The usual visual experiences possess a perspectival phenomenology as they seem to present objects from a certain perspective. Nevertheless, it is not obvious how to characterise experiential content determining such phenomenology. In particular, while there are many works investigating perspectival properties of experienced objects, a question regarding how subject is represented in visual perspectival experiences attracted less attention. In order to address this problem, I consider four popular phenomenal intuitions regarding perspectival experiences and (...) argue that the major theories of perspectival experiences do not account for all of them. Relying on these observations, I show how a theory which accommodates all these intuitions can be developed by (a) recognising that visual perspectival experiences are, in fact, multimodal visuo-bodily experiences and (b) distinguishing between egocentric and structural contents. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences inform us about objective properties of things in our environment. But they also have perspectival character in the sense that they differ phenomenally when objects are viewed from different points of view. Contemporary representationalists hold, at a minimum, that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. Thus, in order to account for perspectival character, they need to indentify a type of representational content that changes in appropriate ways with the perceiver’s point of view. Many representationlists, including (...) Shoemaker and Lycan, argue that such contents are best construed in terms of mind-dependent properties. Other representationalists, including Tye and Dretske, hold that these contents involve only mind-independent properties. Susanna Schellenberg has recently developed an account of perceptual experience that would serve these latter representationalists extremely well. She suggests that we can do justice to the perspectival character of perceptual experience by appeal to representations of a certain type of relational properties, so-called ‘situation-dependent properties.’ In this paper, I critically engage with Schellenberg’s proposal in order to show how mind-independent representationalists can explain perspectival character. I argue that appeal to situation-dependent properties is problematic. I then show that mind-independent representationalists can account for perspectical character by means of scenario contents in Christopher Peacocke’s sense. (shrink)

In developing a theory of consciousness, one of the main problems has to do with determining what distinguishes conscious states from non-conscious ones—the delimitation problem. This paper explores the possibility of solving this problem in terms of self-awareness. That self-awareness is essential to understanding the nature of our conscious experience is perhaps the most widely discussed hypothesis in the study of consciousness throughout the history of philosophy. Its plausibility hinges on how the notion of self-awareness is unpacked. The idea that (...) consciousness involves self-awareness has been understood in two different ways: either as awareness of oneself—the subject of experience—or as awareness of the conscious episode itself. In this paper I argue (i) that every experience concerns the subject in a very specific way, involving what I will call ‘perspectival de se representation’, and (ii) that there is no need to appeal to the experience itself in order to characterize the awareness within that experience. The view I articulate explains the subjective nature of experience without over-intellectualizing it, accommodates the phenomenology of experience, and dispels any doubt about the need to find the self in introspection. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the extent to which a perspectival understanding of scientific knowledge supports forms of “scientific pluralism.” I will not initially attempt to formulate a general characterization of either perspectivism or scientific pluralism. I assume only that both are opposed to two extreme views. The one extreme is a (monistic) metaphysical realism according to which there is in principle one true and complete theory of everything. The other extreme is a constructivist relativism according to which scientific (...) claims about any reality beyond that of ordinary experience are merely social conventions. (shrink)

Critics of survival research often claim that the survival hypothesis is conceptually problematic at best, and literally incoherent at worst. The guiding intuition behind their skepticism is that there’s an essential link between the concept of a person (or personality or experience) and physical embodiment. Thus (they argue), since by hypothesis postmortem individuals such as ostensible mediumistic communicators have no physical body, there’s something wrong with the very idea of a postmortem person, personality or experience. However, critics can’t simply beg (...) the question and assert that physical embodiment is essential to personhood, personality, or experience, because the evidence suggesting survival is a prima facie challenge to the contrary. On the other hand, defenders of ostensible mediumistic communication need to explain how postmortem awareness and knowledge of the current physical world can occur without a physical body that experiences the world and represents it accurately enough to ground veridical postmortem reports. This paper will fi rst consider why survivalists face potentially serious problems in trying to make sense of apparent postmortem perception. Then it will consider a plausible—and arguably the only—way to deal with the issues. However, that solution turns out to be a double-edged sword. Ironically, the best way to deal with the problem of perspectival postmortem awareness may render the survival hypothesis gratuitous. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel experimental approach that would help to determine whether perspectival shapes, such as the elliptical profile of a tilted plate or coin, are part of perceptual experience. If they are part of perceptual experience, then it should be possible to identify these shapes simply by attending appropriately to them. Otherwise, in order to identify perspectival shapes they must first be constructed in the visual imagination. We propose that these accounts of perspectival identification can (...) be tested by measuring the interference between visual and verbal working memory load, respectively, and the identification of perspectival shapes in the appearance of a 3D object. (shrink)

