Phenomenal Presence and Perceptual Awareness

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Philosophical Issues, 21, The Epistemology of Perception, 2011

PHENOMENAL PRESENCE AND PERCEPTUAL AWARENESS:

A SUBJECTIVIST ACCOUNT OF PERCEPTUAL OPENNESS TO

THE WORLD1

Martine Nida-Rumelin

University of Fribourg

1. A Puzzle about Perception

After a longer stay in Australia where I learned to deeply enjoy the closepresence of magpies and cockatoos, I took the habit, back in Switzerland, to

put pieces of cheese in front of the window to attract the black crows living

in the neighborhood. One of them discovered the new source of food very

quickly and he returns to the window almost every day. When I watch the

crow outside the window I am perceptually aware of it and I have, in some

sense, direct access through the senses to that beautiful animal.

Suppose that after having worked through several nights in order to

finish this paper I take a drug with the intention to enhance my concentration

on the topic of perception and that the drug has, unbeknownst to me,psychedelic side effects. It might then happen that during my work I look out

of the window and seem to see a crow approaching the window, hesitating in

the air before landing and finally picking up the pieces of cheesealthough

in reality no crow has yet discovered the cheese on that particular morning.

The two experiences, seeing a crow and hallucinating a crow are, or so

we may suppose, phenomenally alike. There is no difference in phenomenal

character, or so I assume, between the experience I have when I actually

see the approaching crow and the corresponding pseudo-perception which I

have in hallucinating an approaching crow. There is no difference, as I thinkone should put the point, with respect to my experiential properties. My

experiential properties are those that characterize the way it is like for me to

see (or to hallucinate) a crow. I have the same relevant experiential properties

in both cases.


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Phenomenal Presence and Perceptual Awareness 353

These two kinds of crow experiences can be used to illustrate a puzzle

about perception. In my perception of a crow I am, in some sense, directly

aware of something. I am, for instance, directly aware of a crow approaching

the window. The phenomenal character of my experience is fully determinedby what I am directly aware of in that perception. In general, when we

perceive or pseudo-perceive (I will use the term pseudo-perception for cases

where the subject is the victim of an illusion or a hallucination and takes

the experience to be a genuine perception), the phenomenal character of

the experience is fully determined by what the subject is directly aware of,

or so one might wish to say. But this assumption leads to trouble if we

wish to acknowledge that seeing the crow and hallucinating a crow can

be phenomenally alike. Only in the case of perceiving the crow but not in

hallucinating a crow I am directly aware of a real animal approaching thewindow. So there is a difference between these experiences in what I am

directly aware of. It follows, according to the principle just formulated, that

a perception of a crow and a hallucination of a crow cannot be phenomenally

alike after all.

Different views about perception can be characterized by the way they

react to this puzzle. I will propose a simple solution: we have to distinguish

perceptual awareness and phenomenal presence. Phenomenal character is

determined by what is directly present to the subject in the sense of

phenomenal presence. The two experiences are not distinct with respectto phenomenal presence; they are only distinct with respect to perceptual

awareness.

Perceptual awareness is constituted by causal relations between the

object perceived and what is phenomenally present to the perceiving subject.

Phenomenal presence, by contrast, is not a relation between the subject and

some external object. Phenomenal presence, as I propose to understand it, is

not a relation at all. When we talk about what is phenomenally present to a

subject we thereby describe the subjects intrinsic, non-relational properties;

we do not thereby establish a relation between the subject and somethingelse.

I propose to accept the notion of phenomenal presence as a fundamental

notion and to understand it in a purely phenomenological way. The notion of

phenomenal presence cannot be avoided, or so I suggest, if we wish to think

clearly about phenomenal consciousness. The notion has general application

and is not restricted to the domain of perceptual experience. The ongoing

debate about whether thinking is a case of phenomenal consciousness is

about what it phenomenally present in thinking. I side with those who

argue that when a thought pops up in ones mind that popping-up itselfis phenomenally present to the subject and the propositional content is, or

can be, phenomenally present to the thinker as well.2 Other non-perceptual

cases of phenomenal presence are to be found in the phenomenology of

agency. I agree, for example, with those who defend the view that, in acting,


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354 Martine Nida-Rumelin

we experience ourselves as the causal origin of what happens.3 Being him-

or herself the causal origin of what happens is phenomenally present to the

agent in acting.

Phenomenal presence characterizes all episodes of phenomenal con-sciousness. Whenever a subject undergoes a conscious experience something

is phenomenally present to the subject in having the experience.4 To be a

subject of experience is to have the potential to be phenomenally presented

with something. If this is correct then the notion of phenomenal presence

and what it refers to deserves the closest attention of philosophers interested

in issues about consciousness.

The distinction between phenomenal presence and perceptual awareness

just sketched will raise the suspicion that the view here advocated implies

that we are only indirectly aware of the objects surrounding us. The viewmay seem to imply thatin watching the crowI am directlyaware only of

what is phenomenally present to me and only indirectly aware of the crow. I

will argue that this is not so. Phenomenal presence correctly understood does

not involve the introduction of an extra level of representations between the

subject and its perceptually accessible environment. The distinction between

phenomenal presence and perceptual awareness is not in conflict with the

intuitive idea of openness to the world through the senses.5

The view developed in this paper is an attempt to reconcile two basic

ideas: the conviction of what one might call the ontological primacy ofconsciousness and the conviction that we have direct access to the world

via the senses. The first element of the view might be briefly described

as follows: the phenomenal character of experience is neither conceptually

nor ontologically reducible to anything more fundamental. Experiential

properties are basic properties of experiencing beings (subjects of experience);

phenomenal presence cannot be reduced to representation in any relational

sense nor can it be conceptually or ontologically reduced in any way suitable

for the philosopher pursuing the so-called naturalistic program concerning

consciousness. Phenomenal presence involves a subject to whom what ispresent is present; subjects belong to a specific ontological category different

from the category of material objects. I developed this view in some detail in

other places.6

The second element the view is supposed to fully endorse is the insight

that we are not looking at the world through a veil of mental images;

we are directly aware of what we perceive, we have direct access to what we

perceive and there is no illusion involved in our impression that we do have

such direct access. I will propose what one may call a subjectivist account of

this idea of perceptual openness to the world. The account may be calledsubjectivist since it incorporates the first basic idea sketched above.

Phenomenological arguments play an important role in the philosophy

of perception; nonetheless phenomenological reflection is often done only in


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passing and often superficially with a specific argumentative goal in mind.

It would be fruitful, I believe, for the discussion about perception if more

attention would be given to the question of how and in what language

the phenomenology of perceptual experience can be adequately described.By proposing and motivating a number of distinctions that appear to me

necessary for an adequate description of perceptual phenomenology, I hope

to contribute to attracting attention to this particularly intriguing area for

phenomenological reflection.

2. Philosophical Presuppositions and Terminology

I start with a few remarks about the terminology used in this paper. Thechoice of terminology is partially motivated by the view here adopted about

consciousness. I hope that those who reject that terminology will still be able

to identify, in their own perceptual phenomenology, those aspects I will be

trying to draw attention to.

Every experiencing subject when awake or dreaming is in a state with

some overall phenomenology. A subjects overall present phenomenology

consists in being phenomenally presented with a complex, rich and constantly

changing totality through perceiving or pseudo-perceiving, imagining, think-

ing, being active, remembering, etc. We can focus on elements in that totality.A subject can focus, for instance, on the element phenomenally present to

it in a visual experience of a tree with moving leaves at a certain apparent

distance, or on the element present when the subject vividly remembers a

childhood episode. The common metaphor of a stream of consciousness

involving elements flowing by is not a bad metaphor. One should, however,

keep in mind that the stream stands for whatis phenomenally presentto the

subject and that the subject is not just a passive observer but that it is rather

actively involved. The subject is not part of the stream nor is the subject the

whole stream, the subject is the one to whomthe stream occurs.Conscious experience, quite generally, has the structure of something

being given to a subject. But this structure is not to be understood in the

sense of a relation between the subject and something else, or so I propose.

