Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays

by Alastair Hannay

  2 In order to set the scene, however, we need a thought with more body than Frege provides, a thought whose 'how' includes not just representational and presentational variation but also the sort of variety proper to human transaction in the world, for example the kind of thing philosophers call propositional attitudes. Here we may help ourselves further by drawing on an analysis of intentionality proposed by John Searle. The analysis offers a useful example not only because it gives us a more full-bodied thought, but also because the terms of the analysis seem to preclude, or at least not to take account of, the possibility of a positive answer to our questions.

  Searle distinguishes between, on the one hand, the propositional content of our thinking, by virtue of which an intentional state represents (though not necessarily in imagery) objects and states of affairs, and, on the other hand, the 'psychological mode or manner' in which the 'representative content' occurs.13 The exception is perception, for here the objects and states of affairs are presented, not represented. Searle's account corresponds to a commonsense model of the subject's active contact with the world. There is, first, a referential core of our thinking, a propositional part which either represents or fails to represent those segments of reality which form the targets of our anticipations, surmisings and recollections. Surrounding that core there is a mental state or attitude corresponding to the psychological mode of our thinking, whether hope, fear, expectation, relief, belief, disbelief or whatever. If, as Searle has also put it, intentionality is 'how the mind grasps other things',14 then the psychological mode forms the practical 'how' of our engagement while the referential core forms the cognitive 'what', with perception functioning as a testing ground and continuing control.

  Equating the thought with the notion of intentionality allows us now to equip the thought with two sources of specifications, both of which together or either of which separately can be used to determine the type of which a given occurrence of thinking is a token. In effect, then, a given occurrence of thinking can be classified under different types, depending on the source(s) of specification. Treated as a biographical event, the thinking's type would usually be identified by means of both sources: we are interested in what a person does in and correctly or incorrectly believes about the part of the world in which he finds himself. But as natural scientists we would be interested more in the referential core than in the psychological mode, while the reverse would very likely be the case if we were psychiatrists interested in the subject's mental' life.

  However, although we are now offered a wider concept of thought in which the thought's type (its content) is to be determined not only by its referential 'what' but also by its attitudinal 'how', the possibility of the two interacting is not yet allowed for. In fact Searle's faithfully commonsensical account of intentionality fits, and is in fact no doubt based upon, the naïve notion of the world and of our perception of it which most of us unreflectingly accept. According to this view, the world is, roughly, a unitary space-time continuum containing assorted and, at the level of perception, fairly unfugitive matter. The matter provides common vistas for suitably placed perceivers, and the basic form of access to these vistas is direct acquaintance with whatever public objects, states of affairs and events a view of them affords. Perception, thus conceived, is like viewing things from a window, viewing things which others can view from other windows, windows from which anyone could look. A description of those things provides the 'what'.

  As for the 'how', the events or states comprising a psychological mode are at least not obviously unlocatable in the public world. No doubt hope, fear, desire,

  regret, and so on, do have a private aspect in addition to their public one, but that aspect does not seem to call too insistently for accommodation in some kind of mental space (though here one may prefer to put the emphasis on 'space'). The 'what' and the 'how' can be conceived as two independent aspects of the common world, combined in the active subject's thought.

  3 Perhaps they can, but must they be? Can they not combine with each other, the 'how' maybe assuming the status of a 'what'? Let us begin our inquiry into the possibility of the infection of the 'what' by the 'how' by looking at the visual 'how', an interesting phenomenon not usually accounted for in philosophical analyses of perception. The reason for its exclusion may be linked to acceptance of the naïve model of perception with its implicit assumption that the 'what' is the province of scientists, journalists and photographers while the 'how' remains a kind of window-colouring and shading' that can be left to specialists in aesthetics. But as Virgil Aldrich has shown, aesthetics construed as the aesthetics of perception can be a richer source of insight into the inherent complexity of perception than, say, an analysis of epistemic concepts or appeals to common understanding.

  The significance of the visual 'how' is that it is a 'how' whose specification necessarily enjoys the referential position. It does so simply because any specification of a visual 'how' is a specification of how some public object appears to be. Since the varieties of the visual 'how' are familiar to most philosophers these days, due to the writings of the later Wittgenstein, there is no need to catalogue them here. All that is required is to recognize the possibility of seeing the self-same object under different 'aspects', where a change of aspects is a modification of visual or sensory experience not due to any material change in the thing that is visible. The standard example is the shopworn but still serviceable duck–rabbit. The essential point is that a description of an aspect includes an object-phrase that is a specification not simply of something outside the mind but also, at least in part, of how the mind grasps that thing which is 'other than it'.

  But what exactly is the significance of this? Well, first it indicates that the referential core is not incorruptible: it is susceptible to the influence of modes or manners of seeing. Secondly, it undermines the naïve understanding of perception: how can visual characteristics not true of things in their strictly public space and status nevertheless appear to be true of them? And, thirdly, it leaves us with the problem of the true identity of the bearer of these aspects: Is there still an incorruptible core to the corruptible 'what', or does the possibility of the invasion of the 'what' by the 'how' somehow reduce the referential core of perception as a whole to 'subjective' or 'mental' status?

