objects as they are; (b) experience as a whole intends the world as a whole and is always open to presenting the world as it is. In other words, while perceptual experiences can disengage from the particular objects they intend, they cannot disengage from the world itself. To put this in terms of the problem we are now facing, while perception can fail to involve the presence of its objects at a local level, at a global level our perceptions always involve the presence of the world they intend. There is no insistence here, contra the skeptic, that any particular experience does in fact present its object as it is. What there is, however, is an insistence that perceptual experience as a whole and the object of that experience as a whole (namely, the world) are correlates. What we experience is the world, and conversely – to paraphrase Merleau-Ponty’s claim that being is what appears – the world is what we experience. Merleau-Ponty’s view is holistic, then, in the sense that its primary analysand is not some particular experience or object but experience and its object as a whole. With this holism in view, MerleauPonty can allow that the proximate object of experience can fail to exist (in hallucination), but the ultimate object of experience is the world, and the world cannot fail to exist (see, e.g., PhP, 360). We need to get the phenomena that ground this claim into view. To do so, I want to start by explaining my distinction between the proximate and ultimate objects of perceptual intentions. This distinction is built into the horizonality of experience discussed in Chapter 5. When I perceive an object, my perceptual intention involves a horizon of co-intentions, including what Husserl calls retentions (just past experiences of that object) and protentions (anticipations of experiences I am about to have). This horizon structure allows me to experience objects as admitting series of possible experiences or as sites of ongoing exploration: I can rotate the apple in my

182  Perception and World hand, slice into it, or take a bite out of it, accruing novel and ampliative experiences of one and the same apple. In other words, the horizon structure allows me to fill in the details of an object, to make its presence to me more precise and complete.35 However, the horizon structure also allows me to revise my experience of an object. Perhaps, when seen from a distance the apple looks ripe but on closer inspection turns out to be mushy and covered with bad spots on its hidden side. Or, in the case where the sculpture looks contiguous to me when viewed from a certain angle, but when I walk around the sculpture I discover it to be discontiguous. Here, the horizon structure allows me to correct my mistaken original perception. In these cases of perceptual disillusion, even though I perceive one and the same object, my perception is revised in virtue of ongoing exploration. Further, this horizon structure allows me not only to revise the details of an object but to revise the whole perceptual sense of an object. Take again Merleau-Ponty’s example of the driftwood and the rock. In this case, when the appearance changes, I do not think that the wood has vanished and in its place a rock has appeared. Rather, as I continue my walk along the shore, I perceive one and the same thing now as a piece of wood, now as a clayey rock. Merleau-Ponty articulates this experience as follows: “I thought I saw on the sands a piece of wood polished by the sea, and it was a clayey rock” (VI, 40). The essential feature of this articulation is the “it was” – one and the same “it” persists through the shifting meanings. Here the horizon of the original intention allows me to revise the perceptual sense of the very same object intended by the perception. But the horizon structure of experience allows an even more radical transformation than this: it allows me to revise the very demonstrative content of an intention. For example, what first appear as clouds rising from Lake Malawi, turn out on closer inspection to be millions of mating midges. In this case, not only the “what” but the very “that” of an intention has changed – from one thing to many things. Conversely, if I were first to observe a late Chuck Close painting from up close, what appear to be many splotches of color would as I step back reveal themselves to form a portrait. In this case, many distinct “thats” merge into one. But, though the “that’s” of an intention changes in these cases, at another level it remains constant. This becomes evident when we consider that we take the two perceptions to be in conflict. The perception of the clouds only excludes that of the midges because it is one very same something that is now seen as one cloud and now as many midges. Neither do we think that the clouds have been replaced by midges, nor the splotches by the portrait. Rather, we would justly say, “What’s there seemed to be a

The Problem of Perception  183 cloud, but in fact what’s there were midges.” Despite the transformation of the objects we find there, in either case we intend the very same “what’s there.” The horizon structure of experience allows us not only to revise the details of a proximate object but to dissolve or assimilate this proximate object to other objects. Even here, though, perceptual disillusion is marked by continuity: the two perceptual experiences only conflict insofar as they share some object. Since they evidently do not share a proximate object, we can say instead that they share an ultimate object, the “what’s there.” Thus, the horizon structure of experience requires us to distinguish between the proximate object (e.g., the cloud or the splotch of color) and the ultimate object (namely, “what’s there”) of an experience. The same analysis allows us to make sense of cases in which the object of experience turns out not to exist at all. Here we might say, for example, “it seemed to be a shadowy figure, but in reality it was nothing.” What is the “it” here? Not the shadowy figure, nor the nothing. Instead, it is something like the “what’s there” that seemed to be a shadowy figure but is now shown to be nothing. Even in the case of hallucination, then we should say that the ultimate object of experience is something like this “what’s there.” We might try to argue that what ultimately appears in the case of nonveridical experience is some region of space. Alston suggests such an option to deal with cases of isolated hallucinations: since the space (e.g., above the chair in the corner) in which I experience a hallucinated object (e.g., my cat) exists, as well as something physical occupying that space (e.g., air), we can say that in this case the space or the air appears to me as a cat.36 This suggestion is, in a way, quite phenomenologically compelling and captures the way in which the ultimate object of perception is preserved despite changes in proximate objects. But there are cases in which even a given space is not the ultimate object of a perceptual experience. For example, there are cases in which an error about what space is intended plays a crucial role in an illusion. Consider Merleau-Ponty’s example of mistaking a fly close to one’s eye for a shadow (PhP, 311). Should we say that despite a change in the proximate object of experience, the same ultimate object presents itself, namely, the same region of space? The obvious problem with this solution is that the flyperception and the shadow-perception do not intend the same space: the fly is supposed to take up a small space over here, whereas the shadow takes up a large space over there. Or, as Pautz points out, we can imagine someone having a hallucination of an object 5 feet away while standing at the edge of space, and so there is no space that performs the role of appearing or being the ultimate object present.37 Further, Alston points out that

