Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXX No. 2, May 2010 2010 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC

Disjunctivism and Illusion

a. d. smith Warwick University

Disjunctivism is a theory about sensory experience that, as its very name implies, invokes a certain contrast: between being one thing or another (and not both). The theory claims that sensory experience comes in certain fundamentally dierent and incompatible psychological forms. Everyone would accept that, of course. What is distinctive about disjunctivism is its claim that there are such dierences, even intrinsic ones, that the experiencing subject is necessarily not in a position to appreciate simply in virtue of having the experiences and reecting on, or introspecting, them, even though the experiences are fully conscious ones. The contrasting kinds of experience that the disjunctivist is concerned with are those that intuitively have dierent cognitive and epistemological credentials. At one extreme there is veridical perception. Here one is perceptually aware of a real object in the world, the object appears just as it really is, and one is thereby, at least usually, in a position to have perceptual knowledge of this object. This is, cognitively and epistemologically, a good case. At the other extreme, there is hallucination. Here one is not aware of any real object in the world at all, and the experience can furnish one with no perceptual knowledge of that world. This is a bad case. A hallucination might, however, be subjectively indiscriminable from some veridical perception, in that one could hallucinate an object of just the same perceptible sort as one might veridically perceive, and the hallucination might be so lifelike that one could not tell, simply on the basis of what it is like to have the experience, that one was not veridically perceiving such an object. Nevertheless, claims the disjunctivist, these two sorts of experiences, even considered just as experiences, are intrinsically dierent in nature: so dierent, indeed, that they should be regarded as falling into two fundamentally dierent psychological kinds. The kind of experience one has when one veridically perceives
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some object in the world is one that simply cannot be had by a subject who is not in perceptual contact with some such object. This kind of experience is essentially object-involving, and so is a kind of experience that one cannot have hallucinatorily.1 Mere subjective indiscriminability, the disjunctivist claims, should not be used as a criterion for determining psychological nature in such cases. There is, to be sure, something that reective subjects of either perceptual or hallucinatory experiences can denitely know about their conscious life just on the basis of reecting on their experiences. They can, for example, denitely know that it at least seems to them that they are perceiving something of a certain sort. In order, however, to emphasise the fact that two fundamentally dierent kinds of experiential state can be the basis of such knowledge, disjunctivists prefer to express the knowledge in question as being of a disjunctive form: the subjects know that they are either perceiving something or that they are merely under the impression that they are.2 We may call such a formulation an experiential disjunction: one that disjoins what are commonly referred to as a good and a bad disjunct. In this paper I address the question of what account disjunctivism can or should give of illusion. This is a surprisingly under-discussed topic. Although most disjunctivists do briey mention illusion, and sometimes commit themselves on the question of whether it should be regarded as falling under the good or the bad disjunct of the experiential disjunction, almost all their detailed discussions of bad cases concern hallucination. Perhaps they sense that illusion may harbour difculties for the view. Be this as it may, I shall argue that the phenomenon of illusion, at least of certain kinds, indeed cannot be adequately accommodated by one inuential form of disjunctivism. Having established that, I shall explore alternative versions of disjunctivism that are not simply refuted by the facts, and ask whether illusion should be allocated to the good or the bad disjunct. In as much as illusory perceptions are indeed perceptionsperceptual contact is made with some actual object in the environmentthey share a good feature with veridical perceptions. In as much as they are illusory, however, they are in some sense bad. No doubt because of this, disjunctivists themselves are

Those writing in this tradition treat objects as entities. In other words, non-existent intentional objects are not countenanced. For the purposes of this paper I shall fall in with this way of thinking. I have argued elsewhere (Smith, 2008) that neither the notion of being under the impression that one is perceiving, when one isnt, nor its variants that can be found in the disjunctivist literature (such as being subjectively indiscriminable from a perception), is adequate to pick out the class of hallucinatory experiences. For present purposes, however, I shall leave aside this somewhat important issue.

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divided over the issue of where to place illusions in the experiential disjunctionas Paul Snowdon, himself a leading disjunctivist, recognises: In one account (that embodied in the present discussion), the disjuncts are perception and hallucinations. Into the perception disjunct would go both accurate and inaccurate perceptions. The other accounts form a disjunction between accurate perception on the one side and, on the other, all non-accurate cases. These are the disjunctions to which Hinton . . . and McDowell have attended (1990, 131). For reasons that we shall see, and as Snowdon himself later indicates, the case of McDowell is not straightforward, in that his form of disjunctivism is not directly concerned with the nature of perceptual experience. Hinton, however, is explicitly concerned with this issue, and he does make it clear that his bad disjunct includes both illusion and hallucination (Hinton, 1973, 114121). Another leading disjunctivist who regards both illusion and hallucination as constituting a bad case is M. G. F. Martin. His contrast is always between veridical perceptions on the one hand, and states that are merely subjectively indiscriminable from them on the other.3 Indeed, Snowdon is in a small minority of disjunctivists in allocating illusion to the good disjunct. I shall argue that he is right to do so. It may not be immediately clear, to either insiders or outsiders, whether these different decisions concerning where to place illusion in the experiential disjunction reveal a philosophical disagreement; or, if they do, how signicant it is. One might, for example, wonder why disjunctivists should be required to operate with just a twofold disjunction. If the experiential disjunction were presented in terms of veridical perception or illusory perception or hallucination, perhaps the present issue would simply evaporate. Even someone who does work with the simple twofold disjunction, and who places illusions along with hallucinations in the bad disjunct, need not deny that illusions and hallucinations dier signicantly, perhaps even fundamentally and essentially, from one another. Indeed, Snowdon himself suggests that the dierent formulations of the experiential disjunction do not necessarily represent theories between which we have to choose (1990, 132). Since illusions seem to have both good and bad aspects, perhaps for some philosophical purposes it is worth stressing their good aspect and associating them with veridical perceptions, whereas for other purposes it is worth underlining their bad aspect and allying them with hallucinations. There is, however, a substantial philosophical issue involved here on which one does have to take a stand. It is the question whether in both illusions and hallucinations we nd a kind of experience, or
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Martin adopts disjunctivism as a way of upholding what he terms na ve realism: a position that, as we shall see, requires illusions to be placed in the bad disjunct.
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intrinsic feature of experience, that is necessarily not to be found in any veridical, non-illusory perceptual experience, or conversely.4 Anyone who, like Hinton or Martin, places illusion with hallucination in the bad disjunct clearly thinks that this is so. When Snowdon formulates his own perception hallucination disjunction, he may not be expressing disagreement with this. He may simply be interested in a dierent issue. It is, however, this issue that I am concerned with in this paper. When, therefore, I refer to a form of disjunctivism that endorses the perception hallucination disjunction, and thereby allocates illusion to the good disjunct, I mean a theory that positively claims that there is nothing to illusory experiences, qua experiences, that cannot be found in veridical experiences.5 To place illusions together with veridical perceptions in the good disjunct is, therefore, to commit oneself to the view that they have, to use John McDowells phrase, a highest common factor (McDowell 1982, 472). I take this phrase to express the idea that types of experience that have such a highest common factor are of identical psychological kinds, diering at most only in external, relational matters. As mentioned, I shall argue that such a view is the correct one for a disjunctivist to hold. Having established that, I shall conclude by considering how signicant such a concession may be. I In this section I argue that a certain currently inuential form of disjunctivism is incapable of giving an adequate account of illusion. All disjunctivists agree that a veridical perceptual experience is of a psychological type that cannot be had unless one is perceiving some item in the real world. Most disjunctivists go beyond this, and give a particular explanation of this impossibility. When some worldly object is veridically perceived, this common view has it, the object is a constituent of the experience. Paul Snowdon goes so far as to make such constituency an
4

