Abstract

PEREIRA, Francisco. The role of distal objects in visual perception. Prax. filos. [online]. 2008, n.26, pp.33-50. ISSN 0120-4688.

Some philosophers point out that the visual experiences that we undergo when perceiving are ontologically of the same kind as those experiences that we could undergo if we were having a perfectly matching hallucination. If in both cases there is an ontologically highest common factor-an experience of the same kind-then distal objects clearly do not constitute fundamentally our visual experiences. One of the reasons used for the adoption of this particular interpretation is the possibility of producing a hallucination, which is introspectively indiscriminable from a perceptual experience, by activating the same proximate neurophysiological causes in the subject’s brain. In this paper I will argue that this reason is clearly insufficient. Indeed, I will suggest that there is an alternative way to understand perception as a natural phenomenon in which distal objects do play a constitutive role (causal and non-causal). If this is the case, then perceptual experiences and perfectly matching hallucinations are fundamentally different, even if they are introspectively indiscriminable.

Keywords : Perception; Distal Objects; Hallucinations; Causal Processes; Highest Common Factor.

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