184  Perception and World this tactic won’t work in the case of total hallucinations, where even the spaces we experience are hallucinated. We can avoid these problems, though, if we instead take the ultimate object of experience to be the world itself; in each of the above cases – and, indeed, in every conceivable case of perceptual experience – the world itself is ultimately what appears to us. For example, in the shadow-fly case, the world presents itself as containing a shadow in one spatial region and then as containing a fly at another. Or, in Pautz’ case, the world appears to include a space that it, in fact, does not. Finally, in the case of total hallucination, the world presents itself as containing a totality of objects and spaces quite different from those it actually does. If we say that the ultimate object of experience is the world, then there is no way in which the object of experience can fail to exist or to appear to us. Properly conceived, the case of total hallucination is not unlike the cases of illusion considered above, but with the scope of the proximate object of experience maximally expanded. Here too, it is not so much that one world has been replaced by another, but that the world seemed to be some way that it was not. In this limit case, in which I am dreaming or suffering a hallucination about the total contents of the world, my disillusion will involve discovering that I was wrong about the totality of what’s there. Again, though, such disillusion can only occur if the ultimate object of experience – here, the world itself – remains the same. Here we see that the world just is the ultimate object of experience, taken at the highest level, and even hallucination manages to reach the world itself, though it may present the world incorrectly. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, The world remains the vague place of all experiences. It accommodates, pell-mell, true objects as well as individual and fleeting ­ fantasies  – because it is an individual that encompasses everything and not a collection of objects linked together through causal relations. To have hallucinations and, in general, to imagine is to exploit this tolerance of the pre-predicative world as well as our vertiginous proximity to all of being in syncretic experience. (PhP, 359) To sum up, the horizonality of experience means that every proximate intention occurs in the foreground of an ultimate intention, which at the highest level is of the world itself. The foregoing discussion should have given phenomenological weight to the distinction between perception’s proximate and ultimate objects. But we still do not have support for the claim that the ultimate object of perception exists necessarily. The other piece of this argument is Merleau-Ponty’s

The Problem of Perception  185 claim that the world, which is the ultimate object of experience, cannot fail to exist. He writes, To wonder if the world is real is to fail to understand what one is saying, since the world is not a sum of things that one could always cast into doubt, but precisely the inexhaustible reservoir from which things are drawn. (PhP, 360) For Merleau-Ponty, then, skeptical concerns about the existence of the world (and not just of things in the world) get no purchase. Of course, it may turn out that the world has an entirely different character than I thought, and it is populated by entirely different entities. But whether or not the world is how I experience it, in either case I intend the same object, namely, the world itself. The skeptical scenario requires us to misconstrue the world for a particular collection of objects. But it is not a collection of objects; it is that within which any object exists. Even if only I and un malin genie exist, there is yet a world, just one that environs only these two beings. Merleau-Ponty concludes, Each perception is mutable and only probable – it is, if one likes, only an opinion; but what is not opinion, what each perception, even if false, verifies, is the belongingness of each experience to the same world, their equal power to manifest it, as possibilities of the same world. (VI, 41)38 So, while the proximate objects of experience can fail to exist, its ultimate object, namely the world itself cannot. Synthesizability and Presence This outcome, however, will not by itself suffice to guarantee the conclusion I set out to demonstrate, namely, that even hallucination involves the presence of its ultimate object. One might object, for example, that we can hallucinate objects that happen really to exist – e.g., in the case of my hallucination of my cat – but surely such a hallucination does not consist in the presence of my cat to me: an object in Connecticut cannot be directly perceptually present to me in Dublin. Therefore, the real existence of the object of perception does not entail its perceptual presence. Scenarios in which we seem to be entirely separated from the world, e.g., total hallucinations, or brain-in-vat (henceforth just “BIV”) scenarios, press home this point with respect to perception’s ultimate object. Just

