Decided I should worry whether there is a causal condition on seeing. In particular, does S seeing o entail that o was a cause of S's experience? #philsenses #perception - ThreadSky

giuliamartina.bsky.social • 10 days ago

Decided I should worry whether there is a causal condition on seeing. In particular, does S seeing o entail that o was a cause of S's experience?

#philsenses #perception

Comments

conjugateprior.org•10 days ago

ooh are we going to do reliabilism again? I'd like a second pass at that now the causal literature has improved.

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

What debates do you have in mind? I came to this question by reading some old-ish papers criticising the causal theory of perception.

conjugateprior.org•10 days ago

Ah don't mind me. I had nothing specific in mind. I'm just a random data guy slowly revisiting his philosophy background through a contemporary causal inference frame.

conjugateprior.org•10 days ago

Mute as necessary, it was a random burst of enthusiasm.

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

No worries! I don't know much about causation stuff myself!

sthippo.bsky.social•10 days ago

Not quite. Seeing o starts with sensing light. There is no o until your visual system processes that sense data and decides it’s an o

sthippo.bsky.social•10 days ago

The o-in-itself causes the sense data and the sense data causes the o

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

Though on the view you describe here, I suspect the relation between sense-data and object won't be causal...

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

Ah, yes, I was assuming there are mind-independent material objects that we see! Not assuming we need to see them as objects or categorise them as such though.

chazfirestone.bsky.social•10 days ago

this is one reason i find the perception of absence so interesting! suppose you can genuinely perceive absences, as some empirical data suggest; should we then say that absences have causal powers? the latter may be suspect depending on one's view of what absences are (or are not)

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

Ah that one is tricky! I probably would redescribe an experience of absence so that an absence isn't an object, but haven't thought about it enough.

johnrgregg3.bsky.social•9 days ago

So much of our experience is (re)constructed based on internal schemas and expectations. Anomalies poke out. Absences can be such violations of our expectations.

severson.bsky.social•10 days ago

Would it matter if instead of saying o was a cause of S's experience, one rather said that the cause of S's visual experience of o was o's coming into their view? Would that just be a matter of formulation?

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

I guess it depends on what o coming into their view is. If it is their seeing o, then it doesn't seem to work.

severson.bsky.social•10 days ago

I was taking to be something like coming to be—or perhaps just being—located so that its presence there (partially) determines the subject's visual experience.

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

That seems plausible. One might think that there are causal enabling conditions like that (certain distance, illumination, no occlusion...) on seeing o. But maybe they aren't a matter of o causing the experience.

severson.bsky.social•10 days ago

Some care is needed in seeing that up not to run together the personal perceptual level in which distal objects feature with the sub-personal responses to proximal stimuli, but the object will need to be situated so that its presence will (partially) determine those stimuli.

severson.bsky.social•10 days ago

What motivates the question is that one might think that the most compelling causal thought would be this:
It's a condition on S's perceiving that p that S perceives that p because p.

And the explanation there is a causal explanation.

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

If what we focus on is perceiving that p rather than objectual perceiving, we need a different causal condition. Was that your concern?

severson.bsky.social•10 days ago

But that leaves it as yet to be determined what account to offer of the underlying causal relations; e.g. will they hold between states and objects, say, or between events or some other kinds of relata.

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

For context, I came to the question from people worrying that a causal condition presupposes a certain conception of experience as a distinct effect of the object (rather than a relation which involves the object).

markelikalderon.bsky.social•10 days ago

Why can't the object cause the perceiver to stand in relation to it? I say some things about this in The Multiply Qualitative, a response to Shoemaker

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

Yes that would be a solution. I was reading Snowdon and I guess the target was a causal theory on which the effect is not a relation (which you would deny)

severson.bsky.social•10 days ago

So there it does seem to matter what account can be offered of causation; they might need to say more to help with the idea of an object itself producing an effect (as opposed, say, to an event involving the object causing an effect).

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

But I think even if it was an event involving the object (say o coming into view) which causes the experience, some would worry that the experience is conceived as something independent of the object - and that on some views is ruled out.

giuliamartina.bsky.social•10 days ago

Yes, was just reading this and will see if it helps me understand https://academic.oup.com/book/2236/chapter/142312201

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