Jérôme Dokic

La conception naïve de l’expérience visuelle dépeint celle-ci comme une relation directe, primitive, entre le sujet voyant et l’objet vu. Elle repose sur une opposition entre la relation visuelle et la représentation mentale de l’objet vu dans l’imagination visuelle ou la vision des images. Le but de cet article est de suggérer que l’opposition naïve entre relation et représentation présente un intérêt philosophique et scientifique parfois sous-estimé. Deux théories philosophiques de la perception sont présentées : le relationnisme reprend l’esprit de la conception naïve en analysant l’expérience visuelle comme une relation non représentationnelle à l’objet vu, alors que l’intentionnalisme rejette la conception naïve comme inadéquate et considère que l’expérience visuelle est représentationnelle de part en part. Après avoir introduit une notion générale de « représentation » acceptable par les deux parties, nous examinons un ensemble de travaux issus des sciences cognitives et susceptibles d’arbitrer le débat entre relationnisme et intentionnalisme. La thèse principale défendue est que le relationnisme est compatible avec les données scientifiques à notre disposition sur les processus cognitifs liés à la vision. Le relationnisme présente également un avantage philosophique puisqu’il permet de comprendre comment les représentations mentales, y compris visuelles, peuvent être fondées sur un rapport cognitif plus direct, c’est-à-dire intrinsèquement relationnel, au monde visible.

Aesthetics, both in its theoretical and empirical forms, has seen a renewed interest in the sublime, an aesthetic category dear to traditional philosophers, but quite neglected by contemporary philosophy. Our aim is to offer a novel perspective on the experience of the sublime. More precisely, our hypothesis is that the latter arises from ‘a radical limit-experience’, which is a metacognitve awareness of the limits of our cognitive capacities as we are confronted with something indefinitely greater or more powerful than us. This hypothesis better explains the negative feelings involved in the experience of the sublime and accounts for its demarcation from other experiences (for example, terrible beauty). Experiences of the sublime have an overall positive valence, though. We will explore different ways in which a subject can try to overcome the negative evaluation involved in radical limit-experiences, and suggest that only one of them is appropriate to experiences of the sublime.

Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (contentment, happiness), and negative affective components (fear and a sense of being smaller, humbler or insignificant). It is striking that the elicitors of awe correspond closely to what philosophical aesthetics, and especially Burke and Kant, have called “the sublime.” As a matter of fact, awe is almost absent from the philosophical agenda, while there are very few studies on the experience of the sublime as such in the psychological literature. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the complex relationship between awe (as understood by psychologists) and the experience of the sublime (as discussed by philosophers). We distinguish seven ways of conceiving this relationship and highlight those that seem more promising to us. Once we have a clearer picture of how awe and the experience of the sublime are related, we can use it to enhance collaboration between these domains. We would be able to use empirical results about awe in a philosophical analysis of the experience of the sublime, which in turn can help us to design novel experimental hypotheses about the contexts in which we experience awe.

Si l’accointance est définie comme une relation mentale entre un sujet et un fragment de réalité, le sens de l’accointance est le sentiment pour le sujet d’être en rapport direct avec un fragment de réalité. Pour de nombreux philosophes, le sens de l’accointance fait partie de l’essence de la perception consciente : voir une montagne, par exemple, implique le sentiment d’être en rapport direct avec elle, de l’avoir « en chair et en os » sous les yeux, plutôt que de la viser à travers une représentation mentale indépendante. La thèse principale défendue dans cet essai est que le sens de l’accointance est indépendant et distinct de l’accointance elle-même. Plusieurs exemples présentés montrent que pour être véritablement accointé avec la réalité, il n’est ni nécessaire ni suffisant d’avoir le sentiment d’accointance. Le sens de l’accointance est mieux conçu comme une expérience métacognitive séparée de l’accointance. L’article examine enfin les conséquences de cette thèse pour la question de savoir si la perception implique ou repose sur une représentation mentale de ce qui est perçu.

