Perceptual experience, that paradigm of subjectivity, constitutes our most immediate and fundamental access to the objective world. At least, this would seem to be so if commonsense realism is correct — if perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like. Commonsense realism raises many questions. First, can we be more precise about its commitments? Does it entail any particular conception of the nature of (...) perceptual experience and its relation to perceived objects, or any particular view of the way perception yields knowledge? Second, what explains the apparent intuitive appeal of commonsense realism? Should we think of it as a kind of folk theory held by most human adults or is there a sense in which we are pre-theoretically committed to it — in virtue of the experience we enjoy or in virtue of the concepts we use or in virtue of the explanations we give? Third, is commonsense realism defensible, in the face of formidable challenges from epistemology, metaphysics and cognitive science? The project of the present volume is to advance our understanding of these issues and thus to shed light on the commitments and credentials of commonsense realism. As you may have guessed from the title, the volume also aims to highlight the key role the concept of causation plays in these debates. Central issues to be addressed include the status and nature of causal requirements on perception, the causal role of perceptual experience, and the relation between objective perception and causal thinking — issues that, as many chapters in the volume bring out, are inseparable from concerns with the very nature of causation. (shrink)

By giving the proper emphasis to both radical skepticism and naturalism as two independent standpoints in Hume, I wish to propose a more satisfactory account of some of the more puzzling Humean claims on causation. I place these claims alternatively in either the philosophical standpoint of the radical skeptic or in the standpoint of everyday and scientific beliefs. I characterize Hume’s radical skeptical standpoint in relation to Hume’s perceptual model of the traditional theory of ideas, and I argue (...) that Hume‘s radical skeptical argument concerning our causal inferences is inextricably linked to his skeptical argument concerning our idea of a necessary connection between cause and effect. I discuss Hume’s naturalistic account of the origin of our idea of necessity and offer a new reading of Hume’s two “definitions” of cause. I argue along the way against central aspects of two opposing styles of interpretation---Norman Kemp Smith’s and Annette Baier’s, on the one hand, and Robert Fogelin’s, on the other---that in my view do not appreciate the mutual autonomy of radical skepticism and naturalism in Hume. (shrink)

Whether perceptual experience represents high-level properties like causation and natural-kind in virtue of its phenomenology is an open question in philosophy of mind. While the question of high-level properties has sparked disagreement, there is widespread agreement that the sensory phenomenology of perceptual experience presents us with low-level properties like shape and color. This paper argues that the relationship between the sensory character of experience and the low-level properties represented therein is more complex than most assume. Careful consideration (...) of mundane examples, like looking at a coin from an oblique angle, show that the low-level properties represented in experience do not necessarily figure in the sensory character of the experience. Furthermore, the sensible properties invoked when characterizing the sensory character of a perceptual experience are not necessarily included in the sensible properties represented in a perceptual experience. On this basis it is argued that perceptual experience has a disunified metaphysics, consisting in distinct sensory and cognitive components. The account is developed in relation to existing unified and disunified accounts, and discussed in terms of its implications for cognitive penetration, the reliability of introspection, the transparency of experience, and cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

The thesis that we can visually perceive causal relations is distinct from the thesis that visual experiences can represent causal relations. I defend the latter thesis about visual experience, and argue that although they are suggestive, the data provided by Albert Michotte's experiments on perceptual causality do not establish this thesis. Turning to the perception of causality, I defend the claim that we can perceive causation against the objection that its arcane features are unlikely to be represented in (...) experience. (shrink)

Defending a form of naïve realism about visual experiences is quite popular these days. Those naïve realists who I will be concerned with in this paper make a central claim about the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences. They argue that how it is with the perceiver subjectively when she sees worldly objects is literally determined by those objects. This way of thinking leads them to endorse a form of disjunctivism, according to which the fundamental psychological nature of seeings and (...) hallucinations is distinct. I will oppose their central claim by defending a version of the so-called ‘causal argument’, which dwells on ideas about causation and explanation in perception. The aim of this discussion is to highlight that the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences cannot be explained in naïve realist terms. Instead, it will be argued that one needs to appeal to a mental factor which does not involve worldly objects as constituents, and which is common to seeings and hallucinations. (shrink)

By giving the proper emphasis to both radical skepticism and naturalism as two independent standpoints in Hume, I wish to propose a more satisfactory account of some of the more puzzling Humean claims on causation. I place these claims alternatively in either the philosophical standpoint of the radical skeptic or in the standpoint of everyday and scientific beliefs. I characterize Hume’s radical skeptical standpoint in relation to Hume’s perceptual model of the traditional theory of ideas, and I argue (...) that Hume‘s radical skeptical argument concerning our causal inferences is inextricably linked to his skeptical argument concerning our idea of a necessary connection between cause and effect. I discuss Hume’s naturalistic account of the origin of our idea of necessity and offer a new reading of Hume’s two “definitions” of cause. I argue along the way against central aspects of two opposing styles of interpretation---Norman Kemp Smith’s and Annette Baier’s, on the one hand, and Robert Fogelin’s, on the other---that in my view do not appreciate the mutual autonomy of radical skepticism and naturalism in Hume. (shrink)

Leading philosophers & psychologists offer an assessment of the commonsense view that perceptual experience is an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects. They examine the nature of perception, its role in the acquisition of knowledge, the role of causation in perception, & how perceptual understanding develops in humans.

