What counts as seeing?

hey all.

in light of what the majority of this semester has been spent on - visual perception - i wanted to offer up the very fundamental question of what we should count as seeing.

you may consider the tye-nanay-dretske debate over the speckled hen as a springboard into this problem; what counts as seeing, such that we should consider our beliefs about the speckled hen justified?

for example, tye uses the problem of the speckled hen to present his overall theory of seeing: we count as seeing something iff we can ask about it: "what is that?"

should we agree with tye?

The Speckled Hen

Obviously, you see the speckles. Everyone agrees about that.

The question is whether you see each and every speckle that is in view.

Tye says, "No. You see the speckles, but you don't see each and every speckle, at least not at the same time."

Dretske says, "Yes, you do. You see each and every speckle."

So, who is right, and why? (Note that both agree that you do not see the hen as having, say, thirty six speckles (or however many there are in view).)

Tye on Tye

In Chapter Three of Consciousness Revisited, Tye criticizes his earlier "phenomenal concepts" approach to introspection.

First, let's try to get clear about the nature of this approach. What is a phenomenal concept supposed to be?

Second, why exactly does Tye abandon the phenomenal concept strategy? Do you think he's right to do so?

Phenomenal Information?

Lewis's "Ability Hypothesis" (AH) is an alternative to what he calls "The Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information" (HPI). Both of these hypotheses offer to explain what Mary learns on leaving the black and white room. According to HPI, what Mary learns is information about the phenomenal character of certain types of color experience. According to AH, what Mary learns is how to do something--namely, recognize, remember, and imagine certain types of color experience.

So, here are some questions for you: Do you think that there is such a thing as phenomenal information? Why or why not? What sort of thing is phenomenal information supposed to be, and why does Lewis think it's so weird?

In thinking about these issues, it might be worth thinking about the phenomenology of color vision: What do you think it would be like for Mary on seeing red for the first time? Do you think that she would be inclined to say that this was like learning a new fact?

The Knowledge Argument and the Ability Hypothesis

In Consciousness, Color, and Content, Tye criticizes the "Ability Hypothesis" (AH) that David Lewis offers in response to Frank Jackson's "Knowledge Argument." Let's consider how this criticism is supposed to work.

First, since AH identifies knowledge of what an experience E is like with the abilities to remember, imagine, and recognize E-type experiences (call these 'Lewis abilities with respect to E'), then AH is true if and only if:

S knows what it is like to undergo experience E if and only if S has the Lewis abilities with respect to E.

This means that, if we can find cases in which either

1. S knows what it is like to undergo E but lacks the relevant Lewis abilities,

or

2. S has Lewis abilities with respect to E but does not know what it is like to undergo E,

then AH is false.

Now, Tye's claim is that we can easily find cases of both kinds:

1. S introspectively attends to the experience of a particular shade of, say, red (and so, knows what it is like), but cannot later recognize or imagine or remember this experience. (After all, we don't have concepts for all of the different shades of color that we can experience--right?) (See CCC, pp. 11-13)

2. S has Lewis abilities with respect to E, but S isn't paying attention to E, so she doesn't know what E is like. (See CCC, pp. 13-15)

Are these criticisms convincing?

Illusions and Phenomenal Qualities

I've nicked these garish swirls from the "Phenomenal Qualities Project" website. Now here's the cool part. These are the same swirls with a black background:

Crap! The green and blue swirls are actually the same color? How could that be?

Contrast effects can be pretty powerful!

In any case, here's the question: how should the Tye-style representationalist handle these cases? Do they pose a problem for the representationalist? That is, do they suggest the existence of aspects of phenomenal character that can't be identified with representational content?

[More such examples to come.]

Tye on Transparency

One of Tye's principal claims about perceptual experience is that it is transparent. Problem eight in Ten Problems of Consciousness (TPC) is "the problem of transparency," and it is discussed in some detail at the opening to chapter five, where Tye uses it to support his intentionalism (his identification of phenomenal character with phenomenal content). (He returns to the topic in much greater detail in sections 3.1 and 3.2 of Consciousnes, Color, and Content.)

In thinking about these topics, here are some questions you should try to answer:

1. What does it mean to say that experience is transparent, according to Tye?

2. How does the transparency of experience support Tye's intentionalism?

3. Is experience really transparent? Do phenomena such as your ability to blur your vision by squinting put transparency into question?

Tye's *Ten Problems of Consciousness*

Our first text for the course is Michael Tye's Ten Problems of Consciousness. Tye's views on perceptual phenomenology (AKA the phenomenal character of perceptual experience) have been extremely influential in recent discussions, so this book--which constitutes their first systematic presentation--is a great starting point for us. Later today, I'll make a couple of posts with some questions about material in the early chapters of Tye's book; making comments on these posts will be a good way to get the discussion going in advance of our first class meeting.

For the time being, it might be useful to have just a bit of guidance about what to focus on in reading the text.

To begin with, we will not be deeply concerned with physicalism, or with whether Tye succeeds in developing a genuinely physicalist theory of phenomenal consciousness. Tye's version of physicalism is introduced in chapter two and it is critical to generating what he calls the "paradox of phenomenal consciousness." It is important for us to understand this stuff, but mainly so that we have a grip on what motivates Tye's representationalist approach to the phenomenal character of experience. We won't have time to attend to many of the details.

Second, of the ten problems, we'll focus most closely on problems two, seven, and eight: the problem of perspectival subjectivity (1.3), the problem of the inverted spectrum (1.8), and the problem of transparency (1.9). Keep this in mind as you read. These issues will come up several times throughout the course.

Finally, the heart of the book is chapters four and five, where Tye presents and develops his representationalism (also called "intentionalism") about phenomenal character. You should focus your energies on these chapters, and particularly on those sections dealing with perception. You'll want to be able to answer two questions: (1) what is Tye's view? and (2) what evidence or reasons does he have for it? (Note: you'll encounter transparency again in the beginning of chapter five. For perspectival subjectivity and spectrum inversion, however, you'll have to move on to chapters six and seven.)

That's all for now. Happy reading.