The subjects being presented with a stream of consciousness should be

understood as a succession of instantiations of non-relational experiential

propertiesby the subject. I hereby presuppose the following understanding of

experiential properties: a property is an experiential property of a subject if

and only if its instantiation in a given moment partially constitutes the overall

phenomenology of the subjects state in that moment. Talking of experientialpropertiesof subjects replaces, in the terminology here proposed, talking of

phenomenal properties of experiences. I thereby wish to avoid the mistaken

perceptual metaphor for phenomenal awareness.7


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The inner structure of consciousness which consists in there being a

subject and something phenomenally present to the subject is not to be

interpreted metaphysically: it is not a relation between the subject and some

thing beyond itself. According to this view, we need to combine the followinginsights: (a) in being phenomenally conscious we exhibit a basic form of

intentionality: something is phenomenally present; (b) to be in that way

phenomenally conscious is not to stand in a relation to some entity; it is to

instantiate an intrinsic, non-relational property.

It will sometimes be convenient to have a name for the totality of what is

phenomenally given to a subject. I will use the term the experiential quasi-

object: experiential is intended to remind us of what is given is given in

experience (that is it is phenomenally given), object is intended to remind

us of the general subject-object-structure of phenomenal consciousness justalluded to and quasi is used to stress that there is no entity or genuine

object involved. To say that there is no genuine object or entity involved is

to claim that we should not accept the experiential quasi-object as a further

piece of reality over and above material objects and experiencing beings. We

should not commit ourselves to the existence of experiential quasi-objects.

The subject is phenomenally presented with a rich, complex and constantly

changing experiential quasi-object, but the subject is not thereby related to

some thing. The totality of what is phenomenally present to a subject isnotan

object in the sense of being an entity which needs to be recognized as a furtherpiece of reality. Nor should any element of that totality be so recognized.

Furthermore, talking of elements of that totality must be understood

as a metaphor. I do not mean to imply that these elements are parts of

the experiential quasi-object in any literal sense. The only way to grasp the

locution of elements in the relevant sense is to understand it, on the basis

of examples, as a purely phenomenological notion. Using the notion to

describe phenomenology does not involve any ontological commitment to

these elements.

Elements of the experiential quasi-object are not sense data in thesense in which they are postulated by the sense datum theory as usually

understood: they are not entities and, in the case of perception, they do not

have the properties things appear to have in the perceptual experience at

issue. One may pick out an element of a subjects experiential quasi-object

saying that the subject is phenomenally presented with a black, cheese-

eating crow. In being presented with that element the subject is under the

impression of there being, in a certain location, an animal which is black

and eating cheese. Obviously, the relevant element of the experiential quasi-

object is neither black nor is it eating cheese. It is not an entity and thereforeincapable of instantiating properties. Nor is the subject under the impression

that an element of what is phenomenally present to it is black or is eating

cheese. We are not under the impression that elements of our stream of

consciousness are black or eating cheese.


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Some seem to be attracted by the following idea: in visual experience

we are presented with certain items (e.g., with a black crow) and these

items can turn out to be real things (as when the subject discovers that it is

genuinely perceiving).8 This is not the view I will advocate. Even in genuineperception we are phenomenally presented with elements of the experiential

quasi-object and even in that case these elements are not pieces of reality.

We can distinguish different kinds of such elements. Some of them come

with the impression of there being something independent of ones own

experience and to which one appears to have direct access through the senses

(e.g., in hallucinating a crow); some such elements do not come with the

appearance of reality but nonetheless with the impression of being presented

with countable individuals (like in afterimage experience or when presented

with red points with the eyes closed). As underlined above, it is a mistaketo reify these elements. Still, we can quasi-refer to them (see section 3) and

we can talk about them in the description of how it is to be phenomenally

presented with them.

3. Quasi-reference

Example 1: Seeing a Red Ball

Looking at a red ball, we are under the impression that the ball has a certain

surface property: it appears to be red. The redness of the ball appears to be there

out there on the surface of the object and the one who looks at the ball is under

the impression of being directly presented with that property of the surface.

The following descriptions are adequate according to the way I understand

phenomenal presence. A red ball is phenomenally present to the subject. The

color of the ball, redness, is phenomenally present to the subject. The color of

the ball being a property of the object perceived is phenomenally present to the

subject. Furthermore, the subject appears to have direct visual access to the colorof the ball, so we can say: it is phenomenally present to the subject that he or

she has direct access to the balls color simply by looking.

The property attributed saying the person is phenomenally presented

with a red ball is a property the perceiver shares with the person who

undergoes a corresponding hallucination. According to a common version

of disjunctivism, the person hallucinating a red ball and the person seeing a

red ball have the following common feature: they both have an experience

which is indistinguishable for the subject from a genuine perception of a redball. This claim is undoubtedly correct. One should, however, disagree if the

disjunctivist makes the further claim that this is the only relevant property

they share. If hallucinating a red ball is indistinguishable for the person

concerned from perceiving a red ball in a given case, then this is due to


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the fact that the hallucinating person shares a complex set of experiential

properties with the one who genuinely perceives a ball: both are under the

impression that there is a ball with the surface property of being red, both

are under the impression that the ball is a piece of reality which existsindependently of their experience, both are under the impression of having

direct visual access, to that object. According to the view here adopted,

having these properties is to instantiate substantial non-relational intrinsic

properties.9

The description

(S1) A red ball is phenomenally present to the subject s.

is meant to describe a common feature of people who perceive a red balland people who only hallucinate a red ball. Therefore (S1), as it is here

intended, does not state a relation of being conscious or aware of a real ball;

this relational interpretation, since it is true only of the case of a genuine

perception, could not capture the common feature at issue. (S1) attributes

an experiential property to the subject s which is shared by people who seem

to see a red ball. It follows that (S1) does not have the logical structure

it appears to have. A red ball is not used to refer to an object of which

the sentence then would say that it is related in a particular way to the

subject s.But this raises a question. If a red ball in (S1) has no referential

function, how should we then understand its semantic role? The intentionalist

has an answer that may appear to be in agreement with the view I am

trying to articulate. The intentionalist might propose to paraphrase (S1)

by (S1)10:

(S1) It is phenomenally present to the subject s that there is an object which is

a ball and which is red.

I agree that (S1) implies (S1). But something is lost in the transition

from (S1) to (S1), or so I would like to insist. The hallucinating and the

perceiving person are both presented with a concretum, as one might try to

put the point. (S1) does not appear to capture this common feature. Maybe

this is a way to put what I have in mind: (S1), if true of a person, is made true

by something that (S1) but not (S1) explicitly mentions: it is made true by a

certain specific element of the experiential quasi-object, an element which is

present to the mind in the visual phenomenology of the person concerned.

The person can attend to that concrete element by visually attending to aparticular part of its visual field. One may describe the semantic function of

a red ball in (S1) as follows: it has the function to pick out the particular

element in the experiential quasi-object which is responsible for the truth

of the whole sentence and it is used to specify the experiential property


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attributed by the whole sentence. A red ball, according to this proposal,

has a double function: it contributes to the meaning of the whole sentence

by specifying the experiential property which is attributed and it quasi-refers

(picks out) the element in what is given to the subject which makes it thecase that the whole sentence is correct (if it is correct).