186  Perception and World as with my hallucinated cat, even if it is true that the world exists (and indeed cannot fail to exist), it would seem that the BIV is not thereby perceptually presented with the world. Instead, the BIV seems merely to intend the world, without this intention making any contact with its intended object. Of course, one could try to find grounds that disqualify such scenarios. For example, Noë resists BIV scenarios on the Enactivist grounds that we are more than just our brains, but brains in contact with an environment.39 I don’t want to make this kind of argument here (if these arguments work, though, all the better for my case). Metaphysically, all one needs to admit for such scenarios to gain purchase is that perceptual experience is brought about by the stimulation of a properly functioning brain by sensory organs and that this stimulation could be reproduced in the absence of those organs. I don’t see any good reason to deny this. More interestingly, I don’t see anything phenomenologically impossible about a case in which the total contents of one’s experience – even if exactly as detailed and rich as they are now – turn out to be false, for which the BIV is a convenient shorthand. One might suspect that, phenomenologically, the BIV case is totally uninteresting, since no one has had the experience of being a BIV. But this strikes me as an overly narrow view of phenomenology. Phenomenology is not interested only in experiences that have actually occurred, even though it has its basis there: it is also interested in the eidetic contours of experience, which means that it is interested in what experiences are possible. In this light, the BIV case is precisely one of those imaginative variations of perceptual experience that help us discern the essential features of experience. Its fantastical qualities do not merit its outright dismissal from phenomenology.40 So, I don’t see an easy way out of the problem. It is a phenomenological fact that the ultimate object of every experience cannot fail to exist. But if we are in a BIV scenario, it seems that despite the world’s real existence, we fail to make any perceptual contact with it, i.e., it fails to be perceptually present to us. But I think the Merleau-Pontian account, even if not designed to deal with extreme scenarios, has resources to address even this case.41 We can see how this might be so by working out more precisely what presence actually requires in this context. I said above that, for Merleau-Ponty, perception and hallucination differ not only in relation to their objects but also phenomenal structure. This difference, which I clarified in terms of Smith’s and Hopp’s discussion of synthesizability, can be helpful here. While, earlier, I rejected synthesizability with an object’s manifold as a necessary condition for intending that object, I would now like to suggest that it is a sufficient condition for the perceptual presence of that object.

The Problem of Perception  187 Consider again the difference between the sculpture-illusion and the c­ at-hallucination. In the former case, I argued that the sculpture is present to me even though I misperceive it, whereas in the latter, no one would suggest that my cat is present to me, even if we suppose that my experience is correct in all regards other than location. The question for us is what differentiates these two cases, i.e., what is the factor present in the former but not in the latter case that makes only the former count as an instance of perceptual presence? One natural place to differentiate between the two is in terms of their causality: the statue itself plays an important role in the causal process that generates my perception of it (i.e., it reflects certain wavelengths of light, which are detected by me eye, etc.), whereas neither my cat, nor my room in Dublin, nor any other object plays the parallel role in the causal process that generates my hallucination. Hallucinations are produced by abnormal causal processes in which the brain functions in comparative isolation from its environment. But if we are giving a phenomenological account of perceptual presence, causality is not very promising. Merleau-Ponty consistently resists just this kind of “Objective thought” that models experience on the basis of the objects which contribute to causing it.42 Admittedly, when we genuinely perceive, we sense that our perception is responsive to its object: if the object were to change, so would our perception. In this sense, we might even say that we perceive the thing as we do in part because of how the thing itself is. But this is not to experience one’s perception as caused by the thing: that a physical object “impinges” on our senses, inducing certain events in the brain, ultimately resulting in an experience, is not itself a part of our perceptual experience. We experience our contact with the world, not a process beneath this contact that brings it about. We ought to separate the experience of openness or responsiveness from that of causation: that X is responsive to Y, such that a change in Y will be mirrored by a change in X, does not entail that X is caused by Y. A painting of a landscape, for example, can be responsive to this landscape, such that we can in a certain sense say that the painting has the properties it does because of the properties of the landscape, but no one would say that the landscape caused the painting to have those properties. As I have pointed out repeatedly, perceptual experience is quite unlike a painting, but the same point holds: our sense of perceptual openness or responsiveness to the world does not include a sense of perception being physically caused by the world.43 Alston argues persuasively against a view on which the object of perception is picked out by causal factors. Causing a perceptual experience is not sufficient for being the object of that experience since there are innumerable factors that contribute to causing an experience that no one supposes to be the object of that experience.44 For example, certain chemical

188  Perception and World processes in the brain and certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation contribute to causing visual experience, but presumably no one would say these are the objects of that experience, nor a fortiori that they are presented in experience. As he puts it, “No matter how x causally contributes to the production of an experience, I do not see, or otherwise perceive, x in having that experience unless x presents itself to my experience as an object.”45 Perceptual presence is irreducible to causation. On the other hand, one might think of accuracy as a natural difference between perception and hallucination that accounts for presence. But accuracy certainly won’t account for perceptual presence: illusions are inaccurate but, as I argued above, involve perceptual presence. On the other hand, a portrait can portray its subject perfectly accurately, but it hardly follows that the portrait involves the presence of its subject. Yet again, if accuracy won’t account for presence, maybe we can at least say that some kind of lawful regularity in the relation between my perceptual experience and its object is a condition for presence. On this view, when I perceive an object, my perceptual experience varies in some regular manner with changes in the relation between me and my total environment. For example, if the object itself changes, if the lighting changes, or if I change position, my perceptual experience of that object will change correlatively. This view is certainly an advancement and accommodates my claim that illusion involves perceptual presence. Even if I am having an illusion, my perceptual experience will alter in a regular fashion as the total environment changes. For example, the moon regularly looks large on the horizon and shrinks as it rises. In contrast, no such lawful regularity needs to characterize a hallucination: one subject, for example, describes hallucinating a butterfly that transforms into a sunset, which transforms into an otter and lastly, into a flower.46 However, lawful regularity alone also will not suffice for presence. A camera feed changes lawfully with regard to the total environment of the camera, but to see a camera feed is not to be present to the object portrayed by the feed. Nor is regularity even necessary for presence. Sacks describes a perceptual distortion in which he experiences his coffee as suddenly turning green and then purple.47 Here, Sacks’ experience lacks regularity, but I don’t think we would say that the coffee at any point ceases to be present to him: throughout the experience, he is conscious of perceptually experiencing the same coffee, and we would not say that the coffee that was present to him is suddenly substituted for a representation of coffee when it turns green or re-emerges when it ceases to be purple. Instead, I think Smith’s and Hopp’s development of Husserl’s notion of synthesizability can give us the condition we need. For there is a difference in the synthesizability of the two cases. My illusion of the sculpture obviously

