SENSE DATA THE SENSIBLE APPROACH

Manuel GARCIacuteA-CARPINTEROUniversitat de Barcelona

Summary

In this paper I present a version of a sense-data approach to perceptionwhich differs to a certain extent from well-known versions like the one putforward by Jackson I compare the sense-data view to the currently mostpopular alternative theories of perception the so-called Theory of Ap-pearing (a very specific form of disjunctivist approaches) on the one handand reductive representationalist approaches on the other I defend thesense-data approach on the basis that it improves substantially on those al-ternative theories

1 The Theory of Appearing

Sense data are out of favor these days Most philosophers currentlywriting on conscious experience and perception go to great pains toavoid them In a recent paper on perception Alston writes ldquoSincesense datum theory has been almost universally abandoned for goodand sufficient reason I need not spend time bad mouthing itrdquo(Alston 1999 189) Only two pages later however in response tothe main argument for sense data Alston (who purports to defend a

Grazer Philosophische Studien62 (2001) 17-63

Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the LOGOS seminarUniversitat de Barcelona and at Oxford University I would like to thank the au-diences there for very useful suggestions and in particular Martin Davies JoseacuteAntonio Diacuteez Dan Loacutepez de Sa Josep Maciagrave and Manuel Peacuterez Very detailedcomments by Kevin Mulligan led to many improvements both of style and sub-stance Financial support was provided by the research projects BFF2001-3466funded by the DGI Spanish Government and SGR2001-0018 Generalitat deCatalunya

version of the Theory of Appearing) contends that in hallucinationsubjects are in experiential relations with ldquoa particularly vivid men-tal imagerdquo a mental particular Thus although Alston dismissessense data he is prepared to commit himself to what was tradition-ally supposed to be the main ontological burden of those theoriesOne then wonders what he takes to be the ldquogood and sufficient rea-sonsrdquo to dismiss sense data

It is healthy to remember that it has not always been so for a goodhalf of the past century sense data were taken for granted by mostphilosophers For better or for worse a new trend was forcefully es-tablished by the joint efforts of philosophers such as Austin RyleSellars and Wittgenstein which has acquired the force of estab-lished presumption Philosophers take for granted that Austin RyleSellars and Wittgenstein gave arguments that made it clear thatsense data are one more philosophical invention but they are notvery explicit about how exactly the arguments go There are ofcourse some exceptions outstanding among them Jackson (1977)and Perkins (1983) This paper is an attempt at a vindication of sensedata against currently fashionable alternative proposals which de-parts at some points from their views but has been influenced bythem

Like other accounts of sensory experience envisaging sense datathe one presented in this paper posits them as part of a causal accountof perception Any correct explication of perception will involvedistinctive conscious sensory experiences Perception is a form ofknowledge perceptual states have a representational content cor-rectness conditions that are as a matter of fact satisfied There is asystematic non-accidental relationship such that perceptual stateswith different intentional contents typically involve sensory experi-ences with different qualia We report the phenomenal character ofperceptual experiences involved in perceptual states by resorting toldquolookrdquo or ldquoappearrdquo talk ldquoit appears to S as if a bright red solid sphereof radius of about one foot hovers at about one yard in front of himagainst an undifferentiated gray backgroundrdquo

As this example reminds us sensory experiences are quite com-plex It is natural to isolate in them phenomenal features the appar-ent color shape and size of the sphere its apparent distance and po-sition with respect to the subjectrsquos body its apparent solidity and so

18

on These phenomenal features will be called henceforth qualiaThis term is introduced without presupposing anything very contro-versial It is left open here whether or not individual phenomenalfeatures are relational even when as with appearances of shapesand colors for instance they do not seem so at first sight Qualiamight be relational in the sense that the instantiation of a quale al-ways involves the instantiation of an intentional object this is so onthe view advanced here Qualia might even be relational in the moststraightforward sense that the instantiation of a quale in the sensoryexperience in a case of perception always consists in the instan-tiation of a relation between the perceiving subject and a featureinstantiated in a material object This is the disjunctivist claim char-acterizing one of the views that I will be questioning the Theory ofAppearing These introductory stipulations leave also open whetheror not qualia are reductively definable in intentional terms ndash as an-other view on perception that I will be criticizing holds

Qualia can be isolated in our typically complex sensory experi-ences in a methodologically perspicuous way by taking advantageof an important fact about them The fact is that instances of qualiaare constitutively related to other qualia relations of which subjectsaware of those instances are also consciously aware A subject expe-riencing an instance of a quale will be able to recognize other in-stances of the same quale and to discriminate them from otherqualia Also he will typically be able to merely imagine qualia andthus to be in a different conscious relation with them A subject willthereby be able to consciously appreciate how a new token feature ofwhich he is aware or which he imagines shares some qualia with oth-ers he has experienced and differs in some other qualia from themSubjects are also consciously aware of determinables of whichqualia as those previously mentioned are determinates and also oforderings of the determinates in each determinable along differentdimensions (hue brightness and saturation for appearances of col-ors pitch and timbre for appearances of sounds intensity for mostqualities etc) Qualia thus belong in a multi-dimensional spaceElaborating on previous proposals by Carnap and Goodman Clark(1993) shows how the presumption that specific qualia can be iso-lated in our complex sensory fields can be scientifically cashed outon that basis

19

I have so far made the relatively uncontroversial claim that per-ception constitutively involves sensory experiences states consist-ing in the perceptual subject being consciously aware of specificphenomenal qualities What I plan to do in the rest of the paper is todefend a sense data theory of a particular sort by arguing that it hasclear advantages over alternative accounts of perceptual experienceI will consider two views disjunctivism in the form of the Theory ofAppearing (TA) a view that qualified observers consider the stron-gest rival of sense data accounts1 I will present this view in the restof this section In the second section I will present and criticize afunctional-cum-physical representationalist approach The thirdsection of the paper will outline the main traits of the sense data the-ory that I take to be correct The fourth and final section contains mycriticism of TA

TA (in Jacksonrsquos (1977) terms the Multiple Relation Theory ofAppearing) is already discussed in classic papers by Moore(1918-9) Chisholm (1950) Sellars (1963) and others and has beengiven a sharp formulation by Langsam (1997) Johnston (1997) andAlston (1999) have recently praised it as the best account of percep-tual experience The theory embodies a form of the disjunctive con-ception of experience incompatible (in contrast with other forms ofdisjunctivism) with sense data accounts The main claim character-izing TA is that ldquophenomenal features such as redness are relationsbetween material objects and mindsrdquo (Langsam 1997 35) A subjectS experiences a phenomenal feature F if and only if S is in a primitiverelation with a material thing this is the relation consisting of thatmaterial thing appearing red to S It is the primitiveness of the rela-tion which characterizes TA As Jackson (1977 91) emphasizessense data theorists do not dispute that when S perceives O to be redO appears red to S According to them however the fact that a mate-rial thing appears F to the perceiving subject is to be analyzed in

20

1 One such qualified observer C D Broad wrote ldquoHow are we to describe[appearance] and to analyze it Two different types of theory seem to be possiblewhich I will call respectively the Multiple Relation Theory and the Object The-ory of sensible appearancerdquo (Broad 1965 88) The first is Broadrsquos term for thetheory of appearing (towards which he like Moore at times was not entirely un-sympathetic although both he and Moore are classic proponents of the sensedata approach) the second is his term for the sense data theory

causal terms involving sense data2 It is therefore of the essence of TAthat the relation of a material object appearing F to a subject beunanalyzable This is compatible with considering the appearing-re-lation as explainable (as opposed to analyzable) in scientific termseven in scientific terms involving something called lsquosensationsrsquo Mostdefenders of the theory of appearing as we will see would support aclaim of explainability as opposed to one of analyzability3

The philosophical primitiveness of the relations postulated by thetheory of appearing makes a causal analysis of S perceives O out ofthe question There is in this a further incompatibility with sensedata theories that explain the relation between sense data and per-ceived objects in causal terms If the perceptual experience in a casein which S perceives O instantiating a given feature at t conceptuallyinvolves the instantiation by O of that feature at t no causal claimlinking the relevant state of O and the relevant experience E can besensibly made under those descriptions Surely causally related par-ticular events are ldquodistinct existencesrdquo at the very least in that underthe descriptions relevant for the evaluation of the causal claim relat-ing them the existence of the effect should only contingently requirethat of the cause If c causes e then if c had not occurred e would nothave occurred either But this counterfactual claim has a differentforce than this if Socrates had not died Xanthippe would not havebecome a widow Socratesrsquos death did not cause Xanthippersquos wid-owhood One difference lies in that the former counterfactual butnot the latter is made with respect to a context which includes possi-ble worlds (albeit sufficiently remote from actuality) in which e oc-curs without c having occurred4

21

2 In phenomenalist versions of the sense data theory the relation would beanalyzed instead as that of a ldquomaterialrdquo thing ndash a mere possibility of sensation ndashbecoming manifest to the subject by its defining potentiality for sensations of de-terminate types being actualized

3 See Moore (1918-9 23) Chisholm (1950 173) Sellars (1963a 141)Johnston (1997174)and Alston (1999183) Sellars (1963a 150) who seems attimes to favor the theory of appearing also advocated ldquothe idea that lsquoimmediateexperiencesrsquoplay a role analogous to that of the molecules of the kinetic theoryrdquoLater I will interpret this as proposing a reductivist ldquothird wayrdquo close to the viewrecently advanced by Tye (1984 1995)

4 I rely here on Lewisrsquo (1973) well-known analysis of counterfactuals

Traditional arguments for sense data elaborate two related con-siderations In the first place considerations based on the facts ofperceptual illusions or misperceptions (including here the temporalillusions on which the ldquotime-gaprdquo argument is based) and halluci-nations In the second place considerations based on the need to dis-tinguish primary from secondary qualities The arguments to be pro-vided here do not depart from these traditional themes I only claim ameasure of originality in the specific way in which they will be de-ployed against recent supporters of alternative accounts who seemnot to appreciate the force of the traditional concerns regardingviews like those they hold Let us see at this point how the defenderof TA attempts to handle the first sort of argument

If we look at a red surface with one eye for about a minute whilekeeping the other eye closed and then immediately afterwards lookat the surface alternately with the accustomed and the unaccustomedeye we will realize that the color looks noticeably different It looksbright red when looking with the unaccustomed eye but is a consid-erably darker shade of red when looking with the accustomed eye5

The appearance obtained with the accustomed eye is a mispercep-tion because the surface does not change color when we alternateeyes TA handles cases like this by contending that one and the samematerial thing ndash the colored surface as it is at a certain time ndash appearsto us bright red in one case and dark red in the other That is to sayone is in each case in a different primitive unanalyzable relationwith an unchanged material thing Essentially the same consider-ations serve to handle ldquotime-gaprdquo arguments The subject is at time tunanalyzably related to a material thing as it was at the time t ndash a (a gt0) when the material thing triggered the causal chain leading to thesubjectrsquos experience The relation itself in fact obtains at t the objectappearing to have whatever properties the subject perceives it tohave contemporarily with his experience This temporal appearancemay or may not be illusory but there are good reasons not to count itso in most ordinary cases6

This same treatment cannot be applied to hallucinations how-ever for there is no material thing perceived in those cases7 TA re-

22

5 I borrow the example from Clark (1993)6 See the illuminating discussion of the time-gap issue by Suchting (1969)7 It is probably because of this that Sellars (1963a 142) refuses to count lsquoO

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

version of the Theory of Appearing) contends that in hallucinationsubjects are in experiential relations with ldquoa particularly vivid men-tal imagerdquo a mental particular Thus although Alston dismissessense data he is prepared to commit himself to what was tradition-ally supposed to be the main ontological burden of those theoriesOne then wonders what he takes to be the ldquogood and sufficient rea-sonsrdquo to dismiss sense data

It is healthy to remember that it has not always been so for a goodhalf of the past century sense data were taken for granted by mostphilosophers For better or for worse a new trend was forcefully es-tablished by the joint efforts of philosophers such as Austin RyleSellars and Wittgenstein which has acquired the force of estab-lished presumption Philosophers take for granted that Austin RyleSellars and Wittgenstein gave arguments that made it clear thatsense data are one more philosophical invention but they are notvery explicit about how exactly the arguments go There are ofcourse some exceptions outstanding among them Jackson (1977)and Perkins (1983) This paper is an attempt at a vindication of sensedata against currently fashionable alternative proposals which de-parts at some points from their views but has been influenced bythem

Like other accounts of sensory experience envisaging sense datathe one presented in this paper posits them as part of a causal accountof perception Any correct explication of perception will involvedistinctive conscious sensory experiences Perception is a form ofknowledge perceptual states have a representational content cor-rectness conditions that are as a matter of fact satisfied There is asystematic non-accidental relationship such that perceptual stateswith different intentional contents typically involve sensory experi-ences with different qualia We report the phenomenal character ofperceptual experiences involved in perceptual states by resorting toldquolookrdquo or ldquoappearrdquo talk ldquoit appears to S as if a bright red solid sphereof radius of about one foot hovers at about one yard in front of himagainst an undifferentiated gray backgroundrdquo

As this example reminds us sensory experiences are quite com-plex It is natural to isolate in them phenomenal features the appar-ent color shape and size of the sphere its apparent distance and po-sition with respect to the subjectrsquos body its apparent solidity and so

18

on These phenomenal features will be called henceforth qualiaThis term is introduced without presupposing anything very contro-versial It is left open here whether or not individual phenomenalfeatures are relational even when as with appearances of shapesand colors for instance they do not seem so at first sight Qualiamight be relational in the sense that the instantiation of a quale al-ways involves the instantiation of an intentional object this is so onthe view advanced here Qualia might even be relational in the moststraightforward sense that the instantiation of a quale in the sensoryexperience in a case of perception always consists in the instan-tiation of a relation between the perceiving subject and a featureinstantiated in a material object This is the disjunctivist claim char-acterizing one of the views that I will be questioning the Theory ofAppearing These introductory stipulations leave also open whetheror not qualia are reductively definable in intentional terms ndash as an-other view on perception that I will be criticizing holds

Qualia can be isolated in our typically complex sensory experi-ences in a methodologically perspicuous way by taking advantageof an important fact about them The fact is that instances of qualiaare constitutively related to other qualia relations of which subjectsaware of those instances are also consciously aware A subject expe-riencing an instance of a quale will be able to recognize other in-stances of the same quale and to discriminate them from otherqualia Also he will typically be able to merely imagine qualia andthus to be in a different conscious relation with them A subject willthereby be able to consciously appreciate how a new token feature ofwhich he is aware or which he imagines shares some qualia with oth-ers he has experienced and differs in some other qualia from themSubjects are also consciously aware of determinables of whichqualia as those previously mentioned are determinates and also oforderings of the determinates in each determinable along differentdimensions (hue brightness and saturation for appearances of col-ors pitch and timbre for appearances of sounds intensity for mostqualities etc) Qualia thus belong in a multi-dimensional spaceElaborating on previous proposals by Carnap and Goodman Clark(1993) shows how the presumption that specific qualia can be iso-lated in our complex sensory fields can be scientifically cashed outon that basis