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of our ordinary (...) experiences. I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness : a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects. (shrink)

As far as our experience goes, we live in a dynamic present. Those two phenomenal features of experience—presentness and dynamism—are obviously connected. However, how they are connected is not obvious at all. In this paper, I criticise the view according to which the former can explain the latter, which I call sophisticated representationalism. My criticism will be based on an ambiguity in the notion of tense found in the philosophical literature, that between the perspectival understanding and the dynamic understanding (...) of tenses. The distinction is not just of independent interest, but it has a role in providing indirect evidence for the claim that the feeling of passage of time should be understood in non-representationalist terms. (shrink)

As perceivers we are able to keep track of the ways in which our perceptual experience depends on what we do. This capacity, which Hurley calls perspectival self- consciousness, is a special instance of our more general ability as perceivers to keep track of how things are. I argue that one upshot of this is that perspectival self- consciousness, like the ability to perceive more generally, relies on our possession of conceptual skills.

ABSTRACTHilary Putnam provides an anti-skeptical argument motivated by semantic externalism. He argues that our best theorizing about what it takes to experience, think, and so on, entails that the world is much as we take it to be. This fact eliminates the possibility of radical skeptical scenarios, where from our perspective everything seems as it does in the actual case, but we are widely and systematically mistaken. I think that this approach is generally correct, and that it is the most (...) promising strategy for undermining radical skepticism. There are, however, well-discussed difficulties with Putnam's way of pursuing this strategy. I argue that in order to avoid these objections we will have to be more radical externalists than Putnam proposed; in particular, we will have to beperspectival externalists. According to perspectival externalism, a subject's reliable relations to her environment play a crucial role in determining not only the contents of her mental events, but also what it is like for her to grasp those contents. While semantic externalism is widely accepted in epistemology, perspectival externalism is not. I argue that perspectival externalism is independently more plausible than mere semantic externalism, and that such an account can enable us to better pursue Putnam's anti-skeptical strategy. (shrink)

Arguably the most foundational principle in perception research is that our experience of the world goes beyond the retinal image; we perceive the distal environment itself, not the proximal stimulation it causes. Shape may be the paradigm case of such “unconscious inference”: When a coin is rotated in depth, we infer the circular object it truly is, discarding the perspectival ellipse projected on our eyes. But is this really the fate of such perspectival shapes? Or does a tilted (...) coin retain an elliptical appearance even when we know it’s circular? This question has generated heated debate from Locke and Hume to the present; but whereas extant arguments rely primarily on introspection, this problem is also open to empirical test. If tilted coins bear a representational similarity to elliptical objects, then a circular coin should, when rotated, impair search for a distal ellipse. Here, nine experiments demonstrate that this is so, suggesting that perspectival shapes persist in the mind far longer than traditionally assumed. Subjects saw search arrays of three-dimensional “coins,” and simply had to locate a distally elliptical coin. Surprisingly, rotated circular coins slowed search for elliptical targets, even when subjects clearly knew the rotated coins were circular. This pattern arose with static and dynamic cues, couldn’t be explained by strategic responding or unfamiliarity, generalized across shape classes, and occurred even with sustained viewing. Finally, these effects extended beyond artificial displays to real-world objects viewed in naturalistic, full-cue conditions. We conclude that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape “out there,” and their perspectival shape “from here.”. (shrink)