The Problem of Perception  189 is synthesizable along some line with the sculpture’s manifold: I just need to walk around the sculpture to see it as it in fact is. On the other hand, there is no line of my cat’s manifold which is synthesizable with the hallucination I am currently having. Let me be more precise. The hallucinatory object – namely, the “that” which I perceive as my cat – has no coherent manifold. As Smith puts it, this manifold includes a possible experience in which the hallucination “explodes.” There is no question of my hallucination being synthesizable with any actually existing “that” in this case, neither my cat, nor some really existing object over there which I am perceiving as my cat. On the other hand, my hallucination is synthesizable with the manifold of the “there” in which I experience my cat. It is possible for the hallucination to “explode,” i.e. to come to an end, such that I experience the “there” as it really is. So, while my cat is not present to me, and neither is the “that” which I perceive as a cat, the “there” is present to me, even in the case of hallucination. Here we have a nice illustration of the fact that, phenomenologically, neither causality, nor accuracy, nor lawful regularity account for presence. What accounts for the presence of some object is the synthesizability of my present experience with that object’s manifold. Note that this use of synthesizability is not circular in the way I argued Hopp’s and Smith’s use is. Unlike in the case of Hopp’s use, here we can actually appeal to the manifold of veridical experiences of an object. First, if an experience is veridical, then its object is presented in that experience.48 Second, if an experience is not veridical, we can nevertheless allow that that experience’s object is presented if that experience is synthesizable with the manifold of veridical experiences of that object. So, presence (though not intention) is explained either by an experience’s being veridical or by its being synthesizable with veridical experiences. One might try to flout this line of reasoning by suggesting that a very special kind of hallucination is possible: one in which I hallucinate my cat there on the chair where he in fact is. Nothing rules out this kind of hallucination. In principle, I can have a hallucination of my cat at any location, in Dublin, or right there in my office chair where he in fact is. To deal with the phenomenological differences ordinarily present between perception and hallucination, the objector could suggest that this hallucination is specially produced by brain stimulation to perfectly mimic normal perception. Such a hallucination would surely be synthesizable with my cat’s manifold, since there is a possible development of my experience which moves from the hallucination to a genuine perception, namely, one in which the hallucination ends, and I am simply presented with my cat there where he is. But, if I am having a hallucination, presumably we wouldn’t say that my cat is present to me.

190  Perception and World This last point, however, is just where I would disagree. Note, first, that this is not a case of hallucination in the familiar philosophical sense indicated above, since the object of this perceptual experience – not only my cat and the “there” but the very “that” – exists. Further, since by hypothesis there are no phenomenological differences between the hallucination and corresponding genuine perception, the only difference lies in the causal processes that produced the two experiences: one a normal perceptual process, involving interaction between the environment, sensory organs, and certain patterns of brain activity, and the other involving an abnormal process, in terms of brain functioning or lack of normal environmental input. But I have already argued that causal differences in the provenance of a perceptual experience are irrelevant to questions about presence. If I have a perceptual experience of my cat exactly as he is, just one produced through an abnormal process, then I see no phenomenological grounds to deny that this is a case of perceptual presence. So, synthesizability gives us the best criterion for perceptual presence. Now, is the BIV’s experience synthesizable with the world’s manifold? Indeed it is. There is a line along which the present experience can be developed such as to be synthesized with the world’s manifold, namely, one in which the BIV “wakes up” and genuinely perceives the world. There is nothing that prevents such a development of experience, just as nothing in principle prevents a hallucination from suddenly ending, such that one comes to experience the “there” as it is. The only difference is that the perceptual transformation in the BIV’s case is total: the only element that remains the same throughout the transformation is the world itself. Presumably, on whatever version of the BIV scenario one wants to employ, some physical transformation will have to occur – e.g., the envatted brain will have to be embodied – to enable this perceptual change. But this is irrelevant to the question at hand, since some physical transformation (e.g., in brain states and their relation to sensory organs) is involved in any move from hallucination to perception, and we have already ruled out physical causality as a relevant factor for presence. Admittedly, the BIV’s experiences of the world are presumably (though the opposite is also conceivable) not harmonious with the set of possible veridical experiences of the world. But as Smith and Hopp point out, perfect harmoniousness is not required for synthesizability, only what Smith calls “ultimate harmoniousness”: in an ultimately harmonious system of experiences, the totality of actual and possible experiences relating to a single object that, although it may (unlike the Kantian ‘idea’) contain illusory perceptions, and hence conflict, is harmonious as a whole: i.e., is such that any