For reasons that we shall examine later, veridical, non-illusory is not pleonastic. Since, until then, the issues involved are not pertinent to the discussion, I shall sometimes write veridical where veridical and non-illusory would strictly be accurate. Martin (2002, 395 n24) contrasts a view that simply allocates illusions to the bad disjunct with one that simply allocates them to the good one, and suggests that his own position is somewhere in between these two approaches. This is because Martin construes the terms illusory and veridicalquite correctly, as we shall seeas applying primarily to the perception of features of objects, rather than of objects as such. Given the way I have just set up the issue that is to concern us, however, he is to be placed squarely in the camp of those who allocate illusion to the bad disjunct. For, as we shall soon see, he certainly supposes there to be some feature of veridical experience that cannot be found in any illusory experience in so far as it is illusory.

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essential part of disjunctivism as such. Disjunctivism is, he writes, not exhausted . . . by the simple denial of a common nature to bad and good experiences. It involves also the characterisation of the dierence between the perceptual and non-perceptual in terms of the dierent constituents of the experiences involved. The experience in a perceptual case in its nature reaches out to and involves the perceived external object, not so the experience in other cases (2005, 1367). The specic form of disjunctivism that we shall be considering in this section interprets such constituency as accounting not only for the fact that an experience makes perceptual contact with the world; it accounts also for the phenomenal character of the experience, at least in part. Martin, who subscribes to this view, calls it na ve realism, and I shall follow him in this. He species it as follows: According to na ve realism, the actual objects of perception, the external things such as trees, tables and rainbows, which one can perceive, and the properties which they can manifest to one when perceived, partly constitute ones conscious experience, and hence determine the phenomenal character of ones experience. This talk of constitution and determination should be taken literally (1997, 83, my emphasis).6 For an object to be a constituent of an experience, therefore, is for it to constitute and determine the phenomenal character of the experience, at least in part. The object does this by, as it were, importing its very own features into experience. When, for example, I veridically see a green square, the phenomenal greenness and phenomenal squareness of my experience are nothing more than the physical greenness and shape of that square featuring in my experience by way of constituency. The reason why illusion poses a problem for such a view is that illusions can be, indeed almost always are, partial. Consider, for example, a case where a green square looks yellow to me, though it does look square. Since I am really seeing the square, and veridically perceiving its shape, the square and its shape are presumably constituents of my experience.7 This squares shape furnishes the phenomenal character of the illusory perception in some respect: in the respect of being as of a square. What, however, about the apparent yellowness? It, clearly, must be accounted for by something other than the green square being a constituent of the experience, since this is the case when a green square veridically looks green to me. Some extra, bad factor, over and above the green squares being a constituent, must, therefore, be attributed to this partially illusory state to account for the illusorily appearing colour: something that

Determines implies is sucient for, as Martin makes clear: Dierence in presented elements between two experiences will be sucient for dierence in their phenomenal properties (Martin 1998, 174). We shall consider later how matters stand if this is denied.
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is absent in the case of completely veridical perception, where the constituent object itself does all the work. A na ve realist about veridical perception must, it seems, embrace a mixed account of such partial illusions, constituency accounting for the respects in which the experience is veridical, and some extra factor accounting for the respects in which it is illusory.8 There are a number of candidates for such a bad factor: some representational feature, or a quale, for instance. But whatever is postulated will, in certain cases, undermine the na ve realist account of the veridical perception of an objects features. This is because, to continue with our example, a certain square can, through constituency, determine an aspect of the phenomenal character of a visual experiencemaking it such that something looks squareonly in virtue of being seen. A visible shape, however, necessarily has some colour; and only because an objects colour is seen is an objects shape seen.9 Indeed, the apparent shape of an object, as far as vision is concerned, just is a matter of the distribution of apparent colour. An object is visibly square to me because and only because of how colour is distributed in my visual eld.10 Because of this, a squares being a constituent of my experience cannot account for why a square seems to be visually present to me unless it also accounts for the appearance of colour. In the case in hand, the apparently distributed colour is yellow; but the square is actually green. How could a green squares being a constituent of my experience account for the apparent yellowness of the square? By itself, it clearly cannot. So, by itself it cannot account even for the appearance of a square, since this depends on apparent colour and how it is distributed. To account for the distribution of the apparent colour is to account for the appearance of the shape. If something other than the real square accounts for the appearance of the colour, something other than the real square (and its constituency) accounts for the very appearance of the square. Generally, whatever bad factor is postulated to account for an illusorily appearing feature in a partially illusory perceptual experience will undermine the na ve realist account of any veridically appearing aspect whose appearing presupposes and is fully determined by the appearing of such a feature. It will not do to respond to this argument by claiming that, although something other than the square accounts for which colour appears, it
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Martin (2002, 395 n24) seems to commit himself to this account of the matter. What, it may be asked, about glints and gleams? One possible answer is to extend the term colour so that it covers such phenomena. Another, which I favour, is to deny that in seeing such a glint or gleam you are seeing a part of the object or its surface. What you see, in these cases, is light reected from the object. Things, at least usually, visually appear as located and variously oriented in threedimensional space. The distribution of colour of which I speak is not in some merely two-dimensional visual array.