When a circular coin is rotated in depth, is there any sense in which it comes to resemble an ellipse? While this question is at the center of a rich and divided philosophical tradition (with some scholars answering affirmatively and some negatively), Morales et al. (2020, 2021) took an empirical approach, reporting 10 experiments whose results favor such perspectival similarity. Recently, Burge and Burge (2022) offered a vigorous critique of this work, objecting to its approach and conclusions on both (...) philosophical and empirical grounds. Here, we answer these objections on both fronts. We show that Burge and Burge’s critique rests on misunderstandings of Morales et al.’s claims; of the relation between the data and conclusions; and of the philosophical context in which the work appears. Specifically, Burge and Burge attribute to us a much stronger (and stranger) view than we hold, involving the introduction of “a new entity” located “in some intermediate position(s) between the distal shape and the retinal image.” We do not hold this view. Indeed, once properly understood, most of Burge and Burge’s objections favor Morales et al.’s claims rather than oppose them. Finally, we discuss several questions that remain unanswered, and reflect on a productive path forward on these issues of foundational scientific and philosophical interest. (shrink)

When viewing a circular coin rotated in depth, it fills an elliptical region of the distal scene. For some, this appears to generate a two-fold experience, in which one sees the coin as simultaneously circular (in light of its 3D shape) and elliptical (in light of its 2D ‘perspectival shape’ or ‘p-shape’). An energetic philosophical debate asks whether the latter p-shapes are genuinely presented in perceptual experience (as ‘perspectivalists’ argue) or if, instead, this appearance is somehow derived or inferred (...) from experience (as ‘anti-perspectivalists’ argue). This debate, however, has largely turned on introspection. In a recent study, Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020) aim to provide the first empirical test of this question. They asked subjects to find an elliptical coin seen face-on from a search array that also included a circular coin seen either face-on or at an angle. They found that subjects reacted more slowly when the distracting circle was seen at an angle, such that it’s p-shape matched that of the target ellipse. From this, they concluded that the similar p-shape between the ellipse and circle constituted a phenomenal similarity between the two, and thus that perspectivalism is true. We show that these results can also be explained by pre-attentive guidance by unconscious representations (in what follows, just “unconscious pre-attentive guidance”) and that this explanation is at least as plausible as one from phenomenal similarity. Thus, we conclude that the experiment does not support perspectivalism over anti-perspectivalism. (shrink)

According to a classical causal account of perception, to perceive that object x is F is to fulfill the following conditions: (i) one has an experience as of x's being F, (ii) x is F, and (iii) one's experience of x's being F depends causally on x's being F. This is the core of Grice's causal theory of perception, and it is initially quite plausible (Grice 1961).

Visual forms of episodic memory and anticipatory imagination involve images that, by virtue of their perspectival organization, imply a notional subject of experience. But they contain no inbuilt reference to the actual subject, the person actually doing the remembering or imagining. This poses the problem of what (if anything) connects these two perspectival subjects and what differentiates cases of genuine memory and anticipation from mere imagined seeing. I consider two approaches to this problem. The first, exemplified by Wollheim (...) and Velleman, claims that genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations are phenomenally unselfconscious, with the co-identity of the notional and actual subjects secured by a determinate causal history. The second approach posits some distinctive phenomenal property that attaches to genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations and serves to experientially conflate the notional and actual subject. I consider a version of the second approach, derived from Kierkegaard’s discussions of phenomenal contemporaneity, and argue that this approach can better account for the possibility of affective alienation from the selves we were and will be: the way in which our sense of self and awareness of our causal history can sometimes come apart. (shrink)