The Problem of Perception  191 illusion it contains is shown up as an illusion by reference to the totality of experiences in the system.49 And the BIV’s experience of the world is like this: the BIV’s error, though it conflicts with veridical experiences of the world, is shown up as an error by reference to the totality of experiences in the system of all possible experiences of the world. Recall that Smith argues that a hallucination cannot belong to the same manifold as a perception, since the manifold of the object of a hallucination is not harmonious, while that of a perception is. The manifold of the object of a hallucination is not harmonious because, that object not existing, there is a possible experience in which this object, so to speak, “explodes,” i.e., is revealed as not existing. The object of the BIV’s experience, however, does exist, and so has an ultimately harmonious system of experiences. Consequently, the experience of awakening is not that of “explosion” but of a total revision of what the world exhibits. The manifold of the ultimate object intended in the BIV’s experience (namely, the world) is not perfectly harmonious, but it is ultimately harmonious, and so the experience of awakening is not one of “explosion,” but rather of revision, i.e., of the BIV’s experiences being shown up as erroneous by reference to the totality of possible experiences of the world to which they belong. To be clear, I don’t think that any of the BIV’s experiences is necessarily synthesizable with the manifold of any entity within the world. Just as my hallucination of my cat is not synthesizable with my cat’s manifold (other than in exceptional cases such as where my cat exists exactly where and as I hallucinate it), neither will be the BIV’s experience of my cat, should it have had one. No “that” intended by the BIV can be a “that” intended by a perception. This is because a “that” is picked out, in part, by a spatial location, but the BIV cannot experience any perceptible space. A space exhibited by the BIV’s experience is not to the left or the right of, near to or far from, any really existing, perceptible space; in short, the former does not occupy any location within really existing space. Consequently, we cannot say that any of the inner-worldly entities perceptually intended by the BIV are present to it. However, the world is not itself a spatial entity but rather the context within which there is space, and so is not picked out by any particular set of spaces. Similarly, reference to the world does not depend on any of the world’s constituents, just as reference to a particular space does not depend on the inhabitants of that space. Thus, even though the spaces and objects intended in the BIV’s experiences do not occupy any location within the really existing world, this is no obstacle to the BIV’s experience presenting the world. The BIV’s experience is synthesizable with the world’s manifold, just as my experience of the “there” where

192  Perception and World I hallucinate my cat is synthesizable with “there’s” manifold. The structure here – in which an ultimate object is present despite a proximate object’s failure to exist – is the same, just on a global rather than on a local scale. There is a possible experience in which the hallucination or the envatted experience ends and is replaced with a veridical experience. Thus, we can say that the world is present to the BIV. A natural objection here would be to allow that some world is present to the BIV even before awakening, but to deny that is the same world present to it after awakening. It might be tempting to say that just as it is a different space we experience before and after the transformation, so the BIV experiences not the real world but a kind of quasi-world, while after its awakening, it experiences the real world. This objection faces the initial problem that the BIV will take itself to have been wrong about the world, i.e., to have perceived the world one way, when in fact it is quite otherwise. But one could simply insist that the BIV is confused about its experience. The real problem with this objection is that synthesizability is what is supposed to decide this question: synthesizability tells us what is present to us throughout a perceptual transformation. Thus, the mere fact that the BIV’s experience is synthesizable with the world’s manifold answers this question affirmatively: it is the same world that is present before and after the perceptual transformation.50 Hopp argues that if a perceptual error is radical enough to count as a hallucination, rather than an illusion, the erroneous experience will not be synthesizable with that object’s manifold. For example, he argues that if a perceptual experience presents a steel ball as a table or a sunset or a rabid dog, we have no ground for claiming it is really of the ball.51 There is certainly some sense in which this is correct about the proximate objects of perception. It would not really even make sense to say that I perceive a ball here as an enormous sunset on the horizon, since the two occupy vastly different spatial dimensions and have no properties in common: the perception of the sunset is not a perception of the ball. However, this is no reason for objecting that the BIV’s experience is not of the world. As we have seen, reference to the world does not depend on reference to any particular property, object, or space within the world. Quite to the contrary, the world is that to which any intention of properties, objects, or spaces as really existing ultimately refers. Consequently, even though no error can be more radical than the BIV’s, its experience is nonetheless of the world. In this way we can recognize the existence of hallucinations, while at the same holding onto Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental claim that being is what appears to us, i.e., that perceptual experience consists in the presence of the world to us. For even hallucination takes places against the background of the world’s presence. There is no need to resort to Disjunctivism to resolve the problem of perception, then: we need only attend to the ultimate bond

