Departament de Filosofia Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Dissertation: Perceptual Demonstratives and Attention: Conceptual and Epistemological Aspects of Perceptual Consciousness Olga Fernández Prat July 2002 Departament de Filosofia Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Dissertation: Perceptual Demonstratives and Attention: Conceptual and Epistemological Aspects of Perceptual Consciousness Candidate: Olga Fernández Prat Supervisor: Daniel Quesada Casajuana PhD Graduate Programme: Ciència Cognitiva i Llenguatge Anything which we see to be continually changing, as, for example, fire, we must not call “this” or “that”, but rather say that it is “of such a nature”; nor let us speak of water as “this”, but always as “such”; nor must we imply that there is any stability in any of those things which we indicate by the use of the words “this” and “that”, supposing ourselves to signify something thereby; for they are too volatile to be detained in any such expressions as “this”, or “that”, or “relative to this”, or any other mode of speaking which represents them as permanent. We ought not to apply “this” to any of them, but rather the word “such”. Plato, Timaeus, 49 d- 50 . Three things are to be considered and differentiated... when seeing any object. First, the object we see; for example, a stone, a flame or any other body perceptible by the sense of vision, an object which can exist even before of beeing seen. Second, the seeing, which did not existed before the sense perceived the object. Third, the attention of the mind, which makes sight rest on the object contemplating it while the seeing lasts. St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XI, 2,2. Simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Tho’ a particular colour, taste, and smell are qualities all united together in this apple, ‘tis easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, part I, Section I. My experience is what I agree to attend to. William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter IX. Acknowledgments In developing my ideas on the topics of this dissertation, I am grateful to many people. For the most part I will restrict myself to those whose personal help has been very important, or even decisive, at different moments in my work. Bill Brewer was my supervisor at Oxford during the months of my stay there. He assisted my first ventures in the area between philosophy and psychology and listened to some of the ideas I had, or thought I had, on the Molyneux question. His sharp criticism, accompanied by occasional appreciation, and his unfailingly strong encouragement were of immense importance to me and a vital part of what made my stay in Oxford unforgettable. I am afraid that my work has moved in directions about which he is, to put it mildly, strongly sceptical. Perhaps is not clear from reading this work, but I have always been concerned about what I imagined he would say about my efforts, and the recognition —at least partial— of the strength of his point of view has contributed to shaping various of my ideas. I regret that I have not been able to engage his ideas on a (conceptual) demonstrative theory of perceptual content, and I hope to be able to do so on a future opportunity. I have always received the kind of encouragement from Naomi Eilan that makes one feel that it is worth going on. She read and listened to early versions of my project and also read an early draft of at least one chapter of my work. Her remarks and encouragement were very valuable. My interest in the field of the relations between philosophy and psychology was greatly increased when I was fortunate enough to take part in the seminar sessions and other more informal meetings of the Project for Consciousness and Self-Consciousness held regularly at Warwick throughout 1997, in which, besides Bill Brewer and Naomi Eilan (the project leader) Campbell, Martin, Roessler and, sometimes, Peacocke, among others also took part. Needless to say, I learned a great deal from the discussions at those meetings. I could not fail to mention, even if very briefly, the helpful comments of members of the audience at the VIIIth Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology held at Warwick, and the “Analytical Philosophy at the Turn of the Millenium” congress held in Santiago de Compostela, where initial versions of the ideas in the first chapters of this dissertation were presented (I remember Jérôme Dokic's sceptical stance at the first of those congresses as particularly helpful). As will be seen, Manuel García-Carpintero's ideas are pervasive in this dissertation. The impression I have when I read him is one of philosophy growing, and I really would like this dissertation to show how much I have learnt from his writings. I thank Carolyn Black for her careful grammatical revision. On the personal side, I am very grateful to my parents, without whose help I would not have reached this point, and to my sisters, who were able to bear tensions and even some off- handedness. They have greatly contributed very much to my tranquility and I thank them all. Finally, my very special gratitude is directed at Daniel Quesada, who shares both the sphere of ideas, and that of feelings. He has wisely combined his role as supervisor with his role as life companion. It was he who illuminated my initial grapplings with philosophical issues, and from whom I have learned so many things through so many conversations. His ideas, his support, and his confidence have been decisive. Contents Chapter 1: Introduction. 