Haneke’s 1997 adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Das Schloß is thus far his last work for television[1]. Although «the Austrian film almanac lists» it «as a feature film» and it «was released in Austrian cinemas before its television première» [2], Haneke has always professed The Castle to be a TV film adaption, «an honorable enterprise» aimed at «bring[ing] literature closer to an audience» [3]. This is a significant remark, as it conveys a belief that this specific double status – qua TV (...) product and qua adaption of a literary work –prevents film adaptation from being considered «autonomous art». For one, he states, a work destined for TV by definition «serves audience expectations». For another, as an adaptation, a work is necessarily dependent upon its original source. [1] Before being well-known as a very influential film director, Michael Haneke began working for television in 1967. His first TV film, i.e., After Liverpool, was released long before his first feature film, Der siebente Kontinent, which was issued in 1989. This should not come as a surprise, since «practically every German-speaking filmmaker» at that time «started out directing films for television, taking advantage of the relatively generous system of subsidies and the general openness of German and Austrian state television channels to aesthetic innovation». In any case, Haneke later specified that directing for television was not solely a matter of opportunity, but also a fitting milieu in which to develop his own style. [2] However, that reportedly happened against Haneke’s will: «The Castle, for example, was in fact made for television, even though it will now be shown in movie houses as well. In my view, film adaptations are not genuine works of art. And I don’t really know of any film adaptation that really worked very well». Later he will confirm this point: «I would not have dared to turn The Castle into a movie for the big screen». [3] Let us note that this does not imply that Haneke feels a work formally presented as an adaptation cannot result in a great feature film. However, properly speaking, such a film could no longer be called an adaptation, since «it is not possible to serve two masters at the same time». Haneke is quite categorical on this point: «Thus one has to decide. Either I use a book as a quarry for ideas for something that I want to create myself, then it is a failed project as a film adaptation, or it is to be a film for a television program that has a commitment to cultural standards». (shrink)

Many people have recently argued that we need to distinguish between experiences and seemings and that this has consequences for views about how perception provides evidence. In this article I spell out my take on these issues by doing three things. First, I distinguish between mere sensations like seeing pitch black all around you and perceptual experiences like seeing a red apple. Both have sensory phenomenology in presenting us with sensory qualities like colors, being analog in Dretske's sense, (...) and being fine-grained. However, only the latter have furthermore a perceptual phenomenology characterized by objectification and related dualities of perspectivality/completion and variation/constancy. Second, I elaborate on the reasons for thinking that both mere sensations and perceptual experiences need to be distinguished from accompanying seemings that passively assign things into conceptual categories and thereby tell you something about them. For example, when you look at a red apple and have the relevant recognitional abilities it will also normally seem to you that this is an apple. Finally, I argue that the best version of the popular dogmatist view about evidence is one which claims that it's neither experiences nor seemings by themselves, but rather the right sorts of composites of experiences and seemings that provide evidence. (shrink)

The following paper considers one important feature of our experiential or ‘recollective’ memories, namely their spatial perspectival characteristics. I begin by considering the ‘Past-Dependency-Claim’, which states that every recollective memory (or ‘R-memory’) has its spatial perspectival characteristics in virtue of the subject’s present awareness of the spatial perspectival characteristics of a relevant past perceptual experience. Although the Past-Dependency-Claim might for various reasons seem particularly attractive, I show that it is false. I then proceed to develop and defend (...) the ‘Present-Dependency-Claim’, namely the claim that the spatial perspectival characteristics of an R-memory depend on the spatial perspectival characteristics of perceptual experiences that the subject has at the time at which the R-memory occurs. Lastly, I discuss the phenomenon of so-called ‘observer-memories’, which presents a special challenge for any attempt to account for the spatial perspectival characteristics of R-memories. I argue that we have no good reason to deny that the relevant experiences should count as memories, and I show that we can account for the spatial perspectival characteristics of observer-memories with the help of the ‘Present-Dependency-Claim’. More generally, the paper shows that certain events that occur in a subject’s mental life (namely, a subject’s R-memories) are necessarily dependent on other events that occur in the relevant subject’s mental life (namely, on certain perceptual experiences). This more general conclusion in turn should be relevant for any attempt to develop an appropriate account of a subject’s mental life as a whole. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that the references of indexical expressions are fixed partly by their relations to contextual parameters such as the author, time, and place of the utterance. Because of this, indexicals are sometimes described as token-reflexive or utterance-reflexive in their semantics. But when we inquire into how indexicals help us to identify items within experience, we find that while utterance-reflexivity is essential to an interpretation of indexical tokens, it is not a factor in a speaker's identificatory use of (...) indexicals. Tokens cannot be interpreted unless they are first produced, and obviously the speaker who produces them does not depend upon utterance parameters in order to identify their referents in the way that hearers do. Consequently, the standard reflexive accounts of indexicals are of little use in explaining the speaker's identificatory use of indexicals, and must be either replaced or complemented by a further theory of the role of indexicals in thought. This paper provides an account of indexical identification that is attentive to a speaker's as well as a hearer's identification and reveals how indexicals are inextricably perspectival. (shrink)