10

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could be the square that accounts for how this colour is specically distributed. The only way, on the na ve realist account, in which the square can do this, given that the shape is veridically perceived, is by being a constituent of the experience. It cannot, however, be a constituent without being seen; and it cannot be seen without some particular colour appearing. According to the present response, however, an objects being a constituent of a visual experience does not sufce for any particular colour to appear. A square, through being a constituent of an experience, cannot account for the appearance of just some colour or other. To suppose otherwise is to treat constituency as a weaker notion than it in fact is. The constituency view is not merely that an object is responsible for the phenomenal character of an experience when the latter is veridical. It is, rather, responsible for this character specically in virtue of importing its own character into the experience through constituency. It must, therefore, import everything that is necessary for its constituency, and hence for its veridically perceived features to be seen. This is just what does not happen in illusory cases of the sort we are considering. An alternative way for the na ve realist to account for such illusory perceptions would be to deny that any extra factor is responsible for the illusorily appearing colour. This would apply to the case in hand something like the account that Martin offers of certain hallucinations.11 According to that account, the only thing that can be said about the phenomenal character of these hallucinations is that they are not subjectively discriminable from some kind of veridical perception: their only positive mental characteristics are negative epistemological onesthat they cannot be told apart by the subject from veridical perception (Martin, 2004, 734). Applied to the illusory case of a green square looking yellow, one would say that the squares being a constituent of the experience accounts for a square appearance, and that its looking specically yellow is simply a matter of the experiences negative epistemological characteristic of not being subjectively distinguishable from veridically seeing something yellow, or something along these lines. Since no positive feature is postulated to account for the apparent yellowness, there is, it may be thought, nothing to conict with or undermine the real squares actual shape accounting for the apparent squareness through constituency. This will not help matters, however, since it still remains impossible for the squares actual shape to appear at all in a way compatible with na ve realism. It can appear only in virtue of some colour appearing as distributed in a particular way, and one must account for the latter in order to account for the former. The veridical appearance of the square is
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The hallucinations in question are those that have the same kind of proximal cause as some (possible) veridical perception.
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certainly not, however, for the na ve realist, simply a negative epistemological matter, as is, supposedly, the appearance of colour. II Bill Brewer has recently offered an analysis of illusory perception that, if acceptable, would block the preceding argument against the na ve realist form of disjunctivism. Brewer has given up his earlier representationalist account of perceptual consciousness, and now holds that perceived objects not only are constituents of perceptual experience, but that they constitute the subjective character of perceptual experience (2006, 168). Moreover, he offers an account of how this can be true in the case of illusion. His analysis postulates two levels in the subjective character of experience. At the rst level, the mind-independent direct object itself, just as it actually is, . . . is constitutive of this subjective character. The second level consists of the way in which an object presented at the rst level may mistakenly be perceptually taken (2006, 172). What is signicant about Brewers proposal is that error enters into an illusory experience only at this second level: it is to be attributed solely to the subjects response to what is perceptually presented. In perceptual experience, he writes, a person is simply presented with the actual constituents of the physical world themselves. Any errors in her worldview which result are products of the subjects responses to this experience, however automatic, natural or understandable in retrospect these responses may be. Error, strictly speaking, given how the world actually is, is never an essential feature of experience itself (2006, 169). It should be clear how na ve realism is sustained by this account of illusion. Objects in the world can be constituents of illusory experiences, and determinative of their phenomenal character, since how they are in such experiences, at least at the rst level, is how they actually are. Any mismatch occurs only when it comes to our response to our (rst level) experiences. In a later work Brewer is not so explicit about the two-level nature of the account; and yet it is still in place. He still postulates that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is given simply by citing the physical object which is its mind-independent direct object (2008, 171). In cases of illusion, however, this physical object, given a certain point of view and circumstances of perception, bears certain visually relevant similarities to a dierent kind of object; and these similarities may intelligibly lead one to take the object as being of this other kind. It is such similarities and the way they provide an intelligible ground for error that constitute the illusory look of the thing (2008, 1712 and 178). Such a look is, however, still regarded as something over and above a

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more basic phenomenal presentation of the object that constitutes the core subjective character of the experience (2008, 178). Brewer illustrates how his account is meant to work by applying it to the case of the Mu ller-Lyer illusion. Brewer suggests that the two objectively equal lines in the Mu ller-Lyer gure are present as equal lines in our core experience when we view the gure, so that the basic phenomenal character of our experience is indeed as of equal lines. Nevertheless, these lines have the power to mislead us, in virtue of their perceptually relevant similarities with other things. For these lines bear a similarity to two unequal lines, one of which is nearer to the viewer than the other so that they have the same projective length in the plane in which the Mu ller-Lyer gure is located. The inward and outward pointing wings at the ends of the two lines function to make this similarity salient, and bring two unequal lines to mind (2006, 1689). Such a two-level account is not implausible in relation to some illusions: those that psychologists call cognitive illusions, and of which the Mu ller-Lyer illusion is one. Brewer claims, however, that his account can be applied to many of the most standard cases of visual illusion (2008, 173). Unless it applies to all types of illusion, na ve realism will still be inadequate, but in fact it does not apply to any illusions at all other than the cognitive ones: to any, that is to say, that are more physiologically or physically based. It does not, for instance, to continue with our example of colour, apply to the illusorily appearing colours that are due either to unusual lighting or to simultaneous or successive colour contrast. In such cases it is ones sensory experience itself, at the most basic level, that is aected, not just some response to the experience. Because of this, there are in such cases no visually relevant similarities of the sort that Brewer can point to in the Mu ller-Lyer illusion. A green square can look yellow to me because of the peculiar lighting.12

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A na ve realist may suggest that when, as most of us would say, illusion is caused by the behaviour of light, or by other objective features of the environmentas in the present example, and in the familiar example of the straight stick half immersed in waterthere is really no illusion at all, since we are accurately picking up on real features in the external world. The green square is, it may be suggested, yellow-in-this-light, and the stick is, as we might say, optically bent. (I am grateful to an anonymous referee of this journal for raising this objection.) I reject this suggestion, because it is incapable of recognising that, in the situations in question, we get anything wrong at all about our environment. (The error cannot be attributed to our taking the situation to be in some sense standard when it is not, since we need not so take it: we may be perfectly well aware of the situation for what it is.) This inadequacy is grounded on the fact that when I, for example, see a stick, it is the shape of the stick that seems apparent to menot its optical shape. In any case, there are many kinds of wholly internally caused, physiologically based illusionssuch as those due to simultaneous or successive colour contrast in relation to which this na ve realist proposal is a complete non-starter.
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There is, however, no relevant similarity at all between green and yellow. They are simply two quite dierent colours. In fact, when Brewer explicitly considers non-cognitive illusions, he is forced to make it clear that his visually relevant similarities cover things of which the subject may be totally unaware. Two objects have visually relevant similarities, he writes, when they share suciently many properties amongst those which have a signicant involvement in the physical processes underlying vision. Thus, and very crudely, visually relevant similarities are identities in such things as, the way in which light is reected and transmitted from the objects in question, and the way in which stimuli are handled by the visual system, given its evolutionary history and our shared training during development (2008, 172). It should be evident, however, that such similarities as these, wholly unknown to the experiencing subject as they typically are, can play no role in an account of illusion that locates error only in an intelligible response to a core experience that perfectly matches the actual situation perceived. When I see the yellow-looking square, there is no sense at all in which I see the light travelling to my eyes. The light does not look any way at all to me.13 It is the square that I see and that looks a certain way. And in cases of colour contrast, there is not even a relevant similarity in anything external to the observer. According to Brewer, illusion consists in the fact that visually relevant similarities may intelligibly be taken for qualitative identities (2008, 173). But nothing I am wholly unaware of can be taken by me in any way whatever. Are we really to suppose that a white objects looking green to me after I have been staring at a red surface is a matter of the state of my retinal cells providing an intelligible ground for a response that brings green to mind? There is no intelligibility here at all. It is just a matter of psycho-physical causation. The visually relevant similarities in all such non-cognitive illusions simply concern the processes that give rise to experience. They are operative before any experience occurs, even at a rst level, and they condition the phenomenal character of that experience. Moreover, the suggestion that, in illusion, the perceived object is accurately registered phenomenally in a rst-level experience has dropped out of Brewers account when it is applied to non-cognitive illusions, or is at least playing no explanatory role. This is not surprising, since the suggestion that, in the case of non-cognitive illusions, the actual character of the perceived object phenomenally characterises the experience (in the respect in which it is illusory) is wholly indefensible. In the case of the Mu ller-Lyer illusion, according to Brewer, an equality of the lines characterises ones core experiencean experience that
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Glints and gleams aside.