19

I have so far made the relatively uncontroversial claim that per-ception constitutively involves sensory experiences states consist-ing in the perceptual subject being consciously aware of specificphenomenal qualities What I plan to do in the rest of the paper is todefend a sense data theory of a particular sort by arguing that it hasclear advantages over alternative accounts of perceptual experienceI will consider two views disjunctivism in the form of the Theory ofAppearing (TA) a view that qualified observers consider the stron-gest rival of sense data accounts1 I will present this view in the restof this section In the second section I will present and criticize afunctional-cum-physical representationalist approach The thirdsection of the paper will outline the main traits of the sense data the-ory that I take to be correct The fourth and final section contains mycriticism of TA

TA (in Jacksonrsquos (1977) terms the Multiple Relation Theory ofAppearing) is already discussed in classic papers by Moore(1918-9) Chisholm (1950) Sellars (1963) and others and has beengiven a sharp formulation by Langsam (1997) Johnston (1997) andAlston (1999) have recently praised it as the best account of percep-tual experience The theory embodies a form of the disjunctive con-ception of experience incompatible (in contrast with other forms ofdisjunctivism) with sense data accounts The main claim character-izing TA is that ldquophenomenal features such as redness are relationsbetween material objects and mindsrdquo (Langsam 1997 35) A subjectS experiences a phenomenal feature F if and only if S is in a primitiverelation with a material thing this is the relation consisting of thatmaterial thing appearing red to S It is the primitiveness of the rela-tion which characterizes TA As Jackson (1977 91) emphasizessense data theorists do not dispute that when S perceives O to be redO appears red to S According to them however the fact that a mate-rial thing appears F to the perceiving subject is to be analyzed in

20

1 One such qualified observer C D Broad wrote ldquoHow are we to describe[appearance] and to analyze it Two different types of theory seem to be possiblewhich I will call respectively the Multiple Relation Theory and the Object The-ory of sensible appearancerdquo (Broad 1965 88) The first is Broadrsquos term for thetheory of appearing (towards which he like Moore at times was not entirely un-sympathetic although both he and Moore are classic proponents of the sensedata approach) the second is his term for the sense data theory

causal terms involving sense data2 It is therefore of the essence of TAthat the relation of a material object appearing F to a subject beunanalyzable This is compatible with considering the appearing-re-lation as explainable (as opposed to analyzable) in scientific termseven in scientific terms involving something called lsquosensationsrsquo Mostdefenders of the theory of appearing as we will see would support aclaim of explainability as opposed to one of analyzability3

The philosophical primitiveness of the relations postulated by thetheory of appearing makes a causal analysis of S perceives O out ofthe question There is in this a further incompatibility with sensedata theories that explain the relation between sense data and per-ceived objects in causal terms If the perceptual experience in a casein which S perceives O instantiating a given feature at t conceptuallyinvolves the instantiation by O of that feature at t no causal claimlinking the relevant state of O and the relevant experience E can besensibly made under those descriptions Surely causally related par-ticular events are ldquodistinct existencesrdquo at the very least in that underthe descriptions relevant for the evaluation of the causal claim relat-ing them the existence of the effect should only contingently requirethat of the cause If c causes e then if c had not occurred e would nothave occurred either But this counterfactual claim has a differentforce than this if Socrates had not died Xanthippe would not havebecome a widow Socratesrsquos death did not cause Xanthippersquos wid-owhood One difference lies in that the former counterfactual butnot the latter is made with respect to a context which includes possi-ble worlds (albeit sufficiently remote from actuality) in which e oc-curs without c having occurred4

21

2 In phenomenalist versions of the sense data theory the relation would beanalyzed instead as that of a ldquomaterialrdquo thing ndash a mere possibility of sensation ndashbecoming manifest to the subject by its defining potentiality for sensations of de-terminate types being actualized

3 See Moore (1918-9 23) Chisholm (1950 173) Sellars (1963a 141)Johnston (1997174)and Alston (1999183) Sellars (1963a 150) who seems attimes to favor the theory of appearing also advocated ldquothe idea that lsquoimmediateexperiencesrsquoplay a role analogous to that of the molecules of the kinetic theoryrdquoLater I will interpret this as proposing a reductivist ldquothird wayrdquo close to the viewrecently advanced by Tye (1984 1995)

4 I rely here on Lewisrsquo (1973) well-known analysis of counterfactuals

Traditional arguments for sense data elaborate two related con-siderations In the first place considerations based on the facts ofperceptual illusions or misperceptions (including here the temporalillusions on which the ldquotime-gaprdquo argument is based) and halluci-nations In the second place considerations based on the need to dis-tinguish primary from secondary qualities The arguments to be pro-vided here do not depart from these traditional themes I only claim ameasure of originality in the specific way in which they will be de-ployed against recent supporters of alternative accounts who seemnot to appreciate the force of the traditional concerns regardingviews like those they hold Let us see at this point how the defenderof TA attempts to handle the first sort of argument

If we look at a red surface with one eye for about a minute whilekeeping the other eye closed and then immediately afterwards lookat the surface alternately with the accustomed and the unaccustomedeye we will realize that the color looks noticeably different It looksbright red when looking with the unaccustomed eye but is a consid-erably darker shade of red when looking with the accustomed eye5

The appearance obtained with the accustomed eye is a mispercep-tion because the surface does not change color when we alternateeyes TA handles cases like this by contending that one and the samematerial thing ndash the colored surface as it is at a certain time ndash appearsto us bright red in one case and dark red in the other That is to sayone is in each case in a different primitive unanalyzable relationwith an unchanged material thing Essentially the same consider-ations serve to handle ldquotime-gaprdquo arguments The subject is at time tunanalyzably related to a material thing as it was at the time t ndash a (a gt0) when the material thing triggered the causal chain leading to thesubjectrsquos experience The relation itself in fact obtains at t the objectappearing to have whatever properties the subject perceives it tohave contemporarily with his experience This temporal appearancemay or may not be illusory but there are good reasons not to count itso in most ordinary cases6

This same treatment cannot be applied to hallucinations how-ever for there is no material thing perceived in those cases7 TA re-

22

5 I borrow the example from Clark (1993)6 See the illuminating discussion of the time-gap issue by Suchting (1969)7 It is probably because of this that Sellars (1963a 142) refuses to count lsquoO

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

on These phenomenal features will be called henceforth qualiaThis term is introduced without presupposing anything very contro-versial It is left open here whether or not individual phenomenalfeatures are relational even when as with appearances of shapesand colors for instance they do not seem so at first sight Qualiamight be relational in the sense that the instantiation of a quale al-ways involves the instantiation of an intentional object this is so onthe view advanced here Qualia might even be relational in the moststraightforward sense that the instantiation of a quale in the sensoryexperience in a case of perception always consists in the instan-tiation of a relation between the perceiving subject and a featureinstantiated in a material object This is the disjunctivist claim char-acterizing one of the views that I will be questioning the Theory ofAppearing These introductory stipulations leave also open whetheror not qualia are reductively definable in intentional terms ndash as an-other view on perception that I will be criticizing holds

Qualia can be isolated in our typically complex sensory experi-ences in a methodologically perspicuous way by taking advantageof an important fact about them The fact is that instances of qualiaare constitutively related to other qualia relations of which subjectsaware of those instances are also consciously aware A subject expe-riencing an instance of a quale will be able to recognize other in-stances of the same quale and to discriminate them from otherqualia Also he will typically be able to merely imagine qualia andthus to be in a different conscious relation with them A subject willthereby be able to consciously appreciate how a new token feature ofwhich he is aware or which he imagines shares some qualia with oth-ers he has experienced and differs in some other qualia from themSubjects are also consciously aware of determinables of whichqualia as those previously mentioned are determinates and also oforderings of the determinates in each determinable along differentdimensions (hue brightness and saturation for appearances of col-ors pitch and timbre for appearances of sounds intensity for mostqualities etc) Qualia thus belong in a multi-dimensional spaceElaborating on previous proposals by Carnap and Goodman Clark(1993) shows how the presumption that specific qualia can be iso-lated in our complex sensory fields can be scientifically cashed outon that basis

19

I have so far made the relatively uncontroversial claim that per-ception constitutively involves sensory experiences states consist-ing in the perceptual subject being consciously aware of specificphenomenal qualities What I plan to do in the rest of the paper is todefend a sense data theory of a particular sort by arguing that it hasclear advantages over alternative accounts of perceptual experienceI will consider two views disjunctivism in the form of the Theory ofAppearing (TA) a view that qualified observers consider the stron-gest rival of sense data accounts1 I will present this view in the restof this section In the second section I will present and criticize afunctional-cum-physical representationalist approach The thirdsection of the paper will outline the main traits of the sense data the-ory that I take to be correct The fourth and final section contains mycriticism of TA

TA (in Jacksonrsquos (1977) terms the Multiple Relation Theory ofAppearing) is already discussed in classic papers by Moore(1918-9) Chisholm (1950) Sellars (1963) and others and has beengiven a sharp formulation by Langsam (1997) Johnston (1997) andAlston (1999) have recently praised it as the best account of percep-tual experience The theory embodies a form of the disjunctive con-ception of experience incompatible (in contrast with other forms ofdisjunctivism) with sense data accounts The main claim character-izing TA is that ldquophenomenal features such as redness are relationsbetween material objects and mindsrdquo (Langsam 1997 35) A subjectS experiences a phenomenal feature F if and only if S is in a primitiverelation with a material thing this is the relation consisting of thatmaterial thing appearing red to S It is the primitiveness of the rela-tion which characterizes TA As Jackson (1977 91) emphasizessense data theorists do not dispute that when S perceives O to be redO appears red to S According to them however the fact that a mate-rial thing appears F to the perceiving subject is to be analyzed in

20

1 One such qualified observer C D Broad wrote ldquoHow are we to describe[appearance] and to analyze it Two different types of theory seem to be possiblewhich I will call respectively the Multiple Relation Theory and the Object The-ory of sensible appearancerdquo (Broad 1965 88) The first is Broadrsquos term for thetheory of appearing (towards which he like Moore at times was not entirely un-sympathetic although both he and Moore are classic proponents of the sensedata approach) the second is his term for the sense data theory

causal terms involving sense data2 It is therefore of the essence of TAthat the relation of a material object appearing F to a subject beunanalyzable This is compatible with considering the appearing-re-lation as explainable (as opposed to analyzable) in scientific termseven in scientific terms involving something called lsquosensationsrsquo Mostdefenders of the theory of appearing as we will see would support aclaim of explainability as opposed to one of analyzability3

The philosophical primitiveness of the relations postulated by thetheory of appearing makes a causal analysis of S perceives O out ofthe question There is in this a further incompatibility with sensedata theories that explain the relation between sense data and per-ceived objects in causal terms If the perceptual experience in a casein which S perceives O instantiating a given feature at t conceptuallyinvolves the instantiation by O of that feature at t no causal claimlinking the relevant state of O and the relevant experience E can besensibly made under those descriptions Surely causally related par-ticular events are ldquodistinct existencesrdquo at the very least in that underthe descriptions relevant for the evaluation of the causal claim relat-ing them the existence of the effect should only contingently requirethat of the cause If c causes e then if c had not occurred e would nothave occurred either But this counterfactual claim has a differentforce than this if Socrates had not died Xanthippe would not havebecome a widow Socratesrsquos death did not cause Xanthippersquos wid-owhood One difference lies in that the former counterfactual butnot the latter is made with respect to a context which includes possi-ble worlds (albeit sufficiently remote from actuality) in which e oc-curs without c having occurred4

21

2 In phenomenalist versions of the sense data theory the relation would beanalyzed instead as that of a ldquomaterialrdquo thing ndash a mere possibility of sensation ndashbecoming manifest to the subject by its defining potentiality for sensations of de-terminate types being actualized

3 See Moore (1918-9 23) Chisholm (1950 173) Sellars (1963a 141)Johnston (1997174)and Alston (1999183) Sellars (1963a 150) who seems attimes to favor the theory of appearing also advocated ldquothe idea that lsquoimmediateexperiencesrsquoplay a role analogous to that of the molecules of the kinetic theoryrdquoLater I will interpret this as proposing a reductivist ldquothird wayrdquo close to the viewrecently advanced by Tye (1984 1995)

4 I rely here on Lewisrsquo (1973) well-known analysis of counterfactuals

Traditional arguments for sense data elaborate two related con-siderations In the first place considerations based on the facts ofperceptual illusions or misperceptions (including here the temporalillusions on which the ldquotime-gaprdquo argument is based) and halluci-nations In the second place considerations based on the need to dis-tinguish primary from secondary qualities The arguments to be pro-vided here do not depart from these traditional themes I only claim ameasure of originality in the specific way in which they will be de-ployed against recent supporters of alternative accounts who seemnot to appreciate the force of the traditional concerns regardingviews like those they hold Let us see at this point how the defenderof TA attempts to handle the first sort of argument

If we look at a red surface with one eye for about a minute whilekeeping the other eye closed and then immediately afterwards lookat the surface alternately with the accustomed and the unaccustomedeye we will realize that the color looks noticeably different It looksbright red when looking with the unaccustomed eye but is a consid-erably darker shade of red when looking with the accustomed eye5

The appearance obtained with the accustomed eye is a mispercep-tion because the surface does not change color when we alternateeyes TA handles cases like this by contending that one and the samematerial thing ndash the colored surface as it is at a certain time ndash appearsto us bright red in one case and dark red in the other That is to sayone is in each case in a different primitive unanalyzable relationwith an unchanged material thing Essentially the same consider-ations serve to handle ldquotime-gaprdquo arguments The subject is at time tunanalyzably related to a material thing as it was at the time t ndash a (a gt0) when the material thing triggered the causal chain leading to thesubjectrsquos experience The relation itself in fact obtains at t the objectappearing to have whatever properties the subject perceives it tohave contemporarily with his experience This temporal appearancemay or may not be illusory but there are good reasons not to count itso in most ordinary cases6

This same treatment cannot be applied to hallucinations how-ever for there is no material thing perceived in those cases7 TA re-

22

5 I borrow the example from Clark (1993)6 See the illuminating discussion of the time-gap issue by Suchting (1969)7 It is probably because of this that Sellars (1963a 142) refuses to count lsquoO

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

I have so far made the relatively uncontroversial claim that per-ception constitutively involves sensory experiences states consist-ing in the perceptual subject being consciously aware of specificphenomenal qualities What I plan to do in the rest of the paper is todefend a sense data theory of a particular sort by arguing that it hasclear advantages over alternative accounts of perceptual experienceI will consider two views disjunctivism in the form of the Theory ofAppearing (TA) a view that qualified observers consider the stron-gest rival of sense data accounts1 I will present this view in the restof this section In the second section I will present and criticize afunctional-cum-physical representationalist approach The thirdsection of the paper will outline the main traits of the sense data the-ory that I take to be correct The fourth and final section contains mycriticism of TA

