HORIZONTE DEL PROYECTO 5 AÑOS

As said, indirectivists posit intermediary entities between our intentional mental states and the world of ordinary objects. These intermediaries might be representations, sense data, intentional objects, percepts, or some other kind of thing. Different indirectivist views posit different entities for a variety of reasons. Some, like sense data, are thought to be required because of a disparity between how things appear and how they are. Others are sometimes thought to be required in order to avoid certain complications

75 _{That is not to say that the details of any given phenomenal intentionalist}

account will not constrain the possibilities here.

76 _{The view in question here is not one that takes the relevant properties to}

be abstract universals, but one that takes the properties to be property instances. So, one is not an indirectivist simply because one holds the

position that we only see the table by seeing its instantiated properties. One is an indirectivist if one thinks the table’s properties cause us to represent abstract properties, of which the table’s properties are instances.

arising from intentional inexistents, and other such puzzles. Below I examine one such indirectivist account, listing its merits and demerits.

Before doing so, I should explain why I have chosen not to discuss a very prominent theory that can be understood as an indirectivist theory of cognitive contact: Frege’s account of sense and reference. Roughly put, senses, or cognitive contents on Frege’s view (Frege, 1892/1997), act as intermediaries between mental states and the world of ordinary objects. On Frege’s view, the cognitive contact relation is akin to reference, which obtains between a mental state and an ordinary object by means of the object’s mode of presentation, or sense (Frege, 1892/1997). So for Frege cognitive contact is a two-step relation: the first between the mental state and its content (sense), the second between the sense and its referent (the ordinary object in the present case. My reason for not examining this view of cognitive contact is that I have already discussed several challenges for views that take contents to be senses: if there are challenges to the view that intentionality is a relation to senses, and if this relation to senses is the first of two steps in making cognitive contact (reference), then those challenges apply here as well.

8.2.1 Indirectivism and Sense Data

The sense data theory takes mind dependent concrete objects to be the immediate objects of experience (Russell, 1912/1997, 1927). Though out of favour, sense data theories appear to have some advantages. There does not seem to be a problem about how to specify the relation between intentional states and their contents since the contents with which the intentional states are connected are, at least on most sense data views, in direct contact with them. On the other hand, one might ask how exactly are we to pair sense data

with the ordinary objects a theory of cognitive contact requires. Perhaps some sense data theorists are idealists, but many are not. Therefore some additional story about how we cognitively contact the world of ordinary objects by first contacting sense data is required. That is, some account is required about which mind-dependent sense datum is linked to which external ordinary object, such that when I encounter that object, I have that sense datum. That is how a sense data theory would deliver cognitive contact.

One possibility for specifying which sense datum goes with which object is by appeal to co-instantiation. Roughly, round sense data go with objects that have the property of roundness. The challenge here is that sense data theories came about, in part, because our perceptions seem to involve properties that everyday objects do not have, such as perspectival properties. More clearly, sense data theories enjoyed the popularity they did precisely because they had an answer about how perfectly round coins could appear elliptical, how after images could be yellow, etc. The answer was that in such cases, there is indeed something elliptical, or yellow. It is just that the elliptical or yellow thing is a mind dependent sense datum. This is problematic because it seems to preclude the sense data theorist from appealing to the co-instantiation of properties to secure cognitive contact, as the things that we perceive indirectly (the external world objects) often do not, or cannot, instantiate some/all of the properties that the sense data appear to have.

Presumably, someone keen on sense data could posit some causal relation between ordinary objects and minds such that under certain circumstances, encountering object X would cause sense data SDX to happen, token, be

relation is problematic will depend on the nature of the sense datum. If a sense datum is a physical object, then the causal relation does not seem so mysterious. If, however, sense data are non-physical objects, then the causal relation inherits the problems associated with dualist interactionism: How do physical events cause sense data?

However, because sense data are supposed to have the very properties they appear to, perhaps they are physical objects. After all, assuming sense data theory to be true, and noting that sense data appear to have shape, color, size, etc., they must be physical. Only physical objects have these kinds of properties. But where, then, are sense data located? Russell (1912; 1927), for instance, thought they were located in the brain. The problem with that view is that nothing in the brain is, for instance, blue. On Jackson’s (1977) view, sense data are precisely where they seem to be, and are indeed caused by the material objects to which they belong—where belonging to is cashed out in the following way:

…[A] sense-datum, D, belongs to a material object, M, just if (i) an M- event causes the having of D, and (ii) that spatial properties of D are functionally dependent on those of M as a consequences of the manner in which M causes the having of D. (Jackson, 1977, p. 171)

Jackson also endorses the view that sense data can be three-dimensional (1977, pp. 102-103), which, according to Jackson, provides an answer to Ryle’s challenge that “round plates, however steeply tilted, do not usually look elliptical” (Jackson, 1977, p. 103). According to Jackson:

“[T]he three-dimensionalist has an extra dimension in which to resolve this dilemma. The sense-datum belonging to the round plate held at an angle is round at an angle.” (Jackson, 1977, p. 104)

Novel though Jackson’s account of sense-data is, one wonders what additional benefit there is to calling the posited entities ‘sense data’ rather than properties. They belong to objects, are (or can be) three dimensional, have causal influence on our sense organs, and, like the ordinary objects to which they belong, can appear round at an angle.

Jackson’s idiosyncratic view aside, sense data are often thought to be non- physical—or at least to exist in a phenomenal domain, rather than a physical one—mind-dependent entities that we are directly aware of when we perceive. This being the case, the question that emerges is how sense data theory might deliver cognitive contact. Our points of evaluation were:

1) How the theory understands the external world

2) What the theory says about our knowledge of the external world 3) How the theory accounts for the seeming directness and

immediateness of our cognitive contact 4) A theory’s relative parsimony.

If sense data exist outside the physical realm, and the ordinary objects that we think populate the external world exist in the physical realm, then it is not entirely clear whether sense data theory has much to say about the external world. Epistemically, sense data theory also faces some serious challenges: our perceptually based beliefs are most plausibly taken to be about ordinary everyday objects and states of affairs. But if perceptions are the justification for such beliefs, and our perceptions are always perceptions of sense data, then we seem to lack proper justification for believing anything about the ordinary objects our beliefs appear to be about—other than, of course, that said objects have, or in some way produce, the relevant sense data. Perhaps this complaint demands too much of sense data theory. The complaint, after all, seems to demand that the theory give us a justification for judgments

about the things in themselves as it were. On the other hand, the complaint might be taken as merely stating that according to common sense, our perceptually based beliefs are about ordinary objects, not sense data. So, sense data theory owes us an account of why things seem this way. Moreover, to someone not already committed to sense data, it is unclear how positing them would help a theory of cognitive contact. While sense data are concrete particulars on most sense data theories, it is not clear how these mind dependent concreta manage to connect us with the world of ordinary objects. This is especially true if, as is commonly held, sense data are not physical objects, and therefore have properties of a non-physical nature.