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constitutes a more basic phenomenal presentation of the object than is to be found at the second level, where alone error inters into the picture (2008, 178)). When a green object looks yellow because of the lighting, however, greenness does not phenomenally characterise my experience in any way at all. It is not, in such a case, simply that my response involves an (intelligible) error. The response is just what it should be to a core experience that is qualitatively identical to the one I get when a yellow object looks yellow. In order to justify his claim that equality in length does indeed characterise the core visual experience when the Mu ller-Lyer gure is seen, Brewer points out that the lines in the gure would not appear to change length if the attached wings were to shrink to vanishing point (2006, 170). This perhaps suggests that there is a certain phenomenal sameness to the lines with and without the wings; and that since the lines without wings are certainly phenomenally equal, so are the lines in the actual Mu ller-Lyer gure with their wings. Nothing analogous to this is to be found when lighting changes, or when a colour becomes surrounded by another colour that gives rise to simultaneous colour contrast. In order further to justify his claim that phenomenal equality is present in the core experience of the Mu ller-Lyer gure, Brewer suggests that if you were to point to where the ends of the two lines in the gure appear to be, you will point to their actual locationwhich also perhaps suggests that equality is in some way phenomenally manifest to you. Again, nothing analogous is to be found in the case of non-cognitive illusions. When that green square looks yellow to me, all my non-inferential responses are those appropriate to yellow. Or, to take a non-cognitive illusion that is closer to the Mu ller-Lyer illusion in that it involves spatial properties, consider the straight stick that looks bent when half submerged in water. Here, when I point to the ends of the stick on the basis of how it appears to me, I will not point to their actual location. The following sort of situation also shows Brewers proposal to be unworkable as a general account of illusion. Consider a situation where you view two equal lines through distorting lenses, so that just one of the lines looks a little longer than it is. Choose the right distortion, and when the Mu ller-Lyer illusion is exemplied by adding suitable attachments to the ends of the lines, the two lines will look equal with their attachments.14 Since the attachments function the same way in this case as in the usual Mu ller-Lyer case, Brewers two level analysis must recognise a phenomenal dierence in the length of the two lines, due to the non-cognitive illusory eect produced by the distorting lenses, at
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This would be a case of veridical illusion: a phenomenon to which we shall attend later.
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the rst level of experiencesomething that his account is meant to rule out. The case against a two-level account of any non-cognitive illusion is overwhelming. At least wherever non-cognitive illusions are concerned, the actual character of the perceived object is not, in so far as the experience is illusory, phenomenally manifest to the subject at all, at any level of experience. All such illusions therefore stand in the way of defending na ve realism against the arguments of the previous section. III The only way for the na ve realist form of disjunctivism to avoid the problems detailed above is to claim that illusory perceptual experiences, even when they contain veridical elements, are wholly dierent in kind from completely veridical perceptual experiences. The mixed account of partial illusion we have been considering is rejected, and it is denied that the veridical aspects of a partially illusory appearances are to be accounted for by constituency. The question now arises, of course, how illusions are to be distinguished from hallucinations; but that will pose no serious problem in principle. One possibilityin fact, as far as I can see, the only possibility consistent with the direct realism that na ve realism is intent upon defendingis for the na ve realist to conceive of both illusions and hallucinations as representational states, with no worldly objects as constituents, but to distinguish between hallucinations and illusions on the basis of a distinction between dierent kinds of representational content: by, for example, denying to hallucinations, but attributing to illusory perceptual states, object-dependent representational content.15 Such an unmixed account is, however, at odds with the fundamental motivation for na ve realism, and, indeed, with its literal formulation. As Martin has stressed on a number of occasions, na ve realism is adopted by its proponents as being the best articulation of how our experiences strike us as being to introspective reection on them (2004, 42). By contrast, both sense-datum and representationalist accounts amount to error-theories of sense experience (2004, 84). The na ve realist is happy to convict us of error when we hallucinate, for then we are merely under the mistaken impression that we are really perceiving things. But the na ve realist who endorses an unmixed account of partially illusory experience must convict us of error even when we are veridically perceiving some aspect of the surrounding world. When I misperceive that green square as yellow, I see the objects shape just as it is. And yet my entire visual perception of

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More on this notion below.

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the square has, on the present unmixed account, a fundamentally different nature from that of any wholly veridical perception. Anything other than a na ve realist, constituency account of perception is, however, supposed to constitute an error-theory. We should, writes Martin, be moved to this position [sc. na ve realism] in defence of a natural conception of how our veridical perceptual experience relates us to the world around us. That is what leads us to Na ve Realism (2004, 84). If so, we should be equally moved when it comes to the veridical aspects of partially illusory perceptions. The na ve realist claim that veridically perceived objects are constituents of perceptual experiences is straightforwardly falsied by a case such as the yellowlooking green square. The square is veridically perceived as a square, but cannot, on the unmixed account, be a constituent of the perceivers visual experience, because of its illusory yellowness. And yet, when I see that green square, I see its actual shape. I see, as Wilfrid Sellars would have put it, its very squareness. That the square looks yellow to me in no way conicts with this fact. More signicantly, a na ve realist account that embraces an unmixed, representationalist account of illusion is objectively untenable because of a variant of the following argument. Suppose, again, that I am misperceiving that green square as yellow (though as square). On the present account, this is a representational state that does not have the square as a constituent. Suppose, now, that because of some change in the situation, my representational state becomes wholly accurate. The na ve realist surely cannot deny that this is possible. In such a situation, however, I cease to misperceive the squares colour. Since I am now perceiving the square in a wholly veridical way, it should now be, for the na ve realist, a constituent of my visual experience. But the only change I have postulated in the original experiential state is one that concerns that states intentional content and its correctness. The state remains a representational state, not one that now has physical objects as constituents. This, however, is impossible if na ve realism is true, and at least all wholly veridical perceptions involve the perceived object as a constituent of experience. Such an intentionalist account will undercut the entire na ve realist position. I said that it is a variant of the foregoing argument that will invalidate a na ve realist unmixed account of illusion. A variation is required, because the argument lacks cogency as it stands. This is because it presupposes that a wholly veridical intentional perceptual state will necessarily involve no illusion; and this is false, since illusions are not necessarily non-veridical in the sense of misrepresenting the nature of the object perceived. An experience can arise, for example, from two independently operative illusion-inducing factorsabnormal
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lighting and lateral inhibition or retinal fatigue, saythat precisely offset one another, so that how something ends up appearing is the way it actually is.16 Some readers may not be inclined to regard this sort of case as one of illusion at allso tight may be the connection between illusion and misrepresentation in some peoples minds. In fact, whether or not such a case is properly termed an illusion is not a matter of great philosophical importance. Everyone will, I assume, at least agree that such a case is not a wholly optimal case of perception. One indication that it is indeed less than perceptually optimal is that we should deny that the subject who sees a green square that looks green to him because of two illusion-inducing factors that conspire to produce this eect is in a position either to know that or to see that the square is green.17 The important point, now, is that the na ve realist will not unreasonably apply the constituency account of the phenomenal character of experience only to optimal cases of perception. If, therefore, intentionalism is to undercut the present unmixed version of na ve realism, it must be able to oer an acceptable account of such optimalityone that involves more than mere correctness of perceptual representation. I now indicate how this may be done. The reason we judge the veridical cases now under consideration to be less than optimal cases of perception is that the veridicality of the experiences in question is fortuitous, because of the nature of the visual processes involved. Given just this shade of green, and just these surrounding colours producing a retinal effect that gives rise to the phenomenon of simultaneous colour contrast, and just this abnormal light, the green thing looks green; but this type of situation does not reliably give rise to accurate perception.18 This fact certainly supports our judgement that a subject in such a situation would not know that the object before him is indeed green. Moreover, it supports our judgement that such a subject would not see that the object is green.19 This is not
16