TA (in Jacksonrsquos (1977) terms the Multiple Relation Theory ofAppearing) is already discussed in classic papers by Moore(1918-9) Chisholm (1950) Sellars (1963) and others and has beengiven a sharp formulation by Langsam (1997) Johnston (1997) andAlston (1999) have recently praised it as the best account of percep-tual experience The theory embodies a form of the disjunctive con-ception of experience incompatible (in contrast with other forms ofdisjunctivism) with sense data accounts The main claim character-izing TA is that ldquophenomenal features such as redness are relationsbetween material objects and mindsrdquo (Langsam 1997 35) A subjectS experiences a phenomenal feature F if and only if S is in a primitiverelation with a material thing this is the relation consisting of thatmaterial thing appearing red to S It is the primitiveness of the rela-tion which characterizes TA As Jackson (1977 91) emphasizessense data theorists do not dispute that when S perceives O to be redO appears red to S According to them however the fact that a mate-rial thing appears F to the perceiving subject is to be analyzed in

20

1 One such qualified observer C D Broad wrote ldquoHow are we to describe[appearance] and to analyze it Two different types of theory seem to be possiblewhich I will call respectively the Multiple Relation Theory and the Object The-ory of sensible appearancerdquo (Broad 1965 88) The first is Broadrsquos term for thetheory of appearing (towards which he like Moore at times was not entirely un-sympathetic although both he and Moore are classic proponents of the sensedata approach) the second is his term for the sense data theory

causal terms involving sense data2 It is therefore of the essence of TAthat the relation of a material object appearing F to a subject beunanalyzable This is compatible with considering the appearing-re-lation as explainable (as opposed to analyzable) in scientific termseven in scientific terms involving something called lsquosensationsrsquo Mostdefenders of the theory of appearing as we will see would support aclaim of explainability as opposed to one of analyzability3

The philosophical primitiveness of the relations postulated by thetheory of appearing makes a causal analysis of S perceives O out ofthe question There is in this a further incompatibility with sensedata theories that explain the relation between sense data and per-ceived objects in causal terms If the perceptual experience in a casein which S perceives O instantiating a given feature at t conceptuallyinvolves the instantiation by O of that feature at t no causal claimlinking the relevant state of O and the relevant experience E can besensibly made under those descriptions Surely causally related par-ticular events are ldquodistinct existencesrdquo at the very least in that underthe descriptions relevant for the evaluation of the causal claim relat-ing them the existence of the effect should only contingently requirethat of the cause If c causes e then if c had not occurred e would nothave occurred either But this counterfactual claim has a differentforce than this if Socrates had not died Xanthippe would not havebecome a widow Socratesrsquos death did not cause Xanthippersquos wid-owhood One difference lies in that the former counterfactual butnot the latter is made with respect to a context which includes possi-ble worlds (albeit sufficiently remote from actuality) in which e oc-curs without c having occurred4

21

2 In phenomenalist versions of the sense data theory the relation would beanalyzed instead as that of a ldquomaterialrdquo thing ndash a mere possibility of sensation ndashbecoming manifest to the subject by its defining potentiality for sensations of de-terminate types being actualized

3 See Moore (1918-9 23) Chisholm (1950 173) Sellars (1963a 141)Johnston (1997174)and Alston (1999183) Sellars (1963a 150) who seems attimes to favor the theory of appearing also advocated ldquothe idea that lsquoimmediateexperiencesrsquoplay a role analogous to that of the molecules of the kinetic theoryrdquoLater I will interpret this as proposing a reductivist ldquothird wayrdquo close to the viewrecently advanced by Tye (1984 1995)

4 I rely here on Lewisrsquo (1973) well-known analysis of counterfactuals

Traditional arguments for sense data elaborate two related con-siderations In the first place considerations based on the facts ofperceptual illusions or misperceptions (including here the temporalillusions on which the ldquotime-gaprdquo argument is based) and halluci-nations In the second place considerations based on the need to dis-tinguish primary from secondary qualities The arguments to be pro-vided here do not depart from these traditional themes I only claim ameasure of originality in the specific way in which they will be de-ployed against recent supporters of alternative accounts who seemnot to appreciate the force of the traditional concerns regardingviews like those they hold Let us see at this point how the defenderof TA attempts to handle the first sort of argument

If we look at a red surface with one eye for about a minute whilekeeping the other eye closed and then immediately afterwards lookat the surface alternately with the accustomed and the unaccustomedeye we will realize that the color looks noticeably different It looksbright red when looking with the unaccustomed eye but is a consid-erably darker shade of red when looking with the accustomed eye5

The appearance obtained with the accustomed eye is a mispercep-tion because the surface does not change color when we alternateeyes TA handles cases like this by contending that one and the samematerial thing ndash the colored surface as it is at a certain time ndash appearsto us bright red in one case and dark red in the other That is to sayone is in each case in a different primitive unanalyzable relationwith an unchanged material thing Essentially the same consider-ations serve to handle ldquotime-gaprdquo arguments The subject is at time tunanalyzably related to a material thing as it was at the time t ndash a (a gt0) when the material thing triggered the causal chain leading to thesubjectrsquos experience The relation itself in fact obtains at t the objectappearing to have whatever properties the subject perceives it tohave contemporarily with his experience This temporal appearancemay or may not be illusory but there are good reasons not to count itso in most ordinary cases6

This same treatment cannot be applied to hallucinations how-ever for there is no material thing perceived in those cases7 TA re-

22

5 I borrow the example from Clark (1993)6 See the illuminating discussion of the time-gap issue by Suchting (1969)7 It is probably because of this that Sellars (1963a 142) refuses to count lsquoO

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

causal terms involving sense data2 It is therefore of the essence of TAthat the relation of a material object appearing F to a subject beunanalyzable This is compatible with considering the appearing-re-lation as explainable (as opposed to analyzable) in scientific termseven in scientific terms involving something called lsquosensationsrsquo Mostdefenders of the theory of appearing as we will see would support aclaim of explainability as opposed to one of analyzability3

The philosophical primitiveness of the relations postulated by thetheory of appearing makes a causal analysis of S perceives O out ofthe question There is in this a further incompatibility with sensedata theories that explain the relation between sense data and per-ceived objects in causal terms If the perceptual experience in a casein which S perceives O instantiating a given feature at t conceptuallyinvolves the instantiation by O of that feature at t no causal claimlinking the relevant state of O and the relevant experience E can besensibly made under those descriptions Surely causally related par-ticular events are ldquodistinct existencesrdquo at the very least in that underthe descriptions relevant for the evaluation of the causal claim relat-ing them the existence of the effect should only contingently requirethat of the cause If c causes e then if c had not occurred e would nothave occurred either But this counterfactual claim has a differentforce than this if Socrates had not died Xanthippe would not havebecome a widow Socratesrsquos death did not cause Xanthippersquos wid-owhood One difference lies in that the former counterfactual butnot the latter is made with respect to a context which includes possi-ble worlds (albeit sufficiently remote from actuality) in which e oc-curs without c having occurred4

21

2 In phenomenalist versions of the sense data theory the relation would beanalyzed instead as that of a ldquomaterialrdquo thing ndash a mere possibility of sensation ndashbecoming manifest to the subject by its defining potentiality for sensations of de-terminate types being actualized

3 See Moore (1918-9 23) Chisholm (1950 173) Sellars (1963a 141)Johnston (1997174)and Alston (1999183) Sellars (1963a 150) who seems attimes to favor the theory of appearing also advocated ldquothe idea that lsquoimmediateexperiencesrsquoplay a role analogous to that of the molecules of the kinetic theoryrdquoLater I will interpret this as proposing a reductivist ldquothird wayrdquo close to the viewrecently advanced by Tye (1984 1995)

4 I rely here on Lewisrsquo (1973) well-known analysis of counterfactuals

Traditional arguments for sense data elaborate two related con-siderations In the first place considerations based on the facts ofperceptual illusions or misperceptions (including here the temporalillusions on which the ldquotime-gaprdquo argument is based) and halluci-nations In the second place considerations based on the need to dis-tinguish primary from secondary qualities The arguments to be pro-vided here do not depart from these traditional themes I only claim ameasure of originality in the specific way in which they will be de-ployed against recent supporters of alternative accounts who seemnot to appreciate the force of the traditional concerns regardingviews like those they hold Let us see at this point how the defenderof TA attempts to handle the first sort of argument

If we look at a red surface with one eye for about a minute whilekeeping the other eye closed and then immediately afterwards lookat the surface alternately with the accustomed and the unaccustomedeye we will realize that the color looks noticeably different It looksbright red when looking with the unaccustomed eye but is a consid-erably darker shade of red when looking with the accustomed eye5

The appearance obtained with the accustomed eye is a mispercep-tion because the surface does not change color when we alternateeyes TA handles cases like this by contending that one and the samematerial thing ndash the colored surface as it is at a certain time ndash appearsto us bright red in one case and dark red in the other That is to sayone is in each case in a different primitive unanalyzable relationwith an unchanged material thing Essentially the same consider-ations serve to handle ldquotime-gaprdquo arguments The subject is at time tunanalyzably related to a material thing as it was at the time t ndash a (a gt0) when the material thing triggered the causal chain leading to thesubjectrsquos experience The relation itself in fact obtains at t the objectappearing to have whatever properties the subject perceives it tohave contemporarily with his experience This temporal appearancemay or may not be illusory but there are good reasons not to count itso in most ordinary cases6

This same treatment cannot be applied to hallucinations how-ever for there is no material thing perceived in those cases7 TA re-

22

5 I borrow the example from Clark (1993)6 See the illuminating discussion of the time-gap issue by Suchting (1969)7 It is probably because of this that Sellars (1963a 142) refuses to count lsquoO

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

Traditional arguments for sense data elaborate two related con-siderations In the first place considerations based on the facts ofperceptual illusions or misperceptions (including here the temporalillusions on which the ldquotime-gaprdquo argument is based) and halluci-nations In the second place considerations based on the need to dis-tinguish primary from secondary qualities The arguments to be pro-vided here do not depart from these traditional themes I only claim ameasure of originality in the specific way in which they will be de-ployed against recent supporters of alternative accounts who seemnot to appreciate the force of the traditional concerns regardingviews like those they hold Let us see at this point how the defenderof TA attempts to handle the first sort of argument

If we look at a red surface with one eye for about a minute whilekeeping the other eye closed and then immediately afterwards lookat the surface alternately with the accustomed and the unaccustomedeye we will realize that the color looks noticeably different It looksbright red when looking with the unaccustomed eye but is a consid-erably darker shade of red when looking with the accustomed eye5

The appearance obtained with the accustomed eye is a mispercep-tion because the surface does not change color when we alternateeyes TA handles cases like this by contending that one and the samematerial thing ndash the colored surface as it is at a certain time ndash appearsto us bright red in one case and dark red in the other That is to sayone is in each case in a different primitive unanalyzable relationwith an unchanged material thing Essentially the same consider-ations serve to handle ldquotime-gaprdquo arguments The subject is at time tunanalyzably related to a material thing as it was at the time t ndash a (a gt0) when the material thing triggered the causal chain leading to thesubjectrsquos experience The relation itself in fact obtains at t the objectappearing to have whatever properties the subject perceives it tohave contemporarily with his experience This temporal appearancemay or may not be illusory but there are good reasons not to count itso in most ordinary cases6

This same treatment cannot be applied to hallucinations how-ever for there is no material thing perceived in those cases7 TA re-

22

5 I borrow the example from Clark (1993)6 See the illuminating discussion of the time-gap issue by Suchting (1969)7 It is probably because of this that Sellars (1963a 142) refuses to count lsquoO

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

jects the common assumption that the appearances experienced inhallucination can be identical to corresponding appearances presentin subjectively indistinguishable cases of veridical perception ormisperception TA adopts instead the most radical form of what hascome to be known as the Disjunctive Conception of Experience ndash ordisjunctivism for short This view advocated by philosophers likeMcDowell (1982 and 1986) and Snowdon (1981 and 1990) denies ndashin McDowellrsquos suggestive phrase ndash that the experiences involved invision and hallucination share a ldquohighest common factorrdquo

Thus Langsam has this response to objections to TA based onhallucinations ldquoI deny hellip that the indistinguishability of perceptualexperiences and their corresponding hallucinations can be ex-plained only in terms of their instantiating the same phenomenal fea-tures hellip it is sufficient if they instantiate similar phenomenal fea-tures phenomenal features that are the same in some respects butdifferent in others hellip they need not share the same ontological char-acter in particular the phenomenal features of perceptual experi-ences can be instantiations of relations between material objects andminds even though the phenomenal features of hallucinations arenot There is no reason to think that two phenomenal features cannotshare the same appearance yet differ in ontological characterrdquo(Langsam 1992 39)

I will postpone a critical discussion of TA until the final sectionmy argument will be essentially abductive (sense data theories arebetter qualified to account for the relevant facts than their rivals)and only by then will be the main considerations for this form of ar-gument in place Against Langsam I will present considerationsthere in support of the view that the appearances in perceptual expe-riences and corresponding hallucinations share an ontological char-acter I will argue that at the relevant first-personal level and notmerely at the causal-explanatory level there is no room for thewedge that Langsam seeks to drive between a subjective commonal-ity and a real distinction There is something however that I find ap-pealing in the disjunctive conception of experience and I want to

23

looks F to Srsquo as relational at all He posits a common explanatory factor to thethree standard cases in which ldquolooksrdquo talk is used veridical perception illusionand hallucination This is the main reason supporting the representationalist in-terpretation of his views to be provided in the next section

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

grant it now its refusal to countenance a symmetrical treatment ofthe experiences involved in cases of hallucinations and cases of per-ception Perception is a form of knowledge and perceptual experi-ences are constitutively intended to play a role in accounting for theclaims of perception on that score Experiences involved in percep-tion and in hallucination are asymmetric from an epistemologicalpoint of view and the epistemic factors that determine the asymme-try ought to be taken into consideration in a philosophical explica-tion of perceptual experiences8

The main lesson from discussions of the Gettier-like counter-examples to traditional analyses of knowledge lies precisely hereThere is little chance of reductively capturing perception or anyother form of knowledge for that matter by starting from a fullynon-factive notion (belief in the general case a purely internal no-tion of experience in the specific case of perception) and adding fur-ther conditions to it Only already factive states with the content thatp can lead to knowledge that p only already factive experiences withthe content that p can be a basis for the perceptual knowledge that p9

It is belief that is to be explained on the basis of the concept of knowl-edge and not the other way around Likewise hallucinatory experi-ence is to be explicated on the basis of a factive concept of successfulexperience A fundamental asymmetry should be recognized in theepistemic status of those experiences involved in perceptionvis-agrave-vis that of those involved in hallucination The disjunctiveconception of experience constitutes a way of capturing this

The externalist form of the sense data theory recommended hereis in harmony with this point as previous writers have noted thereare forms of disjunctivism compatible with the causal theory of per-ception10 What I reject is the strong externalism that distinguishesthe theory of appearing according to which perceived objects them-selves individuate perceptual experiences On the view of empirical

24

8 As Peacocke (1999 ch 2) puts the point phenomenal features play a con-stitutive role in the individuation of observational concepts (those that figure inperceptual judgments) and these are epistemically individuated concepts ldquocon-cepts hellip individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for a thinkerrsquosknowing certain contents containing those conceptsrdquo

9 Williamson (1995) argues for this see also McDowell (1995)10 Child (1992 303) considers a view like the one defended here

