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We interview John about Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception
Well, we see things under an aspect: a presentation of the thing. And that presentation presents itself as caused by just that thing that the perception is of. If these "conditions of satisfaction" (i.e., that the perception is actually caused by that thing) are not met, then we have a case of illusion: we thought we were perceiving that thing, but we really weren't. Simple! Right? Searle lays out his theory for us and amusingly dismisses much of the history of philosophy.
Recommended prerequisites: To understand the theories of knowledge that Searle is arguing against, start with ep. 17 on Hume, then ep. 18 on Kant and ep. 89 on Berkeley. Schopenhauer also comes up in the conversation; we talked about his epistemology in ep. 30 and his take on causality in ep. 114. The stuff about Hegel that Mark tries to bring in was covered in ep. 135. We previously talked about Searle and his theory of mind along with competing theories on ep. 21. Then we spoke with David Chalmers who comes up in the conversation in ep. 68.
End song: "Flesh and Blood" from The MayTricks' Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994). Download the whole album for free.
Searle picture by Solomon Grundy.
I’m only halfway through the podcast, but it’s amazing to me how similar to Peirce and Dewey Searle is sounding here. It seems like part of what is behind Searle’s thinking here isn’t just direct realism ala Reid and company but the whole approach of externalism which sees the internalism of Descartes as introducing a fundamental error into philosophy. This leads to what Searle hilariously calls the bad, bad argument. While I’m sure Searle is not too keen on Heidegger, I think he ends up adopting externalism too albeit oddly within a more or less phenomenological approach.
google Dreyfus and Searle to find out why John isn’t doing phenomenology (heideggerian or otherwise).
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/188_s05/pdf/Primacy_of_Phenomenology.pdf
I’m actually pretty familiar with the Dreyfus/Searle exchanges. It’s fascinating to me how they misread each other. However one needn’t be doing phenomenology to do externalism. It’s just that Heidegger and Sartre are easy examples of externalism.
While Dreyfus until late in the exchange kept misreading Searle as doing phenomenology I think what Searle is doing is more logical analysis using ordinary language. I think the ordinary language bit is why his positions are frustratingly vague at key points like how he distinguishes his position from material functionalism or property dualism. The Dreyfus/Searle exchanges continued over decades. Not all of the papers are still up but enough are that a little googling provides some great reading.
A good primer on externalism is Rowland’s Externalism: Putting the Mind and World Back Together. He doesn’t get into Heidegger since Heidegger’s views are nuanced and complex. But he gets at a lot of the views on the subject in both analytic thought and continental (mainly via Sartre).
My own philosophy of choice that gets into this is Peirce who has both logical analysis and a type of phenomenology. (Which he calls phaneroscopy perhaps to distinguish his thought from Kant and Hegel)
Perhaps Searl’s unique presentation of perception and intentionality can be looked at as addressing the continuity of reality between the sensible and intelligible. Philosophers who provided continuity did not look at “What is,” questions about representation and essence which disconnect the sensible and the intelligible, but instead asked Which one,” as with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: what are the forces which take hold of a given thing, what is the will that possesses it. Similarly, Spinoza asks, what can a body do, what is it capable of (conatus)—not questions of essence but of the temporary result of a continuous process.
Spinoza’s ontology is of substance, mode and attribute. Substance is how Spinoza talks of the whole, while modes are the parts or finite expressions of the whole. An attributes is not a thing, but a way of perceiving. Instead of treating mind and body dualistically as with Descartes, Spinoza argues that individuals can be perceived under the aspect of thought, or under the aspect of body (extension)—two separate accounts, or different attributes, of the same individual, the one thing.
There is only one substance for Spinoza and it is the whole of which bodies are merely a part. So bodies are defined in terms of the “ratio of motion and rest” among their parts. My arm is connected to my torso by a ball and joint determining what my arm is capable of—circular motion—one determination in the multiplicity of capabilities of my body. The degree to which my capability is excercised is magnitude. The dimensions of my body are measured by the number of connections my body has to other multiplicities (a keyboard, computer, etc.) A multiplicity (or a body for Spinoza) is not a discrete, static unity, but a continuous reality of entering into and breaking off combinations with other multiplicities.
I don’t think John would be open to hearing that one of his previously dismissed bad Philosophers already came up with his own speculations.
