Consciousness and Perception

(1) The problem that these recent reflections concerning the universal character of perception was intended to illuminate was, why consciousness necessitates accessibility of the perceptual attention. In what way do they take us any nearer to an answer? We have seen we cannot analytically deduce attentive accessibility, as we could the occurrence of experience. Nor can there be a logical deduction from the other mental elements of consciousness, say from the existence of a continuity of rational experience. What rather we should look for are logical connections leading from the concept of consciousness to accessibility of the attention. Then what emerged concerning the nature of perception provides the logical connection that we seek.

But before I spell out that central connection, a preliminary observation. Namely, that the investigation of perception reveals to begin with a fact of some significance. For if what was claimed is correct, it must follow that the concept of perception is derivable by a purely formal operation upon that of the one phenomenon transparently analytically entailed by consciousness, the experience. And this already constitutes a logical link between consciousness and perception: (sheer) awareness leading to (experiential) awareness leading to (sheer extensional) awareness. We take the genus-concept of the experience, and derive the species-concept of perception by assembling a concept out of no more than that of experience and extensional object. That concept is not of an experience taking an extensional object.

Rather, it is the concept of experience taking such an object. In short, once we assume that the state consciousness is realized, the conceptual raw materials are there from the start, merely waiting to be assembled: the concept of perception grows out of that of the core phenomenon of consciousness. It follows from these considerations that for conscious subjects perception cannot be just one logical possibility amongst others,

as holds of sight or hearing. Nor can it be a logical possibility that is founded in part on sheer empirical fact, as the logical possibility of specific faculties like sight and hearing depends upon their empirical reality. It must be one that is conceptually foreseeable. Therefore even if it had been possible for angelic consciousness to exist in the absence of perceptual accessibility, a logical place would have been prepared in advance for perception: an option simply not taken up in this case for reasons of a metaphysical nature. In short, a possibility neglected.

(2) These truths follow upon the analysability of perception into wholly universal a priori-given constituent elements.

They are preliminary to, and precursors of, the deductive connection between consciousness and perception which interests me, which I now discuss. Let us start by representing the sector of reality (R) lying outside the subject's own mind (Ψs) as RΨ–s, and consider the epistemological relation in which a conscious subject stands to this outer domain.

Then the proposition which I hope soon to deduce from the aformentioned universal character of perception is that the epistemological link to RΨ–s that is guaranteed by the presence of consciousness is constrained by the nature of the situation to be perceptual in type. Now it is an interesting fact that such a claim might well prove acceptable to many if the worlds in question were restricted to physical worlds. It is worth considering why it should be acceptable under those conditions. Is it because we have encountered or can imagine nothing else? But the claim most people would make is surely of a stronger order than one based on the character of their experience or the powers of their imagination. Many would say it was simply inconceivable that there be alternative ultimate avenues to physical phenomenal fact. In short, that it is a logical necessity that in a physical world the final court of epistemological appeal, when it comes to discovering purely physical phenomenal fact is, not merely ‘the test of experience’, it is ‘the test of perceptual experience’. What interests me is the reason one is persuaded of this proposition. In my opinion it is because of considerations supporting the universal thesis that is transcendent of the metaphysical character of the world involved: the doctrine that irrespective of the type of the world perception alone meets the conditions necessary for something to count as the ultimate epistemological avenue to outer phenomenal fact that is guaranteed in a mind by the presence of consciousness.

Not everyone will accept a universal theory of the kind envisaged. Why, when the reality under discussion is non-physical and the domain under consideration RΨ–s, need the sensitivity of consciousness to the truth of that domain take the form of an attention ready to receive the imprint of extensionally-given items? Why, in short, need it take the form of perception? For example, in an Idealist World what need of such? What need or indeed possibility of sensations, of sensory quales, and so forth? May there not exist undreamed-of epistemological avenues to RΨ–s, which make no use of perception or anything remotely like it? To insist that it be perceptual is metaphysically unrealistic (sic!), chauvinistic, and so on.