Johnston (2006, 2714) has already argued for this. The illusions he considers, however, all involve at least one arguably cognitive illusion. Although this in no way aects the general point, as far as the present argument is concerned it is, for reasons we have noted earlier in connection with Brewer, better to avoid reliance on illusions of this kind. If you do not think that the sort of case now in question is even less than optimal, then you do not think that such a case harbours any problem for intentionalism as it stands; and nor, therefore, for the suggestion that intentionalism undercuts na ve realism. That these two factors merely happen to conspire to produce accurate perception is fundamental to our judgement on such cases, for we can imagine a sensory system that works optimally, and as a matter of course, by employing two sub-systems that reliably o-set one another in this fashion. Mark Johnston (2006, 2716) has emphasised the need for any adequate account of veridical illusion to account for this fact.

17

18

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because seeing that entails (visually) knowing thatso that accounting for the absence of the latter would ipso facto account for the absence of the former. There are two sorts of situation that render such an entailment at least dubious. First, you can clearly see that something is the case, and yet not believe your eyes, because of some (false) collateral belief that you have. One could attempt to preserve the link between seeing that and knowing that by severing the link between knowing and believing; but that would itself be contestable. The second example, however, is independent of this issue. For you can clearly see that something is the case, and correctly believe it is, even if you are in the middle of a period when you are having spontaneous hallucinations or illusions. Since it is a real possibility that you are hallucinating or having an illusion now, though in fact you are not, you do not know to be so what you see to be so. It is not, therefore, that subjects of the sort of non-optimal visual cases now under consideration fail to see that things are as they appear to be simply because they do not know this, but, rather, because of the specic reason why they do not. In the two kinds of situation just mentioned, subjects can see that things are as they appear to be without knowing this only because the factors that are incompatible with knowledge are extrinsic to perception itself. One is matter of whether or not a natural perceptual belief is inhibited by collateral informationwhich is matter of how a subject epistemologically exploits a perception; and the other is a matter of whether a given perception occurs in a situation in which there is a real possibility of certain other (hallucinatory or illusory) perceptions occurring. By contrast, the intentionalists account of veridical illusion deals with factors that are internal to perception, since it concerns the aetiology of perceptual experience itself and, therefore, how one stands perceptually to a certain object. The notion of seeing that comes apart from (visually) knowing that just to the extent that the former, unlike the latter, essentially concerns just the relation in which I stand perceptually to an object (given certain conceptual capacities and attention). In this way an intentionalist can give an account of optimal perception that does not involve any elements of na ve realism. It is, therefore, this account that functions to undercut the na ve realist account of such optimal perceptions. Note that I am here not simply playing one perceptual theory off against another. I am not simply saying that a representationalist has an account of wholly veridical, optimal perception that is at odds with na ve realism. The point is that the only form of na ve realism still in the eld is one that is itself committed to endorsing a representationalist theory of illusion. So, unless na ve realists can point out some error in the foregoing extension of the theory to cover optimal perceptual states, they will
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themselves be saddled with an account that invalidates their own constituency analysis of such states, since they cannot both endorse representationalism as an account of illusory states and yet reject an unobjectionable development of that position that accounts for optimal cases. For this reason, and also because, as I suggested at the beginning of this section, an unmixed account of partly veridical perceptions is anyway in conict with the motivation of na ve realism, we must conclude that such a unmixed account must be rejected. This was, however, na ve realisms last stand in its attempt to account for illusion. So, na ve realism must be entirely rejected. Disjunctivism, if it is to survive, must be dissociated from it. IV In this section I consider the issue of where to place illusion in the experiential disjunctionin the good or the bad disjunctwhen na ve realism has been rejected. This issue of where to place illusion is not independent of the fate of na ve realism, since a disjunctivist theory that embraces na ve realism is forced to allocate illusion to the bad disjunctat least as I have interpreted such an assignment. This is because, in cases of veridical, non-illusory perception, na ve realism accounts for the phenomenal character of experience simply in terms of a certain physical object being a constituent of the experience. The phenomenal yellowness of my veridical perception of a canary just is a matter of that yellow bird being a constituent of my experience. The phenomenal yellowness of my experience when I illusorily see some differently coloured object as yellow must be accounted for in some other waya way that necessarily has no place in accounting for the phenomenal character of veridical perception, since here the constituent object does all the work. As Martin writes, The na ve realist account of perceptual experience . . . cannot be applied to any case of delusive experience, such as illusions where one does perceive an external object, but misperceives it as other than it really is. If we suppose that such cases involve the same type of mental state, perceptual experience, as veridical perception, then that will directly contradict the na ve realist account even of those cases (1997, 85).20 Since, however, na ve realism must be

20

In so far as Brewers form of na ve realism regards illusion as occurring subsequently to experience itself, in some response to such experience, he assigns illusions, or at least the truly experiential components of illusions, to the good disjunct. But that is because, in eect, Brewer does not recognise illusion as a genuinely sensory phenomenon at all.