This is a complex work by the author of The Moral Nature of Man. First, it is an inventory of the perceptual world using as a tool an original distinction between noticing and observing. This leads to the establishment of a continuity between the conscious and the subconscious, and to the discernment of various meaning-giving levels of attention. Secondly, it is a review of opinion on sensation and perception in recent Anglo-American thought. Particular attention is given to the ideas (...) of Price, Ayer, and Austin. Thirdly, and most importantly, it contains a full theory of reality based on: 1) the resistance or centered action of dynamic systems; 2) the purposive action that meets this resistance; and 3) the emergence of qualia from the encounter of 1 and 2. The method is that of description of ordinary language conceptions of sensation and sensa, "things," interaction and causation, and symbol. From this analysis Garnett obtains some original conclusions about sense qualia and brain processes, body and mind, and, in general, about the physical and mental elements of the universe.—A. M. (shrink)

I present an overview of emotion theories, organised around the question of emotion causation. I argue that theories of emotion causation should ideally address the problems of elicitation, intensity, and differentiation. Each of these problems can be divided into a subquestion that asks about the relation between stimuli and emotions (i.e., the functional level of process description, cf. Marr, 1982) and a subquestion that asks about the mechanism and representations that intervene (i.e., the algorithmic level of process description). (...) The overview reveals that theories of emotion causation sometimes differ with regard to the kind of process that they hold responsible for emotion causation. More precisely, they hold different assumptions regarding the conditions under which the process is supposed to operate (optimal versus suboptimal), the format of the representations involved (propositional versus perceptual), and the object or input of the central process (stimulus versus responses/experience). Further, the overview reveals that theories of emotion causation sometimes differ with regard to the level of process description that they focus on. Finally, the overview brings to light several similarities among the theories discussed. (shrink)

When outer objects are seen, it is through mediation by the epistemologically more immediate items, ‘the visual given’ and ‘the visual mediators’. There is reason for thinking that seeing is the result of a two‐stage causal transaction, the first is the psycho‐physical causation of a sensuous array in body‐relative physical space, the second the psycho‐psycho causing by the latter of a mental process that subjects that array to organizing/interpreting in the forming of the visual experience. ‘The given’ names the (...) psychological product of the first transaction: it is the hypothesized middle term in a hypothesized causal triple. Then since the order/meaning in the content of visual experience is wholly determined by the susceptibility of the perceiving mind, ‘The given’ must single out the sensuous array under its minimum description. Meanwhile ‘the visual mediators’ names a set of perceptual go‐betweens, which are proxy for the object, such as light/surface/colour. Their perception is at once that through which object‐perception occurs, and the form taken by it. Finally, it is proposed that the formation of the internal object of the visual experience takes the following form: the mind constitutes out of the ‘given’ a two‐dimensionally ordered internal object, which in turn explanatorily precedes and causes the acquisition of the more ambitious internal visual objects. (shrink)

In order to perceive something, one must have a sense experience which it causes and which has a content that fits it appropriately. But veridical hallucinations show that more is required, viz., that the experience must also be caused by the object of perception in the right sort of way. The best account of what this amounts to is that the object causes the experience by means of a “reliable mechanism,” i.e., a causal mechanism which is generally apt to connect (...) objects to experiences with contents that fit those objects. The paper advances and defends a careful account of this position and its application to the distinction between state of affairs perception, event perception and thing perception. (shrink)

Sense experience, naïvely conceived, is a way of knowing perceptible properties: the colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures in our perceptual environment. So conceived, ordinary experience presents the perceiver with the essential nature of a property like Sky Blue or Middle C, such that how the property appears in experience is identical to how it essentially is. In antiquity, as today, it was controversial whether sense experience could meet the conditions for knowledge implicit in this naïve conception. Aristotle was (...) a partisan in this debate, but his position is poorly understood. This dissertation examines how Aristotle’s perceptual psychology responds to ancient challenges to the naïve conception, and so articulates his defense of perceptual knowledge. -/- Aristotle’s defense relies on an ontology of “perceptual qualities"—a core class of perceptible properties—according to which those qualities, despite having a perceiver-independent essence rooted in the physics of causation and affection, nevertheless can be present in experience as they essentially are. Chapter 1 defends this realist and objectivist reading against competing interpretations, which overlook a crucial distinction between perceptual qualities and perceptual objects. Chapter 2 presents Aristotle’s ontology as a physicalism that uncharacteristically allows for perceptual qualities to appear in experience as they essentially are. -/- This ontology informs Aristotle’s account of the psychological conditions under which perceivers actually are presented with the essence of perceptual qualities. The locus of this account is an obscure passage where Aristotle purports to show that the senses “discriminate” perceptual qualities because the senses are “mean states” (An. 2.11, 424a5–7). Chapter 3 develops a comprehensive interpretation of the sensory mean state, which Chapter 4 uses to elucidate Aristotle’s argument for sensory discrimination. Sensory discrimination turns out to be a process in which the essence of a perceptual quality comes to be present in the affection it produces in a perceiver. For Aristotle, this shows that sense perception meets a condition for knowledge that his predecessors, including Plato, thought it could not meet. For in his view, but not in theirs, sense experience shares in both the truth and the essence of the qualities it perceives. (shrink)

