Deviant Causal Chains and Hallucinations: A Problem for the Anti-causalist (original) (raw)

Disjunctivism and the Causal Conditions of Hallucination

Erkenntnis, 2022

Disjunctivists maintain that perceptual experiences and hallucinatory experiences are distinct kinds of event with different metaphysical natures. Moreover, given their view about the nature of perceptual cases, disjunctivists must deny that the perceptual kind of experience can occur during hallucination. However, it is widely held that disjunctivists must grant the converse claim, to the effect that the hallucinatory kind of experience occurs even during perception. This paper challenges that thought. As we will see, the argument for thinking that the hallucinatory kind of experience is present even in cases of perception depends on prior acceptance of a ‘non-demanding’ conception of hallucination, on which all it takes to produce an hallucinatory experience is to induce in the subject the right kind of neurological condition. On the view developed here, by contrast, there are substantive causal conditions, going beyond the mere occurrence of the right kind of neurological state, ...

Causation in Perception: A Challenge to Naïve Realism

2012

Defending a form of naïve realism about visual experiences is quite popular these days. Those naïve realists who I will be concerned with in this paper make a central claim about the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences. They argue that how it is with the perceiver subjectively when she sees worldly objects is literally determined by those objects. This way of thinking leads them to endorse a form of disjunctivism, according to which the fundamental psychological nature of seeings and hallucinations is distinct. I will oppose their central claim by defending a version of the so-called ‘causal argument’, which dwells on ideas about causation and explanation in perception. The aim of this discussion is to highlight that the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences cannot be explained in naïve realist terms. Instead, it will be argued that one needs to appeal to a mental factor which does not involve worldly objects as constituents, and which is common to seeings and hallucinations.

The Phenomenological Argument for the Disjunctive Theory of Perception

European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 2009

According to the phenomenological argument for disjunctivism, the reasons why we should prefer the disjunctive theory over its rivals is that (1) the disjunctive theory conforms the most to our pretheoretical or natural convictions about perception (what Michael Martin calls naïve realism), and (2) we should commit ourselves to naïve realism because it conforms the most to the phenomenology of the perceptual experience of objects. In this paper I try to explain why is the phenomenal argument exceptionally strong argument for disjunctivism and at the same time against sense-datum and intentional theories. Furthermore I try to show that the disjunctivist’s explanation of hallucination (which is allegedly the weak point of the theory) is as plausible as its rivals’.

Perceptions and Hallucinations: The Matching View as a Plausible Theory of Perception

A strong intuition about perception is that what we perceive when we perceive an object is a mind-independent object. However, this does not explain the possibility of hallucinations and illusions, since in both cases there is no direct relation between a subject and an object. Various solutions have been proposed to this problem of perception. One of them is the matching view, defended by Michelle Montague. I argue that this account of perception provides a plausible solution to this problem of perception. In order to do this, I will draw on the sense-datum theory, intentionalism and disjunctivism.

Hallucinations for disjunctivists

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2010

In this paper, I examine the so-called disjunctive views on hallucinations. I argue that neither of the options open to the disjunctivist is capable of accommodating basic phenomenological facts about hallucinatory experiences and the explanatory demands behind the classical argument from hallucination. A positive characterization of the hallucinatory case is not attractive to a disjunctivist once she is disposed to accept certain commonalities with veridical experiences. Negative disjunctivism glosses the hallucinatory disjunct in terms of indiscriminability. I will argue that this move either renounces to characterize phenomenally the hallucinatory experience or does not take seriously questions about why indiscriminability is possible in the phenomenal realm.