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

judgments promoted here it is only some material properties (to-gether with some previously encountered instances of them) that in-dividuate experiences not the perceived concrete instances of thoseproperties11 In any particular case of perception the phenomenalfeatures of perceptual experiences are to be analyzed as individuatedindependently of the perceived object It is compatible with the na-ture of the particular experience as such that it might have been hal-lucinatory it is because it has been caused by the perceived objectthat it is not hallucinatory However this does not mean that percep-tual knowledge is to be understood as involving a state individuatedwithout any commitments concerning external objects plus concep-tually contingent causal relations with external objects To satisfythe requirements of the causal theory any particular perception willbe understood to involve experiences individuated without the aid ofthe perceived objects But I will also claim that the perceptual expe-rience in any such particular case of perception is in its nature onesuch that experiences of the same kind are instantiated in cases ofperceptual knowledge12 The concept of experience cannot be expli-cated without the notion of experiences that are (primitively) casesof knowledge

2 A Sellarsian Third Way

Having presented TA in this section I will introduce the other maincontender as a philosophical account of perceptual experience(reductive) representationalism I will discuss Sellarsrsquo (1963a)views on perception because the sense data theory that I will presentin the following section incorporates some of his insights

This is the way Sellars describes the three kinds of cases that anyphilosophical account of perception should consider (op cit 151-

25

11 I am aiming here at distinction which has links with McGinnrsquos (1989)be-tween strong and weak externalism Burgersquos views on these issues have also beenmost influential on me see for instance his (1977)

12 More precisely one such that experiences of related kinds are instantiatedin cases of perceptual knowledge This is required to give content to phenomenalfeatures to which no actually instantiated material property corresponds ndash likeHumersquos missing shade of blue

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

2) (a) seeing that O over there is red (a claim made in cases oneconsiders veridical) (b) its looking to S that O over there is red (aclaim made in cases one has reasons to consider misperceptions)and (c) its looking to one as though there were a red object over there(a claim made in cases one has reasons to consider hallucinatory)According to Sellars in all these cases there is a common proposi-tional content concerning the instantiation of an observable prop-erty by the scene before the eyes This common propositional con-tent is endorsed with different forces in the three cases it is fully en-dorsed in the veridical case partially in the misperception case (onlythe presence of O is endorsed there) and not at all in the hallucina-tory case

As I interpret him Sellars shares with sense data theorists theanti-disjunctivist contention that as he puts it in addition to thecommon propositional content there is in these three cases a furthercommonality a common descriptive content This content is charac-terized by the fact that its instances (in contrast with the instances ofthe observable properties) can never be merely intentional but arereal constituents of the actual world For the sense data theorist it isa red sense datum being experienced in the three cases for Sellars itis a brain state to be fully characterized by future neuroscience Iwill borrow at this point a device introduced by Peacocke (1983) in arelated context The device consists in writing predicates signifyingobservable properties with primes when they are used to refer tothose ldquodescriptive contentsrdquo of experiences I will say that the de-scriptive commonality that Sellars talks about consists in the factthat in all three ascriptions (a)-(c) in addition to the common repre-sentational content the instantiation in the experience of a commonsensuous feature redrsquo is presuppositionally involved

By resorting to Peacockersquos primed predicates I leave openwhether the redness actually instantiated in the three cases (a)-(c) isthe very same property as the redness whose instantiation by the ma-terial scene before the eyes is in question Some sense data theoristsincluding Jackson believe them to be the same I disagree for rea-sons to be given shortly I will refer to the properties signified byprimed predicates as primed properties taking them to be constitu-tive of phenomenal properties would beg the main issue at stakeagainst the other theorist As Sellars correctly indicates the com-

26

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

mon descriptive character redrsquo is intrinsic ndash or at least less extrinsicthan the phenomenal features involved in perception according toTA13 It is intrinsic in that particular instances of redrsquoexist independ-ently of the existence of a related instance of the corresponding ma-terial property or any other similar property This is of course re-quired by the claim that the primed properties are the same alsowhen they occur in hallucinations Thus instances of redrsquo are not re-lational in the strict sense that phenomenal qualities are relationalaccording to the theory of appearing Thanks to this non-relational-ity primed properties can be properly mentioned in a causal accountof how perception occurs in the veridical case and in mispercep-tions

The representationalist ldquothird wayrdquo between the sense data viewand TA shares with sense data accounts the claim that there is ana-lytically a common factor to all three cases (a)-(c) which is to be in-voked in a causal analysis of perception There is a constitutive rela-tion between the meanings of lsquoredrsquoand lsquosquarersquoon the one hand andthose of lsquolooks redrsquo and lsquolooks squarersquo on the other in virtue ofwhich the latter predicates do not signify primitive or unanalyzablerelations but are definable partly in terms of the former The thirdway disagrees with sense data accounts however in taking the phe-nomenal common factor to (a)-(c) relevant for a philosophical expli-cation of perceptual experience to be an intentional instantiation ofan observable property of material objects According to this thirdway that common factor is fully specifiable in terms of the rednessof material things the beliefs of subjects about its instantiation incertain circumstances and the actions these beliefs dispose them toperform Given the existence of this analysis in any given experi-ence the instance of the relevant phenomenal property (identicalwith an observable property) might be a merely intentional object ifthe experience is hallucinatory Thus this view is reductivist aboutqualia in that it takes them to be fully characterizable in causal-ex-planatory terms Now while sense data theorists might agree withthe third way that looks F is definable in terms of F and a commonfactor along the suggested lines they disagree with the third way onthe issue whether the common factor itself can be so reductively un-

27

13 See Langton amp Lewis (1998) for a useful explication of intrinsicness

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

derstood Although for sense data theorists qualia constitutively in-volve the observable features of material things they cannot bereductively analyzed in terms of them for qualia are also consti-tuted irreducibly by the sensuous primed properties

The descriptive primed properties posited by Sellars are not rela-tional in the strict sense in which phenomenal properties are rela-tional according to the theory of appearing but they are relational ina less demanding sense on his account On Sellarsrsquo view a redrsquo sen-sation is one typically caused in normal subjects by red objects innormal circumstances which then typically causes in properlyequipped subjects who think that the circumstances are normal forperception the judgment that something red is instantiated by thescene before their eyes The subjects then count thereby as perceiv-ing a red expanse if they in fact know that circumstances are ade-quate for perception Sellars thought that sensations instantiate ana-logues of the observable properties causing them He writes thatldquothe essential feature of the analogy is that visual impressions standto one another in a system of ways of resembling and differing whichis structurally similar to the ways in which the colors and shapes ofvisible objects resemble and differrdquo (op cit 193) We could makethe point by resorting to the previous indication that qualia belong ina qualitative space Both the manifest properties of material thingsthat figure in the propositional content of lsquolooksrsquo talk and theprimed properties of appearances whose instantiation we presup-pose in that talk belong in structurally isomorphic qualitativespaces one space for the manifest properties of ordinary materialobjects another for the primed properties14 Because the relationalproperties determining those spaces are an integral part of our con-ception of both manifest and sensational properties it is analogi-cally correct to use the same predicates for both

This usage is nevertheless merely analogical There is more to aprimed property than its position in qualitative space among other

28

14 See Mulligan (1995) While the relations determining the spaces mightbe the same in some cases ndash for instance in the case of spatio-temporal propertiesand their primed correlates ndash they might not be exactly the same but only struc-turally related in others A case in point is the relations of intensity for soundsvis-agrave-vis the corresponding relation of degrees of loudness for their phenomenalcorrelates which differ in significant respects

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

things because it is conceptually possible that the relevant qualita-tive space has at least two different points holding the same patternsof relations to other points in the space An automorphism (aone-to-one function) other than the identity relation could be de-fined from the set of points constituting the space onto itself pre-serving the relations that define the space There would then be atleast two different points in the space (two different primed proper-ties) standing in the same relations to other points15 For Sellars thespecific character identifying primed properties over and abovetheir position in qualitative space is a neurological property For thesense data theorist it is an irreducible experiential character (whichI submit might be identified a posteriori with a neurological prop-erty) Similarly there is more to the manifest properties than theirposition in their own qualitative space Manifest properties are ana-lytically said to cause sensations with corresponding primed proper-ties in normal circumstances They must have some specific cate-gorical nature over and above their position in qualitative space tohave this causal efficacy which there is no reason to think will coin-cide with the categorical nature of the primed properties caused bythem16

Thus on Sellarsrsquo account primed properties are not relational inthe demanding sense required by the theory of appearing but theyare relational on two less demanding counts First there are causalrelations holding in normal circumstances between instances of ob-

29

15 Aiming to promote a reductive functionalist analysis Clark (1993178-184) defines individual qualia exclusively by their relations in qualitativespace to other qualia The considerations in the text show that Clarkrsquos proposalfails as an analysis In response to this problem (see pp 203-205)Clark seems tobe prepared to accept ldquodefinitionsrdquo which do not determine unique referentsacross the relevant set of possible circumstances I find this unacceptable Thecorrect alternative is to include as an additional part of the definition somethingover and above the structural aspects something as Clark envisages indexicallyintroduced (Paradigm cases of primed properties introduced directly byostension as in Loarrsquos (1997) theory of phenomenal concepts or indirectly byostension of correspondingmaterial properties) Perhaps this is after all what hehimself would suggest

16 I depart here from Jackson who claims (1977 74-81 and 103) that mani-fest properties are predicated in the same univocal sense of material things andsense data

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

servable properties and them and between them and instances ofmental states In virtue of these relations primed properties essen-tially contribute to the fact that the experiences in which they areinstantiated have intentional contents of a functional-cum-teleologi-cal character Second primed properties are essentially in a qualita-tive space determined by their relations to other primed propertiesThe two relational aspects are related Orderly variations of observ-able properties along the dimensions in their qualitative space wouldgive rise in normal circumstances to sensations whose primedproperties vary along corresponding dimensions in their corre-sponding qualitative space They in turn would give rise in the ap-propriate conditions to judgments with correspondingly varyingcontents thus to beliefs and in the presence of the relevant desiresto action Now the sense data theory that I will advance takes phe-nomenal features to be constituted by sensuous primed propertiesunderstood as Sellars suggests In order to distinguish the demand-ing relationality attributed to phenomenal features in TA from theless demanding one present in Sellarsrsquo views on primed properties Iwill say that on such a view phenomenal features are ta-intrinsicThey are not absolutely intrinsic because of the two relational as-pects we have emphasized but they do not have the demandingrelationality attributed to them in TA

If a theorist merely ascribes a causal-explanatory role to primedproperties of experiences there is no incompatibility with TArsquosdisjunctivism (its opposition to a ldquohighest common factorrdquo) result-ing from the fact that primed properties are TA-intrinsic TA is a phil-osophical explication of experiences as mental states operating atthe personal level ndash at the level at which reflective folk-psychologi-cal rationalizing explications (aided by philosophical theorizing)are provided The fact that a ldquohighest common factorrdquo to veridicalperception misperception and hallucination is posited at a subper-sonal merely causal-explanatory level does not contradict the mainclaims of the theorists we are discussing (as for instance Snowdon(1990) rightly emphasizes) If we took phenomenal features to beconstituted by primed properties as part of our philosophical expli-cation we would be in fact rejecting the distinguishing tenet of thetheory of appearing But that would not follow if we thought of thisidentification as only required on the basis of a posteriori scientific

30

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

considerations Sellarsrsquo views stand in contrast to TA but not on ac-count of his positing sensuous properties This by itself is not in-compatible with the theory of appearing in view of Sellarsrsquo insis-tence that sensations (instances of primed properties) have only aplace ldquoin the logical space of an ideal scientific picture of the worldrdquo(op cit 153) What separates Sellars from TA is his identification ofphenomenal properties with the intentional contents of experienceswhich as we have seen already provides for a common factor tocases (a)-(c) thus avoiding the radical disjunctivism distinguishingTA and the associated difficulties (to be developed in sectionfourth)

Sellarsrsquoaccount of perceptual experiences does feature common-alities in primed properties however in addition to intentional onesWe move in the direction of a sense data theory if we also acknowl-edge Sellarsrsquosensuous properties in our philosophical explication ofappearances After all the claims made so far about primed proper-ties do not rest for their justification on any empirical claim ndash on anyclaim whose truth we know through perception ndash more than anyphilosophical proposal does They are based on considerations re-garding the commitments we incur in making perceptual ascrip-tions relative to intuitions concerning clearly possible circum-stances in which we incur them in particular those sharing the com-monalities and differing in the ways highlighted by Sellarsrsquo cases(a)-(c)17

It might be objected that it is essential to Sellarsrsquoview that it is in-tended to be corroborated by empirical (say neurological) findingsSellars correctly insists that an expression signifying a primed qual-ity should be ldquotruly a name and not just shorthand for a definite de-

31

17 It is true that we take ourselves to know that these represent clear-cut pos-sibilities for potential perceptual ascriptions on the basis of our previous percep-tual experience but we should not confuse claims which depend for their justifi-cation on perception from claims which depend on perception in other waysOnly the former dependenceundoubtedlymakes a claim a posteriori Recent dis-cussions of a priori knowledge insist on this distinction see Bonjour (1998)Burge (1993) and Peacocke (1993) Snowdon (1990) evinces the confusion I amcriticizing The discussions of a priori knowledge just referred to also show duesensitivity to the grain of truth in Quinean qualms which is acknowledged be-low

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

scriptionrdquo (op cit sect 24 see also sect 61 (2) in connection with thediscussion in sectsect 51-55) The view here is I think (to put it inKripkean terms) that a primed predicate is not synonymous with adescription constructed on the basis of its functional role ndash the de-scription merely fixes its reference The term is to all effects anatomic one denoting (to the extent that the theory introducing it istrue) the categorical basis of the functional state as it might someday come to be properly identified in more direct ways by usingterms of neurological theories However this only shows that claimsjustified on the basis of non-empirical considerations (and conceptsintroduced relative to those claims) might also later receive empiri-cal justifications18 It also shows correspondingly that claims thatare thought to be justified on the basis of non-empirical consider-ations might in principle later be rejected on the basis of empiricalevidence Both facts manifest that certain traditional conceptions ofphilosophical knowledge are incorrect ndash which is the grain of truthin the Quinean qualms on the a priori However more sophisticatedconceptions are possible compatible with the facts

By moving from Sellarsrsquo views to a sense-data account more-over we escape a well-known criticism that is otherwise well-takenWhen Sellars examines in Science and Metaphysics (1969 ch 1) theissues whose treatment in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of MindrdquoI have been discussing he applies the term lsquonon-conceptualrsquo to sen-sations He is thus indicating that sensations are introduced merelyto explain causally the commonalities to cases of veridical illusoryand hallucinatory experience19 Sensations would have a non-con-

32

18 I say lsquonon-empiricalrsquo instead of plainly lsquoa priorirsquo because some philoso-phers would balk at counting as a priori a justification that involves propositionsconcerningmatters of particular fact even if these matters are not knownpercep-tually but introspectively

19 However while playing this explanatory task sensations also play forSellars an epistemological role their existence accounts for the ldquoreceptivityrdquo ofperception ndash for a general dependence of perceptual belief on the character of theexternal world ndash which the myth of the Given was wrongly intended to accountfor McDowell (1998 first lecture) sees a difference in Sellarsrsquo presentation ofhis views on this matter in chapter 1 of Science and Metaphysics with respect tothose he advances in ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo which I am un-able to discern As far as I can see sensations are also introduced in this work to