1.1. Sources and aims of the dissertation: Demonstratives, perception and consciousness. 1.2. An overview. Chapter 2: The Study of Perceptual Demonstratives. 2.1. Perceptual demonstratives in recent philosophical discussion. 2.2. Perceptual demonstratives and linguistic demonstratives. 2.3. The aim of the inqury. Chapter 3: Perceptual Demonstrative Judgements and Attention to Objects. 3.1. A short summary of the semantics of demonstrative expressions. 3.2. From a semantic theory towards a theory of perceptual demonstrative thoughts. 3.3. Searle’s theory of perceptual intentionality. 3.4. McDowell’s criticism of Searle’s account. 3.5. Preliminary justification of the attentional proposal. Chapter 4: Approaches to Perceptual Demonstrative Modes of Presentation. 4.1. A “purely perceptual” approach to perceptual demonstrative senses. 4.2. The “substantial” view of perceptual demonstratives. 4.3. A “subpersonal” view of perceptual demonstrative modes of presentation. Chapter 5: Attention from a Psychological Point of View. 5.1. Approaching the notion of attention. 5.2. What are cognitive empirical theories of attention about? 5.3. Treisman’s feature integration theory. 5.4. Features and qualia. Chapter 6: “Imagistic Content” and Phenomenal Aspects. 6.1. Imagistic content: a desideratum. 6.2. Imagistic content and isomorphism. 6.3. Imagistic content and phenomenal properties. 6.4. Attention, phenomenal aspects and demonstrative intentional content. 6.5. An attempt at “separating” demonstrative contents and imagistic or phenomenal contents. Chapter 7: Attention, Consciousness and Perceptual Demonstrative Thought. 7.1. Bringing phenomenal properties closer to propositional content. 7.2. Qualia as non-fully intrinsic properties. 7.3. Qualia and demonstrative modes of presentation: a proposal. 7.4. The subpersonal and the tacit in attention and perceptual demonstrative modes of presentation. 7.5. The philosopher’s mind: neither deep, nor shallow. Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1. Sources and aims of the dissertation: Demonstratives, perception and consciousness The central topic of this dissertation is the study of a key aspect in the philosophical analysis of perception, to wit, its the “demonstrative” nature. This aspect has been regarded even as a necessary condition for visual perception at least. The description given for it is not at all clear as it stands. The word ‘demonstrative’ applies first to a type of linguistic expression, and hence what it means to say that perception has a demonstrative character should be explained. This can only be done in a very preliminary way without going fully into the detailed discussion of issues. Therefore, all that it seems appropriate to say here is that I will be concerned above all with the fact that in perception particular objects are involved in a way that seems to have an immediacy which makes it appropriate to use demonstrative expressions like ‘this’ or ‘that’ to refer to them. But why this is so, and what is the precise relationship of that particular character of perception to the use of demonstrative expressions is just part of what we must become clear about, and of what I hope this dissertation will shed some light on. The relevance of the central topic of this dissertation can only be seen when one 1 appreciates how it lies at the crossroads of epistemology (it might be claimed that the perceptual demonstrative relation is the most fundamental relation between our cognitive mind and mind-independent objects), the philosophy of mind (it might be claimed that it is a key question both in the understanding of the externalistic character of the mind, and the relationships of the intentional with the linguistic), and the philosophy of cognitive science, since its treatment raises all the main questions on the relationships between common sense psychology, philosophical reflection, and scientific cognitive science. Understandably, I will not be able to deal with all these topics in this dissertation. What follows in this introduction is a brief and rather “dry”, quasi- technical enumeration of those I do tackle, together with a short preliminary explanation of my motivation and my approach to them.