The Contents of Visual Experience

by Susanna Siegel

What do we see? We are visually conscious of colors and shapes, but are we also visually conscious of complex properties such as being John Malkovich? In this book, Susanna Siegel develops a framework for understanding the contents of visual experience, and argues that these contents involve all sorts of complex properties. Siegel starts by analyzing the notion of the contents of experience, and by arguing that theorists of all stripes should accept that experiences have contents. She then introduces a method for discovering the contents of the method of phenomenal contrast. This method relies only minimally on introspection, and allows rigorous support for claims about experience. She then applies the method to make the case that we are conscious of many kinds of properties, of all sorts of causal properties, and of many other complex properties. She goes on to use the method to help analyze difficult questions about our consciousness of objects and their role in the
contents of experience, and to reconceptualize the distinction between perception and sensation. Siegel's results are important for many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. They are also important for the psychology and cognitive neuroscience of vision.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Psychology

232 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2010

Reviews

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many philosophers who defend Gibsonian and embodied cognition theories rely on a combination of appeals to claims from Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty (among other continental phenomenologists) and to empirical studies that are relevant to such claims (e.g. Noe, Hutto, Gallagher, Zahavi, and Thompson). Sometimes one worries about the conceptual looseness and contingency on theoretical traditions of these approaches. However, Siegel is different. She does a stunning job in arguing for Gibsonian views in a rigorous analytic style, with more conceptual distinctions and a more careful and explicitly articulated methodological approach compared to these other philosophers.

More specifically, Siegel's book has two main parts, the first defends the "Content View" and the second argues for the "Rich Content View"; the latter account builds on the former. The Content View claims that visual perceptual experience involves contents that are exhausted by their phenomenological character and manifest their own veridicality conditions. That means the experiences in perception involve more general-level properties that are not determined by the literal objects in the environment but rather come from the perceiver's inner states, and these properties refer to accuracy conditions that can be more or less satisfied by the properties of a particular experience.

Then the question follows: what kinds of properties are involved in the contents of visual perceptual experience, and what methodology can help us determine which properties are involved? Siegel argues for the "Rich Content View" which claims there are more properties than the typically assumed ones of shape, color, size, and illuminance. In this book, Siegel particularly selects class/kind properties, causal properties, and subject-object independence properties as properties that are found in visual perceptual experience. Most philosophers intuitively assume that these three kinds of properties are too cognitively complex to be found at the level of visual experience, and are rather processed downstream from the visual stage at the levels of inference or judgement. Siegel masterfully shows that it makes most sense for these properties to be found at the level of visual experience.

Siegel makes her case with her unique method of "phenomenal contrast". Phenomenal contrast identifies pairs of situations that are located in the same environment and involve the same objects, but the two differ significantly on the target properties. The target properties, in this book, are the class, causal, and independence properties whose standing as inherent in visual experience or as given to experience by non-sensory factors or other alternative conditions is questioned. Siegel poses the pair situations and then makes a thorough inventory of all the main possible accounts that could be given to explain the perceptual difference of target properties between them. Such accounts include the utilization of theories of "raw feel", perceptual disjunctivism or externalism, or other non-sensory factors like attitudes or cognitive states. Siegel shows the deep flaws of all these accounts. Only her explanation that the target properties are a change at the level of contents of visual perception can avoid these flaws and stands as most empirically plausible and conceptually sound.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the nature of perception: what do we immediately perceive? Is it limited to typical visual features, or can it also include "meaning-based" elements? Also, anyone interested in new ways to defend Gibsonian ecological theories will fall in love with Siegel's book.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frustrating to read at times, but overall a thoroughly enjoyable and useful book.