Jérôme Dokic

We investigate the nature of the sense of presence that usually accompanies perceptual experience. We show that the notion of a sense of presence can be interpreted in two ways, corresponding to the sense that we are acquainted with an object, and the sense that the object is real. In this essay, we focus on the sense of reality. Drawing on several case studies such as derealization disorder, Parkinson’s disease and virtual reality, we argue that the sense of reality is two-way independent from the spatial and sensory contents of experience. We suggest that the sense of reality is an affective experience akin to a metacognitive feeling. Finally, we present a potentially important implication of our account for the current debate between Intentionalism and Naïve Realism. Since perception is “opaque” with respect to the reality of what is perceived, Intentionalism cannot refer to the sense of reality as what differentiates perception from sensory-like experiences such as imaginings. In contrast, Naïve Realism has an independent explanation of the specificity of perception.

Aristotle famously claimed that we perceive that we see or hear, and that this metaperception necessarily accompanies all conscious sensory experiences. In this essay I compare Aristotle’s account of metaperception with three main models of self-awareness to be found in the contemporary literature. The first model countenances introspection or inner sense as higher-order perception. The second model rejects introspection altogether, and maintains that judgments that we see or hear can be directly extracted from the first-order experience, using a procedure sometimes called “an ascent routine.” The third model insists that the first-order experience has a twofold intentional structure: it is directed both at the perceived external object and at itself, i.e., reflexively. Although Aristotle’s own account is certainly closer to the third model (as Brentano rightly observed), the latter does not exhaust Aristotle’s insights on metaperception. One function of the common sense in Aristotle’s theory of perception is apparently to monitor the activity of our sensory modalities, and to make us aware that we see or hear independently of the sensory contents of our experience. I shall suggest that the monitoring function of perception is best understood in relation with contemporary cognitive science research on metacognition. Common sense is or involves a metaperceptual practical ability distinct from both object level sensory perception and metarepresentational knowledge about our senses.

In this essay, I examine some aspects of the debate between a perceptual model of communication, according to which testimony is a source of knowledge about the communicated fact, and an inferential model of communication, according to which testimony requires from the hearer an inference from the used signs, the speaker’s mental states, and other features of the context. From a reflection on the nature of the capacity for metarepresentation, and its dependence on the capacities of social perception and simulation, I show that the ascription of even complex mental states to the speaker does not preclude communication from functioning on a mode in which the hearer directly inherits the information transmitted by the speaker. Understanding is grounded on the natural tendency to accept what is intelligibly presented to us as true.

The discovery of mirror neurons has given rise to a number of interpretations of their functions together with speculations on their potential role in the evolution of specifically human capacities. Thus, mirror neurons have been thought to ground many aspects of human social cognition, including the capacity to engage in cooperative collective actions and to understand them. We propose an evaluation of this latter claim. On the one hand, we will argue that mirror neurons do not by themselves provide a sufficient basis for the forms of agentive understanding and shared intentionality involved in cooperative collective actions. On the other hand, we will also argue that mirror neurons can nevertheless play an important role in an account of the production and understanding of joint action, insofar as they provide the basic constituents of implicit agent-neutral representations and are useful elements in a process of online mutual adjustment of participants' actions.

I present a novel argument against the epistemic conception of perception according to which perception either is a form of knowledge or puts the subject in a position to gain knowledge about what is perceived. ECP closes the gap between a perceptual experience that veridically presents a given state of affairs and an experience capable of yielding the knowledge that the state of affairs obtains. Against ECP, I describe a particular case of perceptual experience in which the following triad of claims is true: The experience presents a given state of affairs ; The experience is veridical; The experience cannot yield the knowledge that the state of affairs obtains. This case involves an empirically well-studied phenomenon, namely perceptual hysteresis, which involves the maintenance of a perceptual experience with a relatively stable content over progressively degrading sensory stimulations.

Three commitments guide Dennett’s approach to the study of consciousness. First, an ontological commitment to materialist monism. Second, a methodological commitment to what he calls ‘heterophenomenology.’ Third, a ‘doxological’ commitment that can be expressed as the view that there is no room for a distinction between a subject’s beliefs about how things seem to her and what things actually seem to her, or, to put it otherwise, as the view that there is no room for a reality/appearance distinction for consciousness. We investigate how Dennett’s third doxological commitment relates to his first two commitments and whether its acceptance should be seen as a mere logical consequence of acceptance of the first two. We will argue that this is not the case, that Dennett’s doxological commitment is in need of independent motivation, and that this independent motivation is not forthcoming.