Quasi-reference is not genuine reference since reference requires a

referent. But quasi-reference has features in common with genuine reference.

A first common feature might be described along the following lines. When

an existentially quantified sentence There is an x such that Fx is true then

there is an individual which renders the sentence true by having property F;

in many cases we can refer to such an individual. In a somewhat analogous

manner, we quasi-refer in (S1) to the element in the experiential object which

makes it the case (S1) is true. This similarity between reference and quasi-reference sheds some light on the earlier issue about the difference between

(S1) and (S1). The difference cannot be brought out by finding a case

where (S1) but not (S1) applies since (S1) can only be rendered true by the

presence of some concrete element in the experiential quasi-object which is

quasi-referred to by a red ball in sentence (S1).

A second similarity between reference and quasi-reference has to do with

demonstrative thought. When a person who hallucinates a red ball and knows

that she does thinks or talks about her experience, she can use a sentence

like (S1) (A red ball is phenomenally present to me) in order to describethe phenomenology of her hallucination. She then quasi-refers to a specific

element of the totality of what is phenomenally present to her using A red

ball; she refers to an element she can visually attend to. This is similar

to the case where a person refers demonstratively to a perceptually given

red ball. She thereby refers to a real ball to which she can visually attend.

(I will come back to issues about attending and demonstrative reference in

section 9).

An account of the semantics of sentences like (S1) would have to avoid

a number of dangers and solve tricky problems. Although a red ball isused to quasi-refer to a specific phenomenological element, as one might

say, it does not say of that element that it is red or that it is a ball. Nor

does it say of that element that it appears to the subject to be red or to be

a ball for the same reasons mentioned earlier with respect to the example

of perceiving or pseudo-perceiving a cheese-eating black crow. The account

must do duty to the idea that the role of the red ball is the same when

(S1) is used to describe a pseudo-perception as when it is used to describe a

perception. Inbothcases the expression quasi-refers. This is to say, to repeat

a point made earlier, that the expression a red ball in (S1) does not referto something which might turn out to be a real red ball. It quasi-refers to

an element in what is phenomenally given to the subject and does not refer

to a real thingregardless of whether we use the sentence to talk about a

perception or a pseudo-perception or a dream.11


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4. A Note on Natural Language

Sometimes it is necessary in philosophy to depart from natural language.

When one tries to think clearly and talk precisely about phenomenal presenceone quickly arrives at such a point. It is hard or impossible to unambiguously

paraphrase (S1) when one limits oneself to the tools of natural language. One

might try, for instance, the following paraphrase:

(P1) It appears to s that there is a red ball in front of her.

Contrary to (S1), however, there is no quasi-reference to a concrete ele-

ment in the experiential quasi-object involved. (P1) is better as a paraphrase

of (S1) than as a paraphrase of (S1). In order to capture the concreteness ofwhat is given in the experience one might think of a different paraphrase:

(P2) There is an object which appears to s to be a red ball.

Obviously, (P2) is incompatible with the present account of phenomenal

presence since it presupposes an existing object that the subject is related to.

To avoid this flaw one might put the concreteness of the object within what

appears to be the case:

(P3) It appears to s that there is a real object which appears to be a ball and

which appears to be red.

But (P3) is in no way better than (P1) as a paraphrase of (S1). The

concreteness of phenomenal presence, in particular the concreteness of

object-like individuals in phenomenal presence, must not be confused with

the appearance of reality (see section 4). To see this one might think of a

case of lucid dreaming where the person is aware of dreaming and where this

awareness enters the phenomenal character (the whole scene is experiencedas unreal). The person is not under the impression, in that case, that there is

a real object but still (S1) may be true of her. One might think that it helps

to talk of apparent objects and their apparent properties. One might then

propose something like this:

(P4) S is confronted with an apparent ball that has the apparent property of

being red.

The main problem with this reformulation (which is of course quiteremote from natural language anyway) is that the apparent property of

being red is treated as if it was a property of the apparent ball. But, as stressed

earlier, there are no apparent balls capable of instantiating properties and

the subject satisfying (S1) is not under the impression either that some such


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object (an apparent ball) is red. It might be objected that (S1) raises the same

kind of problems. The answer is that (S1) introduces technical terminology

which then can be protected against possible misunderstandings by explicitly

addressing them (in the way started in the preceding section).

4. Appearance of Reality

In a natural understanding of (S1) the subject isphenomenallypresented

with a real object. To say this involves attributing to the subject the

impression that there is a real ball; it is not to say that the subject is related

via phenomenal presenceto a real ball. Assertions of phenomenal presence

are made true, not by a relation between subjects and objects, but by non-

relational properties of the subject; this is so independently of whether the

experience at issue is a case of perception or pseudo-perception. The locution

(S2) A real ball is phenomenally present to the subject (the subject is phenome-

nally presented with a real ball)

is not declared unacceptable or false, according to the proposal here pre-

sented. Rather (S2) is interpreted as a purely phenomenological description.

In perceiving or pseudo-perceiving we are under the impression of being

presented with real objects in the space around us, with objects that exist

independently of our perceptual experience. On a natural reading of (S2),

and according to the reading here proposed, the adjective real in (S2) has

the function of attributing to the subject the impression of there being a

real object which exists independently of its experience.12 The appearance of

reality need not disappear when a hallucinating person realizes that she is

hallucinating.

5. The Appearance of Unreality

Example 2: Afterimages

When you look for a while into a red light and then look at a white wall you will

see a green shiny patch which changes position depending on the movements of

your head and eyes. These afterimages are at an apparent distance in a funny

way: they are located in some sensethey are located in a specific area in

the visual field with a specified distance from the perceiveryet, they do not

appear to be in a specific spatial location. They do not appear to be actually

there, out in ones environment, nor do they appear to be in any internal space;

no such internal space is phenomenally present to the perceiver. Afterimages

have an apparent location without appearing to be in space. Afterimages do

not appear to actually be anywhere. They are experienced as something which is

only apparent; they are experienced as unreal.13


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In an afterimage experience the subject is visually aware of the fact that

she is not seeing something flexibly attached to the wall and moving on

its surface. The afterimage, as one may say, is presented as unreal in the

visual experience of the person concerned. One might propose the followingformulation in an attempt to capture that specific feature of the afterimage

experience.

(S3) The afterimages being unreal is phenomenally present to the subject.

(S3) picks out a specific element of the subjects experiential quasi-

object (the element the person herself could quasi-refer to in a demonstrative

thought about the afterimage) and makes a statement about that elements

contribution to the overall phenomenology of the person. (S3) affirms thatthe person is under the impression that there is nothing real out there that she

is perceptually related to in having the afterimage experience. According to

(S3) the afterimages unreality is positively present in the experience.14

6. Veridicality Conditions for the Appearance of Unreality: A Problem

for Intentionalism

The appearance of unreality is not limited to extravagant cases likeafterimages. It occurs in everyday experiences such as seeing red points with

ones eyes closed. Some intentionalist philosophers hold that phenomenal

character is exhausted by veridicality conditions (plus, possibly, the phenom-

enal character associated with the mode of representation). I would like to

consider a rather weak consequence of this view and argue that even this

weak consequence has trouble in accounting for experiences which include

the appearance of reality. The weak intentionalist claim I wish to consider

is this: all differences in phenomenal character within a given modality (e.g.,

vision) are differences with respect to representational content specifiable interms of veridicality conditions. This weak claim is false if there are visual

experiences with a specific phenomenal character that cannot be specified by

their veridicality conditions. Plausibly the after-image case is an example.