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

ceptual content in that they play a content-involving explanatoryrole merely at the subpersonal level of the information-processingstates posited by cognitive scientists they do not belong in the per-sonal-level ldquological space of reasonsrdquo Thus understood the fact thatthey have propositional content (correctness conditions which wemight present in terms say of possible circumstances compatiblewith their veridicality)20 is not sufficient to give them a rationalizingrole In order to have a rationalizing role their subjects should meeta quite demanding condition which McDowell characterizes thusldquoit is essential to conceptual capacities in the demanding sense thatthey can be exploited in active thinking thinking that is open to re-flection about its own rational credentialsrdquo (1994 47 see also pp10-13) By McDowellrsquos lights to enjoy contentful states positionedldquoin the logical space of reasonsrdquo entails having the capacity to reflectabout the epistemic status of those states For him perceptual expe-riences are capable of offering justification and have ldquoconceptualcontentrdquo but only subjects having general views about conditions inwhich they can trust their senses and in general the ldquorational creden-tialsrdquo of their thoughts can enjoy them

This threatens an obvious regress which Sellars confronted inthis way ldquoall that the view that I am defending requires is that notokening by S now of lsquothis is greenrsquo is to count as lsquoexpressing obser-vational knowledgersquo unless it is also correct to say of S that he nowknows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Ynamely that hellip utterances of lsquoThis is greenrsquoare reliable indicators ofthe presence of green objects in standard conditions of perceptionAnd while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires thatJones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the ideathat these utterances are reliable indicators it requires only that it iscorrect to say that Jones now knows thus remembers [fn Mythought was that one can have direct (non-inferential) knowledge ofa past fact which one did not or even (as in the case envisaged) couldnot conceptualize at the time it was present] that these particular

33

properly account for the dependence of our system of knowledge on the externalworld

20 Most properly in terms closer to Peacockersquos (1992 ch 3) ldquoscenario con-tentrdquo

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

facts did obtain It does not require that it be correct to say that at thetime these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain And the re-gress disappearsrdquo (Sellars 1963a sect37 169)

As Brewer (1996) aptly indicates what Sellarsrsquo argument to re-ject the regress requires is not quite the possibility that he suggests inthe quoted footnote If those past events that the subject did not at thetime conceptualize had been cognitively present to him and the sub-ject had kept memory of them he might justificatorily invoke themlater when he is in a position to apply the required concepts Sup-pose that S has been seeing for some time a light turned on in his carwithout knowing that the event indicates that the car is running outof gasoline ndash S might even lack the very concept of an instrumentwhose function it is to indicate such a thing Suppose that he has no-ticed that more or less coincidentally with the light going on the en-gine makes a peculiar sound When he becomes knowledgeableabout the function of the light he might also come to know of a reli-able correlation between the noise and the car running out of gaso-line This is made possible by the fact that the subject is able tocognitively register the fact even though he lacks the concept of theindicator Sellarsrsquo suggestions however require something muchmore difficult to understand if we assume that the lsquonon-conceptualrsquocharacter of the primed properties implies that their subject lackscognitive access to them It requires that something like that is possi-ble ldquoeven if there is no sense whatsoever in which such a fact was ac-tually present to the subject at the earlier timerdquo (Brewer 1996 265)This is difficult to accept ldquomy memory at some time t1 of what wasthe case at an earlier time t0 radically depends on my conceptual so-phistication at t1 in the following sense I might have known abso-lutely nothing at t0 about the way things then were in the worldaround me or indeed about anything else yet I might at t1 directly(non-inferentially) remember that there was a green object in frontof me at t0rdquo (ibid)

The sense data theorist has a more satisfactory way around this is-sue Because he finds the common descriptive factor at the properpersonal level of rationalizing explanation he can appeal to Sellarsrsquosuggestion to avoid the regress without falling prey to Brewerrsquos ob-jection According to him experiences have primed properties that(i) are common to the likes of cases (a)-(c) (ii) are analogous to

34

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

manifest properties of perceptible material beings in the way sug-gested by Sellars and (iii) have contents derived from the instan-tiation of those manifest properties in normal circumstances also inthe way suggested by Sellars Sense data theorists classify the con-tents of experiences as non-conceptual to indicate that they can beshared by discursive adult humans capable of playing the lan-guage-game of justifying their claims and by animals and childrenwho lack that capability This notwithstanding experiences so con-ceived are postulated at a first-personal level they are capable ofplaying a rationalizing justificatory role They are not merely positsof the empirical theories of cognitive scientist which only relative topurely reliabilist accounts of knowledge could be thought to play ajustificatory role Experiences as understood in the sense data ac-count are posits of a personal-level explication of perception play-ing a fully-fledged epistemic role in ordinary folk-psychological ra-tionalizing explanations This does not require counting the relationbetween sense-experiences and ordinary perceptual judgments asstrictly speaking inferential As Broad said ldquoPerceptual judgmentsare indeed based upon sensa and their properties to the extent that ifwe were not aware of a sensum we should not now judge that anyphysical object is present to our senses and that if this sensum haddifferent properties we should ascribe different properties to thephysical object But the relation between the sensum and its proper-ties on the one hand and the perceptual judgment about the physicalobject on the other is not that of inferencerdquo (Broad 1965 96)

Broadrsquos point here is not that the relation is merely causal Hegoes on to offer a well-known analogy21 Sensa stand to the percep-tual objects we access by means of them as words stand to the ob-jects words tell us about while reading we focus on the meaningnot the words typically we would be able to report the content of amessage at a later time but not the words in which it was expressedBut we could not have accessed the meanings without accessing thewords Similarly we could not have knowledge of observable prop-erties of material objects without being aware of the relevant proper-ties of our sense impressions This awareness plays a rationalizingand justificatory role in folk-psychological personal-level explana-

35

21 Kevin Mulligan informed me that the analogy comes from Husserl

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

tions22

The Sellarsian third way we have been discussing has in its favorthat it is a straightforward naturalistic proposal while sense datatheories are at the very least not obviously so Alas in spite of thisstrength like any other similarly reductive theory23 the Sellarsianthird way cannot be right In addition to the epistemological consid-erations that I have just marshaled against it I have only space tomention the two main problems with reductive accounts well elabo-rated in the literature The first comes from inverted spectrum con-siderations Thought-experiments like those by Block (1990)Peacocke (1983) and Shoemaker (1984) show that there are concep-tual possibilities which a reductive analysis cannot recognize Somereductive theorists advance their proposals in a framework in whichconceptual and empirical claims are not separated A strategy avail-able to them is to suggest that so-called cases of inverted qualia al-ways involve as a matter of empirical fact functional differenceshidden from common sense I do not think this helps reductivism ingeneral in part because I think that the presupposed Quinean frame-work is wrong our discussion assumes an epistemological distinc-tion between conceptual an empirical claims The second difficultyfor reductivism comes from the problem of distinguishing primaryfrom secondary qualities A reductive account would have to countall observable properties as equally objective In my view howeverthere are very good reasons for a response-dependent treatment ofsome manifest properties most prominently colors24

36

22 The view has points of contact with the one advanced by Searle (1983)The form of externalism defended below distinguishes it from SearlersquosGarciacutea-Carpintero (1999) discusses the relations between Searlersquos views andsense data theories

23 Representationalist theories of qualia close to the Sellarsian third wayhave been advocated by Dretske (1995) Harman (1989) and Tye (1995)

24 Johnston (1992) offers some of these reasons I should say that Johnstonhas changed his views here as is coherent with his adoption of the theory of ap-pearing See Johnston 1998 for his new reasons against the response-depend-ence of manifest properties The two problems I havementioned are discussed byJackson (1977 33-48) The need for reductivists to assume an objectivist ac-count of all properties configuring the immediately perceptible material world(including for instance painful bodily conditions perceived in feeling pains)

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

3 Outline of a Sense data Theory

In this section I will present the main features of a sense data theoryand a causal account of perception involving sense data It offers inmy view the best explication of perception in view of the difficultiesfor representationalism we have just mentioned and those of TAthat will be developed in the next section Space only allows the bar-est sketch but I hope it will be sufficient to show at least that the viewis not obviously wrong

Our favored analysis for S perceives O will include the followingclaims25

(i) The experience E constitutively involved when subject Sperceives object O consists of a relation of awareness be-tween subject S and an (event-like) object s-d(E) consistingof the instantiation of a complex of phenomenal propertiesin an egocentric spatio-temporally structured array

This first claim by itself does not go far beyond what was taken ascommon ground in the first section If each particular phenomenalfeature instantiated in s-d(E) consists in a primitive relation of ap-pearance with O or if it can be reductively analyzed by means ofphysical andor functional properties involving O then s-d(E) wouldnot be a sense datum in any problematic sense of that notion (Theterm lsquosense datumrsquo is introduced in classical discussions with thesame lack of commitment to whether its referents are essentially ex-periential relations with features of material things or rather intrin-sically mental that we used in introducing lsquophenomenal featurersquoearlier see Moore 1918-9 as an example of this) The main point of

37

and the implausibility of doing so constitutes the main body of the detailed argu-ment by Perkins (1983) for sense data Jackson also mentions these difficultiesIn sum the conditions mentioned in reductive analyses (causation under normalcircumstances of the phenomenal features by the observational properties beliefthat the observational properties are instantiated or both) are not sufficient forthe truth of ldquophenomenal-lookrdquo ascriptions Nevertheless I believe againstJackson that both sorts of conditions are necessary

25 Although the points I will be discussing are intended to apply to percep-tual claims generally I will mostly concentrate on vision

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

mentioning events in (i) is firstly to allocate sense data to what Itake to be their proper ontological slot Sense data are particularsgranted but event- or state-like they are not particulars that endurethrough time but particulars that stretch through time as enduringthings extend in space

In addition to this (i) puts the present view in opposition to theadverbial analysis of experience ndash a typical logical device in the ar-mory of defenders of the theory of appearing Adverbial analysesare an attempt at getting rid of any objects susceptible of havingproperties like those ascribed by means of observational predicateslsquoredrsquo lsquocubersquo lsquosolidrsquo etc other than the perceived material objectsIn order to avoid the commitment of sense data theories to mentalobjects to which primed analogues of those predicates are properlyapplied adverbialists suggest that we think of experience as a deter-minable for a type of state Determinates for this determinable areobtained by using the observational predicates semantically speak-ing like adverbial modifiers Thus when S experiences a hallucina-tory red after-image the determinable lsquoexperiencingrsquo applies to Sadverbially modified with lsquoredlyrsquo S is experiencing red-ly No redobject of Srsquos experience has to exist it is only that the more determi-nate property experiencing red-ly applies to Srsquos condition26

Jackson (1977 58-72) submits adverbial analyses to a thoroughcriticism to which I do not think their proponents have acceptablereplies Jacksonrsquos criticism is based on two related objections theldquomany-propertyrdquo objection and the ldquocomplementrdquo objection Thefirst is the problem for the adverbialist to distinguish say experienc-ing the appearance of a red square besides a green circle from expe-riencing the appearance of a green circle besides a red squareAdverbialism threatens to conflate them into something like experi-encing red-ly circular-ly green-ly and square-ly The second is theproblem for the adverbialist to avoid absurdly concluding from thefact that S experiences a red appearance and a green ie non-red ap-pearance that S is at the same time both experiencing and not expe-riencing (ldquored-lyrdquo)

Tye (1984 the main claims are still endorsed in his 1995) con-

38

26 Adverbial analyses have been proposed among others by Chisholm(1957 115-25) Sellars (1963b) and Tye (1984)

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

fronts Jacksonrsquos objections It does not distort matters to present hisproposal in two stages Tye first introduces a phenomenal spatio-temporally structured visual field and two relations of ldquocoinci-dencerdquo and ldquoseparationrdquo of phenomenal qualities in the apparentspatiotemporal structure (To generalize the solution we shouldcontemplate experiential fields with perhaps spatial and always tem-poral apparent structures)27 The first step to deal with the many-property problem is then to describe matters thus it is for the subjectas if redness coincided with squareness and greenness with circular-ity in his visual field To deal with the complement problem it is forthe subject as if there were redness separated from greenness in hisvisual field

If the maneuver ended here it would achieve nothing for theadverbialist For positing concrete instances of merely apparent sen-sory fields with richly structured spatio-temporal-like parts deter-mined by analogues of the observable properties is precisely themove made by the sense data theorist whose views the adverbialistultimately wants to oppose Tyersquos second step is therefore crucial forthe success of his adverbialist proposal The second step is areductive analysis of ascriptions of appearances as of spatio-tempo-rally structured sensory fields ldquoThe operation of coincidence itselftherefore may be thought of as mapping any two given sensorymodes or functions F-ly and G-ly onto a function which in turnmaps the property of sensing onto a further sensing property whichis usually instantiated in normal perceivers by virtue of their view-ing a physical object which is both F and G in standard circum-stancesrdquo (Tye 1984 218 analogous claims are made about the oper-ation of separation on p 222) In sum sensing coincidental-with(red-ly square-ly)-ly is intended to be reductively analyzed asbeing in a state typically caused in normal observers under normal

39

27 Tye restricts his discussion to the visual field and then only to versions ofJacksonrsquos problems arising from its spatial structure But of course the visualfield has also a temporal structure (there is also apparent movement) and mostsensory fields have only temporal structure Jacksonrsquos problems can be triviallyrestated on the basis of the temporal structures of appearance Sensing a violinmiddle C succeeded by a cello A cannot be conflated with sensing a cello middleC succeeded by a violin A as unmodified adverbialism would entail nor lead usto conclude that the subject is both sensing and not sensing (ldquocellish-lyrdquo)

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

circumstances by something which is both red and squareAs far as I can see this proposal requires that reductive analyses

be forthcoming for all phenomenal features in terms of correspond-ing immediately perceptible properties of material things not onlyof (primed) spatio-temporal phenomenal features but also of anyother phenomenal features without which the spatio-temporal fea-tures cannot be characterized Perceiving a complex of sounds has atemporal dimension the same applies to perceiving a complex pain-ful condition of onersquos own body This temporally felt structure givesrise to counterparts of the two problems for adverbial accounts pre-sented by Jackson Now for a solution along the lines of Tyersquos towork a reduction ought to be available not only of the temporal ex-perienced features in terms of temporal properties of material eventsperceptually accessed in canonical circumstances A reduction mustalso be possible of the respectively specifically sonorous andldquopainingrdquo properties which in each particular case as it were ldquofilluprdquo that temporal structure Like any other reductive analysis of thephenomenal qualities this will not do essentially for the two rea-sons indicated at the end of section 3 In particular while the first re-duction ndash the one for primary properties ndash sounds feasible I think weshould discard the possibility of the second one without which thefirst does not suffice