This paper sets out a novel response to the ‘screening off problem’ for naïve realism. The aim is to resist the claim (which many naïve realists accept) that the kind of experience involved in hallucinating also occurs during perception, by arguing that there are causal constraints that must be met if an hallucinatory experience is to occur that are never met in perceptual cases. Notably, given this response, it turns out that, contra current orthodoxy, naïve realists need not adopt (...) any particular view about the psychological nature of hallucinatory experience to handle the screening off problem. Consequently, room opens up for naïve realists to endorse whatever theory of hallucinatory experience seems to best capture the distinctive nature of such episodes. (shrink)

How are causal judgements such as 'The ice on the road caused the traffic accident' connected with counterfactual judgements such as 'If there had not been any ice on the road, the traffic accident would not have happened'? This volume throws new light on this question by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches to causation and counterfactuals. Traditionally, philosophers have primarily been interested in connections between causal and counterfactual claims on the level of meaning or truth-conditions. (...) More recently, however, they have also increasingly turned their attention to psychological connections between causal and counterfactual understanding or reasoning. At the same time, there has been a surge in interest in empirical work on causal and counterfactual cognition amongst developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists--much of it inspired by work in philosophy. In this volume, twelve original contributions from leading philosophers and psychologists explore in detail what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify the issues at stake in empirical work on the cognitive underpinnings of, and relationships between, causal and counterfactual thought. (shrink)

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended by appeal (...) to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

This is a complex work by the author of The Moral Nature of Man. First, it is an inventory of the perceptual world using as a tool an original distinction between noticing and observing. This leads to the establishment of a continuity between the conscious and the subconscious, and to the discernment of various meaning-giving levels of attention. Secondly, it is a review of opinion on sensation and perception in recent Anglo-American thought. Particular attention is given to the ideas (...) of Price, Ayer, and Austin. Thirdly, and most importantly, it contains a full theory of reality based on: 1) the resistance or centered action of dynamic systems; 2) the purposive action that meets this resistance; and 3) the emergence of qualia from the encounter of 1 and 2. The method is that of description of ordinary language conceptions of sensation and sensa, "things," interaction and causation, and symbol. From this analysis Garnett obtains some original conclusions about sense qualia and brain processes, body and mind, and, in general, about the physical and mental elements of the universe.—A. M. (shrink)

In several recent essays, Sydney Shoemaker argues that introspective knowledge lacks certain central features which parallel the conditions satisfied by ordinary cases of sense perception. In one influential paper, he discusses and criticizes the “broad perceptual” model of the nature of introspective knowledge of mental states, the view which claims that our introspective awareness of internal facts is analogous to our awareness of facts about the external world. This model may be characterized by its conformance to two conditions of (...) ordinary perceptual awareness which Shoemaker dubs the causation condition and the independence condition. Shoemaker attacks the broad perceptual model by arguing that certain mental facts are “self-intimating”, with the implication being that introspective awareness of mental states does not satisfy the independence condition, and hence its character is not adequately captured by the broad perceptual model. In what follows, I will discuss the main arguments of Shoemaker’s essay. I will argue that a broad perceptual model of introspection can successfully circumvent the central problems he raises; and along the way I will develop some criticisms regarding certain aspects of Shoemaker’s positive proposal.U nekolicini recentnih tekstova, Sydney Shoemaker tvrdi da introspektivnom znanju nedostaju određene ključne centralne značajke koje odgovaraju uvjetima zadovoljenima u običnim slučajevima osjetilne percepcije. U jednom utjecajnom radu on razmatra i kritizira »široki perceptualni « model prirode introspektivnog znanja mentalnih stanja, stajalište koje tvrdi da je naša introspektivna svijest unutrašnjih činjenica analogna našoj svijesti o činjenicama izvanjskoga svijeta. Ovaj model može biti okarakteriziran njegovom sukladnošću dvama uvjetima obične perceptivne svijesti koje Shoemaker naziva uvjet kauzacije i uvjet neovisnosti. Shoemaker napada široki perceptualni model tvrdeći da su određene mentalne činjenice »samozadane«, implicirajući da introspektivna svijest o mentalnim stanjima ne zadovoljava uvjet neovisnosti, te stoga njen karakter nije adekvatno obuhvaćen širokim perceptualnim modelom. U onome što slijedi razmotrit ću glavne argumente Shoemakerovoga rada. Tvrdim da široki perceptualni model introspekcije može uspješno zaobići centralne problem koje on ističe; i usput ću razviti neke kritike vezane uz određene aspekte Shoemakerovog pozitivnog prijedloga.Dans plusieurs essais récents, Sydney Shoemaker affirme que la connaissance introspective est dépourvue de certaines caractéristiques centrales correspondant aux conditions qui, elles, sont remplies dans les cas ordinaires de perception sensorielle. Dans un article influent, il examine et critique le modèle « perceptuel large » de la nature de la connaissance introspective des états mentaux, une position qui affirme que notre conscience introspective des faits internes est analogue à notre conscience des faits du monde externe. Ce modèle peut se définir par sa conformité à deux conditions de la conscience perceptuelle ordinaire que Shoemaker appelle condition de causation et condition d’indépendance. Shoemaker attaque d’abord le modèle perceptuel large en affirmant que certains faits mentaux se « laissent entendre d’eux-mêmes », impliquant que la conscience introspective des états mentaux ne remplit pas la condition d’indépendance et que, par conséquent, son caractère n’est pas saisi de manière adéquate par le modèle perceptuel large. Dans ce qui suit, j’examinerai les principaux arguments de l’essai de Shoemaker. J’affirmerai qu’un modèle perceptuel large de l’introspection peut contourner avec réussite les problèmes centraux qu’il soulève ; ce faisant, je développerai quelques critiques à l’égard de certains aspects de la proposition positive de Shoemaker.In ein paar rezenten Essays postuliert Sydney Shoemaker, das introspektive Wissen ermangele gewisser zentraler Spezifika, die den in herkömmlichen Fällen der Sinneswahrnehmung erfüllten Umständen gleichkommen. In einem wirkungsreichen Paper behandelt und kritisiert er das „breite perzeptive“ Modell der Natur des introspektiven Wissens von Mentalzuständen, eine Betrachtungsweise, die besagt, unser introspektives Bewusstsein der internen Tatsachen sei übereinstimmend mit unserem Bewusstsein der Tatsachen über die Außenwelt. Dieses Modell lässt sich aufgrund seiner Deckungsgleichheit mit zwei Voraussetzungen des ordinären perzeptiven Bewusstseins illustrieren, die Shoemaker Bedingung der Kausalität bzw. Bedingung der Unabhängigkeit nennt. Shoemaker attackiert das breite perzeptive Modell, indem er bekräftigt, bestimmte mentale Fakten seien „selbstimplizierend“; zudem befriedige das introspektive Bewusstsein der Mentalzustände nicht die Bedingung der Unabhängigkeit, weswegen dessen Charakterzug inadäquat vom breiten perzeptiven Modell umfasst werde. Im Folgenden gehe ich die Hauptargumente von Shoemakers Essay durch. Ich stelle die Behauptung auf, das breite perzeptive Modell der Introspektion könne die von ihm aufgeworfenen Kernprobleme erfolgreich umgehen. Nebenher erarbeite ich einige Kritik in puncto gewisser Aspekte von Shoemakers positivem Vorschlag. (shrink)