Proponents of political experiments in living, such as Elizabeth Anderson and Ryan Muldoon, often emphasize their potential to generate useful observational data about the relation between social rules and ethically desirable outcomes. This paper highlights another epistemic dimension of political experiments: their potential to transform the cognitive perspectives of participants. I argue that this transformative dimension of experimentation offers an endogenous societal mechanism for increasing perspectival diversity. I explore the implications of this mechanism for institutional design.

Phenomenal objectivism explains perceptual phenomenal character by reducing it to an awareness of mind-independent objects, properties, and relations. A challenge for this view is that there is a sense in which a distant tree looks smaller than a closer tree even when they are the same objective size (perceptual size variation). The dual content view is a popular objectivist account in which such experiences are explained by my objective spatial relation to the tree, in particular visual angle (perspectival (...) size). I describe a series of first-person experiments for investigating size experience. I use a ruler as a first-person method for operationalising perspectival size (Experiment 1). I use the corridor illusion (Experiment 2), outlining one’s head in the mirror (Experiment 3), and outlining the size of objects on glass (Experiment 4) to show a phenomenal difference in size for items in different depth contexts, despite being identical in visual angle. These finding demonstrate that visual angle cannot account for these spatial experiences. Psychological evidence provides further support for the thesis that subjects do not experience visual angle when depth information is present. Together this evidence supports the hypothesis that perceptual size variation cannot be accounted for by visual angle, hence undermining a plausible version of the dual content theory. This outcome, combined with problems raised by alternative objectivist accounts of size variation, provides support for a subjectivist account of size experience. (shrink)

Observer memories, memories where one sees oneself in the remembered scene, from-the-outside, are commonly considered less accurate and genuine than visual field memories, memories in which the scene remembered is seen as one originally experienced it. In Remembering from the Outside (OUP, 2019), Christopher McCarroll debunks this commonsense conception by offering a detailed analysis of the nature of observer memories. On the one hand, he explains how observer and field perspectives are not really mutually exclusive in an experience, including memory (...) experiences. On the other hand, he argues that in observer memories there is no additional explicit representation of oneself experiencing the event: the self-presence is transparent and given by the mode of presentation. Whereas these are two lines of strategic and original argumentation, they are not exempt of problems. In this critical notice, I focus on the problematic aspects of McCarroll’s account. I show that it presents some issues that affect the internal coherence of the overall framework, and that some aspects and central notions would have needed more development to offer a precise picture of the nature of observer memories. (shrink)

The view that narrative artworks can offer insights into our lives, in particular, into the nature of the emotions, has gained increasing popularity in recent years. However, talk of narrative often involves reference to a perspective or point of view, which indicates a more fundamental mechanism at work. In this article, I argue that our understanding of the emotions is incomplete without adequate attention to the perspectival structures in which they are embedded. Drawing on Bennett Helm’s theory of emotion, (...) I argue that the narrative view fails to take into account the influence of perspective on the emotions. In order to address this gap in our understanding of the emotions, I highlight a mode of engagement with literature that prioritizes the perspectival features of a work. Focusing on lyric poetry, I argue that non-narrative artworks are those best placed to highlight this fundamental aspect of our emotional experiences. (shrink)