The reason is quite obvious: there simply are no conditions under which

an afterimage experience would be veridical. The person is phenomenally

presented with a red patch moving in front of the wall in a specific manner

and, in the very same experience, that patch is presented as unreal. There

is no possible situation in which that visual experience is veridical since the

experience itself contains the impression that what is experienced is, so tospeak,not realized in the surrounding world. I note this difficulty for a weak

intentionalist claim only in passing. To make this argument convincing I

would have to elaborate its details and reject a number of possible replies.

(There is no room to do this in the present paper.)15


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7. Object-likeness and Appearance of Reality

In some sense, elements present in the totality of what is given to a subject

can be object-like even when there is no appearance of reality involved. Thiscan be illustrated, again, by afterimages and red points visually experienced

with the eyes closed. In these experiences afterimages (or red points) can

be counted; they have, in a sense, a location although they do not appear

to be genuinely localized; they can change their position relative to one

another. Furthermore, in the way they are phenomenally presented, they

have an astonishing concreteness and an apparent individuality. We may

say, for instance, quasi-referring to red points visually experienced with the

eyes closed that the first one just disappeared while the second is now moving

in circles around the third. This makes it clear that, in a sense, identity overtime is attributed in experience to these items. Let us say that an element

of the experiential quasi-object is object-like when it is associated with these

aspects: apparent location (sometimes without apparent real location),

apparent identity across time (sometimes without apparent real existence

across time) and being countable (sometimes without the impression that

there really is something to be counted). As the two examples used show,

object-likeness does not include the appearance of reality.

The opposite direction should not be assumed as obvious either. Ar-

guably, melodies and smells are experienced as existing independently ofones own experience but they do not fulfill the criteria for object-likeness, or

so I tend to think. The direction of the origin of a smell (the basil plant, for

instance) and the direction of the violin used to play the melody may well

be phenomenally present, but this is not to say that the smell or the melody

itself appears localized. Both are experienced as located around the subject;

but this is not the kind of experienced location relevant for object-likeness.

Smells and melodies are not countable in a way analogous to the one in which

afterimages are. Smells may be experienced as remaining here over time; but

this is not to be confused with experiencing them as persisting through timein the sense in which an individual is experienced as numerically identical to

itself across time. Similar remarks apply to melodies. (Melodies might be said

to be experienced as extended in time, but this is different from experiencing

them as existing, identically to themselves, over time.)16

8. Objections from Demonstrative Thought and Attention

It may seem that the view proposed has unacceptable consequencesrelated to demonstrative thought. Suppose that in hallucinating a crow I

entertain the thought this crow is looking for cheese and suppose that,

on a different occasion, while actually seeing the crow, I entertain, once

again, the demonstrative thought this crow is looking for cheese. The view


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proposed may appear to imply that I quasi-refer on both occasions to the

common element in both experiences: to the relevant item in the experiential

object. But this would be a reductio ad absurdum. Obviously, when I perceive

the crow, my demonstrative thought is about the real crow.My answer to this objection takes into account the fact that the referent

of demonstrative thought depends on the thinkers intention. Both subjects

intend to refer to the real crow which they appear to see. In the case of

the perception, there is a real crow and the act of demonstrative reference

succeeds. In the case of the hallucination there is no such real animal and

the thinker fails to refer to anything in his or her demonstrative thought.

Both can of course also intend to only describe how things appear; in this

case they both quasi-refer to the relevant item in their respective experiential

object. The view here proposed is perfectly compatible with this assessmentof demonstrative reference in perception and pseudo-perception. So the

challenge can be met quite easily.

It might however be suspected that the view proposed has a similar

but more serious problem with the object of attention. It is impossible to

successfully turn your attention upon a non-existent object, or so someone

may argue. Therefore, so the objection continues, either you must accept that

we cannot turn our attention towards an element in the experiential object

or you must accept that the elements in the experiential object have to be

accepted as genuine entities.In response to this objection I deny its central premise. We can correctly

say of a person that she is directing her attention to red points seen with

closed eyes without thereby being committed to introducing these points into

our ontology.

But the opponent may now take a different line of thought still related to

the topic of attention. A commonly recognized flaw of the sense datum theory

is its commitment to something between the subject and the perceived

object. The present view, so the opponent might argue, has a similar

consequence. When Hans, a person who hallucinates a raven, and Peter,a person who perceives a raven, both attend to the raven which appears to be

there, then, according to the view presented, they both attend to an element

in their experiential object. Peter thereby also attends to the real raven. But

his act of attention is indirect: he attends to the real raven only by attending

to the element in his experiential object.

The answer, I think, must be this: Peter attends to two objects. He

attends to a pseudo-object (the element in his experiential object) and he

attends to the raven. But this doesnotmake his attention to the raven indirect.

Peter attends to the raven by attending to a specific aspect of his overallphenomenology (by attending to the relevant element in his experiential

object) and he attends to that element by attending to the raven. In normal

cases, these two acts of attention are even one and the same. If X is an

element in the experiential object and Y is a real object, then S attends to


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X and S attends to Y can describe one and the same act of attention

(they can be made true by the same act of the subject).17

9. The Appearance of Having Direct Access through the Senses

Example 3: Feeling the Position of Ones Legs

I once had to undergo an operation of my left leg with local anesthesia. I was

awake during the whole operation. Due to the effect of the anesthesia I felt no

pain and could not move my legs. I could hear but not see what was going on. At

some point I realized that I felt the position of my legs. I felt my left leg turned

to the right side and lying heavily on the other leg. I wondered about how thiswas possible despite the effect of the anesthesia. I asked a friendly young lady

assisting in the operation and sitting next to me for an explanation. She answered

very kindly in the following way: You do not actually feel the position of your

legs. It only appears to you that way. We learned in medical school that the brain

retains the last information it gets before the onset of the anesthesia.Your legs

have been moved since then. I had no reason to doubt what she said but I was

deeply puzzled. I seemed to directly feel the position of my whole body but, as

I just learned, that impression was illusory.

In imagining the relevant features of this situation you must just focus

on your proprioceptive experience of the position of your limbs and try

to imagine that you learn by a reliable source that their actual position

is radically different. This exercise might make you realize how hard it

is to believe that one is wrong about the position of ones own body

in proprioception. It is almost as if one experiences oneself as infallible

with respect to proprioception. When focusing with ones eyes closed on

the position of ones own body the position of ones limbs appears to

be so directly available that an illusion appears to be an absurd idea.

However, as the example shows and as one should have expected anyway,

misrepresentation is, of course, not excluded.

Based on the example and further reflection on how it is to feel ones

body via this inner sense, one can realize that a phenomenologically

adequate description of proprioception must mention this impression of

direct access. In feeling the position of ones arm as lying above the head in

a particular way when one wakes up in the morning one is phenomenally

presented with a specific position of that arm; in addition, one is presented

with something else: one appears to have, in that experience, direct access

to the position of ones arm and that additional impression is part, or so

I claim, of the experience itself. That additional aspect of proprioceptive

experiences can easily go unnoticed. Proprioception in adult humans never

comes without that impression of having direct access; therefore, we cannot


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discover the aspect by contrasting experiences having it with experiences

lacking it. One way to become acutely aware of being under the impression

of having direct access is to undergo a proprioceptive experience, as in

example 4, of which one knows while having it that it misrepresents. Whatwas puzzling for me in the situation reported was not so much the fact in

itself that my legs were in a position other than I thought on the basis of my

feeling. What was so puzzling or even bewildering was to learn thatdespite

the clear appearance of having direct access to the position of my bodyI

actually did not have direct access to the position of a great part of my

body.

