November 2, 2009.
What is interesting about perception for philosophers (distinct from biologists/neuroscientists)?
Perception has necessary role within analysis of certain concepts
Empirical facts about perception may be useful, and the physical theories of perception need not be challenged
E.g. gestalt psychology could be important to phenomonology
Notion of ‘perceptual features’. Empirical question:
Is it that to perceive is, essentially, to perceive objects? Every perception is a perception of something?
alternatively, we could also perceive ‘features’, too
More generally, is perception uniform or is there a richness/complexity of kind in the types of perception? This could influence philosophers who need to discuss the uses of perception.
In some sense, this is just a boring/trivial question about the grammar of perception.
Interesting empirical question: what is the privileged form of perceputal sensations - how far are we (always) breaking down sense data into objects? What physical mechanism does this?
Philosophy should disentangle confusions that arise out of the natural usage of the term.
An enduring example confusion:
Tendancy to approach problems in perception from a theory of knowledge.
How much do we know given our perceptions?
How does the knowledge from perceptions interact with other sources of knowledge?
This is often a confusion
(though may make sense in certain contexts, e.g. wondering if I’ve seen you before in the street)
It makes us wrongly think of the essence of perception as being in contact / direct relation with the world, as a means of getting knowledge.
This is a category error
Epistemologists are not actually dealing with perception, rather something derived from perception
Seeing something far away might be misleading
Two people could perceive the same phenomenon differently for various reasons
It’s a mistake of philosophers to lift this to questioning perception in general, questioning whether we ever could be in contact with the real world.
Raw data (waves/beams) impinge upon us, our minds make sense of this
Optics / biology outside domain of philosophy.
Then philosophy asks the trancendental question “how is it possible for us to access the outside world?”
From what point of view is this question being asked?
“Contact” is a better word than “access” because the fact that we (in the world) are in contact with the world is obvious and nullifies the philosophical question.
This question is a symptom of philosophy since Descartes, implies one has already gone astray from understanding what perception is.
Benoist would respond to a Cartesian skeptic differently; rather, would reject the question as ill-founded because the fact we are in contact with the world is presupposed before asking more abstract/higher order questions.
The fact that Descartes creates this artificial question leads him to the artificial separation of the physical and spiritual world. Both artificialities are related.
It’s fundamental to perception that it’s not possible to ‘take distance’ from perception
(yes, epistemlogically, but that is really treating the uses of perceptions).
It’s legitimate inquiry into the role of perception among other aspects of reasoning, but it is not about perception itself.
How does belief in raw contact with the world explain different observers observing the same thing differently?
E.g. “jaundiced eye” seeing the world with yellow tint
Benoist: perception is clearly dependent on where you are
The fact it is perspectival does not take away from the fact we are in direct contact
However we also have different faculties which cause differences beyond geometry (diseases, enhancements).
The yellow of jaundiced eye is just as much a reality and fact of perception as seeing a stick broken in the water.
There is a temptation to think when our perspective has dramatically affected the experience of some aspect of reality (stick), that it’s no longer the stick which we are perceiving
(even though it is the stick, even if it looks different than how we’re used to it - it’s just the reality of optics that viewed a certain way the experience of a stick is broken)
JL Austin: does anyone expect a stick, if it’s actually straight, has to appear to be straight under all circumstances?
It is wrong of philosophers to conclude from examples like this that our subjectivity is in between us and contact with reality.
Our subjectivity is just us being ourselves as we are in relation to the reality.
Subjectivity just captures the factors of perception which are dependent on the perceiver’s location/faculties
Subjectivity is just one aspect of the reality of perception (direct contact with the world).