Burge's Proximality Principle and REC's account of the nature of phenomenality

Juan Camilo Espejo Serna juan.espejo1@unisabana.edu.co

Plan

Preliminaries
Burge's representationalist attack on enactivism
Burge's non-representationalist attack on enactivism
REC's unfortunate answer
A possibly better answer

This paper comes out from a puzzlement with REC’s view on phenomenality as presented in 2013.

“[RECers] take phenomenality to be nothing but forms of activities —perhaps only neural— that are associated with environment-involving interactions.” (Hutto and Myin 2013, p 169).

That sounds very

I

and not very

E

How should we take the fact that RECers accept that a feature of mind like phenomenality is nothing but some internal neural activity?

Aren’t RECers strongly committed to an understanding of basic minds that is always and everywhere essentially related to the environment?

Isn’t phenomenality understood as a matter of neural activity an internalist claim?

I’m unsure: what should RECers say? I want to explain a path that takes REC to an internalish point and then explain why they can and should resist it.

I think REC's view of phenomenality is less radical than it can be. RECers eschew representations but still make claims about phenomenality as if it were a form of internal aspect of mind (merely) widely determined.

Boldly put:

RECers need RECtification about phenomenality

Phenomenality?

phenomenal character of experience

in a representational view of experience: qualitative, non-representational aspects of experience

''qualia''

...what is it that philosophers have called qualitative states?: As Louis Armstrong said when asked what jazz is, “If you got to ask, you ain’t never going to get to know. (Block)

I think that there are certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes. Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain, the kind of states, their functional role, their relation to what goes on at other times and in other brains, and so on and so forth, and be I as clever as can be in fitting it all together, you won't have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy, or about the characteristic experience of tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise or seeing the sky. (Jackson)

an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism– something it is like for the organism. (Nagel)

Phenomenality: sensory consciousness!
One’s conscious sensory experiences have a sensuous, cualitative character which is somehow manifest to one as a self-conscious subject when one has them and the nature of which is a legitimate object of enquiry. (Paraphrasing Soteriou 2016)

I think REC can go wide all the way, in their own distinct manner. That means, Embodied and Enactive but non-representational phenomenality.

To do this I want to talk of the challenge presented by Tyler Burge to another anti-representational view of perception: the challenge from the proximality principle to the so-called relational view of perception (Campbell), sometimes also called naïve realism (Martin) or the object view (Brewer) –views that on occasions are (without nuance) bunched under the label "disjunctivism".

mind-independent objects are present to the mind when one perceives, but ... when one has such experience, its object must actually exist and genuinely be present to the mind. Call this, naïve realism. (Martin 2004, pp, 392-393)

perceptual experience is a matter of a person’s conscious acquaintance with various mind-independent physical objects from a given spatiotemporal point of view, in a particular sense modality, and in certain specific circumstances of perception (such as lighting conditions in the case of vision). (Brewer 2011, p 96)

On a Relational View, the qualitative character of the experience is constituted by the qualitative character of the scene perceived. [...] You characterize the experience they are having by saying which view they are enjoying. On the Relational picture, this is the same thing as describing the phenomenal character of their experiences. (Campbell 114-116)

Representational views are all alike;
every antirepresentational view is anti-representational in its own way.

Though REC and relationalism are two fundamentally distinct approaches to the question about the nature of perceptual experience, there is space for fruitful conversation between them. The space, I believe, can be found in their answers to arguments raised by representationalists against them -in particular, by Burge.

Two sides of Burge's challenge

Claims (purportedly) based on science in favor of representationalism

Claims (purportedly) based on science that do no appeal to representationalism

Representations are part of the fundamental basis of perceptual sciences in so far they implicitly figure in their explanations.

Veridicality, fulfillment of representational function, is the central explanandum of visual psychology. Illusions are explained as lapses from normal representational operation, or as the product of special environmental conditions.(Burge 2010: 311).

[perceptual sciences are full of] explanations that give perceptual and other representational states a causal role in engendering animal action, and in causing further psychological processes. Such explanations evince the existence of perceptual states” (Burge 2010, p. 310).

Put simply, our objection is that there is no empirically known truth that establishes a robust connection between the explanatory successes of the perceptual sciences and the existence of perceptual states with representational content. If we are right about this, the existence of perceptual representations is not, pace Burge, secured by the mere existence of successful perceptual sciences. (Hutto and Myin 2013, p. 117)

live questions about the extent to which the perceptual sciences in fact assume representational notions. (Hutto and Myin 2013, 122)

Science is not representationalist
and it is not anti-representationalist either.

Burge's argument from the
proximality principle

Science is committed to the proximality principle
Relationalism directly goes against the proximality principle

----------

Relationalism is wrong.

Should RECers be worried about a similar argument from the proximality principle?

NO

But they talk about phenomenality as if they were!

Proximality principle

Holding constant the antecedent psychological set of the perceiver, a given type of proximal stimulation (over the whole body), together with associated internal afferent and efferent input into the perceptual system, will produce a given type of perceptual state, assuming that there is no malfunctioning in the system and no interference with the system. On any given occasion, given the total antecedent psychological state of the individual and system, the total proximal input together with internal input into the system suffices to produce a given type of perceptual state, assuming no malfunction or interference. Call this principle the Proximality Principle.(Burge 2005)

The proximality principle, according to Burge, encapsulates the way science identifies perceptual experiences without mentioning representational content!