Perspectival pluralism has as little sympathy for "...a kind of Will Rogers pluralism that never met a position it didn't like" (13-27) as it has patience with the myopic self-importance of doctrinalism. Precisely for this reason it is difficult not to like Rescher's pluralism. With philosophy determined as the answer to an existential need for rational systematization of perspec- tival experience, the position promises to span positions that are commonly divided. There's new hope for those tired of eccentric methodologies (...) in post- modern dialectics, and those tired of the methodical eccentricity in analyti- cal thought experiments-perspectival pluralism holds out the prospect of a metaphilosophical stance which undercuts cynical detachment yet moves beyond necessitarian universalist rationality... (shrink)

Kant’s general mode of argument in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, especially his defence of human nature’s propensity to evil, is a matter of considerable controversy: while some interpret his argument as strictly a priori, others interpret it as anthropological. In dialogue with Allen Wood’s recent work, I defend my earlier claim that Religion employs a quasi-transcendental mode of argument, focused on the possibility of a specific type of experience, not experience in general. In Religion, Kant portrays religious (...) experience as possible only for beings with a good predisposition and a propensity to evil. Kant’s theory of the archetype and his theory of symbolism illustrate the same mode of argument. Taking Religion as a sequel to the third Critique more than the second, my perspectival interpretation makes room for a robust view of unsociable sociability without the absurd deception of regarding it as the source of human evil. (shrink)

Ismael aims for an understanding of the nature of an embedded perspective of agents in a world. If successful, this would explain a cluster of ways in which from an embedded perspective, we experience the world in an array of temporally asymmetric ways. Moreover, these are ways that have led many philosophers to rather metaphysically inflationary views about the nature of time, according to which time itself really is dynamical, and is characterized by the movement of an objectively (i.e., non- (...) class='Hi'>perspectival) present. Ismael aims to explain these features of our experience without positing any such metaphysical picture. She argues that there are constraints which prevent us from taking this Olympian conception of the world and our place in it, and that these, jointly, explain why we experience the world in these temporally asymmetric ways. We take up two related questions. First, what it would mean to say that these constraints are not merely epistemic, and second, how far these constraints get us in explaining why we experience the world in these ways. (shrink)

Visualizings, the simplest imaginings which employ visual imagery, have certain characteristic features; they are perspectival, for instance. Also, it seems that some but not all of our visualizings are imaginings of seeings. But it has been forcefully argued, for example by M.G.F. Martin and Christopher Peacocke, that all visualizings are imaginings of visual sensations. I block these arguments by providing an account of visualizings which allows for their perspectival nature and other features they typically have, but which also (...) explains how we can visualize things without thereby imagining visual sensations. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of empirical tests of the free will, aiming at a presupposition underpinning the experiments’ methodology. The presupposition is that the artificial reporting of machines is prima facie directly congruent with the first-person perspectival report of the participant. A critique of the method reveals the problematic nature of this methodological set-up. The phenomenological critique, however, also carries implications for a theoretical framework dealing with ‘embodied’ religion; these implications will be dis-cussed via reference to the article (...) by Marcel Sarot. (shrink)

