When you have a perceptual experience of a given physical object that object seems to be immediately present to you in a way it never does when you consciously think about or imagine it. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) can provide a satisfying account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience while the content view (the view that to perceive is to (...) represent the world to be a certain way) cannot. I argue that this claim is false. Specifically, I maintain that the only acceptable naïve realist account of the relevant phenomenology is circular and that the content view can provide a similar account. In addition, I maintain that a certain specific variety of the content view provides a non-circular and thus more satisfactory account of this phenomenology. If so, then contrary to what is commonly assumed there are powerful phenomenological grounds for preferring the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)

Both John Campbell and Quassim Cassam have argued that we perceptually experience objects as mind-independent (MI), purportedly solving a problem they refer to as “Berkeley’s Puzzle.” In this paper, I will consider the same topic from a Husserlian perspective. In particular, I will clarify the idea of MI and argue that there is, indeed, a sense in which we can perceptually experience objects as MI, while also making objections to Campbell’s and Cassam’s respective arguments to the same effect. In particular, (...) I will argue that objects can be experienced as MI in the sense of the experience’s not being due to the malfunctioning of a perceptual organ, e.g., when one examines the ways in which the object displays itself, and gains confidence that there is, indeed, nothing the matter with one’s eyes. I will address the issue of MI from the perspective of Husserlian evidentialism, according to which perceptual content is conceived in terms of ways of perceptually exploring the object, thereby gaining evidence pertinent to the object and its properties, e.g., as when one takes a look at the object’s shape from a different angle, or scrutinizes its color in better lighting. (shrink)

I propose that the fundamental challenge Berkeley left realists is to account for experiences’ ability to present items as mind-independent, consistent with the claim that experiences always present themselves among the items of awareness. By exploring two ways of responding to this challenge, and ruling out the second, I hope to show that realists aiming to secure a role for experiences in grounding our grasp of mind-independence need to adopt a specific view of perceptual experience. They must take experiences to (...) have translucent aspects, and accord such aspects an essential role in presenting us with a mind-independent world. (shrink)

We believe that the ordinary physical objects that we perceive continue to exist unperceived; and this is intuitively an aspect of any authentic characterization of how the world appears to us in perception. But how can experience present its objects as continuing to exist beyond that very experience of them? Here I aim to explain this phenomenon. I start with an insight from Evans (1985). Familiar attempts to implement this insight fail, in my opinion. Here I introduce, motivate, defend, and (...) elaborate an alternative approach to its implementation that, I claim, succeeds. Its key is to recognize the role of Evans’s insight in the metaphysics of perceptual experience itself. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the reliability of first-person methods for studying consciousness, and applies first-person experiments to two philosophical problems: the experience of size and of the self. In chapter 1, I discuss the motivations for taking a first-person approach to consciousness, the background assumptions of the dissertation and some methodological preliminaries. In chapter 2, I address the claim that phenomenal judgements are far less reliable than perceptual judgements (Schwitzgebel, 2011). I argue that the main errors and limitations in making phenomenal (...) judgements are due to domain-general factors, which are shared in the formation of perceptual judgements. Phenomenal judgements may still be statistically less reliable than perceptual judgements, though I provide reasons for thinking that Schwitzgebel (2011) overstates the case for statistical unreliability. I also provide criteria for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable phenomenal judgements, hence defending phenomenal judgements against general introspective scepticism. Having identified the main errors in making phenomenal judgements, in chapter 3, I discuss how first-person experiments can be used to control for these errors. I provide examples, and discuss how they overcome attentional and conceptual errors, minimise biases, and exhibit high intersubjective reliability. In chapter 4, I investigate size experience. I use first-person experiments and empirical findings to argue that distant things looking smaller cannot be explained as an awareness of instantiated objective properties (visual angle or retinal image size). I also discuss how an awareness of uninstantiated objective properties cannot adequately account for the phenomenal character of size experience. This provides support for a subjectivist account of variance in size experience. In chapter 5, I investigate the sense of self. I distinguish between a weak sense of self (for-me-ness) and a strong sense of self in which there is a polarity between subject and object. I use first-person experiments from Douglas Harding to demonstrate an explicit strong sense of self, specifically when I point at where others see my face. I also argue that this sense of self is not explained by inference, thoughts, feelings, imagination nor the viewpoint. Rather, it is part of the structure of experience that I seem to be looking from here. Even if there is a sense of self, there may be no self. The question of chapter 6 is whether there can be a direct experience of the self. I argue that to function as a bearer of experience the subject must be single and lack sensory qualities in itself. I use Harding’s first-person experiments to investigate the visual gap where I cannot see my head. I argue that it conforms to the above criteria, and hence is a candidate for being the subject. This finding, in conjunction with the fact that I seem to be looking from the same location, provides prima facie evidence for the reality of the subject. I hold then that contrary to Hume and most philosophers since, that there can be a direct self-experience, if one knows which direction to attend. (shrink)