How should one respond to this objection? I think to begin by introducing more precision into the delimitation, both of the (outer) subject-matter consciousness needs to relate with epistemologically, and of the general character of that relation. For example, it is not addressed to (say) the universal metaphysical characteristics of RΨ–s, nor therefore with the marshalling of pure forms of reasoning. Rather, consciousness brings with it at each moment the latent capacity for epistemological contact of an experiential kind with the phenomenal facts of outer Reality. This is because consciousness is itself an occurrent continuous phenomenon that is renewed instant by instant and is ‘in touch with’—inner and outer—Reality. What is implicit is the utilization of reliable epistemological avenues to contingently present phenomenal facts and events of RΨ–s; and one might add, given through experiences whose content ‘paces’

temporally the ongoing state of waking consciousness, data that is temporally aligned with the time of Ψs. Finally, it should be emphasized that I do not presume upon the presence of any perceptual faculty. Thus, I am not suggesting that the epistemological contact in question take any form, for I expressly disavow faculty theories of the Attention. I do not even claim that sensations need act as attentive mediator, let alone the varieties known to us. I am concerned to demonstrate no more than the potential for attentive contact—of some form or another. That is, of steady occurrent latent perceptual power—of some form or another.

(3) In sum, the truth-orientation of consciousness necessitates the latent capacity to make epistemologically well-founded discoveries concerning the contingently present temporally aligned phenomenal occupants of some given sub-sector of RΨ–s. Such a state of affairs implies that the experiential life of consciousness must from moment to moment be ready reliably to respond to select phenomena in RΨ–s, and that a specific foundation for knowledge would thereby be established. And yet if such experience is to be the expression of the latent epistemological contact of consciousness with what lies beyond itself, something more is needed than reliable responsiveness to that beyond.

Namely, those experiences must in the final analysis be founded upon experiences in which contents of that outer domain are directly presented to awareness. This is because the only conceivable ultimate epistemological avenue leading consciousness beyond itself is awareness of what lies beyond. That is, consciousness can go beyond itself cognitively only by breaking out of itself: that is, into awareness of what lies beyond. Only thus in the final analysis can outer Reality be known.

Then this is to say that the experience in question has to be perceptual, for perception is (and is no more than) bare awareness of phenomenal realities. The one experience which combines regular responsiveness to what lies beyond consciousness with the property of being the ultimate and essential expression of the orientation of consciousness towards outer Reality, is perception. It alone unites the necessary evidential and constitutive properties. If an experience has the

epistemological significance of reliably evidencing the phenomenal state of a sector of RΨ–s, and has in addition the necessary constitutive property of being putatively an awareness-of that sector under some description which truly fits, it at one and the same time constitutes the requisite epistemological bridge and acquires the status of perception. It follows from these considerations that if the epistemological potential guaranteed in conscious subjects by the truth-orientation of consciousness is realized—no matter in how unutterably different a manner from anything we know or could imagine—it will justify the characterization of the epistemologically significant experiences as ‘experiences of (the contacted) x’, in a special and familiar extensional sense of the latter expression, the perceptual sense.

Then in using the expression ‘experience of——’ in the special extensional sense, no mention is made of the specific, highly idiosyncratic, and from the point of view of consciousness wholly contingent, mode in which this special

‘experience of——’ is realized. This fact can easily ‘throw’ one, deflecting one from the fundamental truth that, while the mode is wholly contingent so far as consciousness is concerned, that which it is a mode of is not. This completes the deduction.

(4) Now it may even be that implicitly it is metaphysically chauvinistic to affirm that consciousness necessitates the potential for the perception of outer reality. It could be the case that space is a necessary condition of perception of any kind, the ‘form of outer sense’ of Kant the only conceivable mode in which perception can be realized. My reaction to this suggestion is, if it is true then so be it. I am concerned merely with the necessary connection between consciousness and accessibility of the perceptual attention.