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Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception

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Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception ision and Mind Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception edited by Alva Noë and Evan Thompson Vision and Mind This Page Intentionally Left Blank Vision and Mind Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception edited by Alva Noë and Evan Thompson A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vision and mind : selected readings in the philosophy of perception / edited by Alva Noë and Evan Thompson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-14078-0 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-262-64047-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Perception (Philosophy) I. Noë, Alva. II. Thompson, Evan. B828.45 .V565 2002 121¢.34—dc21 2002023533 Contents Preface vii Sources ix 1 Introduction 1 Alva Noë and Evan Thompson 2 Selections from Phenomenology of Perception 15 Maurice Merleau-Ponty 3 Some Remarks about the Senses 35 H. P. Grice 4 The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature 55 G. E. M. Anscombe 5 A Theory of Direct Visual Perception 77 James J. Gibson 6 Perception and Its Objects 91 P. F. Strawson 7 Perceptions as Hypotheses 111 Richard L. Gregory 8 Veridical Hallucination and Prosthetic Vision 135 David Lewis 9 Perception, Vision and Causation 151 Paul Snowdon 10 How Direct Is Visual Perception?: Some Reflections on Gibson’s “Ecological Approach” 167 Jerry A. Fodor and Zenon W. Pylshyn vi Contents 11 Selections from Vision 229 David Marr 12 Sensation and the Content of Experience: A Distinction 267 Christopher Peacocke 13 Linking Propositions 289 Davida Y. Teller 14 Molyneux’s Question 319 Gareth Evans 15 Ways of Coloring: Comparative Color Vision as a Case Study for Cognitive Science 351 Evan Thompson, Adrian Palacios, and Francisco J. Varela 16 Conscious Experience 419 Fred Dretske 17 The Content of Perceptual Experience 443 John McDowell 18 On the Function of Visual Representation 459 Dana H. Ballard 19 Seeing Is Believing—Or Is It? 481 Daniel C. Dennett 20 Sensory Substitution and Qualia 497 Paul Bach-y-Rita 21 The Visual Brain in Action 515 A. David Milner and Melvyn A. Goodale 22 What Is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness? 531 David J. Chalmers 23 On the Brain-Basis of Visual Consciousness: A Sensorimotor Account 567 Alva Noë and J. Kevin O’Regan Index 599 Preface The writings in this volume investigate the nature of visual perception. Our goal has been to produce a collection that can serve as a starting point for the philo- sophy of perception. These writings provide, we believe, a clear statement of the central issues confronting the philosophical study of perception today. It is our hope that this volume will make a contribution to their ongoing study. All the works collected here, except for one, have been previously published. Many are classics; most have been important for philosophical discussion of per- ception; all serve, we hope, to indicate clearly an important family of problems. In order to make the book as useful as possible, we have resisted (in all but a few instances) reprinting materials that are easily available elsewhere or that are excerpted from larger works. Vision and Mind has been long in the making. Through several incarnations, it has grown leaner and more focused. We are grateful to many people for advice, criticism, and encouragement. We would like to express our thanks to Ned Block, Justin Broakes, Alex Byrne, Dave Chalmers, Dan Dennett, Sean Kelly, Erik Myin, Luiz Pessoa, Susanna Siegel, and Francisco Varela. We are grateful to the authors and to their original publishers for granting us permission to include their works here. We offer special thanks to Carolyn Gray Anderson and to her predecessor at The MIT Press, Amy Yeager, for their strong support of this project. We also wish to thank Diane Zorn for her help in preparing the manuscript. Finally, A. N. grate- fully acknowledges the support of faculty research funds from the Humanities Divi- sion of the University of California, Santa Cruz. This Page Intentionally Left Blank Sources Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Selections from Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1945] 1962. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. “The ‘sensation’ as a unit of experience.” (pp. 3–12) “Experience and objective thought: The problem of the body.” (pp. 67–72) “The theory of the body is already a theory of perception.” (pp. 203–206) H. P. Grice. “Some remarks about the senses.” In R. J. Butler, ed., Analytic Philosophy, 15–153. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. G. E. M. Anscombe. “The intentionality of sensation: A grammatical feature.” In Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind: Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol. III, 3–20. Oxford: Blackwell, 1965. