Tim Crane

Qu’est-ce que le problème de la perception au sens strictement philosophique ? On affirme ici que c’est le conflit entre la nature de l’expérience perceptuelle telle qu’elle nous paraît intuitivement et certaines possibilités qui sont implicites justement dans l’idée d’expérience : les possibilités d’illusion et d’hallucination. L’expérience perceptuelle semble être un rapport à ses objets, une sorte d’«ouverture au monde» qui implique une conscience directe des objets existants et de leurs propriétés. Mais si l’on peut avoir une expérience perceptuelle d’un objet qui n’est pas là – hallucination d’un objet -, il semble bien que l’expérience perceptuelle ne saurait être essentiellement un tel rapport. Et c’est là le problème philosophique fondamental de la perception. Différentes théories philosophiques de la perception des XXe et XXIe siècles peuvent être considérées comme autant de réponses à ce problème

Recent years have seen significant changes in the study of intentionality and mental representation. Twenty years ago, there was a fairly well-established research agenda, set largely by the work of Jerry Fodor. Those working to this agenda tended to assume that the study of intentionality is distinct from the study of consciousness; that the study of intentionality is the study of the propositional attitudes; that the aim of an account of intentionality should be to give a physicalist theory of it; that such a theory must in some way appeal to causal relationships between intentional states and the things in the world that they are about.

Was ist das distinktive philosophische Problem der Perzeption? Hier wird behauptet, dass es der Konflikt zwischen der Natur der perzeptuellen Erfahrung ist, wie sie uns intuitiv erscheint und gewisser Möglichkeiten, die der Idee der Erfahrung implizit innewohnen: der Möglichkeiten von Illusion und Halluzination. Die perzeptuelle Erfahrung kommt uns vor wie eine Einstellung zu den eigenen Objekten, eine Art „Weltoffenheit“, die ein direktes Bewusstsein von den bestehenden Objekten und ihren Eigenschaften einschließt. Doch wenn jemand eine gleichartige Erfahrung haben kann, ohne dass das Objekt da wäre – Halluzination dieses Objektes – dann scheint die perzeptuelle Erfahrung unmöglich essenziell ein solches Verhältnis zu sein. Dies ist das fundamentale philosophische Problem der Perzeption; verschiedene philosophische Perzeptionstheorien des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts können als Antworten darauf verstanden werden

Što je distinktivno filozofski problem opažanja? Ovdje se tvrdi da je to konflikt između prirode opažajnog iskustva kakva nam se intuitivno čini, te stanovitih mogućnosti koje su implicitne upravo u ideji iskustva: mogućnosti iluzije i halucinacije. Opažajno iskustvo čini nam se kao odnos prema svojim objektima, vrsta »otvorenosti prema svijetu« koja uključuje izravnu svijest postojećih objekata i njihovih svojstava. Ali ako netko može imati iskustvo iste vrste a da objekt nije tamo – halucinaciju objekta – onda izgleda da opažajno iskustvo ne može esencijalno biti takav odnos. Ovo je fundamentalni filozofski problem opažanja; različite filozofijske teorije opažanja 20. i 21. stoljeća mogu se sagledati kao odgovori na to.What is the distinctively philosophical problem of perception? Here it is argued that it is the conflictbetween the nature of perceptual experience as it intuitively seems to us, and certain possibilitieswhich are implicit in the very idea of experience: possibilities of illusion and hallucination. Perceptualexperience seems to us to be a relation to its objects, a kind of “openness to the world” whichinvolves direct awareness of existing objects and their properties. But if one can have an experienceof the same kind without the object being there – a hallucination of an object – then it seems thatperceptual experience cannot essentially be such a relation. This is the fundamentally philosophicalproblem of perception; the various philosophical theories of perception in the 20th and 21st centuriescan be seen as responses to it

Analytic philosophy is sometimes said to have particularly close connections to logic and to science, and no particularly interesting or close relation to its own history. It is argued here that although the connections to logic and science have been important in the development of analytic philosophy, these connections do not come close to characterizing the nature of analytic philosophy, either as a body of doctrines or as a philosophical method. We will do better to understand analytic philosophy – and its relationship to continental philosophy – if we see it as a historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns. It is true, however, that analytic philosophy has paid little attention to the history of the subject. This is both its strength – since it allows for a distinctive kind of creativity – and its weakness – since ignoring history can encourage a philosophical variety of “normal science.”

In 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', Donald Davidson argues that it is not possible for us to be massively mistaken in our beliefs. The argument is based on the possibility of an omniscient interpreter who uses the method of radical interpretation to attribute beliefs, since an omniscient interpreter who uses this method will attribute largely true beliefs to those he is inteipreting. In this paper we investigate some of the assumptions behind this argument, and we argue that these assumptions are incompatible with Davidson's view that the object of a belief is its cause. If Davidson wants to keep his interpretationist theory of mind, he should therefore abandon that view.

The idea of an intentional object, or an object of thought, gives rise to a dilemma for theories of intentionality. Either intentional objects are existing objects, in which case it is impossible, contrary to appearances, to think about something which does not exist. Or some intentional objects are non‐existent real objects. But this requires an obscure and implausible metaphysics. I argue that the way out of this dilemma is to deny that being an intentional object is being an entity of any kind. ‘Object’ here does not mean thing or entity. Rather, to say that something is an intentional object is just to say that it is an object of thought (or other intentional state or act) for a subject. It is further argued that theories of intentionality should not dispense with the idea of an intentional object.

It is widely agreed that perceptual experience is a form of intentionality, i.e., that it has representational content. Many philosophers take this to mean that like belief, experience has propositional content, that it can be true or false. I accept that perceptual experience has intentionality; but I dispute the claim that it has propositional content. This claim does not follow from the fact that experience is intentional, nor does it follow from the fact that experiences are accurate or inaccurate. I end by considering the relationship between this question and the question of whether experience has non‐conceptual content.