The Problem of Perception  193 between perception and its world. Put in terms of the trilemma with which I began, at the level of its ultimate object, Merleau-Ponty can affirm both that perceptual experiences involve the presence of their objects and that hallucinations are perceptual experiences. The problem is with the third claim that hallucination does not involve the presence of its object. This claim, while true at the proximate level, is false at the ultimate level. In this light we can see that only if we abstract a particular intention from its horizonality, namely, from its ultimate intention, do we face the problem that Disjunctivism aims to resolve. From this perspective, the whole Disjunctivist analysis appears abstract, since it requires us to focus on an experience as an isolated unit, rather than as bound to its object by its horizons. We do not need to remedy skepticism by resort to Disjunctivism then, since we can also respond by objecting that the skeptical problem depends on an inadequate description of experience. Conclusion Merleau-Ponty writes that we must define “being as what appears to us” (PhP, 419). This book has been an attempt to explore this fraught identification, this synthesis that we live. In Part I, I described the rich sense with which perception reveals being to us, irreducible to conceptual or propositional content or to sensation, and yet inaugurating a world of sensory contents, things, kinds, persons, and practical and moral concerns. In Part II, I have tried to provide an account of perception that preserves Merleau-Ponty’s claim that being is what appears to us. It is often remarked that I am and am not my body. More than accompanying me from place to place, my body is me. I see from out of these eyes, I hear from these ears, and I feel in these fingers; I am on this side of my eyes and beneath the discerning membrane of my skin. And yet I  also live in a world of dreams and memories where my body is only virtually present. My body, which so often rises up to meet my intentions, can also be clumsy or inept. And I do not inhabit my body univocally; I feel myself more in my eyes than my feet, perhaps. The relation between my body and I is not simple and is more an accomplishment than a fact. Between us, there is only an ambiguous identity, and the “am” in “I am my body” is troubled and laden with meaning: it unites in being two distinct dimensions. A similar complexity is at stake in the synthesis, “Being is what we perceive.” What I perceive is being, rather than sense data, representations, etc., and yet to perceive is something I accomplish with my body; I make sense of the world through my senses, and in virtue of this sense-making I perceive even these leaves rustling or a squirrel scurrying behind the tree. The synthesis could also be read in the opposite direction: p ­ erception is

194  Perception and World our opening to the world, and every other genre of being – the world of language, the universe imperceptibly small and large, and the world of ideas – has its foundation in this narrow and rich presence to being that I hold open with my body. And so while being extends well beyond what we perceive, there is a truth in the claim that for us, being is perceptible being. What I hope to have elucidated in this last chapter is this complex inalienability of being – of the world – and our perceptual intentions. There is a unity to the species of intentions we call perception, and this unity (or equally, the object of this unity) is the world. To perceive is to inhabit the world, to have the wind, for example, whip across one’s skin, or whistle in one’s ears, or pour into one’s nostrils, or rustle the leaves that draw one’s eyes. But this inhabitation is an accomplishment and unfolds from this side of my porous body. For just this reason, our perceptual inhabitation is tenuous, partial, ongoing; often on the margin of the world, perception is at times nothing more than a bid or plea for encounter, and yet when my body attunes itself to its environment, I have the unshakable conviction of having opened communication with being. Perception is this approach or this exploration, in which we by varying degrees bridge the gap between us and being; in which we, by opening with each of our senses various dimensions of meaning, allow being to speak in a language we understand, such that henceforth it speaks of itself ceaselessly, stories of what is, stories of what could be, even as we know it also tells many other stories in languages we do not understand or even hear, and undoubtedly retains others still of which it does not speak. Notes 1 Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations (New York: Knopf, 2012), 107. 2 Cited in Sacks, Hallucinations, 103. 3 Cf. Smith, Problem of Perception, Chapter 1. 4 Hume, Enquiry, 12.9. 5 We need to be careful to avoid the thought here that if I see the gray shirt as blue, there must be something that I perceive and that is blue, e.g., a blue sense datum. Instead, what I perceive is the gray shirt, even though how I perceive it is as light blue. Certainly, we must acknowledge that the shirt appears light blue to me: but this does not entail that there is something I perceive that is light blue. Perhaps we can say that light blue is a property of the appearance, but nothing about this entails that what appears to me is a light blue object; it just entails that something appears to me as a light blue object. Cf. Smith, Problem of Perception, 237. If there are non-intentional sensations, e.g., phosphenes, then these will need a different analysis. But this needn’t concern us here, since non-intentional sensations can’t count as illusions - not being about anything, they can’t be wrong about something. 6 Smith, Problem of Perception, Part II. 7 Romano, At the Heart of Reason, 320–1. 8 Husserl writes in the Logical Investigations, for example, “If I represent God to myself, or an angel, or an intelligible thing-in-itself, or a physical thing or a round square etc., I mean the transcendent object named in each case, in other