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. James J. Gibson. “A theory of direct visual perception.” In J. R. Royce and W. W. Rozeboom, eds., The Psychology of Knowing, 215–240. New York: Gordon & Breach, 1972. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. P. F. Strawson. “Perception and its objects.” In G. F. Macdonald, ed., Perception and Iden- tity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer with His Replies, 41–60. London: Macmillan, 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Richard L. Gregory. “Perceptions as hypotheses.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 290 (1980): 181–197. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Royal Society. David Lewis. “Veridical hallucination and prosthetic perception.” In Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (1980): 239–249. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Australasion Journal of Philosophy. D. Lewis, “Postscript.” In Philosophical Papers Volume 2, 287–290. Reprinted by permission of the author. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Paul Snowdon. “Perception, vision and causation.” Aristotelian Society Proceedings New Series 81 (1980–1981): 175–192. Reprinted by courtesy of the Editor of the Aristotelian Society: © [1981] and by permission of the author. Jerry A. Fodor and Zenon W. Pylyshyn. “How direct is visual perception?: Some reflections on Gibson’s ‘Ecological Approach.’” Cognition 9 (1981): 139–196. Reprinted with permis- sion from Elsevier Science. x Sources David Marr. “Part I: Introduction and Philosophical Preliminaries.” Selections from Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1982. Used with permission. “General introduction.” (pp. 3–7) “The philosophy and the approach.” (pp. 8–38) Christopher Peacocke. “Sensation and the content of experience: A distinction.” In Christopher Peacocke, Sense and Content, 4–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Davida Y. Teller. “Linking propositions.” Vision Research 24, no. 10 (1984): 1233–1246. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier Science. Gareth Evans. “Molyneux’s question.” In Gareth Evans, Collected Papers, ed. John McDowell, 364–399. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. © Antonia Phillips 1985. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Evan Thompson, Adrian Palacios, and Francisco J. Varela. “Ways of coloring: Comparative color vision as a case study for cognitive science.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1992): 1–26. Reprinted with the permission of the authors and Cambridge University Press. Fred Dretske. “Conscious experience.” Mind 102, no. 406 (1993): 263–283. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. John McDowell. “The content of perceptual experience.” The Philosophical Quarterly 44, no. 175 (1994): 190–205. Reprinted by permission of the editors of The Philosophical Quarterly. Dana H. Ballard. “On the function of visual representation.” In Kathleen Akins, ed., Perception, 111–131. Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Daniel C. Dennett. “Seeing is believing—or is it?” In Kathleen Akins, ed., Perception, 158–172. Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc., and by permission of the author. Paul Bach-y-Rita. “Substitution sensorielle et qualia” [Sensory substitution and qualia]. In J. Proust, ed., Perception et Intermodalité, 81–100. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author. A. David Milner and Melvyn A. Goodale. “The visual brain in action.” Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness. Available at ·http://psyche.cs.monash.edu/au/v4/psyche-4-12-milner.htmlÒ. 1998. Reprinted by permission of the authors. David J. Chalmers. “What is a neural correlate of consciousness?” In T. Metzinger, ed., Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions, 17–39. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000. Reprinted by permission of the authors and MIT. 1 Introduction Alva Noë and Evan Thompson The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems—What is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world?—are problems at the heart of metaphysics. It is often justifiably said that the theory of perception (and especially vision) is the area of psychology and neuroscience that has made the greatest progress in recent years. Despite this progress, or perhaps because of it, philosophical problems about per- ception retain a great urgency, both for philosophy and for science. Beyond these general remarks, however, it is difficult to state precisely what the philosophy of perception comprises, and hence which topics, issues, and viewpoints should be included in a book such as this one.
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