UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO
DRETSKE AND THE EXTERNAL THEORY OF INTENCIONAL CONTENT
(Perception, Knowledge and Belief, selected essays, Cambridge, u.p.2000;
Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Cambridge, u p. 1981)
JOANA PONTES
Abstract
Taking the Dretske’s achievement as absorbed in understanding the problematic character of ‘informational theories’, my intention in this article is to illustrate and clarify: (i) the difference between the nature of ‘sensation’ (non-epistemic) and ‘perception’ (epistemic); (ii) the “non-conceptual” content of perception: ‘simple seeing’ (iii) the unsatisfactory solution of the Causal theory.
1. What means percept a thing? Dretske’s view: Epistemic and non-epistemic seeing
Perception – awareness or apprehension – is a central issue in epistemology, theory of Knowledge, and is the one that allows us receiving, collecting, action of taking possession and apprehension with the mind or senses. At root, all our empirical knowledge is grounded in how we see, hear, touch, smell and taste the world. We can’t experience the world (knowing it) without any kind of perception. But to perceive a thing (table or book) means to know and recognize what kind of thing is it or can we just see the thing without conscience (in sense of awareness) that this thing is something (non-epistemic seeing)?
The relation between sensibility (the capacity to have experiences) and understanding (the capacity to think and thus deploy concepts) is a central theme of philosophical thinking about perception. Some philosophers have thought that perceiving an object always brings the understanding into play because it necessarily involves the formation of beliefs about the object perceived. Fred Dretske in ‘Simple seeing’ («Perception, Knowledge and Belief») presents an idea of a seeing that does not involve concepts at all. Dretske defends the idea that seeing an object, such as a person, car, or pen, is, as he then puts it, non-epistemic, in the sense that one can see such an object yet have no beliefs (intentional states) about it. We are talking about a seeing that does not involve understanding or conceptual links, is just seeing. Although all seeing-that involves beliefs, seeing X, which is an A, does not imply seeing that X is an A, we can just not see that X is anything else.
For Dretske awareness or consciousness of X (perception) does not imply awareness that X is anything. He argues that for an experience to be conscious is not for it to be either an experience of which one is conscious or an experience that one is conscious of having. What makes your visual experience of a car conscious is that when brought about in the right of way it makes you aware of a car. The key distinction, between thing-awareness and fact-awareness, is used to dissolve the so-called hard problem of consciousness. Dretske holds externalist views about the mind, and thus he tries in various writings to show that by means of mere introspection one actually learns about his own mind less than might be expected. Considering the high complication of this second part, this article will focus in a central, simple problem: clarify the distinction between ‘epistemic seeing’ and ‘non-epistemic seeing’.
2. ‘Seeing That, Seeing As and Simple Seeing (non-epistemic): Seeing an object means knowing it?
«What are we doing when we see something?
Or, if this is not something we do, what conditions must obtain for us
to see a robin, a sunset, or a star? In particular, can one see a robin without perceiving it?
This question may sound a bit odd, but only because one is
accustomed to conflating seeing with visual perception»”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>
Fred Dretske
In our world, we are surrounded by lots of things (objects, persons, etc.) witch we know trough our five senses. We see colors, hear sounds and feel textures. Some aspects of the world, it seems are perceived through a particular sense, others, like shape, are perceived through more than one sense. But what means to see? Is to see always to judge or believe? Is to see to conceptualise? Is visual perception of things, people or processes always indirect? Can we describe a way of seeing that does not involve the formation of beliefs about the object perceived?
In fact there’s more than one way to see or to perceive a thing. Like many others, Dretske believes that to see is not, in the simplest cases, to believe or judge. He maintains that perception is different from conception and is not required to confuse them: one thing is to perceive an object; another is to understand the object perceived. When you look out of your window, you see that it is raining and you really see the rain follow, witch means that your perception represents the world as being like that. To perceive the world in this way, therefore, it is required that you possess ‘concepts’, that is, ways of representing and thinking about the world. In this case, you require the concept rain. Hence, seeing that your car is yellow and that the pencil is black involves the possession of the concepts car, yellow, pencil and black. Such perception is termed ‘perceiving that, or, in another word, ‘seeing that’.