The Problem of Perception  195 words my intentional object: it makes no difference whether this object exists or is imaginary or absurd. ‘The object is merely intentional’ … means rather that the intention, the reference to an object so qualified, exists, but not that the object does” (127). Husserl clearly already thinks of intentionality as a reference that does not require the existence of its object. 9 See, for example, At the Heart of Reason, 320–2. 10 John McDowell, “The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument,” in Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, ed. Adrian Haddock and Fiona MacPherson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 11 “Back to the Theory of Appearing,” 191. 12 “The Theory of Appearing Defended.” 13 At the Heart of Reason, 231. 14 A. David Smith, “Husserl and Externalism,” Synthese 160, no. 3 (2008): 313–33. 15 Perception and Knowledge, 182. 16 Ibid., 182. 17 Ibid., 184–5. 18 Smith, “Husserl and Externalism,” 329. 19 Hopp, Perception and Knowledge, 181. 20 Smith, “Husserl and Externalism,” 329. 21 Hopp, Perception and Knowledge, 188. 22 Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021). 23 While Merleau-Ponty says the illusion is “like the image” – insofar as the body cannot “gear into it” – he certainly does not say the illusion is a kind of image (PhP, 310). 24 It is true that he claims about hallucination that “the hallucinatory thing is not like the real thing” (PhP, 355) and that “the hallucinatory phenomenon is not part of the world” (PhP, 354). Should we take him to mean that there is some actually existing object (say a mental image), quite unlike the perceived object, which does actually appear to us in hallucination? I doubt it. What he means, I take it, is that the phenomenological structure of hallucinations and perceptions are different, and we can see this in the way the objects of those perceptual experiences are presented to us. More on this shortly. 25 Sacks, Hallucinations, 25. 26 Ibid., 26. 27 The same could be said of illusion. My illusory experiences will (or can) fail to be harmonious. For example, as I walk around the apparently contiguous statue, I discover it is discontiguous, introducing a disharmony into my experiences of the statue. Or my experiences of the lines in Zöllner’s illusion will switch between seeming parallel and convergent; the moon will shift from appearing large on the horizon to quite small in the middle of the sky. 28 This, of course, entails that experiences can differ in phenomenological structure or character without differing in intentional object. Is this an acceptable outcome? I think so: certainly two experiences can refer to the same object while having quite different characters. For example, I can see a tree from the ground, or I can climb it and see it from above. These two experiences intend the same tree, even though they are quite dissimilar. 29 Cf. Hopp, Perception and Knowledge, section 6.2. 30 See Ibid., 184–5. 31 Perhaps there is a case in which I hallucinate an object right there where some other object really exists. On the technical definition of hallucination with

196  Perception and World which I began, though, this seems to count as illusion rather than hallucination. For example, I hallucinate that as my cat, when in fact what’s there is just a piece of luggage. Here there is an object that really exists, namely, that, of which I have a mistaken perceptual experience. 32 Smith responds to this problem by arguing that such vacuous circularity is avoided by appealing to the experience of identity (“Husserl and Externalism,” 326). The same issue arises here, though: we are explaining the experience of identity by appealing to the synthesizability of experiences, but experiences are synthesizable only if they are of what is experienced as the same one object. 33 Cf. Berendzen, “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Knowledge,” 274–6. 34 Cf. “Each perception, although always potentially ‘crossed out’ and pushed over to the realm of illusions, only disappears in order to leave a place for another perception that corrects it. Of course, each thing can, après coup, appear uncertain, but at least it is certain for us that there are things, that is, that there is a world. To wonder if the world is real is to fail to understand what one is saying, since the world is not a sum of things that one could always cast into doubt, but precisely the inexhaustible reservoir from which things are drawn. The perceived, taken in its entirety, along with the worldly horizon that simultaneously announces its possible disjunction and its eventual replacement by another perception, does not fully trick us. There could be no error where there is still no truth, but rather reality, and where there is still no necessity, but rather facticity” (PhP, 359). 35 See Romdenh-Romluc’s description of illusion in terms of the horizon structure and the idea of a perceptual “maximal grip.” Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, “MerleauPonty’s Account of Hallucination,” European Journal of Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2009): 82–6. 36 “Back to the Theory of Appearing,” 191. 37 Adam Pautz, “The Interdependence of Phenomenology and Intentionality,” The Monist 91, no. 2 (2008): 258. 38 Cf. Sacrini’s distinction between a global and a local skepticism. Marcus Sacrini, “Merleau-Ponty’s Responses to Skepticism: A Critical Appraisal,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21, no. 5 (2013): 713–34. Much as I argue that Merleau-Ponty secures a genuine connection with the ultimate but not the proximate object of perception, Sacrini argues that the Phenomenology of Perception secures perception from global but not local skepticism (unlike me, though, he thinks Merleau-Ponty wishes to defend against the latter sort of skepticism as well). 39 Cf. Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), Chapter 8. Noë points out, e.g., that developing a properly functioning brain takes interaction between a body and an environment; there is no one-way causation from world to brain, but rather the brain dynamically interacts with the world, e.g., when our perspective on an object changes through bodily movement, we expect a corresponding change in our perception of the environment. Taylor and Dreyfus point out that brains develop in infancy precisely through the kind of dynamic interaction described by Noë, and so the BIV hypothesis is out of step with how organic beings actually work (Dreyfus and Taylor, Retrieving Realism, 198). The problem with this objection is that whatever apparatus a BIV is hooked up to could certainly be programmed to respond appropriately to electrical activity in the brain to simulate this kind of dynamic interactivity, and so support perceptual learning. Taylor and Dreyfus also argue, for example, that certain activities must be carried out in the

