Dissertation: On the Affective Disclosure of Value in Perception
Experiences—hearing beautiful music or stubbing one's toe—can feel good or bad. I articulate a way in which such affectively valenced experiences can disclose the value of objects to subjects. My account appeals to a normative epistemic principle I call 'inheritance': whether an experience is good of bad for a subject is a function of whether its objects are good or bad for that subject. If experience is governed by inheritance, it suggests that all perceivers are directly aware of value de re through their pleasant and painful experiences and that such experiences motivate intelligent action independently of the intellect's powers. I argue against representationalist alternatives, which rely on the idea that all epistemically significant features of an experience have truth or accuracy conditions. We can avoid this core cognitivist epistemic principle if we look at value perception as a matter of being positively and negatively affected by the objects of perception, rather than one of ascribing evaluative properties. Such a view allows us to understand the epistemic and motivational significance of pleasurable and painful experiences, and thus how humans and animals alike are capable of moving from perception to action without the aid of cognitive inferences. The normative dimension of perception, understood in terms of its affective character, may be what puts us in immediate moral contact with our community and makes us naturally susceptible to the value of works of art.
Presentationalism and Affective Character
Forthcoming
Anil Gupta's presentationalism holds that the rational role of experience is hypothetical—it licenses transitions from views to judgments. This is opposed to the conventional view that appearances independently confer some epistemic status on perceptual judgments. Gupta further reconceives of appearances as logical entities that can vary radically from presented elements. In this paper I argue that presentationalism cannot accomodate the affective character of perceptual appearances. It makes an implausible prediction: that faultless painful experiences can relate a perceiver to benefit and faultless pleasant experiences can relate a perceiver to harm. The upshot is that appearances must be more tightly bound to their elements than on Gupta's account.
Title redacted for anonymity (Available upon request)
Under Review
This paper explores the epistemology of a particular dimension of perceptual experience—its affective character: the 'badness' of, for example, the smell of garbage or the pain of a stubbed toe; the 'goodness' of the taste of chocolate, touch of sunshine, or sound of a musical chord. I take the view that affective character is epistemically significant, putting the perceiver in touch with axiological relations in which elements (garbage, bodily harm, sunshine, chocolate, and consonance) stand to perceivers. Two representationalist approaches to accommodate the affective character of experience—cognitivist and non-cognitivist—are explained and analyzed. Considering the objections they face, I motivate a non-representationalist alternative for capturing the epistemic significance of affective character. Because affective character is ubiquitous across the senses, the view developed suggests that perception is an inherently evaluative capacity and that some empirical judgments based on affectively valenced perceptual appearances are normative judgments.
"The Odd Intentionality of Pain" (Available upon request)
In Preparation
A talk diagnosing and proposing a resolution to a historical dispute between Stumpf and Brentano about the intentionality of pain and emotion. Available upon request.
"Perception Discloses Value Affectively" (Available upon request)
In Preparation
In this paper I defend the view that the affective character of perception is governed by the 'inheritance principle' which holds that a range of valenced perceptual experiences affect their subjects negatively and positively, and that, insofar as they do this, they disclose the value relations in which objects of perception stand to perceivers.
The thesis that perception is evaluative holds that perceptual phenomenology reflects external values, and that perceptual experiences are the basis of certain value judgments. Its antithesis is that perception is purely descriptive, and that all evaluation occurs post-perceptually. The two sides of this debate have historically not engaged with each other over the core question of whether perception is evaluative in character. This paper addresses that lacuna by sharpening the terms of the debate. I contrast two very different views of ethical perception, Perceptual Intuitionism (PI) and Evaluative Relationalism (ER). PI conceives of ethical perception as a quasi-visual representation of high-level deontic moral concepts, such as rightness and wrongness. ER, in contrast, conceives of ethical perception as a function of low-level affective phenomenology that valences phenomenal states across the sense modalities—affective character is evaluative because it is a source of epistemic access to axiological relations that involve the wellbeing of the perceiver. I argue that the differences between the views should decisively favor ER for naturalist realists about ethical value.
"Must Feelings Be Faultless? On Aesthetic Knowledge and Disagreement" (Available upon request)
In Preparation
In this paper in aesthetics I suggest that 'epistemic sentimentalism'—the view that the basic source of knowledge of value is affective (i.e. aesthetic pleasure is the source of knowledge of aesthetic value) can be distinguished from 'metaphysical sentimentalism'—the view that the nature of aesthetic value is to be understood in terms of our affective responses. I then defend epistemic sentimentalism from a traditional criticism that sentimentalism in general has been charged with—that, becuase feelings of aesthetic pleasure and displeasure can faultlessly disagree, sentimentalists cannot account for intersubjective agreement (universal validity) in aesthetic judgments. I claim that agreement can be secured by recognizing that objective aesthetic values ground aesthetic pleasure and other affective responses.
Aristotle on Perception's Epistemically Significant Evaluative Dimension (Available upon request)
In Preparation
This is an older paper about Aristotle's conception of aesthēsis—sensation—and phantasia—the sensory imagination. It is exploratory rather than persuasive. In in, I ask how Aristotle conceives of aesthēsis and phantasia as the basis of animal motivation, specifically locomotion—purposive movement that realizes a certain aim. This is the forebear of the idea that perception is discerning of perceiver-relative value in virtue of its specifically affective phenomenal character.