Relationalism in the Face of Hallucinations

Relationalism claims that the phenomenal character of perception is constituted by the obtaining of a non-representational psychological relation to mind-independent objects. Although relationalism provides what seems to be the most straightforward and intuitive account of how experience strikes us introspectively, it is very often believed that the argument from hallucination shows that the view is untenable. The aim of this thesis is to defend relationalism against the argument from hallucination. The argument claims that the phenomenal character of hallucination and perception deserves the same account, and that relationalism cannot be true for hallucinations, therefore relationalism must be rejected. This argument relies on the Indiscriminability Principle (IND), the claim that two experiences that are introspectively indiscriminable from each other have the same phenomenal character. Before assessing the plausibility of this principle, I first consider and dismiss versions of the argument which wouldn’t depend on IND. Although widely accepted, no satisfactory support for IND has been presented yet. In this thesis I argue that defending IND requires that we understand the notion of ‘indiscriminability’ employed in IND in an impersonal sense. I then identify what underwrites IND: the intuition that, in virtue of its superficiality, the nature of a phenomenal character must be accessible through introspection, together with the claim that it is not possible to deny IND without denying the superficiality of phenomenal characters too. I argue that the relationalist can deny IND while preserving the superficiality of phenomenal characters. This can be done by adopting a negative view of hallucination and an account of introspection whereby the phenomenal character doesn’t exist independently of one’s introspective awareness of it and where having introspective access to our experience depends on our perceptual access to the world.

Delusions as Hallucinatory ways of Being-in-the-world: A Case for Disjunctivism, 2019

2019

Hallucinations serve as special cases for philosophers of perception. Roughly, there are two general theories of perception and perceptual experience that philosophers may invoke to 'properly' accommodate hallucinations-these two theories are, respectively, representationalism and disjunctivism. In this paper, I wish to make an argument that gives credence to a certain form of disjunctivism by showing how a plausible and explanatorily powerful account of delusional experience invites us to conceive of delusions as more like articulations of hallucinatory ways of being in the world, i.e. non-ordinary ways of being attuned to environmental affordances, rather than obviously false beliefs that one firmly holds about the objective world in the face of counter-evidence, thanks to certain organic malfunctions that have taken place in the brain. First I will gloss the difference between representationalist and disjunctivist views of perception as they bear on the special case of hallucinations. In turn, I will review top-down and bottom-up approaches to delusion, highlighting the ways in which they come up short in sufficiently explaining delusions, and specifically I will focus on how these shortcomings stem from 1) their taking an approach to cognitive systems that is paradigmatically representationalist, whether concerning higher-order functions of reasoning or lower-order functions of perceptual experience, and 2) the fact that they focus on what ​ causes delusions as opposed to what delusions ​ are​. Then I will review a plausible alternative framework of delusions offered by Shaun Gallagher, highlighting how this alternative account makes up for the shortcomings found in the other approaches by employing a disjunctivist view of perceptual experience that I call affordance disjunctivism.

Disjunctivism, Causality, and the Objects of Perceptual Experience

2014

Permission to Use In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis.

The Causal Argument against Disjunctivism

In this paper, I will ask whether naïve realists have the conceptual resources for meeting the challenge stemming from the causal argument. As I interpret it, naïve realism is committed to disjunctivism. Therefore, I first set out in detail how one has to formulate the causal argument against the background of disjunctivism. This discussion is above all supposed to work out the key assumptions at stake in the causal argument. I will then go on to sketch out several possible rejoinders on behalf of naïve realism. It will be shown that they all fail to provide a satisfying account of how causation and perceptual consciousness fit together. Accordingly, the upshot will be that the causal argument provides good reason to abandon disjunctivism and, instead, to promote a common factor view of perception.

CLASSIFICATION OF DISJUNCTIVISM ABOUT THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF VISUAL EXPERIENCE

The Journal of Philosophical Research

This paper proposes a classificatory framework for disjunctivism about the phenomenology of visual perceptual experience. Disjunctivism of this sort is typically divided into positive and negative disjunctivism. This distinction successfully reflects the disagreement amongst disjunctivists regarding the explanatory status of the introspective indiscriminability of veridical perception and hallucination. However, it is unsatisfactory in two respects. First, it cannot accommodate eliminativism about the phenomenology of hallucination. Second, the class of positive disjunctivism is too coarse-grained to provide an informative overview of the current dialectical landscape. Given this, I propose a classificatory framework which preserves the positive-negative distinction, but which also includes the distinction between eliminativism and non-eliminativism, as well as a distinction between two subclasses of positive disjunctivism. In describing each class in detail, I specify who takes up each position in the existing literature, and demonstrate that this classificatory framework can disambiguate some existing disjunctivist views.