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rejected, the question of where to place illusion in the experiential disjunction remains open. Na ve realism involves a certain way of interpreting the common disjunctivist claim that in good perceptual cases a certain object is a constituent of experience. Such a constituency view does not in and of itself amount to na ve realism, however. I have already quoted Paul Snowdon claiming that such constituency is an essential ingredient in any theory that deserves to be regarded as a form of disjunctivism; and yet he himself does not endorse na ve realism, in the present sense, in any of his writings. Indeed, he informs me that he rejects it. Does such a form of disjunctivismone that accepts constituency but rejects na ve realismalso determine where illusion is to be placed in the experiential disjunction? It does: illusion must be placed in the good disjunctas Snowdon himself consistently does. For in rejecting na ve realismthe view that a worldly constituent of an experience determines the phenomenal character of that experiencethe present form of disjunctivism is left with no role for constituency other than to constitute an experience as being a perceptual experience, rather than a mere hallucination. Constituency simply ensures, or expresses the fact, that perceptual contact is made with the real world. And for those disjunctivists (the vast majority) who peddle the idea of constituency, it is this issue of whether a perceived object is a constituent of a sensory experience or not that alone determines the fundamental psychological kind to which the experience is to be allocatedand, therefore, on which side of the experiential disjunction the experience falls. Despite what Snowdon claims, however, it is not necessary for a disjunctivist to hold that worldly objects are constituents of good experiences. He is certainly right that the mere denial of a common nature, as he puts it, does not fully capture the disjunctivist position. It is necessary that this lack of a common nature derive from a difference in how one stands cognitively to the world. It is precisely because certain experiences require the world to be a certain way, and require us to stand in a certain cognitively favourable relation to that world, that they count as good perceptual cases. With them, and with them alone, is the world perceptually present to one in some sense that is prized. A constituency view of experience is not required in order to capture all of this, however. So we have not yet covered all possible forms of disjunctivism. What sort of theory it is that both counts as a form of disjunctivism and yet rejects the idea that worldly objects are constituents of even good experiences? According to many writers, any direct realist theory that rejects a constituency account of perceptual experience amounts to some
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form of representationalist or intentionalist theory of experience.21 Such a theory holds that sensory experience, both perceptual and hallucinatory, possesses intentional (or representational) content in virtue of which such experience presents the world as being a certain way. What is thus presentedsome object or state of aairs in the worldis always distinct from the experience that presents it. Intentional content also determines, at least in part, the phenomenal character of experience.22 It is, I believe, correct to hold that such a theory is the only direct realist alternative to a constituency viewthough calling it a representationalist theory may cause some hackles to rise. One can understand resistance to the idea that anyone who denies that worldly objects are constituents of experience is committed to viewing us as merely representing the world when we plainly and directly perceive it. Perhaps the alternative term intentionalist will help to allay such fears. Moreover, one can, where perception is concerned, restrict the term represent and its cognates to the experiences themselves and the sensory systems involved in their production, and deny that the subject (merely) represents how things are. When the world is represented by a subjects experiences in a certain way, the world is presented to the subject of these experiences. It is, it may be held, the experiential character of such representations that renders the term represent inappropriate as applied to the subject of experience. If such scruples about merely representing the world are respected, as I believe they can be, it does seem to me that intentionalist (or, as I shall, in fact, also write, representationalist) accounts of experience are the only direct realist alternative to a constituency view. Although many intentionalists are not disjunctivists at all, there is certainly a possible marriage between the two positions.23 This will be possible, however, only if an intentionalist account of experience recognises two fundamentally dierent ways of experientially representing the worldone characterising the good, and one the bad, disjunct. These two ways must, for an intentionalist, be spelled out in terms of a
21

For example, Brewer (2006, 168) states that a constituency view is the only alternative to characterizing experience by its representational content. Martin (2002) concurs. Phenomenalists and certain indirect realists will fall into neither category, of course. It is, however, only direct realist accounts of perception that need to be considered here, since disjunctivism, whatever else it is, is essentially a direct realist perceptual theory. Many intentionalist theories are reductive, in the sense that they claim that sensory experience is nothing but a matter of representing the world in a certain way. Intentionalism need not be thus reductive. Husserl is a classical non-reductivist. More recently Block (e.g., 2003) has advocated a non-reductive version. This issue is not, however, relevant to the present discussion, however important in its own right. Alex Byrne (2001, 202 n7), for example, makes it clear that his own representationalist theory is compatible with disjunctivism.

22

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dierence in intentional content.24 Since it is denitive of disjunctivism that one cannot enjoy a good experiential state without perceiving some real object in the world, the sort of intentional content that is required in order to confer such good status on an experience is object-dependent content: a type of content, that is to say, that a psychological state can have only when it is the case that there really is an object that the state represents. Nothing short of this would guarantee that the experiences that possess such content are of such a kind that they are possible only when some real object is being perceived, as disjunctivism requires. More than this may, however, be required if an intentionalist account is to do justice to the disjunctivist position, even when it is specied that the psychological states in question are sensory in character.25 Paul Snowdon has suggested to me that any case where one hallucinates a familiar object shows that experiential object-dependent content is too weak a notion to capture disjunctivist claims. The psychological state here is, it may be thought, both sensory and objectinvolving; and yet, being a hallucination, it falls under the bad disjunct. For reasons I have given elsewhere (2002, 2656), I reject the suggestion that hallucinatory experiences themselves can contain the sort of object-dependent content suggested by Snowdon. But let us suppose that they can. If so, the intentionalist disjunctivist must appeal to a more specic type of intentional content: one that requires not just the (sometime) existence of its object, but that objects presence. Such content, and the experiences that possess it, need to be, we might say, not merely object-dependent, but object-involving.26 Such content is itself
24

Although, as mentioned in n22 above, intentionalism need not oer a reductive account of sensory experience, and so can recognise something other than representational content as intrinsic to, and even as essential to, such experience, no such extra feature is able to sustain a disjunctivist division of experiences into dierent fundamental kinds. The only non-representational variation in sensory states that any representationalist will countenance is in some irreducible sensory features of such states: qualia. Qualia, however, are supposed to account only for the phenomenal character of experiences (at least in part). Since both illusions and hallucinations can be phenomenally identical to veridical perceptions, no such variation in sensory character can constitute the disjunctivists fundamental dierence in kind of psychological state. According to Martin, If one holds that the content of perceptual experience can be singular, and also holds that singular content is object-dependent, then one will thereby be forced to be disjunctivist (2002, 395 n25). This may well be right; but, as we are about to see, the point is not self-evident. Martin (2003) has signalled a dierent distinction by contrasting the terms objectinvolving and object-dependent. He draws his own distinction as part of an exploration of a possible non-disjunctivist position that yet construes perceptual experience as object-involving. (The account in question is Tyler Burges.) Since Martins distinction is of signicance only in relation to such an account, and since that account is not disjunctivist, it is not relevant to the present discussion, whatever intrinsic interest it may have.
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sometimes characterised these days, employing a natural extension of the term, as demonstrative. It is such content, the intentionalist will hold, that underwrites successful perceptual judgement to the eect that this object is such and such. It is the absence of such content in the hallucinatory case that explains why any such demonstrative judgement there misres. This sketch will have to suce here to indicate the sort of intentionalist theory that can embody disjunctivism, since what we are primarily concerned with are the consequences of embracing such a theory for an account of illusion.27 Distinguishing between experiences on the basis of whether their intentional content is or is not object-involving, or demonstrative, is clearly going to be at the heart of any intentionalist form of disjunctivism. Distinguishing experiences in this way will not, however, serve to distinguish illusions from veridical perceptions, but only perceptions of either sort from hallucinations. Both illusory and veridical perceptions will have such object-involving content in virtue of the fact that both are perceptions. The perfectly obvious essential difference between an illusion and a hallucination is that in the former, but not the latter, a real object is perceivedjust as is the case with veridical perception. An intentionalist will certainly attribute object-involving content to veridical, non-illusory perceptions. But it is hardly because such optimal perceptions are specically veridical that this is the right thing to say. My non-illusory perception of a green square does not possess object-involving content because I get the squares colour right: it is simply because I am actually seeing the squaresomething I can do even though I get the colour wrong as a result of illusion. My seeing the square puts me in a position to make a certain sort of demonstrative judgement: one to the effect that this object is green. This judgement is possible, for the intentionalist, only because of the objectinvolvingness of the experiential state of which it is an expression. The same will hold when I misperceive the object as yellow. My natural judgement, in such a case, to the eect that this is yellow will be

27

A nal word on this issue, though. John Campbell (2002, 1356) interprets such an intentionalist account as construing experience in terms of grasping a demonstrative, object-dependent thought. He then, quite reasonably, goes on to criticise any such account as failing to do justice to the distinctive role that experience plays in relation to thought. The intentionalist form of disjunctivism that we are now considering, however, views experiences themselves as possessing object-dependent content. Such experiences will put a suitably cognitively equipped subject in a position to entertain a corresponding demonstrative thought; but they are not themselves modes of thinking. (They could, indeed, be wholly non-conceptual in nature.) Campbell interprets an intentionalist account in the way he does because of a restriction of intentionality to thinking, which there is absolutely no reason to accept.