Arguments making this clear include those given by Akins (1996)for the ldquonarcissisticrdquo character of some phenomenal features Themain difficulty she raises has the following form She starts from aclass of properties reasonably counted as objective for instancetemperatures as classified and measured by physicists Then sheshows that the system of thermal sensations in humans cannot betaken to represent properties in the presupposed class (see particu-larly her arguments against the ldquoappeal to signal informationrdquo pp356-359) Two different temperatures can give rise to the same sen-sation and the same temperatures can give rise to different sensa-tions in different parts of the skin In addition to this the structure oftemperatures and the structure of thermal sensations differ also inthat changes of temperature of the same amount are felt as differingin intensity depending on the initial temperature These disparitiesmoreover reflect the specific interest of the organism incorporatingthe representational system Facts like these are not specific to the

40

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

thermal receptors we could find them for most sensory systems (in-cluding some representing ldquoprimaryrdquo properties like spatial posi-tions see the example of the sense of balance on p 369)28 In view ofproblems like these Tye should tell us how he expects to be able toreduce say feelings of temperature to physical conditions

(ii) The object s-d(E) is the immediate object of the perceptualstate

As before with (i) (ii) per se is not incompatible with the claims dis-tinguishing the theory of appearing Any account of perception willrequire a distinction between mediate or indirect and immediate ordirect objects of the conscious awareness involved in perceptionInstances of phenomenal properties may be taken to be the immedi-ate objects of awareness in perception even by the supporter of thetheory of appearing because for him the only particulars involvedare the perceived instances of material manifest properties

The way of describing the mediateimmediate distinction men-tioned here may sound slightly strained A more straightforward for-mulation would simply distinguish mediate from immediate objectsof perception instead of the conscious awareness involved in per-ception If I nonetheless avoid the more straightforward formulationit is because I do not think it proper to count the immediate objects ofperception ndash mental sense data on the present view ndash as themselvesperceived this is one point at which I depart from Jackson In a re-cent penetrating discussion Shoemaker (1994) has given good rea-

41

28 See in addition the arguments by Perkins (1983) already mentioned inthis connection I should say that while I take these considerations to putreductivist accounts in jeopardy against Akinsrsquoown conclusion they do not seemto me to affect a view such as the one I am developing The obvious reaction toAkinsrsquo examples is to take the properties represented by qualia to be character-ized essentially in relation to qualia themselves (to be ldquonarcissistic propertiesrdquoin her terms) and to accept that her examples show that those properties cannotbe identified with physical properties There is no metaphysical problem withthis because any sensible physicalism should be understood as a requirement ofsupervenience not one of reduction and as Akins acknowledges the facts shementions are compatible with the required dependence of narcissistic propertieson physical properties

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

sons not to count introspective access to our own occurrent mentalstates as a form of perception and by my own lights experiencingsense data counts as such Shoemakerrsquos considerations are muchricher but for present purposes we can reduce them to the followingpoint Perception is a cognitive achievement in any particular casethe actual achievement could have turned out to be instead an unsuc-cessful attempt at cognitively accessing the perceived object This isnot the case for experience and its phenomenal objects In the firstplace attention is enough to experience concrete sense data addi-tionally experiencing sense data guarantees their existence29 In thesecond place in experiencing sense data we cannot be grossly mis-taken about their character (This is compatible with a limited ad-mission of corrigibility) Given these differences it would be wrongto count introspective access to phenomenal features as a form ofperception

I assume that claims such as the following will not be disputedWhen we see both Venus and a bright speck of light in the nightlysky we see Venus in virtue of seeing a bright speck of light Whenwe see both the orange and an orange spherical shape of such-and-such size we see the former in virtue of seeing the latter Jackson of-fers an in my view insufficient elaboration on this relation of per-ceiving something in virtue of perceiving some related thing Hethen goes on to explain the idea of immediacy by appealing to it Amediate object of perception is one perceived at a time in virtue ofperceiving at that very time a different related object and immedi-ate object of perception is a perceived object which is not mediate(see Jackson 1977 15-22 for this explication)

In his explication of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation Jackson stead-fastly refuses to invoke epistemic notions traditionally appealed toin the account of the immediacy at stake This is why I say that hisexplication is insufficient for although I take it to be correct as faras it goes I think that it requires further elucidation Jacksonrsquos ab-stract explication provides only a necessary but insufficient elabora-tion of the ldquoin virtue ofrdquo relation holding in our case The additional

42

29 Adverbialism of course provides a nice explanation for this in rejectingadverbialism we are forced to provide a different account for the fact This willnot be attempted here

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

material is of an epistemic character Traditionally it has been saidfor instance that when something is seen in virtue of seeing some-thing else the beliefs we have about the former are inferred fromthose we have about the latter or that we are less certain regardingthe former beliefs than we are regarding the latter As part of his re-fusal to invoke epistemic notions Jackson adopts the view advo-cated by Dretske (1969) that what the latter calls ldquosimple seeingrdquo(seeing objects including here events) is analytically more basicthan what he calls ldquoepistemic seeingrdquo (seeing that a fact obtains)Another integral part of Jacksonrsquos refusal to use epistemic notions inthe analysis of the immediacy at stake is his refusal (shared withmany other contemporary philosophers like Evans (1982) for simi-lar reasons) to count perceptual judgments as constitutively in-volved in perception

A proper discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this pa-per but our limited aims do not require it Let me just indicate themain points to be developed in a fuller discussion Firstly the properorder of analysis is the opposite to the one that Dretske and Jacksonassume simple seeing is to be explained in terms of epistemic see-ing seeing that a fact obtains In basic cases the fact involves theinstantiation by the scene before the senses (a situation involving re-lations with some egocentric condition of the perceiverrsquos body) of anarray structured temporally and perhaps also spatially of manifestproperties The basic idea for the explication of the simple percep-tion of objects and events in terms of the epistemic perception of thattype of fact is to think of simple perception as a form of de re ascrip-tion I would provide a treatment of de re ascriptions along the linesof the one given by Kaplan (1969) for de re belief reports withoutassuming any other ontological category of beliefs than that re-quired to analyze de dicto reports30 Thus S perceives O is to be un-

43

30 These proposals are sometimes understood as attempts to reduce singu-lar thoughts thoughts constitutively involving particulars to purely general de-scriptive thoughts They do not need to be understood in that spirit however andthey are not so understood here There are two ways in which the distinction dedictode re might be seen According to the first interpretation it is a distinctionof two kinds of thought- (and utterance-) content singular or object-dependentcontent (content essentially involving particulars) vs general content Accord-ing to the second interpretation it is a distinction of two kinds of content-ascrip-

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

derstood as condensing something like S perceives that hellip hellip andthe singular concept represents O for S31 Secondly as is the casein the analysis offered in the Sellarsian third way perception consti-tutively involves belief ie perceptual ascriptions conceptually en-tail caeligteris paribus belief ascriptions

The usual arguments (including Jacksonrsquos op cit 38-42) againstthe view that judgment and belief are constitutively involved in theaccount of the nature of perceptual experience are based on cases ofwell-known illusions like the Muumlller-Lyer illusion subjects famil-iar with it refuse to take it at face value My reply to this is based on abroadly functionalist conception of the mind in general and of per-ceptual experiences in particular This functionalism is ldquobroadrdquo inthat it is not reductive it acknowledges mental properties whicheven though they necessarily play a functional role cannot be identi-fied with functional properties as usually understood

Thus the view is not that perceptual experiences are identicalwith beliefs or that whenever they occur necessarily a judgementoccurs or that whenever a perceptual judgement occurs it has been

44

tion On the one hand ascriptions whose ascriber commits himself in part as re-gards the nature of the modes of presentation in the ascribed content but do notneed to involve existential commitments On the other ascriptions whoseascriber commits himself to the existence of entities which he refers to in order topartially characterize the ascribed content while he does not need to commithimself to the modes of presentation relative to which the entity is presented inthe ascribed content It is according to the first interpretation that a Kaplanianproposal is intended as a reduction of singular contents to general contents Theinterpretation favored here is the second however My own view is that there areirreducible singular contents including contents constituting the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual experiences

31 A view of this kind can be found in Roxbee Cox (1971) An importantdifference between us is that Roxbee Cox is attempting to provide a reductiveanalysis of perception in terms of the causation of belief Therefore he avoidsmentioning experiences Although in contrast with Jackson I believe that per-ception constitutively involves belief (ie perceptual ascriptions conceptuallyentail ceteris paribus belief ascriptions) contra Roxbee Cox and other philoso-phers I do not think that perception can be reduced to belief That is to say I donot think that any belief ascriptions not involving concealed appeal to experi-ences can be sufficient for perceptual ascriptions for reasons given by Jackson(1977 42-48)

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

generated by a corresponding perceptual experience Firstly certaingeneral conditions for judging should be in place for an experienceto generate a corresponding judgment Judgment and belief are Itake it conceptual affairs to make judgements requires the capacityto give reasons for them and that means that the content of judg-ments and beliefs is conceptualized content Attention to the con-sciously experienced features is one more general condition re-quired for an experience to generate a belief When S suddenly real-izes that there is ndash and has been for some time ndash a deafening pneu-matic drill digging up the street previous to the realization he wasalready having the experience of the sound He was not judging thatthere was that sound though because he was not attending to the rel-evant phenomenal features he was (inattentively) experiencing32

Consider now circumstances (knowledgeable subjects con-fronted with the Muumlller-Lyer figure say) in which a perceptual ex-perience does not give rise to the corresponding judgment Thebroadly functional character of the proposal makes this compatiblewith the view that belief is constitutively involved in experienceFor in such cases certain collateral information is present in virtueof which the subject refrains from taking the experience at facevalue Hence default canonical cases are possible in which the col-lateral information is absent and in those cases the subject wouldmake the judgment33 Similarly in some cases the perceptual beliefcan be formed without the causal operation of the perceptual experi-ence (say a reliable source informs the subject of the fact while thesubject would not have taken his experience at face value in the cir-

45

32 The example comes from Block (1995 234) and the remark on attentionis intended to refute Blockrsquos claim that the example establishes the possibility ofa form of consciousness what he calls lsquophenomenal consciousnessrsquo which un-like what he calls lsquoaccess consciousnessrsquo does not have a functionalrepresenta-tional nature Blockrsquos claim is a form of the internalism about phenomenal fea-tures that I reject here

33 See also Mulligan (1999) In response to this sort of proposal Jackson(1977 41) makes the bold empirical claim that even in the default situation peo-ple would refuse to take the appearance provoked by Muumlller-Lyer figures at facevalue abstaining from making the corresponding judgments Our disagreementhere could in principle be resolved on the basis of the results of carefully de-signed experiments

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

cumstances) But again these cases involve collateral informationHence there are possible canonical cases in which the collateral in-formation is absent and in them the perceptual belief would be gen-erated by the experience

In summary a perceptual experience that p constitutively causescaeligteris paribus (relative to conditions existing in some canonicalcircumstances) a perceptual judgment with a corresponding con-tent and rationalizes it34 The present view therefore contrasts bothwith Jacksonrsquos views and with those of the classical sense data theo-rist For them at the basic level of analysis sense data are objects ofstates without propositional content I should point out that this isthe only sense data theorist whose views Sellars presents and aptlycriticizes in the first section of ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy ofMindrdquo For the more sophisticated fellow whose views we are sup-porting here experiences involving sense data are at the most basiclevel propositional35

To explicate the distinction mediateimmediate only the percep-tion of facts is therefore relevant A fact is perceived in virtue of per-ceiving (or being consciously aware of) another fact if and only if thefollowing two conditions obtain Firstly caeligteris paribus (relative tocanonical circumstances) a subject could not perceive the formerwithout perceiving (or being consciously aware of) the latter Sec-ondly he could perceive (or be consciously aware of) the latterwithout perceiving the former On the present sense data theory in-stances of the manifest properties (material properties placed inSellarsrsquo qualitative space) are the objects we most directly perceivebut we indirectly perceive facts involving them by being con-sciously aware of facts involving instances of sense data36 These re-marks do not add up to a fully-fledged definition of the intended me-

46

34 In speaking of ldquocorrespondingrdquocontent I am skipping over thorny issuesthat have to do with the already pointed out fact that the content of perceptual ex-periences is non-conceptual while the content of judgments based on them isconceptualized content

35 For a state to be propositional in my view is for that state to have possi-ble-world truth-conditions as determined by modes of presentation It is not ob-viously to have conceptual content or possible-world truth-conditions deter-mined by conceptual modes of presentation

36 See Perkins (1983 p 16) for similar suggestions about immediacy

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

diation nor to a justification that applies to the cases at stake ndash whichcould only be given as a result of a more elaborate discussion ndash but Ihope that they are sufficiently indicative of the view

(iii) The properties of s-d(E) (the sensuous sides of qualia) arecorrectly characterized by means of predicates for the corre-sponding manifest features of perceived objects (their inten-tional sides shapes colors etc) this characterization beingessentially analogical Phenomenal properties have thus twoaspects sensuous and intentional

This was explicated in the previous section in connection withSellarsrsquo views The sense data theory I defend uses exactly the sameaccount that we have seen in Sellarsrsquo proposal (involving the loca-tion of qualia in a qualitative space) according to which predicatesfor the manifest properties and their corresponding primed corre-lates attribute related properties

Hence to distinguish the manifest properties I would appeal toSellarsrsquo idea that there is a structural similarity between some prop-erties we perceive in material things and the sensuous sides of phe-nomenal features We have elucidated this structural similarity ear-lier by appealing to the view that phenomenal properties constitute aqualitative space The sense data account coincides thus with theSellarsian third way in counting as essential features of sensuousproperties of experiences both the fact that they cause judgments incanonical circumstances and that they are caused in canonical cir-cumstances by material properties corresponding to them in an anal-ogous qualitative space It is the second constitutive aspect that weneed for the definition of the manifest properties they are by defini-tion those constituting the space corresponding to the qualitativespace in which sensuous sides of phenomenal features are placedWe will also appeal to it below to characterize the nature of thecausal relation which causal theories of perception appeal to

The representationalist claim that ascriptions of phenomenal fea-tures constitutively entail propositions stating that manifest proper-ties cause the corresponding primed properties under normal condi-tions in normal circumstances is disputed by Jackson (op cit 35-39)on three counts First there is Humersquos notorious missing shade of

47

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

blue that is to say phenomenal features that are experienced buthave not been caused by any instance of the corresponding observ-able property The account in terms of qualitative spaces deals satis-factorily with this objection the fact that the relations defining thephenomenal qualitative space are consciously experienced by sub-jects allows for extrapolation based on qualities whose instanceshave been involved in genuine cases of perception Second there isthe problem of explaining ldquonormal conditionsrdquo non-circularly theadoption of a teleological explanation will deal with this difficulty37

Finally Jackson points out well-known difficulties for counterfac-tual accounts provoked by ldquofinkishrdquo dispositions ldquoConsider a worldcreated by a Cartesian evil demon who hates red things but toleratesnon-red things looking red on odd occasions Perhaps he has re-solved to destroy the world if any red things come into existence Inthis world things look red on odd occasions but nothing looks theway red things would if there were any for if there were any nothingwould look any way to anyonerdquo (op cit 35) The reply to this is thatin contrast with reductive representationalist views the present pro-posal is not to reduce categorical claims regarding the instantiationof sensuous properties to counterfactual claims involving potentialinstantiations of their material correlates but only that the latter areconstitutively entailed by the former On the contrary I take thecounterfactual claim entailed by an ascription of a primed propertyto be explainable relative to the categorical bases implicitly ascribedin the attribution such as neurological properties with which sensu-ous properties can be identified a posteriori38

