Relationalism and unconscious perception

Philosophical Quarterly, 2023

I argue that the phenomenal properties of conscious visual experiences are properties of the mindindependent objects to which the subject is perceptually related, mediated by the subject's practical understanding of their sensorimotor relation to those properties. This position conjoins two existing strategies for explaining the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences: accounts appealing to perceivers' limited, non-inferential access to the details of their sensory relation to the environment, and the relationalist conception of phenomenal properties. Bringing these two positions together by emphasizing their sensorimotor common ground allows each one to respond to damaging objections using the resources of the other. The resulting 'sensorimotor relationalism' about conscious vision provides a promising schema for explaining phenomenal properties of perceptual states, replacing 'Hard' questions with tractable ones about the perceptual relation and its sensorimotor underpinnings.

In this chapter I examine past and recent theories of unconscious inference. Most theorists have ascribed inferences to perception literally, not analogically, and I focus on the literal approach. I examine three problems faced by such theories if their commitment to unconscious inferences is taken seriously. Two problems concern the cognitive resources that must be available to the visual system (or a more central system) to support the inferences in question. The third problem focuses on how the conclusions of inferences are supposed to explain the phenomenal aspects of visual experience, the looks of things. Finally, in comparing past and recent responses to these problems, I provide an assessment of the current prospects for inferential theories. (A revised version of this paper is reprinted in Hatfield 2009, Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology, Clarendon Press, 124-152.)

Journal of Consciousness Studies , 2019

While there seems to be much evidence that perceptual states can occur without being conscious, some theorists recently express skepticism about unconscious perception. We explore here two kinds of such skepticism: Megan Peters and Hakwan Lau's experimental work regarding the well-known problem of the criterion-which seems to show that many purported instances of unconscious perception go unreported but are weakly conscious-and Ian Phillips' theoretical consideration, which he calls the 'problem of attribution'-the worry that many purported examples of unconscious perception are not perceptual, but rather merely informational and subpersonal. We argue that these concerns do not undermine the evidence for unconscious perception and that this skeptical approach results in a dilemma for the skeptic, who must either deny that there is unconscious mentality generally or explain why perceptual states are unique in the mind such that they cannot occur unconsciously. Both options, we argue, are problematic.

The Philosophy of Perception and Observation. Contributions of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium August 6-12, 2017 Kirchberg am Wechsel, 2017

It has been objected recently that naïve realism is inconsistent with an empirically well-supported hypothesis that unconscious perception is possible. Because epistemological disjunctivism is plausible only in conjunction with naïve realism (for a reason I provide), the objection reaches it too. In response, I show that the unconscious perception hypothesis can be changed from a problem into an advantage of epistemological disjunctivism. I do this by suggesting that: (i) naïve realism is consistent with the hypothesis; (ii) the contrast between epistemological disjunctivism and epistemic externalism explains the difference in epistemic import between conscious and unconscious perception.

Kantian Review, 2016

There is a tension at the heart of Lucy Allais' new account of Kant's transcendental idealism. The problem arises from her use of two incompatible theories in contemporary philosophy – relationalism about perception, or naïve realism, and relationalism about colour, or more generally relationalism about any such perceptual property. The problem is that the former requires a more robust form of realism about the properties of the objects of perception than can be accommodated in the partially idealistic framework of the latter. On Allais' interpretation, Kant's notorious attempt to balance realism and idealism remains unstable.

Mind & Language

Non-relational views of perceptual experience are currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity, largely due to their ability to account for illusions and hallucinations without relying on nonphysical entities. Contemporary non-relational views are modelled on adverbialism. They therefore face an objection originally made by Frank Jackson which is almost universally regarded as constituting a refutation of the view. I argue that Jackson's well-known 'many-property problem', and the existing responses to it, have focused too closely on the controversial terminology adverbialists introduced to reflect the underlying nature of perceptual experience. Although Jackson's aim was to refute the adverbialist's metaphysical analysis of perceptual experience, he does this indirectly, by targeting his objection directly onto the terminology. I argue that we can also direct Jackson's many-property problem explicitly onto the adverbialist's metaphysics, generating a new challenge. The responses contemporary adverbialists and nonrelationalists have made to the original objection do not yield successful responses to this challenge. We need a new non-relational account. I sketch an outline of a new theory, and motivate the view by explaining how it can respond successfully to this additional challenge.

2017

Introduction to a forthcoming special issue of Topoi focusing upon the debate between relational and representational views of perception, and in particular upon emerging non-representational views of experience. Being historically more recent and less widely held, relational views have all too often been poorly understood by their detractors, many of whom have taken such views to be implausible, incompatible with perceptual science, or simply inscrutable. Indeed, for those steeped in the representationalist tradition, it can be difficult to understand why one might want to deny what may seem an obvious truth about perceptual experiences: that they represent how things in the world are. Against this tendency, we aim to shed further light upon the nature, motivations for, and theoretical commitments of non-representational views of perception in a way that facilitates a more nuanced debate (Brewer, Travis, Martin, this volume). Other contributions explore the phenomenal character of experience and its explanatory role (Brogaard, Dokic & Martin, Eilan), and reappraise existing arguments both for (Brogaard) and against (O’Sullivan, Judge, Ivanov) relational views. We hope that this goes some way towards demonstrating that, far from being an implausible fringe view, relational theories constitute a significant and genuine attempt to overcome some central problems in the philosophy of perception and, as such, are worthy of further consideration—not least by their opponents. This article available via Open Access under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence.

In this paper, I raise a new problem for relationalism, the view, roughly, that experience is a relation between subjects and mind-independent items from a point of view. Drawing on my reconstruction of the view developed by Bill Fish, I show that his view is in principle ill-poised to accommodate certain varieties of doxastic variation: specifically, certain effects beliefs may have on the phenomenal character of experience. I briefly show that a similar problem besets Bill Brewer’s position and suggest that the problem in fact generalizes – every relationalist position faces, but cannot solve it. This is due to the fact that the effects I highlight undermine what relationalists think is experience’s central function: again, to relate us to mind-independent objects. Near the end, I sketch an alternative view which succeeds in accommodating all kinds of doxastic variability, leaves the central function of experience unimpaired, but eschews the conception of that function that relationalists provide.

2009

The aim of this dissertation is to elaborate and assess the Relational View of perceptual experience, and to compare it to its main rival, the Representational View. Roughly stated, the core claim of the Relational View is that veridical perceptual experience is basically a matter of perceiving material entities in one's environment. By contrast, the Representational View holds that all kinds of perceptual experience consist in a propositional attitude-ie, in representing a proposition to the effect that one's environment is a certain way.

Philosophical Studies

I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the second but not the first desideratum. I argue that to satisfy both desiderata perceptual experience is best conceived of as fundamentally both relational and representational. I develop a view of perceptual experience that synthesizes the virtues of relationalism and representationalism, by arguing that perceptual content is constituted by potentially gappy de re modes of presentation.