I have been using the example in order to pick out a specific aspect

of proprioceptive experience. If I succeeded in doing so then the reader

will be able to focus on that aspect in his or her own proprioceptiveexperience. Describing the experience as an impression of direct access is

to introduce a name which captures quite well its phenomenal character by

characterizing in a preliminary manner what appears to be the case in being

under the impression at issue. But the characterization is only preliminary.

Once this particular aspect of the phenomenology of proprioception has

been identified one may further reflect upon how what appears to be the

case in that impression of direct access can be more fully and more precisely

captured. Theoretical considerations can enter in that process of finding an

adequate description of the corresponding veridicality conditions.18 It is partof the impression of direct access that we seem to be able to track the

position of our own bodywhere to be able to track ones bodily position

includes that the way we appear to be positioned is due to the way we are

positioned. Understood in that way, a specific counterfactual dependence

(of how our position appears to be in proprioception on how the body

actually is positioned) is essential to having direct access to ones bodily

position in proprioception. To say that we are under the impression of having

direct access to the position of our limbs in proprioception then amounts to

something like this: we are under the impression that any relevant change inour actual bodily position would result in our noticing that change; should

such a change occur then the change would be phenomenally present to us.

The appearance of direct access, or so I suggest, is present in other

modalities of perception as well and, arguably, it is an essential feature of

what it is to perceive.19 In visual perception we appear to have direct access

to the things around us. This includes the impression that we are sensible

in an appropriate way to relevant changes. When a subject puts its hand

into water and perceives its temperature as warm, then it is part of that

experience, or so I would like to suggest, that the experience would changeif the water were to change with respect to the property thus felt. Arguably

this is so at least in the human case. In mature human visual experience,

visual perceptions appear to provide access to the colors, forms and position


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of things and many other properties. When I see a crow in front of the

window, I am, for instance, under the impression that I would notice the

change if the crow where to turn white (that the color phenomenally present

to me would change accordingly); and I am under the impression that Iwould be phenomenally aware of a crow flying away if the crow were to fly

away.

As example 4 illustrates, the impression of direct access can be illusory.

It was impossible for me to free myself from the impression of having direct

access to the position of my legs in proprioception during the operation.

Yet the impression of direct access was an illusion and I even knew that it

was; I was not in a position to track the position of that part of my body

via proprioception. Under normal circumstances the impression of having

direct access to the things around us through vision, for instance, is largelyveridical: we can track an immense amount of properties of things through

vision; we are visually sensible to the relevant changes and being so sensible

is precisely what appears to be the case in the impression of having direct

access. The properties we can visually track go far beyond colors, forms and

spatial relations. We can, for instance, visually track finest emotions in the

faces of other humans. We are often under the impression of having direct

access to what another person feels looking into her face. Arguably, this

impression is, in most cases, veridical.20 I will come back to the impression

of having direct access in section 14 below.

10. Phenomenal Presence of Qualia

The following is a clear example of phenomenal presence of a quale in

the way in which I will use the term:

Example 4:

There is a picture painted by Karl-Theodor Piloty in 1855 entitled Seni vor dem

Leichnam des Wallenstein (Moderne Pinakothek, Munich) in which you can see

a huge golden tissue when you look at it from a certain distance. The picture has

a horrible theme and if your art taste is similar to mine then you will not like it.

The picture is, however, interesting: when you approach it you will detect that the

painter hasnt used a single golden pigment in order to produce the impression

of gold. All there is on its surface are patches of brown, orange, yellow and

white. Yet, when you go back a few steps, shining gold will be phenomenally

present to you (and no orange, yellow, brown or white).21

This example renders the notion of being presented with a quality quite

clear, even clearer, I believe, than ordinary color perception. But any color


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experience is an example of being presented with a quale; further examples

are being phenomenally presented with a melody, a sound, a smell or a taste.

(I use gold and golden in what follows as color terms, no reference to

the chemical substance is intended.)The term qualia is usually introduced as referring to properties of

experiences which are constitutive of the phenomenal character of the

experience. On the other hand, qualia are usually understood as something

that is directly present to the mindin the way in which colors, smells and

sounds are present in experience. These two characterizations of qualia

as specific properties of experiences on the one hand and as something

directly given in experience on the otherare, however, incompatible. When

looking at Pilotys picture, the color gold is phenomenally present to the

subject. But that color is not thereby a property of the experience (it is nota property of the event consisting in the subjects experiencing that color).

Nor is gold a property experiences appear to have. When a person sees the

picture she is not thereby confronted with a mental item, an experience,

which appears to be golden; no golden items appear to float inside. The

closest one can get to attributing gold or mental gold or any other

qualitative property to the experience itself is to say that the experience

has the property that having that experience is to be presented with gold.

But any understanding of this complex property of an experience E (to be

such that having E is to be presented with gold) is based on an understandingof what it is to be phenomenally presented with gold. Therefore, the notion

of a quale as something that can be phenomenally present is conceptually

more fundamental than the notion of qualia as properties of experiences.

Furthermore, the term qualia is not suited for the complex properties

(illustrated above) that might be considered constitutive of phenomenal

character. I therefore reserve the term quale for qualities that can be

phenomenally present in experience. Qualia in this sense are not properties

of experiences.22

When qualia are understood as those properties of experiences whichconstitute phenomenal character then, by definition, there can be no

difference with respect to phenomenal character unless there is a difference

with respect to qualia. But let as ask the corresponding question using the

term qualia in the sense here adopted. Are all differences with respect to

overall phenomenology differences with respect to phenomenal presence of

qualia? If so, then any difference in phenomenal character between subjects

X and Y is either constituted by a quale being phenomenally present to X

which is not phenomenally present to Y or by a different distribution of

qualia over items in the experiential object (e.g., a red square and a bluecircle is phenomenally present to X while a blue square and a red circle

is phenomenally present to Y). The answer, or so I claim, is clearly no. A

great many phenomenal differences do not involve differences with respect to

phenomenal presence of qualia. The following example 6 is a typical case.


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Example 5: Hearing Directions

When you sit on a beach with your eyes closed you might hear a wave breaking

to your left and then hear a wave breaking to your right. You can distinguish

just by listening where the sound comes from. In both cases the sound might

otherwise be exactly alike. But there is a phenomenal difference between the two

cases. It is phenomenally different to hear an otherwise qualitatively identical

sound as coming from the right side as opposed to hearing it as coming from

the left side.

Example 5 illustrates that two experiences can be phenomenally different

(which means that it is different for the subject involved to have the

first as opposed to the second) without any difference with respect tothe presence of qualia. There is no quale (in the sense exemplified by

colors and smells) associated with hearing a sound as coming from a

certain direction. Qualia occur in experiences which present the world in a

certain way to the subject but they are separableat least in thought

from the way the world appears to be in that experience. There is no

quale which is separable from being under the impression that the sound

comes from the left hand side. In the case of a perceptual experience of

gold, for instance, we can isolate the purely qualitative aspect of what

is phenomenally present (the gold). (There are experiences where gold isphenomenally present and yet nothing appears to be golden.) In the case

of a perceptual experience of a given sound coming from the left, there is

no purely qualitative aspect of hearing it as coming from the left which

could be isolated and then imagined as occurring in an experience where

the subject is not under the impression that the sound comes from the left.

No quality can be separated in thought from being under the impression

that a sound comes from a specific direction. The separation in thought of

a pure quality is impossible, or so I claim, for a simple reason: there is no

such pure quality phenomenally present to the subject when a subject hearsdirections in addition to the other qualities of the sound such as pitch and

loudness.