Searle also tends to discount out of hand the particular property dualism that Spinoza came up with. (See his Rediscovery of the Mind among other places) Yet he embraces a kind of substance functionalism but avoiding what it is about the substances that makes them capable of producing mind-like processes. Effectively he adopts Spinoza’s dualism while denying dualism. It’s quite odd in some ways.
My sense, perhaps wrong, is that he is led this way due to his focus on ordinary language philosophy. That is there are semantic reasons behind why he avoids these ontological questions.
Professor Searle does not “amusingly dismisses much of the history of philosophy” because it is not amusing. In fact, it is quite disconcerting. Professor Searle has written a book and come to a conclusion to answer a philosophical question, but now it seems he has lost respect for the question itself, and in doing so has dismissed a rich and profound Western philosophical tradition. A philosophical conclusion is simply a call to ask the question yet again, and to re-engage the historical discussion . If you lose respect for the question, then you have lost respect for questioning, and that is the very essence of philosophy itself. .
I’ve listened to all three of his Berkely lecture series on Mind, Language and Society (available on youtube) and he just basically just reiterated aspects of all three. I’m a forensic scientist by trade who has to answer questions of identity and he’s helped me understand how to navigate the problem of conditions of satisfaction because that’s the one the defense tries to discredit you with in court.
On the science track, I think that radical embodied cognition wrestles with some of the same questions and problems from a brain science aspect. Check out this podcast for some interesting overlapping discussion.
http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/2016/126-andyclark
Forgive the simplicity of my understanding, but as I hear the discussion take place, I do not see the difference between what has been historically called a “representation” of a thing and what Searle is calling “a presentation under an aspect” of a thing. However, I begin to see that Searle is rejecting any philosophical position that abstracts the “representation” from the act of experiencing a thing as a foundation for understanding what our perception actually is in the mind. What this reminds me of is the debate about whether light is a particle or a wave. We know now that light behaves as both under certain conditions like our relationship to it, and by way of analogy, I think it is helpful for ‘elucidating’ how we can understand perception. Searle rejects the philosophical traditions that build its understanding of perception on the abstracted form in the mind, which would be akin to scientific theories that are based on light being a particle. However, I would say that there are valuable insights from this that are important for our understanding of perception, just as it is for our understanding of light, which would not make sense otherwise. Searle’s position becomes polemical, I imagine, because he sees that so much weight has been given to the abstraction of perception in current philosophical thought. I don’t think he is wrong by tying perception back to the actual thing in the world, directly connecting perception to things, similarly to how light behaves as a wave, directly connected to all light (for lack of a better description). You cannot perceive perception when it behaves as a “wave”, in the act of perceiving something in the world, it just is, and so performs immediately without mediation. However, when you attempt to abstract what is going on at the moment of perception it appears mediated to the mind by a representation. That representation is like how light is seen as a particle, and what Searle is saying is that perception is more like how light behaves as a wave, directly connected to things in the world. And I agree with Clark above in the comments who suggests that the ontological argument of Heidegger is similar in the ‘web of meaning”, and I might suggest that Merleau-Ponty may have been attempting to bring that insight from Heidegger and phenomenology to perception with a “primordial openness” to the field of perception.
But Searle states he is not a phenomenologist, nor does he argue as one. Your other observations are spot on.
I’m really not suggesting that Searle is a phenomenologist. I do think what he is doing with epistemology, specifically with perception, is what Heidegger was attempting with ontology. They are fundamentally different topics and so have very different outcomes and conclusions, and so either one would not say they are like the other, but I do see an underlying thread of a similarity, i.e. rejecting a strict subject/object dichotomy, ontologically speaking with Heidegger and epistimelogically with Searle.
To borrow from Wittgenstein, they are using completely different “language games” to discuss an essentially similar topic. Actually, its more like they have a similar approach in how they discuss different topics, but are using different language forms. Not like the difference between English and French exactly, but more like how sign language is different from braille….