According to Dretske this kind of seeing is an ‘epistemic seeing’, because it involves beliefs (intentional mental states) about the things you see. For example, when you perceive that it is raining, you must believe that it is raining. I can also, though, perceive the world to be a certain way and yet be mistaken. This type of situation we can call, ‘perceiving as’ or in the usual case, ‘seeing as’. A stick partly submerged in water may not be bent; nonetheless, you see it as curved. Your perception represents the stick as being a certain way, although it turns out that you are wrong.
Consequently, much of your perception is representational, as a form of intentionality or mental representation witch is sometimes explained as the ‘aboutness’ of mental states. An intentional mental state is normally understood, therefore, as one which is about, or represents, something in the world, thus: you take the world to be a certain way, sometimes correctly, when you see that the world is thus and so, and sometimes incorrectly, when the world is not how you perceive it to be.
Although the major of your perception seems to be representational, in fact it also seems in your seeing that there is a form of perception witch does not require the possession of concepts. It is plausible to claim that cognitively unsophisticated creatures, those that are not seen as engaging in conceptually structured thought, can perceive the world, and that at times we can perceptually engage with the world in a non-conceptual way. You can tell that the wasp senses or perceives your presence because of its irascible behaviour. When you are walking along the Oxford Street daydreaming, you see bus stops, waste bins, and your fellow pedestrians. You must see them because you do not bump into them, but you do not see that the bus stop is red or that a certain pedestrian is wearing Replay jeans. You can, of course come to see the street in this way if you focus on the scene in front of you, but the claim here is that there is a coherent form of perception that does not involve such conceptual structuring. Dretske call this baseline perceptual engagement with the word ‘simple seeing’<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–> or basic seeing.
3. The edge between perception and conception
This sort of seeing (simples seeing) does not involves the acquisition of perceptual information about the world, information that enables us to discriminate visually objects and to engage successfully with them, but also information that does not amount to one having a conceptually structured representation of the world. «Simple seeing is seeing these sorts of things. What is not at issue is our seeing that there are rocks in the road, how many people are in the room, where the cat is, whether the clock has stopped, who is at the door, or what is happening”.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–> This means that this sort of seeing concerns our seeing of objects and things, not facts about these things. Thus, you can simply see the bus stop, witch is not the same as see that the bus stop is blue, or (mistakenly) see the bus stop as made of sapphire, because no perceptual beliefs are required in virtue of simply seeing the world. Then, what sort of attitude is involved in ‘simple seeing’? The answer set out here is that see X is typically to enjoy a form of primitive certainty. See X is similar to be above to X. S can step on X with or without knowledge or beliefs on X. In the same way, S can see X with or without knowledge or beliefs on X. This means that S can have beliefs about X but for that S needs to recognize (know) what sees. Consequently, see X is not incompatible with beliefs or knowledge about X. Nonetheless, where did such beliefs came from? Can we have false beliefs?
First, we can only have beliefs (or not) about what we see, and second there are beliefs witch are not determined by the descriptions that one can give or which they are. In fact, you can make your own beliefs, you can think that this is a table or that is a chair (even if you are wrong). You have absolutely authority about what you believe you see, and you are allowed to management what you see, because you see (something that for you is true) even if your beliefs are wrong about what you see.