This second partial agreement with the Sellarsian third way iswhat the moderate externalism of the present sense data theory andits own form of disjunctivism ndash both mentioned at the end of the firstsection ndash comes to Consider an ascription of phenomenal characterit looks M to S (where M is any manifest property) Under the present

48

37 See for instance Millikan 1984 but disregard any suggestion of biologi-cal reductivism

38 See Lewis (1997) for a general account of finkish dispositions compati-ble with the sort of non-reductive line taken here for the example mentioned byJackson In this case there are of course in addition the specific problems con-cerning the relation between phenomenal qualities and brain states My line herewould be essentially that defended by Loar (1997)

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

proposal its truth-conditions incur ontological commitmentsFirstly to the existence of an instance of a corresponding sensuousproperty M Secondly to the existence of canonical cases in whichother instances of the same type are caused by instances of M Incontrast to TA the analysis does not require the existence of an in-stance of M perceived by means of the experienced instance of M It thus overcomes the difficulties of TA to be elaborated on in thenext section But the analysis does entail the existence of cases of M(or at least cases of other manifest properties in the space corre-sponding to the qualitative one) As David Lewis puts it accordingto the view when philosophically explicated it turns out that ldquofolkpsychology includes folk psychophysicsrdquo (Lewis 1994 416) Thisleaves open whether primed properties in their turn have natureswhich can be fully analyzed in terms of the manifest properties thatcause them in canonical circumstances Against the reductivism ofthe Sellarsian third way the view defended here has it that this can-not be done in view of the possibility (and I would say the actualexistence) of secondary properties Thus while manifest primaryproperties are constitutively prior to their corresponding primedproperties manifest secondary properties and their correspondingprimed properties are constitutively on the same level

Traditional sense data theories like those we associated with theBritish empiricists are Cartesian They take phenomenal features tobe fully intrinsic properties and represent perception as the result ofa risky inference (in the ordinary case of course one involving atleast a premise constituting tacit knowledge) This is not the case inthe proposal advanced here Against the extreme relationalism re-presented by the theory of appearing I have contended that a philo-sophically correct analysis of perceptual experiences requires us toseparate two sides of phenomenal features On the one hand theconstitutively merely intentional instances of the material propertiesperceived in virtue of an awareness of them and on the other the ac-tual instances of corresponding sensuous properties As tradition-ally contended this is needed to account for the commonalities be-tween cases of hallucination and the corresponding veridical casesBut the requirement can be met while essentially considering hallu-cinations as parasitic on veridical cases It can be met while refusingto offer an analysis involving non-factive states common to veridical

49

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

cases and hallucinations This is what the present externalism aboutphenomenal features suggests

It is important to emphasize this because it is strict internalismabout phenomenal features that is responsible for what is correct incriticisms of some sense data accounts beginning with the pri-vate-language considerations Friends of the questionable form ofdisjunctivism associated with the theory of appearing typically sad-dle their opponents with internalism39 We have seen that it is notmandatory It is also relevant to mention that the best-known con-temporary proponent of the causal theory of perception Grice farfrom embracing internalism endorsed a moderate view such as theone supported here40

(iv) If S perceives O a specific event concerning O s(O) (aldquomanifest scene concerning Ordquo) causes in S the perceptual

50

39 See for instance Snowdon 1990 pp 128 and 125 and Hyman 1992 p283

40 A long quotation might perhapsbe justified ldquo(1) hellip it is quite incorrect todescribe many of my perceptual beliefs hellip as ldquoinferencesrdquo of any kind if this is tobe taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me on demand to justify byan argument hellip the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually isthe case hellip (2) The allegedly lsquofundamentalrsquocase hellip in which a perceptual claimis to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense datum statements isa myth any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth ofone or more further propositions about the material world hellip (3) It might be ques-tioned whether given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certainsense-impressions and given also that I think that M is causally responsible forthose sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the groundsthat its existence is required in order to account for the sense-impressions (4) hellipThe non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (orround) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were some-thing red (or round) before them does not of course in itself preclude the partic-ular fact that it looks to me as if there were something red before me from beingexplained by the presence of a particular red object it is a non-contingent matterthat corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which they are applied but itis quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by sayingthat it was caused by some corrosive substance In each case the effect might havecome about in some other wayrdquo (Grice 1961245-7) The present view both elab-orates upon and endorses each of these contentions

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

experience E involved in Srsquos perceiving O

For reasons given in the first section the causal explanation in (iv) ofthe relation between sense data and perceived material objectsmakes the account incompatible with TA which takes the relation ofappearing to be primitive in a philosophical explication

A notorious problem for defenders of the causal theory of percep-tion has been to provide an adequate characterization of the intendedcausal relation in a manner that is capable of handling the two kindsof cases which Lewis (1980) accurately describes as veridical hallu-cinations and prosthetic vision41 I think that Jackson (1977) is onthe right track here this in fact constitutes one of the main consider-ations in favor of claim (iii) that the sensuous sides of phenomenalproperties are (analogically) square green hot and so on Accordingto Jacksonrsquos proposal what is crucial ldquois what I call the functionalspatial dependence of the sense datum on the object a dependencewhich is consequent on the causal connection between the object andthe sense datum Suppose to illustrate that I am looking at an orangeThere are four spatial properties at issue shape size distance (away)and (relative) direction If say all of these except size are kept fixedwhat happens Well if the orange doubles in size the sense datumdoubles in size (approximately) if the orange halves the sense datumhalves and so on Thus the size of the sense datum is a function ofthat of the material object Likewise if the orange changes directionwhile remaining constant in the other spatial respects a similar de-pendence will be exhibitedrdquo (Jackson 1977 170-1)

There is an important qualification that Jackson makes which ex-plains the reference in (iv) to a ldquomanifest scene involving Ordquo AsJackson puts it ldquoI am correctly said to see someone in a tent dressthough my sense datum may be invariant to considerable changes inthat personrsquos shape hellip we need to distinguish three entities seen and

51

41 Cases of veridical hallucination are cases such that say S has an experi-ence as if there were a red sphere before his eyes there actually is such a spherebefore his eyes but Srsquos experience has been caused independently of the pres-ence of the sphere A case of prosthetic vision is one where S has an experience asif there were a red sphere before his eyes there is such a sphere actually causingSrsquos experience but the causal mechanism is substantially different from the onetypically operating in normal human beings

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

two relations When I see a reasonably sized opaque material thing Isee (i) the sense datum (ii) the thingrsquos facing surface and (iii) thething Now the relation between the facing surface and the thing iscommon ground in the philosophy of perception hellip [the account interms of functional dependence] is designed to elucidate only thecontroversial relationship ndash that between sense data and the surfacesof material things hellip when I see a person in a tent dress the relation[which the account] is intended to capture is not that between thepersonrsquos body and the dress but that between the facing surface ofthe dress and the sense datumrdquo (Jackson 1977 172) The relationldquobetween the facing surface and the thingrdquo is the one to be explainedby the form of mediation not to be disputed by anybody (like that ob-taining between the perception of Venus and the perception of thebright luminous speck) It is just the mediation of the perception ofthe instantiation of manifest properties in the perceived scene by theconsciously awareness of sensory features in the experienced sensedatum that we want to explain in causal terms

I said of the suggestion by Jackson only that it is ldquoon the righttrackrdquo because the proposal I believe to be entirely correct is some-what different In order to characterize that functional dependenceof perception on sensory awareness I think we should invoke allmanifest relations among the manifest properties (chromatic rela-tions like brightness acoustic relations like loudness and so on) notjust the spatial ones We take thus full advantage of the Sellarsianway in which we have explained the likeness of sensory and mani-fest sides of phenomenal features We can see a white sphere by ex-periencing a pink egg-shaped sense datum It is the white spherethat is the perceptual object in that variations in the shape and colorof the sphere would give rise to corresponding variations in the sensedatum Invoking in this way all manifest relations instead of merelythe spatial ones is the only way I envisage to generalize the accountto cases of perception where spatial properties are not involved forinstance perceiving a sound which one cannot locate in space ex-cept in the vaguest terms

Thus following Jacksonrsquos account (op cit 171) I will say moreprecisely that in experiencing s-d(E) S perceives a scene involvingmaterial object O just if (i) s(O) causes s-d(E) and (ii) the sensuousproperties of s-d(E) are functionally dependent on the correspond-

52

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

ing manifest properties of s(O) as a consequence of the manner inwhich s(O) causes the having of s-d(E)42

We are in a better position now to understand the sense in whichaccording to the present view the manifest properties can be appliedto sense data Consider the most controversial case the three-dimen-sional spatial properties The intentional objects of some perceptualstates are to be characterized in spatial terms say as an instance of agiven shape Our ability to represent objects of that kind is system-atic productive Anybody able to represent an instance of a givenshape would be able to represent also instances of the same shape indifferent sizes in different directions and distances before him andso on This can only be explained by assuming that we bring to bear atacitly possessed systematic knowledge of those properties ndash a naivegeometry a component of the naive physics psychologists ascribe tous Now we can indirectly perceive instances of some spatial prop-erties (the three-dimensional shape of your armchair) by less indi-rectly perceiving the spatial properties of others (the two-dimen-sional drawing you made for me) The representational relation incases like the latter involve the tacitly known functional dependenceof the more indirectly represented spatial properties on the spatialproperties less indirectly represented We tacitly understand that theseveral different spatial properties we would have been equally ableto identify in the drawing (by bringing thus to bear our tacitly knowngeometry) would have indicated different spatial properties wecould have been equally able to attribute to the room

The sense data account that I am supporting here contends thatsomething like this obtains in any case of apparent perception thistime involving our conscious awareness of spatial (and other) prop-erties of sense data These properties are spatial in that we bring tobear in recognizing them and in locating them in their proper placein qualitative space a geometrical tacit knowledge It is geometricalin that it shares relevant features with the knowledge by means of

53

42 The present proposal is closely related to the one by Lewis (1980 283)whenever someone perceives the scene beforehis senses according to the presentaccount he perceives it according to Lewis although not the other way aroundFocussing on the counterfactual dependenceof primed properties of experienceson their corresponding manifest properties provides further precision of whichLewisrsquo proposal is in my view needed

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

which we recognize and place in their own undeniable space thespatial properties instantiated in the material scenes we do perceivein canonical circumstances The spatial properties of sense data aremore specifically three-dimensional (in contrast with the two-di-mensional ones of the previous example) in that the tacitly knowngeometrical knowledge we bring to bear is more specifically of thekind involved in representing to us perceptually three-dimensionalproperties of manifest objects

(v) The object s-d(E) is mental

This follows from the preceding consideration by elimination of al-ternative possibilities Sense data could only be material things (incases of perception and misperception) if we accepted the claims ofthe theory of appearing but not after rejecting it and subscribing thecausal claim before Sense data are mental in that as concrete tokens(not just the sensuous types they instantiate) they could not existwithout the existence of a subject potentially consciously aware ofthem In this they differ from the tokens of manifest properties per-ceived by means of them Even in the case of secondary propertiesany particular token could exist without being the object of the per-ceptual conscious awareness of anybody and each concrete tokencould be the object of the perceptual conscious awareness of morethan one mind

4 The Downfall of the Theory of Appearing

The form of a sense data account of perception that has been just out-lined is I submit not easy to rebut on the basis of traditional consid-erations To conclude my defense of the account let me now showthe implausibility of the remaining rival the theory of appearingRobinson (1985 1990) provides an argument that can be further de-veloped so as to provide the decisive consideration against TA Hepoints out that neurophysiology might well find a common cause(or better a constitutive basis) for cases like Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) ofveridical perception misperception and hallucination According tothe disjunctivist theory of appearing the first and the third cases are

54

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

however ontologically apart the first involves a relation with a ma-terial object the hallucinatory case something else Robinson ar-gues against this by invoking a ldquosame cause same effectrdquo (or ldquosameconstitutive basis same constituted staterdquo as I would rather put it)principle On the assumption that neurology finds a common physi-cal constitutive basis for phenomenal states constituting perceptionsand hallucinations the principle would entail against the theory ofappearing that the phenomenal states themselves have also a com-mon ontological nature

Emphasizing the distinction between facts about perceptionknowable by philosophical reflection and facts knowable only aposteriori Langsam (1997) plausibly retorts that the principle atstake only applies to intrinsic properties of the events discussed Ac-cording to TA however phenomenal features as discerned at thepersonal philosophical level are relational at least in cases ofveridical perception and misperception and so extrinsic Langsam(op cit 41-48) then goes on to provide convincing examples in-volving relational properties to which the principle that Robinsonappeals to intuitively does not apply

This response works essentially in combination with the consid-eration concerning the proper level of theorizing at which the natureof phenomenal features is discussed The issue of the nature of per-ceptual experiences concerns their status as postulated at the per-sonal level of rationalizing ultimately folk-psychological explana-tions To the extent that the only plausible account of phenomenalfeatures of experiences at this level is the one provided by TALangsamrsquos response is correct At that level the phenomenal fea-tures involved in perception would be ta-extrinsic properties Robin-sonrsquos principle would not then apply to them On the assumption thatneurology does find a common factor to Sellarsrsquo cases (a)-(c) theprinciple would only entail that there is some ta-intrinsic propertycommon to the three cases playing an explanatory role at some em-pirical level of explanation This is not in contradiction to the maintenet characterizing the theory of appearing

Langsamrsquos response however sets into relief the most strikingproblem for the theory of appearing it can then easily be seen thathis argument backfires When we classify two events as falling un-der a common ta-extrinsic property (say the two occur a century af-

55

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

ter Hastings) we do not expect that they are thereby to be classifiedas falling under a common intrinsic property for purposes of placingthem in a causal structure Correspondingly we do not have any ten-dency to feel our ta-extrinsic classification confirmed by finding outthat the two events can be thus classified for such purposes of causalexplanation When we classify two events as falling under differentta-extrinsic properties (one occurs a century after Hastings the othertwo centuries after Hastings) we similarly lack any tendency to bethereby surprised if they are classified as falling under a common in-trinsic property for purposes of causal explanation

It is altogether different in the case we are discussing We find thesuggestion on which Robinsonrsquos argument rests ndash that neurologywill find a common factor to the likes of Sellarsrsquocases (a)-(c) ndash emi-nently plausible this is what we expect this is the prediction we ndashignorant of the scientific facts ndash would nonetheless make Both theSellarsian third way and our sense data theory provide an explana-tion for this expectation What accounts for our expectation is thatat the proper folk-psychological level of rationalizing explanationwe feel it is appropriate to posit intrinsic (or ta-intrinsic anyway)commonalities to cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo(a)-(c) We are dis-posed to this independently of any consideration having to do withthe constitutive physical (neurological) basis of the ta-intrinsicstates we posit The basis for our disposition must be in the assump-tions constituting folk-psychological explanation thus in the sourceof our relevant a priori intuitions This prima facie inclination to findRobinsonrsquos principle of application to the posits of folk-psychologi-cal explication in cases corresponding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) counts alsoas a prima facie indication that the ontology of the theory of appear-ing is wrong I grant Langsam that this is only a prima facie consid-eration which does not straightforwardly refute the theory of ap-pearing However the prima facie consideration proves at least thefollowing To the extent that there is a coherent story whose ontol-ogy fits with our inclination to find the principle ldquosame constitutivephysical basis same constituted psychological staterdquo of applicationto the likes of cases (a)-(c) that alternative explication is to be pre-ferred to TA

