that in reality they do not have. (Kriegel 2002)
What does it mean to say that things may appear to a subject to have colors that in reality they do not have? One possibility is that for Kriegel the content of visual experience may misrepresent objective colors. Here, it is important to consider:
Does the perceptual error take place at the level of experience or at the level of belief?
Kriegel’s remark seems to suggest the former. Recall that according to internalist representationalism experience carries both phenomenal content and objective content.
The relation between them is that, Kriegel says, “experience carries, immediately, phenomenal content, and only mediately, objective content,”and that “An experience carries the objective content it does only by virtue of carrying the phenomenal content it does.”(Kriegel 2002) On this account, perceptual error happens when the
objective content of experience misrepresents objective colors. Since phenomenal content underlies objective content, it is phenomenal content that is ultimately
responsible for perceptual misrepresentation. As we shall see later, this conflicts with Kriegel’s third reply.
Consider (2). Kriegel claims that even if objective colors cannot be experienced, one can still have inferential knowledge about them. But this is in fact giving up immediate knowledge about color, which violates our ordinary intuition that, when we see things veridically, we immediately know their colors without making any inference.
Also, if knowledge about color can only be inferential, we will have to abandon the notion of noninferential justification.
With regard to (3), Kriegel says, “experience represents only the way things appear to be … It is only the content of beliefs that concern the way things really are.”
(Kriegel 2002) This is problematic. First, it amounts to that the content of
experience is only about phenomenal properties, not about objective properties, which goes against the view that experience carries both phenomenal content and objective
content. Second, Kriegel’s suggestion is that perceptual error takes place only at the level of belief or judgment. This is explicit when he says, “to perceive the moon as appearing one inch across is not to be under an illusion. It is only when the
experience is endorsed by a judgment to the effect that the moon really is one inch across that one falls into error.”(Kriegel 2002) This conflicts with his first reply that the content of visual experience can get objective colors wrong. Third, if the content of experience is only about how things appear to us, and if error only happens at the level of judgment, never at the level of experience, then the content of experience would always be true. This is surely counterintuitive.
4. Shoemaker’s Defense Examined
Shoemaker’s defense is different. According to him, it is misleading to say that on the internalist representationalist account objective colors are not basically seen.
He thinks that phenomenal color properties are just ways that the color of an object can phenomenally present itself to the subjects, and one cannot see the color of an object without seeing it phenomenally appearing to one in a certain way (Shoemaker 2000, 2002). And it is not by accident that an object possesses certain phenomenal color properties. The object has them in virtue of its possessing certain objective colors.
Shoemaker further says, “Appearance properties must be individuated not only by the sorts of experience they produce or are disposed to produce, but also by the kind of causation involved in the production of these experiences.”(Shoemaker 2002) This remark suggests that phenomenal color properties and objective colors are causally
related. Jack perceives a ripe tomato as phenomenally red because the tomato is objectively red. Hence, by seeing the phenomenal redness of the tomato, Jack also sees it as objectively red. Likewise, Jill perceives the tomato as phenomenally green because it is objectively red. By seeing the phenomenal greenness of the tomato, Jill also sees it as objectively red. In this sense, Shoemaker contends, it is wrong to say that objective colors are not basically seen, and it is not possible that an object can have certain phenomenal color properties without having any objective color at all.
Shoemaker claims that it is by perceiving phenomenal color properties that we see objective colors. He seems to take this as a commonsensical claim, as he says, “the relation of the phenomenal property to the color is analogous to that of the facing surface of a table to the whole table.”(Shoemaker 2000) I find this analogy problematic. A table is ordinarily considered as a whole, i.e., not part of another physical object. When we see the facing surface of a table, we take ourselves to be seeing the whole table. This is because seeing the facing surface of a table is seeing the table. But as mentioned above, the phenomenal redness that one directly
perceives is by definition not objective redness. If so, even though phenomenal color properties and objective colors are causally related such that in veridical perception it is not possible for one to see phenomenal color properties without also seeing
objective colors, it is still that objective colors are seen only indirectly.
Tye’s phrase that colors are “not basically seen”might not be the best way to express this point. A better way, I suggest, is to say that since on Shoemaker’s account objective colors are not directly seen, one can only know objective colors
indirectly or mediately. That is, phenomenal color properties are a kind of epistemic intermediary. Consider the notion of perceptual error that might be implied in Shoemaker’s account. There are two possibilities: (1) The subject mistakenly takes the phenomenal content of his experience to be a good reason to think that the real color of the object is red. So construed, perceptual error lies at the level of belief.
(2) The objective content of the subject’s experience misrepresents objective colors because its phenomenal content misrepresents the corresponding phenomenal color
properties. So construed, perceptual error is at the level of experience. More needs to be said about these possibilities. But it seems to me that both suggest that
phenomenal color properties play the role of epistemic intermediary regarding our knowledge about objective colors.
If so, Shoemaker’s view faces a familiar skeptical problem. Epistemically, since objective colors are not directly seen, one can always get real colors wrong. We need not go as far as Tye to doubt whether the object in view really has any color at all.
But the following worry remains: Since we don’t have direct knowledge about colors, it is epistemically possible that although things do have colors, their colors are never what we take them to have. This is counterintuitive enough. So I conclude that, like Kriegel, Shoemaker’s response to Tye’s criticism is unsatisfactory. Any defense of internalist representationalism has to take the epistemological relation between phenomenal content and objective content into consideration.
Literature
Kriegel, Uriah 2002 “Phenomenal Content”, Erkenntnis 57, 175-198.
Shoemaker, Sydney 1994 “Phenomenal Character”Noủs 28, 21-38
Shoemaker, Sydney 2000 “Phenomenal Character Revisited”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, 465-468.
Shoemaker, Sydney 2001 “Introspection and Phenomenal Character”, reprinted in:
David Chalmers (ed.) Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press, 2002.
Shoemaker, Sydney 2002 “Content, Character, and Color II: A Better Kind of Representationalism”, NEH presentation, 1-20.
Tye, Michael 2000 Consciousness, Color, and Content, MIT Press.