Direct Realism as a theory of perception has traditionally been thought to collapse on the existence of hallucinations. The cause of that collapse is what is familiar to philosophers as the Argument from Illusion. And what sustains that argument is the equally familiar No-Intrinsic-Difference Claim. The argument and the claim conspire to undermine Direct Realism as follows. We are first given cases in which we are acquainted with perceptual states of affairs that can be neither material bodies nor parts (...) of such bodies. We are told that what we see in such cases is phenomenally indistinguishable from what we see in cases of veridical perception: There is, so the argument goes, no characteristic of either kind of state of affairs available to inspection which enables us to distinguish one from the other. And since there is no phenomenal difference between them, there is also no intrinsic difference; hence, we are never directly aware of material bodies or their parts in perception—from which it is generally inferred that Direct Realism is false. (shrink)

In the succession of states of consciousness that constitute James’s stream of consciousness, there occur, among others, states of consciousness that are themselves, or that include, perceptual mental acts. It is assumed some of the latter states of consciousness are purely perceptual, lacking both imaginal and signitive contents. According to Husserl, purely perceptual acts present to consciousness, uniquely, their environmental objects in themselves, in person. They do not present, as imaginal mental acts do, an image or other (...) representation of their object. Husserl’s theory resembles Gibson’s with respect to perception’s being direct. Both theorists hold perceptual awareness of the environment is not a "founded" act; its proximate causation does not involve any other mental act. Both theorists contend that perceptual acts keep the perceiver directly in touch with the surrounding environment. The present article considers Husserl’s account of this directness. Although this account has problems, and is largely phenomenological description, it may help psychologists to find their way to an adequate account of the objects of perceptual consciousness — perhaps if it is integrated with Gibson’s perception theory, as I will attempt in a sequel to which this article is introductory. Husserl seeks to provide the phenomenological side of the story, Gibson the stimulus-informational side. (shrink)

In the present paper, I shall argue that disjunctively construed naïve realism about the nature of perceptual experiences succumbs to the empirically inspired causal argument. The causal argument highlights as a first step that local action necessitates the presence of a type-identical common kind of mental state shared by all perceptual experiences. In a second step, it sets out that the property of being a veridical perception cannot be a mental property. It results that the mental nature of (...) perceptions must be exhausted by the occurrence of inner sensory experiences that narrowly supervene on the perceiver. That is, empirical objects fail directly to determine the perceptual consciousness of the perceiver. The upshot is that not only naïve realism, but also certain further forms of direct realism have to be abandoned. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the old empiricist claim that to think about unobservable physical properties a subject must be able to think perception-based thoughts about observable properties. The central argument builds upon foundations laid down by G. E. M. Anscombe and P. F. Strawson. It bridges the gap separating these foundations and the target claim by exploiting a neglected connection between thought about properties and our grasp of causation. This way of bridging the gap promises to introduce (...) substantive constraints on right accounts of perception and perception-based thought. (shrink)

Leading philosophers & psychologists offer an assessment of the commonsense view that perceptual experience is an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects. They examine the nature of perception, its role in the acquisition of knowledge, the role of causation in perception, & how perceptual understanding develops in humans.