11. The Appearance of Three-dimensionality

There is on-going discussion about whether, in visual perception, the

hidden part of an object is phenomenally present. When I see the red ball

on the grass, am I then phenomenally presented only with the part which isvisually accessible to me or is the rest of the ball also phenomenally present?

It is certainly misleading to say that the hidden part of the balls surface

is phenomenally present. Another description is more adequate: in visual

perception we are phenomenally presented with three-dimensional objects.


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When, for instance, I see the crow outside the window, I am phenomenally

presented with a three-dimensional crow-body. The phenomenal presence of

the whole crow-body in a given moment is certainly created by the visual

system due to the fact that the experience in that moment belongs to theexperience of a scene in which the crow is moving and I have visual access

from various perspectives to its body.23

Differences in phenomenal presence of three-dimensional form are

differences in phenomenal character. But again, these differences are not

due to differences in phenomenal presence of qualia. Compare a case where

a person seems to see a whole apple (an object with the three-dimensional

form of a normal apple is phenomenally present) with a case where a person

seems to see one half apple cut into two from a perspective which renders only

the intact surface visible (the three-dimensional form of a half of an appleis phenomenally present). The two experiences are phenomenally different

but the difference cannot be explained by a difference with respect to the

phenomenal presence of qualia. There is no whole-apple-quale separable in

thought from the impression of there being an object with that particular

form.

Three-dimensional form is sometimes phenomenally present in a highly

specified and distinct manner, and sometimes only vaguely present and quite

unspecified. Phenomenal presence of three-dimensionality in perceptual

experience is hard to deny, and seems quite obvious to me. Lack ofagreement about this point is likely to be due to misunderstandings. Some

may suppose, for instance, that accepting phenomenal presence of three-

dimensional form commits one to accepting qualia of three-dimensionality.

But this supposition is based on the mistaken assumption that there are

no phenomenal differences without a difference in phenomenal presence of

qualia.

12. Interpretations Entering Phenomenal Presence

Under the heading cognitive penetration philosophers of perception

argue about what can enter the content, as they say, of perceptual experience;

the question is about to what extent cognitive elements, or interpretation,

can alter what is present in the perceptual experience itself.24 I would like to

ask the question (or at least a related question) as follows: to what extent

can interpretation (in a wide sense where interpretation can be the result of

unconscious neural processing but also the more or less voluntary application

of concepts) enter the phenomenal character of perceptual experience viaphenomenal presence? In other words: what properties are such that their

instantiation in an object can be phenomenally present to a subject in

a perceptual experience?25 Several examples have already been discussed

above: phenomenal presence of three-dimensionality must be due to some


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interpretative work of the perceptual system; the same must be assumed for

the appearance of reality or unreality and for the impression of having direct

access. These interpretations enter the phenomenal character of perception

according to what has been said earlier. Furthermore, interpretation at ahigh conceptual level enters the phenomenal character when I see the crow in

front of the window as an experiencing subject with certain intentions (when

the crows being an experiencing subject and its having certain intentions is

phenomenally present to me) or when I see the crow as the one I have met

so many times before (its identity with a crow met earlier is phenomenally

present to me). There is no room in the present paper to defend the view

that these complex interpretations enter what is phenomenally present. Here

I will just briefly comment on example 7 with the aim to thereby further

explain the notion of phenomenal presence.

Example 7: Artificial Trees

In some restaurants a comfortable atmosphere is produced by the presence of

small trees. You might be disappointed when you touch them and when you

thereby discover: these are not trees, they are fake trees made of plastic. You

can see an object as a real tree and then, after having learned that it is not

real, see it as a fake tree. Even when you have learned that the apparent tree is

artificial you might still be able to switch back and forth between seeing it as

a real tree and seeing it as a fake tree. The switch makes a difference in visual

phenomenology, or so I would like to claim. The object looks different to you

according to whether you see it as a real tree or as a plastic object. The difference

is due to a Gestalt switch and need not go along with any change in the way

the object is presented to you with respect to color and form.

There are of course different views one might take about the example.

Some will deny that there is any phenomenal difference involved here

and say that the difference lies in some cognitive element (a thought, forinstance) which does not have any influence on overall phenomenology.

Others may acknowledge that there is a phenomenal difference between the

experience before and after the switch but they will locate the phenomenal

difference in the cognitive element itself (e.g., in having the thought that the

plant is artificial). Still others mightaccepting that there is a phenomenal

differencelocate the phenomenal difference in the way the plant appears

to be with respect to color and shape. They might argue that other details

about color or shape become salient after the switch and insist that this is

what the phenomenal difference consists in.The view I would like to look at here is different from all these positions.

It does not deny that a phenomenal difference with respect to salience of

details about color and shape may occur with the Gestalt shift. It does

deny, however, that the difference consists in these changes. And it involves


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the claim that the difference lies in the phenomenology of vision, not in the

phenomenology of some co-occurrent thought. The view may be put like

this: the plants being real is phenomenally present in the visual experience

in the first case and the plants being artificial is phenomenally presentin the visual experience in the second case. According to the view here

presented, an experience with the same phenomenological aspect of being

under the impression of seeing an artificial plant may occur in pseudo-

perception, although, in that case, it is not a result of interpreting visual

informationit then is the result of a free construction achieved by the

brain.

Using the notion of phenomenal presence as it has been introduced in

the preceding sections, I will now (in the sections 13 and 14) sketch a way in

which the intuition of openness to the world can be accounted for withinthe present subjectivist framework.

13. Weak Direct Awareness of Features of the World and Weak Transparency

Suppose that, with my eyes closed (but without being aware that they are

closed) I hallucinate >a crow< >in front of the window< which >looks< a

particular way and >behaves in a particular waythe crow< phenomenally present to me in the hallucination.

Obviously, in that case, I only seem to have visual access to a real animal;

with respect to direct access my experience is non-veridical.

But there is a sense in which, despite my lack of access to the relevant

piece of reality, I am directly aware of features of reality. There is a rich variety

of propositions p such that, in this situation, I am phenomenally presented

with p and p is actually the case. I am visually under the impression of there

being a crow which is black and which behaves in a particular way; the crowappears to be outside in the world, existing independently of my experience

and having those properties independently of my experience; and there is,

out there in reality a crow which is black and which behaves exactly in that

manner. In phenomenal presence what is phenomenally present is directly

before the mind, so to speak: it is directly given to the subject. In the case of

my hallucination >a crow eating cheese outside of the window< is directly

present to me and what is thereby directly present to me is the way things

really are. This is, it seems to me, a first weak sense of direct awareness

of features of the real world that we must recognize. When, in perception,something appears to be the case which actually is the case, then the subject

concerned is, in a respectable sense, directly aware of features of the world.

With respect to these features, the world is then presented to the subject

exactly as the world actually is; there is a clear intuitive sense in which the


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person is directly aware, in this case, of real features of the world since a true

proposition is directly present to the mind without any mediation.

One might think that the notion of weak direct awareness of features

of the world I am trying to capture here is constituted by phenomenalpresence plus veridicality. But this is not right. Not any kind of phenomenal

presence plus veridicality is enough to constitute, in the relevant intuitive

sense, weak direct awareness. When I sit in my room and simply consider

that the crow might be back and that it might be eating cheese in front of

the window in a moment where this thought is true, I do not have weak

direct awareness of features of the world. The true proposition that a crow

is eating cheese in front of the window is then, in thought, phenomenally

present to me (or so I claim), but there is no temptation to think of this

case as one of direct awareness of real features of the world even in the weaksense I am aiming at. Only in perception, but not in thought, the subject is

under the impression of reality, under the impression of there being a real

thing out there with certain properties. Phenomenal presence must have this

feature, the appearance of reality, for beingin the case of veridicalityan

instance of weak direct awareness of real features of the world. I assume

that perceptual experiences (perceptions and pseudo-perceptions) and only

perceptual experiences include this aspect. Weak direct awareness can then

be defined as follows:

Definition 1:

A subject has weak direct awareness of the fact that p iff the subject isin having

a perceptual experience (a perception or a pseudo-perception)phenomenally

aware that p and p is the case.