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mistaken, of course; but this judgement can be entertained at all only because of the perceptual presence of the object itselfsomething that the object-involving content of an experience alone guarantees. Although intentionalist disjunctivism cannot distinguish between illusory and non-illusory perceptual states in terms of the above sort of object-involving content, it may be thought that it can do so in terms of an element of content that relates specically to features of objects. When I optimally see a green square, I not only see the square, but also, to echo Sellars again, its very greenness. On the basis of so seeing the square and its colour I can think demonstratively of this green colour, and mean by that, not some repeatable shade of colour, however determinate, but a particular instance of colour. When I hallucinate, I can do no such thing. And perhaps I am not in a position to think demonstratively about an objects features when those features are illusorily perceived (even veridically). The suggestion would be that in virtue of the illusory nature of a perception of a things colour, the experience at best visually represents a certain colour as instantiated, but not a particular instantiation of a colour. There is no actual instance of a colour that it represents. This approach would give us a neat threefold distinction. An optimal perception is demonstratively related to its object and its veridically perceived features; an illusory perception is demonstratively related to its object, but not to its illusorily perceived features; and hallucination is demonstratively related to nothing, though it putatively is. On this basis one could allocate illusion to the bad disjunct in virtue of its not, in so far as it is illusory, representing an objects features in a manner suitable for sustaining demonstrative judgement. This proposal will not work, however, since what has just been said of optimal perceptions, as supposedly distinctive and essential to them, applies equally, and essentially, to illusory perceptions. When we illusorily perceive an object, we perceive the objects featureseven the ones that illusorily appear to us. To deny this is to deny that we see an object at all in at least some illusory cases. For one cannot perceive a thing at all without perceiving some feature that it has; and one cannot consciously perceive a thing at all (so that it consciously seems a certain way to the subject) without consciously perceiving some feature that it has (and that, therefore, itself appears a certain way to the subject). We have already seen that visually perceiving an objects shape requires seeing that objects colour. So if, in seeing a green square that looks yellow to me, I did not see the objects colour, I would not see its shape either. If these are the only two features of the object that appear to me, as may be the case, I would therefore not see anything of the object at all. Indeed, we can suppose that I misperceive both the
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objects colour and its shape. If it is claimed that, because of illusion, I fail to see either of these features of the object, then, even more obviously, I end up not seeing it at all.28 So, when that green square looks yellow to me, I perceive its colour: its actual colour, that is, since it has no other. Since I see the squares colour, and that colour is green, I see the squares greenness (though not as green, of course). It is, indeed, precisely this greenness that looks yellow to me. What other feature could it be? And nothing can look a certain way to me unless I see it. If it had had a dierent colour, doubtless that colour would not have looked yellow to me in this light. Again, suppose the colour of this green square were (really, objectively) to turn a darker shadein response, say, to a change in temperature. In some, perhaps most, such cases, the apparent yellowness would seem to become darker. Here I would be seeing the actual darkening of the squares coloursomething I could not do were I not seeing its colour. It is only because of the fact that, when we suer illusion, we illusorily perceive the actual features of an object that a suitably cognitively equipped subject can, on the basis of an illusory experience, make a perceptual demonstrative judgement about the actual features of the object perceived. Seeing the green square as I dothat is, as yellowI could judge that this colourthat is to say, this colour instanceis qualitatively identical to that of some canary I had recently seen. Here I would be making a perceptually based demonstrative judgement about the actual colour of the square: something I could not do if I were not perceiving it and visually representing it in an object-involving way. That I would indeed be making such a judgement is clear from the fact that such a judgement would be falserather than entirely lacking an object or subject matter. And the reason for this is that the square, unlike the canary, is not really yellow.29 Even illusion is, we may say, feature-involving. Intentionalism cannot, therefore, distinguish between illusory and veridical perceptual states in term of an intrinsic difference in intentional content. It can do so in terms of the distinction between the accuracy and inaccuracy of the intentional content; but this is an extrinsic matter. We saw earlier that the existence of veridical illusion shows that a distinction between accuracy and inaccuracy is not

28

A surprisingly large number of philosophers have claimed that it is impossible for all the perceived features of an object to be perceived illusorily: that illusion must be partial. There is nothing whatever to be said for this view. For a brief discussion and diagnosis of this error, see my (2002, 823). I could, of course, judge that the colour the square appears to me to have is identical to that of the canary, and then I would be correct. In the straightforward situation in question, however, I am making the simpler judgement about the colour of the square.

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sufcient to account for the distinction between illusory and non-illusory (or, at least, optimal and non-optimal) perceptual states. Nevertheless, the extra resources that were employed there to make good this deciency are insufcient to locate illusion in the bad disjunct. All that was required for a state to be non-optimal, even though it was veridical, was that it not put one in a position either to know that or to see that the perceived object is really as it appears (in some relevant respect), and this was spelled out in terms of the perceptual processes involved only fortuitously resulting in veridical perceptual states (when they do). This, too, is an extrinsic matter, at least for an intentionalist. Indeed, for an intentionalist, the only relevant intrinsic features of intentional states are features of intentional content.30 But on this score, as we have just seen, there is no dierentiating between optimal perceptual states and non-optimal ones. Nevertheless, it may occur to some readers that bringing into the intentionalist account of non-optimality a reference to the possibility of knowledge provides the basis for regarding illusory perceptions (whether veridical or not) as intrinsically dierent in kind from any non-illusory perceptions. In particular, readers may be reminded of John McDowells form of disjunctivism. He contrasts psychological states, allocating them to the good or the bad disjunct, precisely in terms of their potentiality for giving the subject knowledge. The disjunction that McDowell typically employs is that of a fact being manifest to one as opposed to the mere appearance of such a fact. That a fact is manifest to one does not mean that one knows it to obtain. What the manifestness of a fact does, rather, is to make knowledge of the fact available to one (McDowell 1982, 457). According to McDowell, for some purposes the notion of being in a position to know something is more interesting than the notion of actually knowing it (ibid., n1). If, however, psychological states are allocated to the good or the bad disjunct on this basis, it looks as if the intentionalist account ought to put illusion squarely in the bad disjunct of the perceptual disjunction. As I mentioned earlier, however, although McDowell is certainly a disjunctivist of sorts, his disjunctivism is not a perceptual theory at all. That his concern is but indirectly related to the issue of the nature of perceptual experience is made clear when he considers a subject whose visual system properly operates only tfully, in such a way that he is prone to hallucinate things. On an occasion where it is working properly (though he does not know this), the subject sees a certain object, and sees it veridically and non-illusorily. According to McDowell, this
30

See n24 above.