Typically representations have certain characteristics but ignore or devalue others. That’s true even when representations aren’t considered picture-like or sentence-like. While Searle’s not doing phenomenology there are ways his treatment of presentation is Heideggarian-like. (This is what threw Dreyfus) Searle sees meaning against a background of practices. These practices and engagements – how we do things with things – are presentations but not necessarily representations. You can see this divide on a practical level in the divide in cognitive science between the schools more characteristic of representation and those that leverage more Heideggarian like comportments. (Not necessarily phenomenologically inclined, but still inspired by Heidegger’s tool-use analysis)
Searle’s not doing phenomenology in the least but his logical analysis has to deal with the these types of aspects. You can see this in the podcast when he discusses things like “seeing.” He’s looking at the logical analysis of how we use the word which always involves a process that involves what is seen. Again while so far as I know Searle’s never formally engaged the pragmatists he in many ways is retracing their steps. Especially that of C. S. Peirce. (Who as I’ve mentioned did both logical analysis and phenomenology albeit not Husserlian styles phenomenology)
I really appreciated Dylan’s comments on the podcast about “completion” and “expectation”, but I still have some questions about how Searle accounts for the way that perception seems to be at least partially constituted by what the mind expects to perceive in a given context, not just by the sense data that we take in. What I see in my field of vision at any given moment is only partially constituted by the sense data actually coming in from objects; the brain does a lot of “filling in the blanks” (unconsciously) based on memory of previous data. Often perceptual mistakes are caused by the brain incorrectly filling in those blanks–we see what we expect to see rather than what is actually there. This seems to suggest that our perceptions are representations, in a way–images assembled by the brain out of both sense data and cognitive guess work (based on unconscious memory). How do you think Searle would respond?
Great question!
Thanks — I’m also wondering about the theory-laden “nature” of perception, which seems like a related point. As we accumulate experience (and ideology), these mental “deposits” inform our expectations for future experience, and in turn, shape (at least partially) future perceptions. If I have a certain prejudice against X (either based on past experience of ideology), I may perceive X inaccurately because my mind expects to see certain negative characteristics. I agree with Searle that this doesn’t mean X isn’t a real object of perception, nor does it mean we can’t get to know X-in-itself, but it does seem to suggest that every perception of X is of a composite nature–manufactured by the mind from raw sense data and unconscious expectations.
What are the distinguishing moments during the act of perception? — Perception of a particular thing is an abstraction out of field of sensuous input (while I’m typing I feel the keyboard strokes, but pay no attention to what I’m sitting on, and as I see the words appear on my screen I’m not actively seeing the paper at the edge of my desk despite it being in my field of vision)– You have the raw sensuous data that is perceived within a specific bodily context, which of itself can have a large range of variance from body to body, simple things like colorblindness or loss of hearing in an ear to the complete loss of a sense or more, and the many limitations that are beyond our bodily abilities, like being able to see ultraviolet or infrared light or hearing tones of a certain high or low pitch level. There is also the intentionality of perceiving a specific thing abstracted from the field of sensuous data, which seems to be determined in a significant way by the context of action and purpose of the one perceiving, which involves much of what Matthew brought up: What does the mind expect to perceive? How much does that inform the moment of perception? And how much of that expectation has been informed by the experiences (context) of the one perceiving? – Would that show, similar to what Matthew suggests, that all things perceived are a mix of illusion and actuality, since things perceived are, in the very act of perception, interpreted by the mind and instilled with a meaning that may or may not be present in the thing perceived to a greater or lesser extent?
So, who can recommend some work by Karma?
It’s not an author! …The concept common to Indian religions.
Searle was making a joke, right? Or did he actually think you were referring to some guy named Karma?
I thought he was making a joke the first time. The second time I was unsure.
Yes, that’s how I felt.
Come on now… It was funny the first time and it was even funnier when he threw it in a second time. Give the man some credit. And on a side-note: I´m sure he´s read lots of material written by Karma…
Hilarious. Karma ran over my dogma.
Searle is on to something with the “big mistake”. Once you posit a representation between the seer and the seen, you raise the homunculus problem; this is, you have to posit a secondary seer (that is not you) to see the representation in your head. For that reason alone, I put myself in the Naive Realism camp.
But it’s not a problem-free account. I take issue with Searle’s too easy identification of the “intentional object.” In his book, Searle claims that his belief that Obama is president has intentional content – namely, the proposition that Obama is, in fact, president – and an intentional object – namely, Obama. But how do we know that the object isn’t “the Presidency,” which happens to be occupied by Obama. Similarly, how do we analyze my seeing that it is raining? The intentional content (the proposition that it is raining) seems clear enough, but what is the intentional object? The raindrops? The wet pavement? The entire objective visual field? The object has to be out in the world, otherwise we re-commit the big mistake. But what part of the objective world?
Substance is the child of perception. Perception carries with it a passive doxic positing of being, that is a positing of substance, or what is called the real. We see real things. However, the question of perception does not carry with it the determination of the rightness or wrongness of perception’s positing, but concerns itself instead with the fact that being is indeed posited. Consequently, the answer or explanation to the question of perception cannot depend on the being which perception has itself posited. We cannot say the stick looks straight because it is straight.