On a cognitivist account of self-ascription, I can have direct, non-inferential knowledge about my own beliefs. This account makes traditionally appeal to the notion of introspection, conceived as an internal source of knowledge. At least since Wittgenstein, many philosophers have justly worried that such a notion makes it impossible to make sense of the ascription of a unified notion of belief, which can be shared with others. In this essay, I explore another method of self-ascription, which was also envisaged by Wittgenstein (and later by Gareth Evans), which I call “the method of deployment”. This method is such that I can gain knowledge about my own beliefs by attending not inwards but outwards, on the external world as I found it. Wittgenstein feared that the method of deployment would inevitably lead to solipsism. With reference to recent work in the theory of mental simulation, I try to show that Wittgenstein’s fear is ungrounded. I draw two general conclusions. First, the method of deployment does not concern self-ascription only ; it can also ground the ascription of beliefs to others. Second, what is special about self-ascription is the “ontological substrate” on which it is based. For instance, I am warranted in believing that I believe that it is raining because I am presented with the fact that it is raining, in contrast to a mere possibility. The method of deployment does not lead to solipsism if it is based on a naïve ontological distinction between facts and mere possibilities.

When we remember a past situation, the emotional import of the latter often transpires in a modified form at the phenomenological level of our present memory. When it does, we experience what is sometimes called an “affective memory.” Theorists of memories have disagreed about the status of affective memories. Sceptics claim that the relationship between memory and emotion can only be of two types: either the memory is about a past emotion (the emotion is part of what is remembered), or it causes a present emotion (the emotion is a separable effect of the memory). We argue that there is a third option, which points to an emotional way of representing the past situation. Drawing from Peter Goldie’s account of mental narratives, we show that three levels of mental perspective are involved in memories: the perspective of the represented subject (the character, if there is one), the perspective of the representing subject (the author), and the intermediary perspective of the narrator (who may remain virtual). Affective memories are cases in which the narrator’s emotional perspective has direct implications for the author’s emotional perspective, even if the former typically differs from the latter.

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.

Qualia, conceived as intrinsic properties of experiences, are not always welcomed by materialists, who prefer to see them as intentional properties presented in our experience. I ask whether this form of reductionism applies to the qualia of bodily awareness. According to the standard materialist theory, the intentional object of pain experience, for instance, is a bodily damage. This theory, though, is unable to account for the phenomenal difference between feeling pain 'inside' and perceiving it 'outside' (seeing oneself or another in pain). I sketch another reductionist analysis which is compatible with materialism, and according to which the intentional object of bodily awareness, unlike that of external perception, constitutively depends on the subject's experience

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.

Cet article porte sur une distinction familière entre deux formes de souvenirs: les souvenirs factuels ('Je me souviens que p', où 'p' est une proposition) et les souvenirs épisodiques ('Je me souviens de x', où x est une entité particulière). Les souvenirs épisodiques ont, contrairement aux souvenirs factuels, un rapport immédiat et interne à une expérience particulière que le sujet a eue dans le passé. Les souvenirs épisodique et factuel sont des souvenirs explicites au sens de la psychologie cognitive. J'esquisse une théorie du souvenir épisodique qui rend compte de ce trait essentiel. L'une des conséquences de cette théorie est que lorsque je me souviens de quelque chose au sens épisodique, je me souviens que ce même souvenir remonte directement à l'une des mes expériences passées. Le souvenir épisodique est un souvenir factuel réflexif

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.

It is widely assumed, both in philosophy and in the cognitive sciences, that perception essentially involves a relative or egocentric frame of reference. Levinson has explicitly challenged this assumption, arguing instead in favour of the 'neo-Whorfian' hypothesis that the frame of reference dominant in a given language infiltrates spatial representations in non-linguistic, and in particular perceptual, modalities. Our aim in this paper is to assess Levinson's neo-Whorfian hypothesis at the philosophical level and to explore the further possibility that perception may not just use frames of reference other than the relative one but may also, in some cases at least, be perspective-free

Episodic memory involves the sense that it is “first-hand”, i.e., originates directly from one’s own past experience. An account of this phenomenological dimension is offered in terms of an affective experience or feeling specific to episodic memory. On the basis of recent empirical research in the domain of metamemory, it is claimed that a recollective experience involves two separate mental components: a first-order memory about the past along with a metacognitive, episodic feeling of knowing. The proposed two-tiered account is contrasted with other, reductionist two-tiered accounts as well as with reflexive accounts of episodic memory to be found in the literature