Alternatively one might choose the following definition:

Definition 1:

A subject has weak direct awareness of the fact that p iff the subject isin

having an experience which includes the appearance of realityphenomenally

aware that p and p is the case.

In analogy to these notions of weak direct awareness of facts one mightintroduce an equally plausible notion of weak direct awareness of concrete

objects. When I have weak direct awareness of a sufficiently rich class of facts

involving the crow, then I may be said to have weak direct awareness of the

individual involved in these facts, the particular crow. Of course, this is not


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a case of genuine access via the senses to that particular individual. Genuine

access requires more, as will be discussed in the next section.

I hope the reader will agree, upon reflection on concrete cases, that the

notion so defined deserves its name. The adjective weak is unproblematic:weak direct awareness need not involve genuine perceptual access; it is not

direct awareness of something in the strong sense of having direct perceptual

access. Nonetheless it is, in a sense, direct. The intuition of directness is

based here on three sources: (a) the proposition is phenomenally present

and so present without any mediation, (b) the proposition is present in the

perceptual way which includes the appearance of reality and (c) what is thus

presented without mediation and involving the appearance of reality typical

for perception is actually true.

Any case of phenomenal presence is one where what is so present isdirectly there for the subject. This kind of directness is shared by all cases

of phenomenal presence, independently of whether they involve or do not

involve the appearance of reality, independently of whether they involve or

do not involve object-like items and independently of whether they involve or

do not involve phenomenal presence of qualia. When what is phenomenally

present is, for instance, >a real red ball< in perceptual experience, then

the directness of phenomenal presence is combined with the appearance

of reality. In that case, what is directly present to the mind, without any

mediation, is that there is an experience-independent object out there whichis a ball and which is red (and which has these properties in an experience-

independent way).

When the directness of phenomenal presence is combined with the

appearance of reality, then at least sufficiently sophisticated subjects will

be under the impression of being directly presented with the world through

the experience. A certain aspect of what has been called transparency of

perception in recent literature may be taken to be just this: it is the impression

of being directly presented with how things stand in having the experience

one is presently having.I propose to distinguish the appearance of reality from this latter

impression, the impression of direct awareness. In the appearance of reality

things appear to be real and appear to really have certain properties. One may

express this appearance of reality adding that things appear to exist and to

have the properties at issue independently of ones own experience. But this

should not be understood as the claim that the appearance of reality contains

a reference to ones own experience. The appearance of realityor rather the

aspect I am trying to focus the readers attention on in using this termis

less sophisticated and might well be present in animals cognitively much lesscomplex than humans. Being real is attributedin the experienceto things

that appear to be out there and to their instantiation of propertieswithout

reference to the way ones own experience is related to them. Contrary to the

appearance of reality, weak transparencyas I understand the termdoes


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involve reference to ones present experience. It is the impression that, in

having the experience, one is directly aware of how things stand. (It is an

impression that becomes salient only upon reflection.)

Once weak transparency is described in this way (as the impres-sion of being directly aware of pieces of reality) the question arises

of how being directly aware should be understood in that context.

My proposal is to use definition 1 for that purpose and to under-

stand direct awareness in the sense of weak awareness there defined.

Weak transparency so interpreted is the impression of being phenomenally

presented with some proposition p in a way which involves the appearance of

reality where that p is a fact about reality. Weak transparency so understood

is an aspect of the phenomenology of perception and pseudo-perception.

Weak transparency is veridical when what is phenomenally present in anexperience exhibiting the appearance of reality is actually the case (the

subject is under the impression of being directly aware of a fact and she

is then directly aware of that fact, in the sense of definition 1).

Weak direct awareness of features of the world is veridical phenomenal

presence in perceiving or pseudo-perceiving, orequivalentlyit is veridical

phenomenal presence in an experience which includes the appearance of

reality. To sum up, one might say, simply: one has direct weak awareness of

features of the world when things perceptually appear the way they are

(where perceptually appear does not exclude pseudo-perception). Weaktransparency then is the impression, included in any perception or pseudo-

perception (and veridical in any case of perception), that things appear the

way they are.

14. Direct Perceptual Access and the Appearance of Direct Perceptual Access

Any philosophical view concerning perception must do duty to the

intuition of openness to the world through the senses. Weak direct awarenessas defined above only captures a small part of what must be said about that

openness. An important aspect is still missing in what has been said so far.

As illustrated by various examples above, we are phenomenally presented

with having direct access to the world around us (or, in proprioception,

to the position of our own body). We now need to find an adequate

understanding of direct access such that (a) it is plausible that we are

under the impression of having direct access in this sense in perception and

(b) we actually have direct access in that sense in perception.

In my perception of the crow I actually have direct access to the crowin the following sense: changes concerning the crow result in changes in

phenomenal presence. When I am under the impression of having direct

access to the crow in the case of perception, my impression is veridical: I

do have that kind of access. The case illustrates a sense of direct access


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which satisfies both constraints (a) and (b) above. I propose to call this

special relation, this special kind of direct access, which we have to objects

in perception perceptual awareness. One might define the notion along the

following lines:

Definition 2:

A subject s is perceptually aware of an object o in a given situation iff for any

property p of a sufficiently rich class of properties the following holds: (a) os

having p is phenomenally present to s; (b) the fact that (a) is caused, in the manner

typical for perception, by os having p; and (c) relevant changes concerning o with

respect to this class of properties would lead in that situationby the normal

causal process characteristic of genuine cases of perceptionto corresponding

changes in what would then be phenomenally present to s. (In other words, the

following holds for a sufficiently rich set of properties: would the object cease

to have property p then the subject woulddue to that change and as a causal

consequence of that changecease to be under the impression that there is an

object there having property p).27

This is only a first sketch of a definition of perceptual awareness which

needs further elaboration. But the basic idea, I hope, is clear enough for thepresent purposes. Perceptual awareness provides direct access to objects; it

captures a further aspect of our openness to the world.

Perceptual access would not be an intuitively satisfying account of an

important aspect of openness to the world through the senses if it wasnt

defined in terms of phenomenal presence. Phenomenal presence combined

with the appearance of reality and veridicality constitutes a weak but

important sense of direct awareness of features of the world. Perceptual

access guarantees that we are in genuine contact with the world in normal

cases where we have and appear to have weak direct awareness of pieces ofreality. It is only on the basis of the kind of directness provided by weak

direct awareness (which includes the directness characteristic of phenomenal

presence) that perceptual access deserves being regarded as direct access to

the world through the senses.

Weak direct awareness and weak transparency can be present and weak

transparency can be veridical in the absence of perceptual awareness; this

may happen even in a case of perception. If my description of the fake

tree example is accepted, then it can be used to illustrate the claim: after

the switch, the objects being a fake tree is phenomenally present to thesubject and the experience involves the appearance of reality. Let us assume

that the object is a fake tree. Then the subject has direct weak awareness

of the trees being fake. Furthermore, the aspect of weak transparency may

well be present: the subject may be under the impression of being directly

aware of the trees being fake, and this impression is veridical according to


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definition 1. However, it may well be that the subject is incapable of making

the difference, just by looking, between real and artificial trees. If the tree,

by magic, were replaced by a genuine tree, the subject would not notice the

difference, or so we may assume. In that case, the subject is not perceptuallyaware of the trees being a fake tree.