The terms “perspectivism” and “perspectivalism” have been the focus of an intense philosophical discussion with important repercussions for the debate about the role of mechanisms in scientific explanations. However, leading exponents of the new mechanistic philosophy have conceded more than was necessary to the radically subjectivistic perspectivalism, and fell into the opposite error, by retaining not negligible residues of objectivistic views about mechanisms. In order to remove this vacillation between the subjective-cultural and the objective-natural sides of mechanisms, we shall raise (...) the question about theory-ladenness over again and interpret it in its connection with the technical–experimental nature of scientific knowledge, as affirming the perspectival character of scientific knowledge: It is because of the character at once theory-laden and practice-laden, i.e. technique-laden, of our putting questions to nature that empirical reality must be investigated from particular perspectives: nature can be known scientifically only from a potentially infinite number of perspectives or theoretical points of view, concretely exemplified by mechanisms or experimental ‘machines’ that allow specific access to specific aspects of sensible reality. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued in favour of the Dependency Thesis: if a subject sensorily imagines an F then he or she sensorily imagines from the inside perceptually experiencing an F in the imaginary world. They claim that it explains certain important features of imaginative experience, in brief: the fact that it is perspectival, the fact that it does not involve presentation of sensory qualities and the fact that mental images can serve a number of different imaginings. I (...) argue that the Dependency Thesis is false and that, in any event, it does not have the explanatory credentials claimed for it. Some of the features of imaginative experience are incorrectly specified, namely the absence of presentation of sensory qualities. With a more precise idea of what we need to explain, I argue that the explanation should proceed by noting that imagination and perception have phenomenally similar contents and that this is to be explained in terms of the similar kinds of representations in play. I trace the consequences of my discussion for disjunctivist theories of perception, Berkeleian Idealism and the characterisation of knowing what an experience is like. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Wittgenstein attempted to clarify ethics through a procedure that, by analogy with “transcendental arguments”, I call “transcendental thought experiment”. Specifically, after offering a brief perspectival account of both transcendental arguments and transcendental thought experiments, I focus on a thought experiment proposed by Wittgenstein in his 1929 'Lecture on Ethics', arguing that it deserves the title of “transcendental”.

This article criticizes what it calls perspectival thought experiments, which require subjects to mentally simulate a perspective before making judgments from within it. Examples include Judith Thomson's violinist analogy, Philippa Foot's trolley problem, and Bernard Williams's Jim case. The article argues that advances in the philosophical and psychological study of empathy suggest that the simulative capacities required by perspectival thought experiments are all but impossible. These thought experiments require agents to consciously simulate necessarily unconscious features of subjectivity. To (...) complete these experiments subjects must deploy theory-theoretical frameworks to predict what they think they would do. These outputs, however, systematically mislead subjects and are highly prone to error. They are of negligible probative value, and this bodes poorly for their continued use. The article ends with two suggestions. First, many thought experiments are not problematically perspectival. Second, it should be possible to carry out “in-their-shoes” perspectival thought experiments by off-loading simulations onto virtual environments into which philosophers place subjects. (shrink)

Husserl holds the view that givenness through adumbrations (i.e. perspectival givenness) is an essential characteristic of the givenness of spatiotemporal things. He goes so far to say that we are dealing with an essential law. In this article I try to make sense of this claim. I am also dealing with a thought experiment that is designed to show that the givenness through adumbrations is just a consequence of our physiological make-up, a view that Husserl explicitly rejects. Amongst other (...) things, I defend Husserl by introducing the crucial distinction between first-person-imagination and third-person-imagination. (shrink)

The puzzle of cross-modal shape experience is the puzzle of reconciling the apparent differences between our visual and haptic experiences of shape with their apparent similarities. This paper proposes that we can resolve the cross-modal puzzle by reflecting on another puzzle. The puzzle of perspectival character challenges us to reconcile the variability of shape experience through shifts in perspective with its constancy. An attractive approach to the latter puzzle holds that shape experience is complex, involving both perspectival (...) aspects and constant aspects. I argue here that parallel distinctions between perspectival and constant aspects of shape experience arise in sight and touch, and that perspectival aspects are modality-specific while at least some constant aspects are constitutively multisensory. I then address a powerful challenge to the idea that aspects of spatial phenomenology are shared cross-modally. (shrink)

There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic (...) naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant. (shrink)

It is a common thought that our experience of self in time plays a crucial role in living a good human life. This idea is seen both in views that say we must think of our lives as temporally extended wholes to live well and those that say living well requires living in the moment. These opposing views share the assumption that a person’s interests must be identified with either a temporally extended or temporally local perspective. David Velleman has argued (...) that both perspectives are necessary parts of human experience, and each has its own independent interests. I agree with Velleman that our experience is inherently multi-perspectival but argue that there are more than two relevant perspectives and reject the claim that these perspectives have independent interests. Expanding his metaphor of narrative, I describe the way in which these perspectives continuously influence and affect one another, and suggest that living well can be understood in terms of skillful management of the perspectives that make up this complex form of temporal self-experience. (shrink)