There are cases in which from a subjective point of view it is im-possible to tell whether the experience one is having is veridical il-

56

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

lusory or plainly hallucinatory43 If the experience is hallucinatoryand the subject is taken in by it we would expect the same kind ofbehavior as in the corresponding veridical case and would providefolk-psychological rationalizing explanations of his behavior onthat assumption by means of ldquoappearancerdquo talk The prima faciecorrect explication is that there are explanatory commonalities pos-ited at the required personal level Again consider the case of a sub-ject who has an overriding intention to touch a red sphere has beforehis eyes a red sphere and still remains undecided whether or not tomove his arm The reason we would say is that he is undecidedwhether his experience is the one he would have in a case of percep-tion or the one he would have in a case of hallucination This expla-nation adverts to a commonality at the personal level in the twocases It is provided independently of neurological knowledge butleads us to expect a common neurological basis whose findingwould confirm our folk-psychological explanations It is prospectsregarding neurological findings such as this which suggest that theontological nature of the phenomenal features we posit in providingexplanations like those in the examples is at odds with TA They aremuch better explained by accounts like the one provided by theSellarsian third way or the sense data theory which against the maintenet of the theory of appearing ascribe the same ontological natureto corresponding phenomenal features in perception illusion andhallucination

The force of this version of Robinsonrsquos argument is strengthenedby appreciating its modesty this can be seen by realizing that nosimilar considerations could be given to support a claim that phe-nomenal features are not just ta-intrinsic as we have argued that theyare but absolutely intrinsic as internalists want them to be Part ofthe Sellarsian third way I have suggested is essentially right Whatis right is the claim that an appearance-ascription entails the kind ofrelationality contemplated by Sellars ie that that kind of relation-

57

43 At least one defender of disjunctivism has denied that ldquothe psychologicalepisodes which occur when I hear or see something and those which occur whenI am subject to the corresponding lsquototal illusionrsquo resemble each other perfectlyrdquo(Hyman 1992 285-7) This is a bold empirical claim I think we already haveenoughevidence to reject it (see the phospheneexample in Jackson op cit 75)

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

ality is a necessary (in fact constitutive) condition for the truth of anappearance-ascription I thus reject the Cartesian claim that phe-nomenal qualities are conceptually speaking strictly intrinsicpurely internal affairs This internalist view of qualia has been de-fended recently by writers such as Block (1995) Chalmers (1996)Loar (1997) and Peacocke (1983) but remains deeply problematic

Now could not an argument like the one deployed in this sectionagainst the theory of appearing be used against my proposal giventhat it also makes phenomenal properties relational even though notta-extrinsic I do not think so Such an argument could not appeal toequally forceful intuitions regarding the kind of folk-psychologicalrationalizing explanations concerning perfectly ordinary cases cor-responding to Sellarsrsquo (a)-(c) and the expectations that those expla-nations create for the physical properties underwriting them Itwould have to appeal to unfamiliar cases (brains in a vat and so on)It is not obvious that we have sufficiently clear-cut intuitions con-cerning the required situations incompatible with the modest formof extrinsicness which my proposal does support

This concludes my case for sense data Essentially the argumentreproduces the one given by Jackson (op cit 96-99) whichLangsam (op cit 56 fn 7) disregards Against the main claim ofTA we have good reasons to provide an analysis of ldquolooksrdquo state-ments which finds a common factor in cases like those discussed bySellars Sellars provides a common intentional factor and a ldquosensu-ousrdquo one at the subpersonal level of scientific explanation But find-ing the common sensuous factor at that level is not enough It existsalso at the personal level of (philosophically explicated) folk-psy-chological rationalizing explanation This is corroborated by our ex-pectations regarding the applicability to the cases at stake of theldquosame constitutive physical basis same constituted folk-psycholog-ical staterdquo principle

In sum I have presented a version of a sense data approach to per-ception I have distinguished it from well-known versions like Jack-sonrsquos and I have offered an argument to show that it improves sub-stantially on alternative theories of perception like TA disjunctiveapproaches in general and reductive representationalist approachesThe form of the sense data theory I have advanced has four featureswhich distinguish it from alternative theories and allow us to count

58

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

it as a version of sense data theories (i) Perception involves experi-ences conceived as states relating subjects to mental particulars(event-tokens) (ii) Those particulars are analogically but correctlycharacterized as possessing the manifest properties of material par-ticulars which we also access in perception like colors shapes andso on (iii) Perception of an object occurs when it and the perceivingsubject are causally connected in such a way that some manifestproperties of the object cause corresponding properties in the expe-rience of which the subject is aware and variations in the manifestproperties along their manifest relations would cause correspondingvariations in the experienced properties (iv) Experiences provide afundamental rational justification for our empirical knowledgeOther features of traditional sense data theories are abandonedThus it is also suggested against tradition (i) that experiences havepropositional correctness conditions (ii) whose constitutive charac-terization involves ldquolocal holismrdquo (in Peacockersquos (1992) sense) andin particular (iii) relations with the material world

REFERENCES

Akins Kathleen (1996) ldquoOf Sensory Systems and the lsquoAboutnessrsquo ofMental Statesrdquo Journal of Philosophy xciii 337-372

Alston William 1999 ldquoBack to the Theory of Appearingrdquo in Philosophi-cal Perspectives 13 Epistemology J Tomberlin (ed) Malden MassBlackwell

Block Ned (1990) ldquoInverted Earthrdquo in J Tomberlin (ed) PhilosophicalPerspectives 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind AtascaderoCalifornia Ridgeview Pub Co

mdash (1995) ldquoOn a Confusion about a Function of Consciousnessrdquo Behav-ioral and Brain Sciences 18 227-247

Bonjour Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

Brewer Bill (1996) ldquoInternalism and Perceptual Knowledgerdquo EuropeanJournal of Philosophy 4 259-275

Broad C D (1965) ldquoThe Theory of Sensardquo in R Swartz (ed) Per-ceiving Sensing and Knowing 85-129 Los Angeles University of

59

California Press (A selection from his Scientific Thought Routledgeamp Kegan Paul London 1923)

Burge Tyler (1977)ldquoBelief de Rerdquo Journalof Philosophy74 338-362

mdash (1993) ldquoContent Preservationrdquo Philosophical Review 102457-488

Chalmers David (1996) The Conscious Mind Oxford Oxford Univer-sity Press

Child William (1992) ldquoVision and Experience the Causal Theory andDisjunctive Conceptionrdquo Philosophical Quarterly 42 297-316

Chisholm Roderick M (1950) ldquoThe Theory of Appearingrdquo in M Black(ed) Philosophical Analysis Ithaca Cornell Univ Pr 102-18 Alsoin R Swartz (ed)Perceiving Sensing and Knowing University of Cal-ifornia Press Los Angeles 168-186

mdash (1957) Perceiving A Philosophical Study Ithaca New York CornellUP

Clark Austen (1993) Sensory Qualities Oxford Clarendon Press

Dretske Fred (1969) Seeing and Knowing London Routledge andKegan Paul

mdash (1995) Naturalizing the Mind Cambridge Mass MIT Press

Garciacutea-Carpintero Manuel (1998) ldquoIndexicals as Token-ReflexivesrdquoMind 107 (1998) pp 529-563

mdash (1999) ldquoSearle on Perceptionrdquo Teorema 181 19-41

Grice H P (1961) ldquoThe Causal Theory of Perceptionrdquo Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society 35 Also in Grice HP Studies in The Ways ofWords Cambridge Mass Harvard UP 1989 224-248 from where Iquote

Harman Gilbert (1989) ldquoThe Intrinsic Quality of Experiencerdquo in JTomberlin (ed) Philosophical Perspectives 4 Philosophy of Mindand Action Theory Atascadero California Ridgeview Pub Co pp31-52

Hyman John (1992) ldquoThe Causal Theory of Perceptionrdquo PhilosophicalQuarterly 42 277-296

Jackson Frank (1977) Perception A Representative Theory CambridgeCambridge UP

Johnston Mark (1992) ldquoHow to Speak of the Colorsrdquo Philosophical

60

Studies 68 221-263

mdash (1997) ldquoHow to Speak of the Colors Postscript Visual Experiencerdquoin A Byrne amp D Hilbert (eds) Readings in Color vol 1 172-6

mdash (1998) ldquoAre the Manifest Properties Response-Dependentrdquo The Mo-nist

Kaplan David (1969) ldquoQuantifying Inrdquo in D Davidson and J Hintikka(eds) Words and Objections Dordrecht D Reidel Publishing Com-pany pp 178-214

Langsam Harold (1997) ldquoThe Theory of Appearing Defendedrdquo Philo-sophical Studies 87 33-59

Langton R amp Lewis D (1998) ldquoDefining lsquoIntrinsicrsquordquo Philosophy andPhenomenological Research 53 333-345

Lewis David (1973) Counterfactuals Oxford Basil Blackwell

mdash (1980) ldquoVeridical Hallucination and Prosthetic Visionrdquo AustralasianJournal of Philosophy 58 Also in his Philosophical Papers vol 2 Ox-ford Oxford U P 273-290 to which I refer

mdash (1994) ldquoLewis David Reduction of Mindrdquo in S Guttenplan (ed) ACompanion to the Philosophy of Mind Oxford Blackwell 412-430

mdash (1997) ldquoFinkish Dispositionsrdquo Philosophical Quarterly 47 143-158

Loar Brian (1997) ldquoPhenomenal Statesrdquo in N Block O Flanagan amp GGuzeldere (eds) The Nature of Consciousness Cambridge MassMIT Press

McDowell John (1982) ldquoCriteria Defeasibility and Knowledgerdquo Pro-ceedings of the British Academy 68 455-79

mdash (1986) ldquoSingular Thoughts and the Extent of Inner Spacerdquo in P Pettitand J McDowell (eds) Subject Thought and Context Oxford Clar-endon Press 137-168

mdash (1994) Mind and World Cambridge Mass Harvard UP

mdash (1995) ldquoKnowledge and the Internalrdquo Philosophy and Phenomeno-logical Research 55 877-93

mdash (1998) ldquoHaving the World in View the Woodbridge Lectures 1997rdquoJournal of Philosophy 95 431-91

McGinn Colin (1989) Mental Content Oxford Basil Blackwell

Millikan Ruth (1984) Language Thought and Other Biological Catego-

61

ries Cambridge Mass MIT Press

Moore George (1918-9) ldquoSome Judgments of Perceptionrdquo Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society 19 Also in Moore George PhilosophicalStudies London Routledge and Kegan Paul and in R Swartz (ed)Perceiving Sensing and Knowing University of California Press LosAngeles 1-28 from which I quote

Mulligan Kevin (1995) ldquoPerceptionrdquo in The Cambridge Companion toHusserl B Smith amp D Woodruff Smith (eds) Cambridge Cam-bridge UP

mdash (1999) ldquoPerception Predicates and Particularrdquo in Consciousness andIntentionality Modes and Modalities of Attribution Denis Fisette(ed) Dordrecht Kluwer

Peacocke Christopher (1983) Sense and Content Experience Thoughtand their Relations Oxford Clarendon Press

mdash (1992) A Study of Concepts Cambridge Mass MIT Press

mdash (1993) ldquoHow Are A Priori Truths Possiblerdquo European Journal ofPhilosophy i 175-199

mdash (1998) ldquoConscious Attitudes Attention and Self-Knowledgerdquo in CWright BC Smith amp C McDonald (eds) Knowing Our Own Minds63-98 Oxford Clarendon Press

mdash (1999) Being Known Oxford Oxford University Press

Perkins Moreland (1983) Sensing the World Indianapolis Hackett

Robinson Howard (1985) ldquoThe General Form of the Argument forBerkeleian Idealismrdquo in J Foster and H Robinson (eds) Essays onBerkeley 163-186 Oxford Clarendon Press

mdash (1990) ldquoThe Objects of Perceptual Experience IIrdquo Proceedings of theAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 64 151-66

Roxbee Cox J W (1971) ldquoAn Analysis of Perceiving in Terms of theCausation of Beliefs Irdquo in F N Sibley (ed) Perception LondonMethuen 23-64

Searle John (1983) Intentionality Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress

Sellars Wilfrid (1963a) ldquoEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mindrdquo inScience Perception and Reality London Routledge and Kegan Paul127-196

62

mdash (1963b) ldquoPhenomenalismrdquo in Science Perception and Reality Lon-don Routledge and Kegan Paul 60-106

mdash (1967) Science and Metaphysics Variations on Kantian ThemesLondon Routledge and Kegan Paul

Shoemaker Sidney (1984) ldquoThe Inverted Spectrumrdquo in his IdentityCause and Mind Cambridge Cambridge University Press

mdash (1994) ldquoSelf-Knowledge and lsquoInner Sensersquordquo Philosophy and Pheno-menological Research 54 249-315

Snowdon Paul (1980-1) ldquoPerception Vision and Causationrdquo Proceed-ings of the Aristotelian Society 81 175-192 Reprinted in J Dancy(ed) Perceptual Knowledge Oxford Oxford Univ Pr 1988192-208

mdash (1990) ldquoThe Objects of Perceptual Experience Irdquo Proceedings of theAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 64 121-50

Suchting W A (1969) ldquoPerception and the Time-Gap Argumentrdquo Philo-sophical Quarterly 19 46-56

Tye Michael (1984) ldquoThe Adverbial Approach to Visual ExperiencerdquoPhilosophical Review 93 195-225

mdash (1995) Ten Problems of Consciousness Cambridge Mass MITPress

Williamson Timothy (1995) ldquoIs Knowing a State of Mindrdquo Mind 104533-65

63

mdash (1963b) ldquoPhenomenalismrdquo in Science Perception and Reality Lon-don Routledge and Kegan Paul 60-106

mdash (1967) Science and Metaphysics Variations on Kantian ThemesLondon Routledge and Kegan Paul

Shoemaker Sidney (1984) ldquoThe Inverted Spectrumrdquo in his IdentityCause and Mind Cambridge Cambridge University Press

mdash (1994) ldquoSelf-Knowledge and lsquoInner Sensersquordquo Philosophy and Pheno-menological Research 54 249-315

Snowdon Paul (1980-1) ldquoPerception Vision and Causationrdquo Proceed-ings of the Aristotelian Society 81 175-192 Reprinted in J Dancy(ed) Perceptual Knowledge Oxford Oxford Univ Pr 1988192-208

mdash (1990) ldquoThe Objects of Perceptual Experience Irdquo Proceedings of theAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 64 121-50

Suchting W A (1969) ldquoPerception and the Time-Gap Argumentrdquo Philo-sophical Quarterly 19 46-56

Tye Michael (1984) ldquoThe Adverbial Approach to Visual ExperiencerdquoPhilosophical Review 93 195-225

mdash (1995) Ten Problems of Consciousness Cambridge Mass MITPress

Williamson Timothy (1995) ldquoIs Knowing a State of Mindrdquo Mind 104533-65

63