Leibniz defends concurrentism, the view that both God and created substances are causally responsible for changes in the states of created substances. Interpretive problems, however, arise in determining just what causal role each plays. Some recent work has been revisionist, greatly downplaying the causal role played by created substances—arguing instead that according to Leibniz only God has productive causal power. Though bearing some causal responsibility for changes in their perceptual states, created substances are not efficient causes of such changes. (...) This paper argues against such revisionism; not only was Leibniz a consistent advocate of concurrentism (at least in his “mature” years), but also his account of concurrentism involves both God and created substances as efficient causes of the changes in the states of created substances. (shrink)

지각 경험의 내용이 전적으로 개념적 내용으로만 구성되지 않음을 주장하는 비개념주의의 이론 중 하나는 동물과 같은 비인간적 존재들의 지각 경험을 근거로 지각적 표상 내용의 비개념적 측면이 있음을 강조하는 것이다. 비개념주의자 피콕과 헐리에 따르면, 동물과 같은 존재들은 우리 인간과 마찬가지로 지각 경험을하는 것이 가능하고, 우리와 동일한 표상적 내용을 갖는다. 하지만 이들은 우리가 갖는 개념 혹은 개념적 능력을 소유하고 있지않기 때문에 이들의 지각적 표상의 내용은 비개념적 내용에 해당된다. 만일 이들의 주장이 옳다면, 비인간적 존재들의 지각 경험과 그러한 경험을 구성하는 내용은 특정한 방식으로 증명될 수 (...) 있고, 지각 경험의 표상적 내용은 지각의 주체가 소유한 개념 혹은개념적 능력으로 부터 독립되어 구성된다는 것 또한 증명될 수 있다. 본 논문은 이러한 접근 방식이 갖는 두 가지 문제를 지적한다. 첫째, 비인간적 존재들의 내적 경험을 ‘지각의 가능조건(an enabling condition of perception)’만으로 판단 할 수 없다는 것이고 둘째는, 지각 주체와 대상사이의 ‘지향적 인과관계(intentional causation)’의 성립을 명확히 밝힐 수 없다는 점이다. 이로부터 본 논문은 지각 경험의 내용의 개념성과 비개념성을판단하는 데 있어 동물의 지각적 표상의 가능성을 전제로 논의하는 것은 ‘마치 그럴듯한 귀속(as-if attribution)’에 기반한 논증임을 주장할 것이다. (shrink)

Leibniz defends concurrentism, the view that both God and created substances are causally responsible for changes in the states of created substances. Interpretive problems, however, arise in determining just what causal role each plays. Some recent work has been revisionist, greatly downplaying the causal role played by created substances—arguing instead that according to Leibniz only God has productive causal power. Though bearing some causal responsibility for changes in their perceptual states, created substances are not efficient causes of such changes. (...) This paper argues against such revisionism; not only was Leibniz a consistent advocate of concurrentism (at least in his “mature” years), but also his account of concurrentism involves both God and created substances asefficient causes of the changes in the states of created substances. (shrink)

As you scroll through this review, you move your hand; this causes the mouse to move; in turn this causes, via a series of intermediary events, changes on your screen. A bit more reflection shows that this case is entirely mundane: causal relations are a ubiquitous feature of the physical world. Causal relations are also, according to many philosophers, at the center of phenomena like knowledge, perception, linguistic meaning, mental content, belief, free action, and right action. In fact, one is (...) hard put to think of an important philosophical notion that has not received a causal analysis, especially in recent analytic philosophy. Consider a few from the theory of knowledge. According to the causal theory of knowledge, knowledge is true belief caused by what makes the belief true. Or, according to a competing view, knowledge is true belief caused by a reliable belief forming process, where a reliable process is one that causes a high ratio of true to false beliefs. According to the causal theory of perception, seeing that the cup is on the table consists in being in a perceptual state that is appropriately caused by the cup and the table. Causation, it seems, is absolutely central. We will need to understand causation itself if we are to understand either causal theories in philosophy or the nature of the surrounding world. (shrink)

The question of what we immediately perceive from the first-person point of view has been an issue of philosophizing since the beginning of Western philosophy. However, many philosophers have not considered all theoretical and practical consequences concerning identity and causation in perceptual experience between a perceiver and the external world. Despite their meritorious studies, philosophers have failed to completely understand how the causal series of events affects what we immediately experience. Using facts relating to perceivers, logical reasoning, introspection, (...) and philosophical theories, the aim of this research is to show that objects of sense have been contradictorily and confusedly associated with several objects in philosophy of perception. The research problem is that of whether the entity external to a perceiver is identical to the immediate object of perceptual experience. The research starts from the basic beliefs that things appear in experience and that there is causality in perceptual experience. After presenting philosophical theories of perception, the concept ‘sense-datum’, a characterization of ‘perception’, and basic arguments for perceiving the inner private sense-datum, the study examines Bertrand Russell’s and G. E Moore’s arguments for a claim that we always perceive mind-internal sense-data. This claim is problematic if ‘sense-datum’ is considered as being under the category of substance. Nonetheless, evidence for a claim in direct realism and eliminative materialism that the immediate object of perception is an external entity leads to circularity and identity problems. Finally, by means of a demonstration based on understanding and facts in perceivers and perceptual phenomena, the research concludes that the external entity is not identical to the immediate object of perceptual experience. Perceptual experience does not directly reach the external world, and the objects of sense are not independent of the perceiver. (shrink)

