Tim Crane Perception

Tim Crane claims that the usual, instinctual way of regarding perception is as an “openness to the world.” However, the fact that illusions and hallucinations can occur seems to indicate some sort of fault with the typical view, as these bizarre experiences give rise to questions about the nature and coherence of perception. He asserts that in order to escape this problem, philosophers must provide a theory of perception which both maintains integrity to our intuitions and explains how perceptual mistakes are possible. (Crane 1.1) Peter Strawson in his paper “Perception and Its Objects” describes common-sense realism, which he takes to be an explication of our ordinary view of perception, and attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between
common-sense and scientific realism. The common-sense view, as he characterizes it, is one that “does credit physical things with visual and tactile properties ... not in the spirit of a notion of representative perception, but in the spirit of a notion of direct or immediate perception.” (Strawson 100) After a clarification of the arguments from illusion and hallucination delivered by Crane, Strawson's account of common-sense realism will then be examined. Finally, the implications of the arguments from illusion and hallucination on common-sense realism as it pertains to the “open to the world” view will be considered.

In having an illusion, an observer perceives an external object in a manner different from how it is in reality or, more specifically, perceives a property of that object which is not present. From the position of the observer, however, the experience of actually perceiving this fictional property would have been no different than the illusory experience they have. Illusions pose a problem to the common account of perception in that it seems such experiences require that the observer cannot be aware of the external object they are perceiving directly. If this is the case with illusions, why not with perceptions, since the experience would have been the same from the subjective view of the observer had it been real? (Crane 1.2) Hallucinations, though similar to illusions, involve an observer having an experience that perfectly mimics the perception of an actual physical object, except that no corresponding object is present. Potentially, a person could have a hallucination that, like an illusion, would have been indiscernible to them from the experience of actually perceiving the object of their hallucination. This possibility suggests that perception of an external object is not dependent on the existence of the object, as the observer could not differentiate between the experience of perceiving it and that of hallucinating it. Here the problem applies not to the directness of perception, but to the relation of dependence that the usual view asserts perception bears to its object. (1.3)

Strawson seeks an explanation of what perceptual (or sensible) experience consists of, and determines that this “strict account” must accurately describe how such experience is subjectively felt, and it must be accurate regardless of whether the resulting perceptual judgement is true or false. He asserts that if someone is asked to describe their visual experience without making any truth-claims about external objects, they will provide an answer along these lines: “I had a visual experience such as it would have been natural to describe by saying that I saw, etc...” (Strawson 93) He takes this to show that we are unable to truthfully describe our sensible experience without mention of the perceptual judgements that we form. Strawson concludes that “our perceptual judgements ... reflect a certain view of the world, as containing objects, variously propertied, located in a common space and continuing in their existence independently of our interrupted and relatively fleeting perceptions of them.” (94) Essentially the argument is that, because perceptual experience is so entangled with perceptual judgements, as a result we view the objects of our perceptions as being physical entities whose existence does not depend on our perceptual experience of them. Another consequence is that we equate this experience with “immediate consciousness of the existence of things outside us.” (97) In other words, intuition tells us that perception is direct, that we are in direct contact with the objects we are experiencing and perceiving. If perception is immediate and involves a consciousness of external objects, the common-sense view also implies that perceptual experience is contingent on the presence of the objects, or is caused by them. (101)

Crane elaborates on what the usual view of perception as “openness to the world” expresses, stating that it involves claims about the essence of the objects of perceptual experience and about the connection between the experiences and their objects.
(Crane 2.1) Concerning the first sort of claim, our “ordinary conception of perception [is] that its objects are mind-independent, public objects.” (2.1.1) Clearly in this respect, Strawson's exposition of common-sense realism relates it to Crane's “open to the world” view. In the “strict account” of perceptual experience free from any truth-claims about the external world, he demonstrates that even when not declaring the existence of the objects we take ourselves to perceive, we still cannot help but refer to these objects as if they do exist. Strawson asserts that the “strict account” of perceptual experience should be the same even in the case of illusion. (Strawson 93) Though we consider ourselves to be immediately experiencing objects around us, Strawson maintains that this does not require “that we take ourselves to be immune from illusion, hallucination or mistake.” (100) This point ties into the second of the “open to the world” view's claims, the conviction that the nature of a perceptual experience is a result of its relation to the nature of its object. (Crane 2.1.2) If we directly perceive external objects, it seems problematic for the common-sense view that the “strict account” of our experience would be the same if the experience was illusory, since we ordinarily understand our perceptual experiences to be related to their objects in the right way, or causally. However, Strawson argues that what our perceptual experiences indicate to us about the world around us does not entail that our resulting picture of its character is reliable, only that we take it to be. (Strawson
94)