About Me

I am a PhD student in Philosophy at Peking University, now staying at Universität zu Köln, Germany. My interests are primarily in Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology and Analytic Phenomenology. Now I am working on my Dissertation: Method, Intentionality, and Knowledge--An essay in analytic phenomenology. --------- I also have substantial interest in Early Modern Philosophy, Political Philosophy and Ethics.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Must Causality be present in the content of perceptual experience?

John Searle's answer is "Yes". Not only it is true that causality belongs to the contents of perceptual experience, it is also argued that it is also experienced and discoverable from the first person perspective. That amounts to say:
1) When we perceive x, we do not only perceive x, under some aspects (e.g., x as such and such).
2) We also perceive x as the cause of our current perception, and this belongs to the content of this perception.
3) Upon reflection of the perception of x, we can have epistemic access to the experience of x as the cause of my perception of x.

But Searle's point seems to be dubious when it comes to 2) and 3). Shortly put, it is possible and very often that when we perceive x, we also experience x as the cause of our perception of x, and upon reflection we have access to this fact. However, this by no means suggest that for every perception, experience of causation must also be present in the entire content. I think it is not implausible that people can have perception without having a concept of causation at all. Thought experienment needs to be done, and a variation needs to be given to make this point...

So experience of causation is not a necessary condition for one to have perception. Now another question is, is it a sufficient condition?

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