The question of what we immediately perceive from the first-person point of view has been an issue of philosophizing since the beginning of Western philosophy. However, many philosophers have not considered all theoretical and practical consequences concerning identity and causation in perceptual experience between a perceiver and the external world. Despite their meritorious studies, philosophers have failed to completely understand how the causal series of events affects what we immediately experience. Using facts relating to perceivers, logical reasoning, introspection, (...) and philosophical theories, the aim of this research is to show that objects of sense have been contradictorily and confusedly associated with several objects in philosophy of perception. The research problem is that of whether the entity external to a perceiver is identical to the immediate object of perceptual experience. The research starts from the basic beliefs that things appear in experience and that there is causality in perceptual experience. After presenting philosophical theories of perception, the concept ‘sense-datum’, a characterization of ‘perception’, and basic arguments for perceiving the inner private sense-datum, the study examines Bertrand Russell’s and G. E Moore’s arguments for a claim that we always perceive mind-internal sense-data. This claim is problematic if ‘sense-datum’ is considered as being under the category of substance. Nonetheless, evidence for a claim in direct realism and eliminative materialism that the immediate object of perception is an external entity leads to circularity and identity problems. Finally, by means of a demonstration based on understanding and facts in perceivers and perceptual phenomena, the research concludes that the external entity is not identical to the immediate object of perceptual experience. Perceptual experience does not directly reach the external world, and the objects of sense are not independent of the perceiver. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a discussion of the significance of studies of aspects of tool use in understanding causal cognition. It argues that tool use studies reveal the most basic type or causal understanding being put to use, in a way that studies that focus on learning statistical relationships between cause and effect or studies of perceptual causation do not. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Singularists about causation often claim that we can have experiences as of causation. This paper argues that regularity theorists need not deny that claim; hence the possibility of causal experience is no objection to regularity theories of causation. The fact that, according to a regularity theorist, causal experience requires background theory does not provide grounds for denying that it is genuine experience. The regularity theorist need not even deny that non-inferential perceptual knowledge of causation is (...) possible, despite the fact that such knowledge would sometimes allow us to make inferences about what happens in far-off places and times. (shrink)

In this paper, I will ask whether naïve realists have the conceptual resources for meeting the challenge stemming from the causal argument. As I interpret it, naïve realism is committed to disjunctivism. Therefore, I first set out in detail how one has to formulate the causal argument against the background of disjunctivism. This discussion is above all supposed to work out the key assumptions at stake in the causal argument. I will then go on to sketch out several possible rejoinders (...) on behalf of naïve realism. It will be shown that they all fail to provide a satisfying account of how causation and perceptual consciousness fit together. Accordingly, the upshot will be that the causal argument provides good reason to abandon disjunctivism and, instead, to promote a common factor view of perception. (shrink)

In the “Second Analogy,” Kant argues that, unless mental contents involve the concept of causation, they cannot represent an objective temporal sequence. According to Kant, deploying the concept of causation renders a certain temporal ordering of representations necessary, thus enabling objective representational purport. One exegetical question that remains controversial is this: how, and in what sense, does deploying the concept of cause render a certain ordering of representations necessary? I argue that this necessitation is a matter of epistemic (...) normativity: with certain causal presuppositions in place, the individual is obliged to make a judgment with certain temporal contents, on pain of irrationality. To make this normatively obligatory judgment, the subject must place her perceptual representations in a certain order. This interpretation fits Kant's text, his argumentative aims, and his broader views about causal inference, better than rival interpretations can. This result has important consequences for the ongoing debate over the role of normativity in Kant's philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Epistemological internalists have a problem about perceptual knowledge: how can perceptual experience both provide faithful information about the external world and justification for empirical belief? This is Sellars’s famous problem about “the given.” Chapter 12 argues, first, that this problem is not just for internalists—a version of it arises for naturalistic externalists. But, second, it argues that the problem can be solved within naturalistic bounds, by appealing to a category of causal relations called “intelligible causation.”.