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constitutes a bad case. This subject is not in a position to acquire knowledge, and no fact is manifest to him, since for all he knows he could be hallucinating. Although, in McDowells example, the subject genuinely sees a tomato in front of him, he need not count as experiencing the presence of a tomato. . . One counts as experiencing the fact making itself manifest only in the exercise of a (fallible) capacity to tell how things are (ibid.). For McDowell, therefore, even a veridical, non-illusory perceptual experience is, in virtue of an unfavourable context, to be allocated to the bad disjunct. It is not types of experience as such that McDowell is interested in classifying disjunctively, but experiences-in-a-context. And this is the most that a theory that works with the notion of being in a position to know can claim. We must conclude, therefore, that intentionalism cannot regard illusion as an intrinsically different sort of fundamental psychological state from non-illusory perception, and so is unable to place illusion anywhere other than in the good disjunct. Since this is also true of Snowdons version of disjunctivism, and these are the only two disjunctivist alternatives to the discredited na ve realist theory, we must conclude that disjunctivism as such must allocate illusion to the good perceptual disjunct. V We should nally consider what signicance such a concession may have. Presumably those philosophers who have both embraced disjunctivism and have placed illusions in the bad disjunct did so because they thought that otherwise some unfortunate cognitive consequence would ensue; or that some cognitive virtue would otherwise be lost. In order fully to appreciate the possible effect of our concession, we should need to see what it precisely is that disjunctivism is supposed to uphold; and unfortunately there are almost as many such aims as there are disjunctivists. I shall, therefore, restrict myself to addressing two related concerns that are, I think, fundamental. Disjunctivists, whatever other aims and interests they may have, are concerned to defend direct realism, and believe that disjunctivism is the only way to defend it. It may be thought that the present concessive proposal puts such direct realism in peril, because it requires us to acknowledge that there is a highest common factor to illusory perceptual states and veridical, non-illusory ones. This may be thought worrying, because it implies that when we normally and non-illusorily see a thing, we do so in virtue of having a type of experience that might have been illusory. This does not, however, in any way imperil direct realism. It might, if the common fundamental kind to which both illusory and non-illusory perceptions are

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assigned were insufcient to constitute direct awareness of the world. One can, therefore, understand a worry about the suggestion that there is a highest common factor, a complete identity in psychological nature, in veridical perception and a possible hallucination. Since a hallucinatory state involves no awareness of the world, and yet just such a state supposedly constitutes the entire experiential dimension of a veridical perception, even the latter can, it may be thought, afford no experiential direct awareness of the world either. I do not say that this line of thought is unanswerable, but one can at least see the worry. When it comes to veridical and illusory perceptions, however, the worry is not even visible, since the latter do give one a direct awareness of the world, in virtue of being, unlike hallucinations, perceptions. At least we need some argument to show that they do not; and I cannot think of one that ought to be convincing to a disjunctivist. There is, however, a remaining concern that may be thought not to be adequately addressed by pointing out that allocating illusion to the good disjunct in no way impugns direct realism. This concern is to preserve the thought that in non-illusory perception, and here alone, an object and its perceptible features are manifest to one. When I non-illusorily perceive a green square, its greenness is immediately present to my consciousness. When it illusorily looks yellow, however, something less than this is the caseeven when, as in veridical illusion, it really is yellow. This observation, even if correct, will support the decision to place illusion in the bad disjunct, however, only if such manifestness is an intrinsic and essential characteristic of a certain kind of experience. It can be this, however, only if na ve realism is true, which it is not. For in order for the observation to be correct, manifestness must at least require that the object be accurately perceived. So, if manifestness is an intrinsic and essential feature of a kind of experience, so is accuracy. Accuracy is clearly not an essential feature of experiences according to intentionalism. Nor is it according to Snowdons version of the constituency theory. It can be an essential feature only on the na ve realist account of things, where constituencycertainly an essential matterdetermines the phenomenological character of an experience, and hence ensures accuracy. Na ve realism is false, however; and these are the only direct realist options. Such manifestness cannot, therefore, be an essential feature of experiences, and our observation loses its force as an objection to placing illusion in the good disjunct. If there is a sense of manifest, as doubtless there is, according to which the world is never manifest to one in virtue of perceiving illusorily, then such manifestness is something that accrues accidentally to any intrinsically specied kind of experience. There is, perhaps, a weaker sense of the term according to which only certain intrinsically speciable kinds
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of experience allow the world to be manifest to us. In this sense, however, for the world to be manifest is just for it to be directly perceivedsomething that holds for perceptual experience as such, whether it be illusory or not. It is understandable why one might want such openness to the world to be written into the very nature of a certain kind of experience. To demand that, in addition, accuracy be built into the very nature of such experience is to want too much. Indeed, disjunctivists should not be at all hesitant in allocating illusion to the good disjunct, since the clear fundamental distinction in this area is between all perceptions, whether illusory or not, on the one hand, and mere hallucinations on the other. Both illusory and non-illusory perceptions are genuine perceptions. With both, perceptual contact is made with some real item in the physical world, and it itself appears some way to the perceiver.31 On their basis, demonstrative thoughts about a perceived object are equally possible for suitable cognitively equipped subjects. All this indicates a fundamental sameness of kind. References Block, N. 2003. Mental Paint. In Reections and Replies. Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, ed. M. Hahn and B. Ramberg, 165200. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brewer, B. 2006a. Perception and Content. European Journal of Philosophy 14: 165181. 2006b. How to account for Illusion. In Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, ed. A Haddock and F. Macpherson, 168180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byrne, A. 2001. Intentionalism Defended. Philosophical Review 100: 199240. Crane, T. 2006. Is There a Perceptual Relation? In Perceptual Experience, ed. T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, 126146. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hinton, J. M. 1973. Experiences. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Johnston, M. 2006. The Function of Sensory Awareness. In Perceptual Experience, ed. T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, 260290. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Tim Crane (2006, 134) characterises disjunctivism as the thesis that there is no common fundamental kind of stateperceptual experiencepresent in cases of genuine perception, which is a relation to a mind-independent object, and illusion and hallucination. The suggestion that illusion is not a relation to a mind-independent object is quite mistaken (unless idealism be true). In virtue of being a kind of perception, rather than a hallucination, that is precisely what it is. The additional suggestion that illusory perception is not genuine perception is also at least tendentious.

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McDowell, J. 1982. Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge. Proceedings of the British Academy 68: 455479. Martin, M. G. F. 1997. The Reality of Appearances. In Thought and Ontology, ed. M. Sainsbury, 81106. Milan: FrancoAngeli. 1998. Setting Things Before the Mind. In Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Mind, ed. A. OHear, 157179. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. The Transparency of Experience. Mind & Language 17: 376425. 2004. The Limits of Self-Awareness. Philosophical Studies 120: 3789. Smith, A. D. 2002. The Problem of Perception. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2008. Disjunctivism and Discriminability. In Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, ed. A. Haddock and F. Macpherson, 181204. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Snowdon, P. 1990. The Objects of Perceptual Experience I. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXIV, 121150. 2005. The Formulation of Disjunctivism: A Reply to Fish. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society CV: 129141.

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