Our environment is changing rapidly, as is the spectrum of possible relationships we can entertain with it. Against this background, one important task emerging in contemporary philosophical discussion concerns defining the status of contemporary images and the "iconic spaces" we encounter with ever-increasing frequency in their various forms. Within this context, the dimension of perception seems to be losing its primacy over the image, making a philosophical description of the relationships between image and reality all the more necessary. Among images, (...) the classical distinction between documentary and fiction has been drastically called into question, and along with it the nature of the emotions and values we experience in these two domains. Rozzoni promotes a phenomenology of the image, that is, a return to a description of images that starts from their essential features while avoiding simplistic dichotomies. By elucidating images’ intimate relationship with phantasy and aesthetic experience and their role in shaping our experience of "reality," this book develops a perspectival notion of "truth" intended to shed light on our contemporary interactions with images and the events, emotions, and values we experience through them. (shrink)

When you look at a circular plate at an angle, it looks circular. But there also is a certain sense in which its look can be described as oval. When you move, the plate’s look changes with your perspective on it—nevertheless, it continues to look circular. This chapter investigates whether these “constancy in variation” phenomena can be explained in terms of the representational content of visual experience, and whether constancy in variation provides special, phenomenological, reasons to construe experience as having (...) centered contents. Concentrating on shape, it argues that due to warring phenomenological demands, all views construing constancy in variation as representation of both objective and perspectival properties or features have limited explanatory powers, and that centering does not provide any advantage. By contrast, adopting the non-standard intentionalism called phenomenal intentionalism, we get rather natural explanations of the phenomenology of constancy in variation. (shrink)

Thomas Reid's Geometry of Visibles, according to which the geometrical properties of an object's perspectival appearance equal the geometrical properties of its projection on the inside of a sphere with the eye in its centre allows for two different interpretations. It may (1) be understood as a theory about phenomenal visual space – i.e. an account of how things appear to human observers from a certain point of view – or it may (2) be seen as a mathematical model (...) of viewpoint-relative but mind-independent relational properties of objects. This paper makes a systematic and a historical claim. I shall argue, first, that given certain features of the human visual system phenomenal visual space differs in several aspects from Reidean visual space. Secondly, I suggest that, since Reid was aware of some of these empirical facts, we should interpret Reid as endorsing the second interpretation of the Geometry of Visibles. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to propose a way to study the role of perspectives in both the production and justification of experimental knowledge claims. My starting point for this will be Anjan Chakravartty’s claim that Ronald Giere’s perspectival account of the role of instruments in the production of such claims entails relativism in the form of irreducibly incompatible truths. This led Michela Massimi to argue that perspectivism, insofar as it wants to form a realist position, is only (...) concerned with the justification of such claims: whether they are produced reliably is, on her view, a perspective-independent fact of the matter. Following a suggestion by Giere on how scientists handle incompatible experimental results, I will then argue that Massimi’s perspectivism can be extended to also cover the production of such claims, without falling into relativism. I will elaborate this suggestion by means of Uljana Feest’s work on how scientists handle incompatible experimental results. I will argue that, if we reconceptualize perspectives as embodied and situated ways of going about in experimentation that can be made explicit through interpretation, we can obtain a fruitful understanding of the role of perspectives in both the production and justification of experimental knowledge. While this role is primarily exploratory, it can still allow for a substantial form of realism. (shrink)

William Lycan is a notable early proponent of representationalism, which is, roughly, the view that a mental state's phenomenal features are nothing over and above its representational features (perhaps in addition to some further ingredients). Representationalism faces a challenge in accounting for perspectival experiences, which are, roughly, experiences that arise from our occupying a particular real or perceived perspective on the world. This paper presents representationalism, situating Lycan's version of representationalism within the representationalist landscape, and describes the (...) challenge from perspectival experiences. It considers three different representationalist treatments of perspectival experiences: the Layered View, which is developed by Lycan; the Relational Properties View, which Lycan eventually comes to endorse; and the Naive View, which, I will argue, combines elements from both views to achieve the best overall view. (shrink)