In rubber hand illusions and full body illusions, touch sensations are projected to non-body objects such as rubber hands, dolls or virtual bodies. The robustness, limits and further perceptual consequences of such illusions are not yet fully explored or understood. A number of experiments are reported that test the limits of a variant of the rubber hand illusion. Methodology/Principal Findings -/- A variant of the rubber hand illusion is explored, in which the real and foreign hands are aligned in (...) personal space. The presence of the illusion is ascertained with participants' scores and temperature changes of the real arm. This generates a basic illusion of touch projected to a foreign arm. Participants are presented with further, unusual visuotactile stimuli subsequent to onset of the basic illusion. Such further visuotactile stimulation is found to generate very unusual experiences of supernatural touch and touch on a non-hand object. The finding of touch on a non-hand object conflicts with prior findings, and to resolve this conflict a further hypothesis is successfully tested: that without prior onset of the basic illusion this unusual experience does not occur. Conclusions/Significance -/- A rubber hand illusion is found that can arise when the real and the foreign arm are aligned in personal space. This illusion persists through periods of no tactile stimulation and is strong enough to allow very unusual experiences of touch felt on a cardboard box and experiences of touch produced at a distance, as if by supernatural causation. These findings suggest that one's visual body image is explained away during experience of the illusion and they may be of further importance to understanding the role of experience in delusion formation. The findings of touch on non-hand objects may help reconcile conflicting results in this area of research. In addition, new evidence is provided that relates to the recently discovered psychologically induced temperature changes that occur during the illusion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The difference between perception and cognition seems introspectively obvious in many cases. Perceiving and thinking have also been assigned quite different roles, in epistemology, in theories of reference and of mental content, in philosophy of psychology, and elsewhere. Yet what is the nature of the distinction? In what way, or ways, do perception and cognition differ? The paper reviews recent work on these questions. Four main respects in which perception and cognition have been held to differ are discussed. First, (...) their phenomenal character, such as the often-remarked vivacity or immediacy of perception. Second, the way in which they represent the world, e.g. the non-propositional nature of the contents, or non-discursive character of the vehicles, that have been held to characterise perceptual representation. Third, their place in cognitive architecture, i.e., roughly, in the information-flow of the mind, such as their alleged (non-)modularity. Fourth, their mind-world relations, e.g. the way in which perceptions seem to be tightly causally linked with distal or proximal stimuli. Against this background, we distinguish some main options for an account of the perception/cognition distinction, in particular concerning whether there is one, several, or no interesting and principled distinction(s) to be drawn here. (shrink)

Ehring, D. 1997. Causation and Persistence. New York: Oxford University Press. Fair, D. 1979. Causation and the flow of energy. Erkenntnis 14: 219–50. Goldman, A. 1977. Perceptual objects. Synthese 35: 257–84. Lewis, D. 1986a. Causation. In Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, 159–213. New York.

If a bit of perceptual behavior is a trope, so is any response to a stimulus, and so is the stimulus, and so therefore, more generally, is every effect and its cause. When we say that the sunlight caused the blackening of the film we assert a connection between two tropes; when we say that Sunlight in general causes Blackening in general, we assert a corresponding relation between the corresponding universals. Causation is often said to relate events, and (...) generally speaking any event is a trope: a smile, a sneeze, a scream, an election, a cold snap, a storm, a lightning flash, a conspiracy, perhaps a wave, and so on up to such big and important events that they have proper names, like the Passover and Lulu the H-bomb explosion. We have called a trope a "case" of its universal, while the universal is the "kind" of the trope, so it is no surprise that a medical "case" is a trope--in the sense, at any rate, in which a person is said to have a case of typhoid fever rather than to be a case of it. A high-school boy, uncoached, has assured me, "Of course there's such a thing as Redness--this pencil has a case of it." When a scientist reports a temperature or a velocity or a viscosity he is reporting a trope--not a universal, because it is a once-for-all occurrence, but not a concrete thing either, though doubtless a component of one. He is likely to call it an "aspect" of the thing or, preferably, a "state," and generally speaking a "state" of a thing or a nation is a trope. Recent developments in sub-atomic physics, a none too reliable oracle, suggest that an electron, e.g., just is an existent state, and that the common-sense philosophy of concreta here abdicates altogether in favor of the trope. (shrink)

I present considerations surrounding pre-reflective self-consciousness, arising in work I am conducting on a new physicalist, process-based account of [phenomenal] consciousness. The account is called the meta-causal account because it identifies consciousness with a certain type of arrangement of meta-causation. Meta-causation is causation where a cause or effect is itself an instance of causation. The proposed type of arrangement involves a sort of time-spanning, internal reflexivity of the overall meta-causation. I argue that, as a result (...) of the account, any conscious process has PRSC. Hence, PRSC does not need to be taken as a stipulation or argued for on purely phenomenological grounds or as a necessary support for reflective consciousness. I also show how it is natural to the account that PRSC is not an additional, peripheral, sort of consciousness, but is intrinsic to all consciousness, thereby fitting claims about self-intimation and co-constitution by various authors, and also being amenable to an adverbial account. As part of this, consciousness of an external object is just the form that current self-consciousness takes, the meta-causal constitution of it being inextricably modulated by the causal relationship with the object. The article also discusses how MCA helps explore issues of for-me-ness, transparency of perceptual consciousness, and possible immediacy and non-relationality of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates about causation are dominated by two approaches, which are often referred to as difference-making and causal process approaches to causation, respectively. I provide a characterization of the dialectic between these two approaches, on which that dialectic turns crucially on the question as to whether our common sense concept of causation involves a commitment to locality – i.e., to the claim that causal relations are always subject to spatial constraints. I then argue that we can (...) extract from existing work on perceptual judgement (specifically work that invokes the notion of a simple theory of perception) materials for an argument in favour of a positive answer to that question, and that this work can also help to bring out a distinctive kind of role that a commitment to locality plays in our reasoning about causal relationships. (shrink)