To repeat:

without mentioning representational content!

The terms used in the proximality principle do seem to be those basic to perceptual psychology. Talk about stimulation, afferent and efferent input, malfunction and processing is actually part of actual psychological explanations of what goes on in perception.

For simplicity, let us formulate the principle in the following way:

sameness of overall input

together with sameness of processing yields

sameness of perceptual experience

(everything else being equal).

But should REC be worried about the proximality principle?

Burge’s principle seems to support a narrow-ish view of phenomenality that, first, is not formulated in terms of representations and, second, is not based on a priori argument.

In so far the same overall input is achieved and it gets processed in the same way to yield the same perceptual experience, it does not matter what kind of environment one finds oneself. Once input and processing are fixed, the perceptual experience is fixed as well.

We have then that the phenomenal aspects of experience of the same kind that are enjoyed in on-line perception seem possible even when subjects are deprived of opportunities to interact with their environments.

Add insult to injury: this narrow-ish view of experience is not argued for on additional philosophical assumptions.

No appeal to representationalism generally
No appeal to the idea that sameness of representational content entails sameness of phenomenal character,
No appeal to something like the Argument from Shared Phenomenality (Shortly put: that it is possible to coherently imagine cases where two experiences have the same phenomenal character but they involve different relations to the environment, one actually involves enaction while to the other does not, one is on-line the other one is off-line.)

“let us allow, for the sake of argument, that similar phenomenology can occur even in the complete absence of environmental interactions. What follows?” (162).

Hutto and Myin seem to give themselves some wiggle room with the the word 'similar', partly because the Argument from Shared phenomenality is not strong enough to allow for identity instead of similarity. The proximality principle does seem to allow a stronger wording in terms of identity, though.

RECers accept that the supervenience basis of phenomenality can be brain bound but immediately try to remedy this trying to go wide while staying in.

“However, even if the Argument from Shared Phenomenality has bite—even if the supervenience base of phenomenality is always brain-bound—it does not follow that the laws of phenomenology are, always and everywhere, narrow. What counts as a law—and certainly what counts as a law that yields adequate predictions and explanations—depends on the practical interests and purposes in play. Thus, focusing entirely on internal, brain-bound activity may be appropriate if one is interested only in producing or replicating phenomenality by limited or minimal means.” (163)

Here is crux of the compromise. RECers accept that the basis of phenomenality is brain bound but the laws that govern it are wide. Hutto and Myin explain this through the following example.

Suppose that some person S wants to convey to a friend, F, what it is like to experience a late-Impressionist depiction of a rowboat. In the normal case, this is achieved only by indirectly manipulating the other’s brain. S might do this by attempting to produce a painting in the late-Impressionist style and inviting F to look at it. To understand how this is possible—i.e., how the painting might be produced by S and appreciated by F in both cases by enactive and embodied means—is to understand the environment-involving activities of S and F. The latter can be explained only by invoking wide laws. By the same token, if we want to understand the place of phenomenality in nature—how it originally came to be, and why it has the features it has—we are likewise forced to widen our scope. (Hutto and Myin 2013, p. 163)

The example is meant to explain how is that wide laws govern narrow phenomenality but I think that it also shows that why they really should go wide all the way

"Suppose that some person S wants to convey to a friend, F, what it is like to experience a late-Impressionist depiction of a rowboat. In the normal case, this is achieved only by indirectly manipulating the other’s brain. S might do this by attempting to produce a painting in the late-Impressionist style and inviting F to look at it. To understand how this is possible—i.e., how the painting might be produced by S and appreciated by F in both cases by enactive and embodied means—is to understand the environment-involving activities of S and F. The latter can be explained only by invoking wide laws. By the same token, if we want to understand the place of phenomenality in nature—how it originally came to be, and why it has the features it has—we are likewise forced to widen our scope."(Hutto and Myin 2013, p. 163)

"The laws of phenomenality are wide"

Why is it that we have to appeal to an enactive embodied engagement with the environment in order to explain phenomenality?

Why is it that if we want to understand the place of phenomenality in nature—how it originally came to be, and why it has the features it has we are likewise forced to widen our scope?

Simple answer: because phenomenality consists in an enactive embodied engagement with the environment

RECers should not accept that there are phenomenal aspects common to the on-line and the off-line cases.

Here is where other anti-representational views might help.

According to REC, the qualitative character of the experience is constituted by enactive embodied engagement with the perceived environment. [...] You characterize the experience they are having by describing the enactive embodied engagement with the perceived environment. On the REC picture, this is the same thing as describing the phenomenal character of their experiences. (Anonymous RECer 2021)

Nöe has expressed a similar view of phenomenality. But that formulation is still tainted by representationalism and, more importantly, does not fully embrace what the view implies for it seems to entail that there are common aspects between on- and off-line cases.

"When we hallucinate, the very same skills are triggered or called into play; the idea is that it is this fact that explains why we think of ourselves as in touch with things when we are not in touch with them" (Nöe 2005, p. 37 )

RECers should go wide all the way or abandon their explanation of phenomenality in terms of wide laws

Either go properly wide or accept narrowmindedness

Don't kill the tiger of representationalism and get scared by the phenomenal skin