This problematic between your beliefs and the true of your seeing is clear when Dretske makes a photocopy almost indistinguishable of a letter and carefully places it on the original one; consequently, only the copy of the letter is visible (instead of the original). It is that it is mistaken (a shade was single) happens that the original one is stained in the same way that thought that the superior leaf was it. Obvious, it had several false beliefs. What makes false to those beliefs is the fact that they are beliefs about the copy, not about the original (as you think). Their beliefs are about the copy because it sees the superior leaf and their beliefs are about which it sees. A possible solution for this problem is the Causal theory of the perception witch tries to make an edge between perception and conception. The partisan of the causal theory would say that the perceptual object of S is the copy, because the light is being reflected by the copy, not by the original one; since the copy is causal responsible for the experience of S, the copy is the object that S sees. However, when removing the copy, the content of the experience is identical, is irrelevant, changes what S sees, because changes the causal origin of the experience. According to Dretske, this explanation works only partially, because it differentiates between perception and conception. It distinguishes between the etiological of our experience and the effect of our experience. In this measurement, it manages to capture the essence of the simple one to see and it would explain because the belief of representation, that is to say, because S is in a relation determined with the copy and not with the original one.
|
SIMPLES SEEING |
KNOWLEDGE |
|
Meeting with an object Sensation Phenomenal Experience |
Epistemic states Belief Knowledge |
4. The Causal theory
At moment, there are two problems for the causal theory: (i) it is not clear to know an element involved in the causal sequence, is the object of the experience. The case of the timbre; (ii) what we mean when we spoke of which To cause B. What To is causal responsible for B or that B is one of the effects of A? In the visual perception quantum, processes are involved that imply indetermination on the events. If causal indetermination in the vision exists, can we appeal to her? In front of this problem, Dretske proposes a theorical informational explanation. To say that somebody has seen X is to say that information on X in a particular form has been given (different from when we listened, we smell, we proved, or we touched). This information is given by means of processes and causal mechanisms. For Dretske the mechanism of the seeing works in a particular way: when we see X, X initiates a chain of events that culminates with a type of differentiated experience, with a visual experience. The visual system is in charge of the information delivery only. Here its work finishes. The cognitive-conceptual resources of the collector are the ones in charge to interpret the received message.
The visual system is like the postal service: one is in charge to give the information, once it has been received; if one does not take the letters or when it takes them cannot read them the problem is not in the visual system but in another side. There are differences with the causal theory: It does not deny that there is an involved causal process but denies that this is the essence of seeing. Thus, to see X is to obtain data on X (codified in certain form) and can be given by non-causal processes when there are random relations. Even though, we see, the reason is that the appearance of these inherently random events incarnates information on those objects. In order to distinguish the causal theory of the perception from the informational theory of the perception, we must imagine somebody, speaking about objects, on a distant side, of the enormous wall, speaking about it’s colour, form and movement, without any transmission of light between the objects and the subject. The point of this exercise is to illustrate that the information delivery was the essential to see the things and not it causal connection.
While information on X is happening, and while this information is being given in characteristic a visual form, then X is being seen is or not a causal process responsible for the delivery of the information. Simple seeing or non-epistemic seeing can be understood like visual differentiation. If X is differentiated from the bottom and its environs of an excellent way, the experience incorporates information on the size, forms, position, and movement of X. Yes the light is being reflected of X in such a way that X visually is not differentiated from the bottom, then, even if the light from X is being received, though the subject is watching and focusing to X, it is not being received no information on the size, the form, location or movement of X. Under such circumstances, X cannot be seeing.
Conclusion
Dretske says there’s no essential connection between seeing and knowing. Putting the issue of non-epistemic seeing this broadly lets us mention the topic of this paper without prejudice. Dretske argues that this way of seeing may be isolated from other ways of seeing in that it is devoid of any positive belief content. The fundamental way of seeing witch has this characteristic is labelled non epistemic. Conversely, ways of seeing which are not devoid of positive belief content are said to be epistemic. Dretske’s reason for characterising non-epistemic seeing in terms of belief rather than knowledge is straightforward. He holds that knowing that p entails levering that p; hence if, for any p, seeing something does not entail believing that p, then seeing that thing does not entail believing that p, then seeing that thing does not entail knowing that p. In this way, the conclusion is obvious: the causal theory is not sufficient. In fact, what you do when you are seeing is to obtain data on the objects. What it makes see is the intrinsic character of those events that happen on you, when you carry the information. What causes that X (instead of E) is what you see the information that carries these internal events on X (instead of E).
References
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