Perception is unique for two reasons as a modality of consciousness, that is as compared to memory, expectation, imagination and abstraction or what might be called ideation. It is the original or nascent form of consciousness on which the others depend, and it is this original positing of being. This positing has been bequeathed to us by perception which we, of course, must take up immediately and without consideration. Perception carries with it the urgency and force of the real and of truth. And that means we did not reason our way to the idea of substance, but that it was instead handed over to us as the birthright of perception.
But consider that moment in the historical life of consciousness we celebrate most. That moment is the emergence of symbolic thought exemplified in the cave art at Lascaux. This is the emergence of man himself as the superseding of the reality of perception by the new reality of symbolic thought. This is a moment of freedom. It is that moment when man broke free from the bonds of perceptual reality, and became himself.
Perception has duration, and because of that perception is responsible for its own verification. This is because the future always remains the open possibility that perception may be wrong. Verification is a continuous fulfillment of the perceptual object as meant over time. As such, every presentation of a perceived object is the continuous re-presentation of what is presented. More generally, each presented intentional object is the fulfillment of an intentional act which is constantly affirmed by the intentional object. We see a tree and continue to see the tree, and this verifies our seeing of the tree. Perception will recognize error at the moment the perception disrupts the identity of the perceived object. I see my friend across the street, but as I get close I realize it is someone else. Interestingly, I cast this identity back on my past experience of seeing my friend, and I now re-characterize that experience as having not seen my friend, but someone else. Correspondence is not a static demand between a representation and some external thing, but is rather necessitated by temporal relation between the perceived object now, and the object as it was previously perceived and meant.
Perception, however, does not require continuity, either in time or appearance. We see one and the same object at different times and under many varied aspects. These aspects need not and often are not similar in appearance. In fact, they can be widely disparate visual presentations of one and the same object. I see the tree up close and from far away, at dusk , at night or vaguely through the fog, or perhaps I see just the one branch out my window, but always the same tree. Through it all I maintain the identity of this one object, and I will do so right up to the moment I no longer can. This may seem easy with a tree, but think of a twig that suddenly gets up and walks away, a fantastically camouflaged insect.
All of Searle’s talk of dispositions seems like some real metaphysics. Someone mentioned Peirce above, and that seems an appropriate connection to make. I’m recall a statement of Peirce to the effect that he could not be mistaken about some perception (a color, I think) if there wasn’t such a thing in the world to be mistaken about.
Moreover, with that talk of perception and disposition, doesn’t he need some notion of proper function, or a telos for even the fundamental particles (that, arranged brain-wise they tend to behave in one way, that is, for ends appropriate to brains)? I haven’t read enough of his work to know if he has an aversion to this sort of talk, or if he’s aware that his approach seems to strongly imply it.
I think Searle is overstating the novelty of his approach. Amongst many other examples;
“Such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities. [Locke, 1690, 2.8.10]”
Searle has a strange disposition for a philosopher. It’s honestly strange and a little distracting. He seems just totally exasperated and impatient by literally everyone that doesn’t completely agree with him. Like he just expects everyone to see the “obvious,” “apparent” reality that he sees. It’s too bad because he’s really well steeped in the subject and a voice worth listening to on the matter. He may be more enjoyable to read than listen to.
What would Searle make of full blown visual/auditory hallucinations? I’m not talking about bent sticks or optical illusions, but the type a schizophrenic might experience in which there isn’t any external stimulus ‘causing’ the perception. If I close my eyes and imagine a picture of a fruit basket would that image be a presentation?
The idea of replacing the word representation with presentation doesn’t get around the problem that an object is being presented to ‘something’. I realize that granting an ontology to that ‘something’ runs the risk of creating an infinite regress, but don’t think Searle has given a satisfactory account of what ‘subject’ refers to in the expression ‘subjective point of view’.
Lastly, I don’t think there is anything ‘direct’ about our perceptions of mind independent objects at all. Consider the journey information must make to be presented. First, EM waves must reflect off of an object that we want to know about. Then the info on this wave is translated into an electro-chemical signal that travels along our optical nerve. Finally, it reaches our brain, which is in total darkness, and the info from the optic nerve is broadcast to various regions via patterned firings of neurons. I count three places where info could be corrupted or interpreted.