This book argues that there is a joint in nature between seeing and thinking, perception, and cognition. Perception is constitutively iconic, nonconceptual, and nonpropositional, whereas cognition does not have these properties constitutively. The book does not appeal to “intuitions,” as is common in philosophy, but to empirical evidence, including experiments in neuroscience and psychology. The book argues that cognition affects perception, i.e., that perception is cognitively penetrable, but that this does not impugn the joint in nature. A key part of (...) the argument is that we perceive not only low-level properties like colors, shapes, and textures but also high-level properties such as faces and causation. Along the way, the book explains the difference between perception and perceptual memory, the differences between format and content, and whether perception is probabilistic despite our lack of awareness of probabilistic properties. The book argues for perceptual categories that are not concepts, that perception need not be singular, that perceptual attribution and perceptual discrimination are equally fundamental, and that basic features of the mind known as “core cognition” are not a third category in between perception and cognition. The chapter on consciousness leverages these results to argue against some of the most widely accepted theories of consciousness. Although only one chapter is about consciousness, much of the rest of the book repurposes work on consciousness to isolate the scientific basis of perception. (shrink)

Abstract (for the combined three Parts) This paper presents the simplest known theory of processes involved in a person’s unconscious and conscious achievements such as intending, perceiving, reacting and thinking. The basic principle is that an individual has mental states which possess quantitative causal powers and are susceptible to influences from other mental states. Mental performance discriminates the present level of a situational feature from its level in an individually acquired, multiple featured norm (exemplar, template, standard). The effect on output (...) of a moderate disparity between input and norm is scaled in a universal unit of discrimination (Weber’s fraction), with the norm’s level being zero. When one process converts separate sources of input into an output, their discriminative distances from norm are summated. Distinct processes converging on an output combine their discriminations from norm orthogonally. An output may be influenced by the constructs of other outputs as well as by inputs. Descriptive performance is the influence of one category of input on a verbal output. Reasoning is minimally the effect of one verbal process on another. In deeper mental processing, the influence on a response comes from a response construct modulating a description: this process gives the meaning to an emotion or a motive. Descriptive modulation of stimulation corresponds to a bodily sensation or other conceptualized percept. When an output is explained solely by sources of input, that response to the stimulation may be mediated unconsciously. Development of a person within physical and communal environments embodies such mental causation within material causation and acculturates that mind to social causation. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a probabilistic account of factual knowledge, based on the notion of chance, which is a function of an event given a prior history. This account has some affinity with my chance account of token causation, but it neither relies on it nor presupposes it. Here, I concentrate on the core cases of perceptual knowledge and of knowledge by memory. The analysis of knowledge presented below is externalist. The underlying intuition guiding the treatment of (...) knowledge in this paper is that knowledge boils down to high token discriminative indicativeness. Type indicativeness or type discriminability are neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge: the token aspect comes out in the strong dependence on the specific circumstances and chances of the case. The main condition of the first section, the indicativity condition, properly refined, yields pertinent indicativity as a main constituent. Very roughly, it involves the chance of the content clause p being higher given the subject's believing that p than otherwise. The discriminability condition in question captures the sense of discriminability appropriate for knowledge and yield the indicativity condition: it is an extension of the indicativity condition KI. Roughly, the subject’s ability to discriminate the object in front of her being red from its being green is captured by holding fixed, in the indicativity condition, the condition “the object in front of her is red or green.” A major element in the analysis is the so-called Contrast Class, which governs the scope of discriminability. This is the class of features that have to be taken into account in the discriminability condition, and it is characterized by two constraints. Very roughly, according to the first constraint, for a feature to be in the contrast class, it must not represent a sub-type of the predicate in the content clause. According to the second constraint, which is a central condition with many implications, the chance that the object specified in the content clause has a feature represented in the contrast class must not under the circumstances be too low. This constraint, within the framework of the discriminability condition, brings out a major constitutive aspect of knowledge: knowledge amounts to a limited vulnerability to mistakes of the belief in question under the circumstances at hand. The contrast class plays a major role in my treatment of skepticism. The second constraint on the Contrast Class together with the VHP condition below bring out precisely the way in which perceptual knowledge is fallible. (shrink)

This is a philosophical `position paper' (html and pdf versions), starting from the observation that we have an intuitive grasp of a family of related concepts of ``possibility'', ``causation'' and ``constraint'' which we often use in thinking about complex mechanisms, and perhaps also in perceptual processes, which according to Gibson are primarily concerned with detecting positive and negative affordances, such as support, obstruction, graspability, etc. We are able to talk about, think about, and perceive possibilities, such as possible (...) shapes, possible pressures, possible motions, and also risks, opportunities and dangers. We can also think about constraints linking such possibilities. If such abilities are useful to us (and perhaps other animals) they may be equally useful to intelligent artefacts. All this bears on a collection of different more technical topics, including modal logic, constraint analysis, qualitative reasoning, naive physics, the analysis of functionality, and the modelling design processes. The paper suggests that our ability to use knowledge about ``de-re'' modality is more primitive than the ability to use ``de-dicto'' modalities, in which modal operators are applied to sentences. The paper explores these ideas, links them to notions of ``causation'' and ``machine'', suggests that they are applicable to virtual or abstract machines as well as physical machines. Some conclusions are drawn regarding the nature of mind and consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a probabilistic account of factual knowledge,[1] based on the notion of chance.[2] This account has some affinity with my chance account of token causation,[3] but it neither relies on it nor presupposes it. Here I concentrate on the core cases of perceptual knowledge and of knowledge by memory (based on perception). The analysis of knowledge presented below is externalist; but pursuing such an analysis need not detract from the significance of attempts to flesh (...) out justificational analyses knowledge; indeed, I have pursued such an analysis in great detail myself. (shrink)

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections into (...) several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)