It is psychologically plausible to assume that weak transparency nor-

mally goes along with what one may call strong transparency: the impression

of being perceptually aware of the relevant item in the sense of (b) and (c)

in definition 2. In the fake tree case it is quite possible that the subject is,

in addition to weak transparency, under the impression of having perceptual

access (in that sense) to the trees being fake. If so, her experience exhibits

strong transparency but that impression is non-veridical.

15. Full Direct Awareness or Openness to the World

All elements required for the account of openness to the world through

the senses which I would like to propose are now in place. In a normal

perception, e.g., when I observe the black crow eating cheese in front of

the window, I am phenomenally presented with there being a black crow

eating cheese and the experience comes with the appearance of reality: the

crow appears to be outside in the external, objective world and to have

the relevant properties independently of my experience. Furthermore, my

impression that there is a black crow eating cheese is veridical. So, I have weak

direct awareness of the crow and a number of facts about it. I also appear

to have that weak direct access: my experience exhibits weak transparency.

Furthermore, I am perceptually aware of the crow; I am in a position to track

relevant changes of the crow by looking at the crow; and I am under the

impression of having that access: my experience exhibits strong transparency.

When all this is trueveridical phenomenal presence plus the appearance

of reality plus veridicality plus weak transparency plus perceptual access

plus strong transparencythen the subject has full direct awareness of the

relevant object or fact. This is my account of openness to the world through

the senses: it consists in having direct access to a rich variety of objects and

facts about the world by being fully directly aware of them.

16. A Puzzle about Perception Revisited

To conclude I would like to come back to the puzzle with which I started:

Three initially plausible statements taken together lead into contradiction:

(1) The phenomenal character of perception is determined by what one

is directly aware of in perception.


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(2) The phenomenal character of a perception and its corresponding

pseudo-perception is the same.

(3) In perception but not in pseudo-perception we are directly aware of

the perceived real objects (or of a fact).

The view here proposed solves the problem by distinguishing different

senses of being directly aware of something in perception: phenomenal

presence, weak direct awareness and perceptual awareness. The phenomenal

character of perceptual experiences is determined by what is phenomenally

present to the subject. So direct awareness in (1) must be read, according

to the view here proposed, in the sense of phenomenal presence. (1) is false if

direct awareness is understood either as weak direct awareness (definition 1)

or as perceptual awareness (definition 2). By contrast, (3) cannot be acceptedwhen direct awareness is read as phenomenal presence. No piece of reality is

phenomenally present, either in perception or in pseudo-perception. But (3) is

true when direct awareness is read as perceptual awareness. The problem

is thereby solved since no contradiction arises when direct awareness is

interpreted differently in (1) and (3).

The view here presented about perception is characterized by taking

phenomenal presence as basic. It shares with the sense datum theory its

emphasis on what is present in phenomenology while avoiding its well-known

errors, in particular the error of introducing entities which have the propertiesobjects appear to have in perception. It avoids, furthermore, the unwelcome

result that perception is indirect awareness of objects and facts. The view

here proposed shares with disjunctivism the idea that direct causal contact

is essential for direct awareness of perceptual objects. But it avoids the main

flaw of disjunctivism which consists in missing the substantial commonality

between genuine perception and pseudo-perception. The view shares with

intentionalism the basic idea that, at least in many cases, having a perceptual

or pseudo-perceptual experience with a given phenomenal character consists

in being under the impressionin a particular waythat such-and-such isthe case. It insists, however, that not all aspects of the phenomenal character

of perception can be captured in this manner. It rejects every version of

intentionalism which involves the claim that phenomenal presence can be

ontologically reduced to some relation satisfying the constraints a genuine

physicalist will impose. The view, furthermore, endorses the idea that what

has been called quasi-reference is necessary for an adequate description of

phenomenal presence.

The view presented in this paper contains a description of some basic

ideas for a solution to the so-called problem of perception. It would, however,be ridiculous to pretend having presented a new and genuine solution given

the difficulty and the depth of the problem of perception and the enormous

effort past and present philosophers have invested in solving the problem. I

hope, however, that I succeeded in a much more modest enterprise. I hope


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I will convince some readers that there is a further option which has not

been sufficiently thought through in the discussion about perception and

which incorporates elements in a coherent manner that may appear to be

in irresolvable tension at first sight: the subjectivist approach which takeswhat is phenomenally given to the subject (understood in a non-relational

manner) as basic and the full acceptance of the intuition that we have direct

access through the senses to a mind-independent world.

Notes

1. The research in preparation of this paper is part of the project PDM-118610funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Many elements of the view

here presented developed in exchange with my collaborator in the project,

Fabrice Theler about transparency and representationalism. The main ideas

here presented became clearer during the fruitful exchange in the worskop

on phenomenal presence (Fribourg, June 2010, organized by Fabrice Theler,

Fabian Dorsch, Fiona McPherson and me) which was part of that project.

I would like to thank all the participants in that workshop for the intense,

focussed and stimulting discussion. In developing my views about phenomenal

presence regular meetings with Laura Schroter during her stay in Fribourg in

2007 (within a research project funded by the SNF) and with Daniel Stoljarduring my sabbatical in Canberra in 2009 were of great help. In the last few

months I profited enormously from the feedback received by the participants

in my two seminars on perception in Fribourg in spring 2011; I would like to

thank all the students who contributed to the discussion. I specifically remember

critical remarks that helped me a lot to articulate the view by Emmanuel Baierle,

Benjamin Oswald, Julien Bugnon, Patrik Engisch, Josua Maurer and Benot

Pittet. Philosophical conversations with Coralie Dorsaz and Jacob Naito had

a lot of influence in finding a way to express the view here presented. I would

like to thank my colleague Gianfranco Soldati whose contributions in several

workshops and seminars in Fribourg helped me to clearly see the problem ofperception. I have to mention that the subjectivist approach to the problem of

perception here proposed has developed over many years in continous exchange

with my partner, the philosopher Max Drommer. I here give voice to ideas

present in the chapter Sinnesdaten of his book Philosophische Skizzen

(unpublished manuscript).

2. Compare Charles Siewert, 1999, chapter 8 for an illuminating discussion of these

issues and forceful arguments in favor of so-called cognitive phenomenology.

3. Compare Terrence Horgan, 2011, and for a view including doings which are not

actions M. Nida-Rumelin, 2007a.

4. I do not wish to thereby imply that self-awareness is an instance of phenomenal

consciousness (which I take to be false). Arguably, however, self-awareness is

present only in episodes of phenomenal concsiousness.

5. Compare Tim Crane 2005/2011.

6. Compare in particular M. Nida-Rumelin, 2006, 2007a, 2008a, 2001.


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7. The perceptual metaphor involves thinking of phenomenal awareness in the

following way: in having an experience with a certain phenomenal character

we are presented with an event, an experience, and that event is presented as

having some qualitative property. This metaphor is so obviously misleadingthat it cannot be assumed to be seriously adopted by philosophers. However,

the common picture that experiences (understood as events in the brain) have

qualia tends to favor errors that are close to implicitly presupposing this mistaken

perceptual view about phenomenal awareness. I discuss this issue at some length

in M. Nida-Rumelin, 2007c and 2008a. For related considerations compare

Shoemaker 1994.

8. Moore appears to take this position in Moore 1914 and is interpreted by Katalin

Farkas in that way (see Katalin Farkas, 2010).

9. Disjunctivism is often characterized by its denial of the common

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Phenomenal Presence and Perceptual Awareness