The Problem of Perception  197 “interspace” of mind and world, and so cannot be reproduced by the BIV. For example, if one has a practical knowledge, in one’s hands, so to speak, about how to tie a tie but wouldn’t know how to diagram or describe these steps, Dreyfus and Taylor argue that the action can only be performed by interacting with the tie itself (Ibid., 197). I don’t see how this conclusion follows, though: it is certainly true that some knowledge occurs as a level beneath explicit intellectual awareness, but I don’t see why such knowledge couldn’t be activated by, e.g., a simulated tie. 40 Are there important phenomenological differences between the BIV’s experience and ours, as between waking and dreaming life, which might rule out its relevance for the present problem? I don’t think so, since the point after all is that our present experience could be that of a BIV. Of course, at present artificial stimulation of the brain can produce little more than isolated sensations, which obviously are phenomenologically quite different from normal perception. But there is no convincing reason to suppose that a more sophisticated apparatus couldn’t perfectly mirror normal perceptual inputs to the brain. If normal experience is produced by appropriate stimulations of a properly functioning brain, why think that a properly developed BIV scenario could not in principle provide experiences with the same phenomenological structure? See A. D. Smith (The Problem of Perception, 203–4) for responses to some other objections to the BIV. 41 As Romdenh-Romluc points out in her discussion of hallucination, MerleauPonty’s analysis of hallucination is really at cross purposes with extreme skeptical scenarios, since he is interested in analyzing what forms hallucination actually takes, rather than what forms it can possibly take.“Merleau-­Ponty’s Account of Hallucination,” 76. Even his account of the quasi-world of dreams doesn’t get purchase on the BIV, since the phenomenological differences between dreams and perception need not be paralleled by the BIV. 42 Cf., e.g., his rejection of the Constancy Hypothesis considered in Chapter 1. 43 To be clear, I very much don’t mean to deny that there is a causal process connecting world and perception, just that this will not yield our account of perceptual presence. 44 “Back to the Theory of Appearing,” 193–4. 45 Ibid., 193. 46 Sacks, Hallucination, 39. 47 Ibid., 116. 48 One might argue that there are veridical experiences the object of which is not presented, e.g., I might be watching a camera feed of a grocery store that veridically represents the store, but the store itself is obviously not present to me in this experience. But this objection is confused. If I experience the video feed not as an experience of a video but of the grocery store, then the experience is not veridical at all: I have perceptually mistaken a video feed for a grocery store. If I don’t mistake the video feed for the store, then I am having a veridical experience of a video feed – not of a store – and the video feed really is present to me – though the store is not. In any genuinely veridical experience, the object of that experience must be present. 49 Smith, “Husserl and Externalism,” 329. 50 One might also worry that this account assimilates hallucination to a species of illusion, since it treats every hallucination as the misperception of some actually present ulterior object (the “there” or the world). There is still a difference between the two, however, since the proximate object fails to exist in the case of hallucination. 51 Perception and Knowledge, 184.

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Index

Adverbialism 13, 15, 121–3, 156 affectivity 36, 53–4, 86, 89–91; emotion 46, 62, 86, 89–91, 98 affordance 77–85, 86, 94–6, 159–60 agnosia 65, 78; prosopagnosia 30–1, 49, 53 apraxia 78–82, 95 attention 22, 27, 54–6, 92, 105, 141–4, 149, 160, 168, 176 awareness (perceptual) 14, 23, 32, 71–3, 82, 121, 126–8 body 6–7, 80, 82, 101–2, 104, 139–43, 147–8, 154–6, 193 color 2, 12–19, 23, 36, 51, 75, 142, 151–7 Disjunctivism 125, 170–80, 193 Enactivism 5–6, 71, 186 gestalten 18–26, 36–8, 49, 56–62, 64, 66–9, 74, 86; Gestalt Psychology 18, 41 Gurwitsch, A. 18, 25, 41, 57–8 hallucination 106, 119, 124–5, 164–5, 168–180, 183–193 Heidegger, M. 83, 96, 111–3, 121, 160 holism 13–4, 16, 40, 47, 86, 180–1 Hopp, W. 18, 28–9, 36, 43, 139, 171– 3, 176–80, 188–90, 192

horizonality 139–40, 175–6, 181–4, 193 Husserl, E. 13, 17–8, 27, 75, 103, 105–6, 118–9, 129, 131, 161–2, 171, 181, 188, 194–5 Idealism 108, 134–6, 144–9, 151, 154, 157, 161–2 illusion 26, 43, 68–9, 106, 108–10, 152, 164–8, 172, 174, 176, 178–84, 187–92, 195–6 intentionality 12–8, 34–5, 40, 90–1, 103–6, 114, 120, 122, 129, 137, 139–40, 142, 169–70, 173–4 Intentionalism 123–8, 132–3 moral perception 71, 74–5, 82–91, 93–4, 98 perspective 101, 105, 112, 122–3, 137, 140–3, 146–7, 149–51, 159, 166–7, 196 Racialization (in perception) 86–9, 97–8 Realism 15, 40, 134–44, 149–54, 157–9, 161, 166–8; about race 97; Indirect Realism 120–1 Representationalism 118–121, 123–8, 135, 144–5, 160 Romano, C. 158, 160, 169–71, 173–4

210 Index sensation 12–26, 29–33, 36–7, 39–43, 45–8, 51–3, 129, 143, 145, 194, 197 sense (perceptual) 6, 11, 19, 33–8, 44, 45–6, 51, 61–2, 64, 71, 88, 91, 139, 152, 178, 182 Sense Data Theories 119–21, 131

Smith, A.D. 40, 43, 132–3, 168, 171–3, 176–7, 186, 188–91, 196–7 synthesis 27, 135–6, 145–9, 159, 161–2; synthesizability 172, 179, 185–93 Theory of Appearances 128, 171