  The linguistic tradition in philosophy tends to leave these matters untouched. It is not that the phenomena or the distinctions are ignored, but simply that they are dealt with at a level where the crucial problems don't arise or else are susceptible to merely linguistic and therefore facile solutions. Thus there is talk of two languages of perception: the language of 'appearing', in which the object-phrases of verbs of perception are specifications of things that exist outside minds; and the

  language of 'appearance', in which verbs of perception (perhaps the very same verbs but with different uses) have as their complements specifications not necessarily applicable to whatever (if anything – it may be pure imagery) appears in the former sense.15 This may give rise to the problem of the ontological status of the merely intentional objects of appearance-descriptions, but then, in the time-honoured manner of philosophical book-keeping, one seeks to eliminate these rogue references by treating the object-phrases corresponding to them as 'oblique' references to public things not presently appearing: they are references contained in clauses specifying how some presently appearing object 'looks'. Thus the true description 'I see two pennies' when there is only one penny to be seen is said to be elliptical for 'I see what looks like two pennies'.16 The result seems to be that one can go away satisfied that all descriptions of visual content are 'ultimately' descriptions of how publicly perceivable objects appear or look, and that no descriptions of how they appear or look include specifications of things which are not publicly perceivable.

  Now this may effectively rid us of such rogue references as 'The two pennies I now see but only in my mind', but it does not rid us of the very apparent ability of ordinary public references to gi
ve us roguish looks, and it is this ability that gives rise to the problems just listed. However, these problems can be presented in an even more pointed way. It may be the case that descriptions of looks are always descriptions of public things that look that way, but it is certainly not the case that their looking that way always corresponds to some specification of them in their publicly perceptible state. Consider the following: I am a university man of settled, scholarly ways and limited interests, bound for the most part to my study, and perhaps to those of a circle of similarly narrow-minded acquaintances. But one day I happen to be brought, say by a rich and worldly friend, into quite different surroundings, seeing new and unfamiliar sights, and acquiring new visual and other information about my environment. On returning home, I find my study itself has an altogether new and unfamiliar 'feel'. It has acquired definite characteristics which it did not have before; it has become spartan (at best), less 'central', and (at worst) tawdry and insignificant. But it quickly loses these characteristics as the memory of the unfamiliar fades and restores to my study its old familiarity.17

  The tale is one from which various morals may be drawn: for instance, that things and places may have properties in experience that they are not recognized as having or as having had until, perhaps only momentarily, they cease to have them. (A simple case: you only realized the tap had been audibly dripping when it stopped.) The properties may not be the ones that find their way most often into our sentences, but they are properties none the less, and it would be tendentious to regard them as mere 'shading' or 'colouring'. But for us the main moral is that the range of properties mentioned – familiarity, tawdriness, centrality, and so on – are attributable in experience to things and places on the basis of an impression received, and yet cannot be construed as properties of the things and places themselves. Take the predicate 'familiar'. 'Familiar' is always implicitly 'familiar to someone', and the familiarity which X has for A is not a quality of X B could ever

  be said to have failed to detect, or which A could reasonably chide B for not detecting. 'Familiar' is not an observational predicate, in spite of the impressive quality of the corresponding property. The conditions of its application may, like Frege's shading and colouring, be evoked by the presentation of some object or situation, but they cannot be reduced to a description of whatever it is that is presented. Nor, being an observational predicate, can its corresponding property be depicted. If it is attributable to what is depicted, that is simply because what is seen evokes that way of seeing what is depicted.

  Properties of the above kind and their predicates may be termed 'situational'. They are in some way tied to the manner of the perceiving subject's experience of the particular things and events in its environment. In this respect they resemble the properties Aldrich has analysed and calls 'aesthetic'. For these, 'situational' is a less apt term, since aesthetic properties are in important respects more closely linked to the actual objects that are seen to have them. But the logic of aesthetic predicates is significantly the same: they cannot be classified as observational predicates because here too there are no specifiable physical conditions which would suffice to confirm the correctness or incorrectness of their application. Aldrich maintains that aesthetic predicates are space-qualifiers with a special use or meaning.18 The terms themselves, for example 'flat', 'solid', 'deep', 'whole', and so on, can also have an observational meaning or use: that is, they are applicable in their literal (and perhaps primary) sense to things as they present themselves – or as they look in mind-independent respects. But in their aesthetic use they are metaphors which have no observational application: aesthetic flatness, solidity, depth and wholeness cannot be attributed to things as objects fully observable to any sensorily normal observer. Although Aldrich has called the space in which the properties appear 'picture space' (also 'aesthetic space'), it is important to note that these properties are not representational; they describe something presented. Otherwise the predicates in question would not have a special use or meaning. Thus the three-dimensional depth of a depicted scene is an observational property of the scene depicted, not an aesthetic property of the depicting object. If 'depth' is to have an aesthetic meaning, it must be by virtue of a property of which, as Wittgenstein puts it (though his own example is of a picture's representational theme), one cannot say: 'what a picture must be like to produce this effect'.19 Of course if, as has been claimed, three-dimensionality is itself an effect which one cannot say what a picture must be like to produce, then this aspect of a picture would also be similar to situational familiarity: its conditions of application could only be evoked in the individual minds so disposed, although in this case the disposition would no doubt be fairly widespread. But if the depth which Aldrich says can be 'exhibited' – along with movement, energy and rest – in picture space is a non-observational property, then the parallel with familiarity is more significant. Like familiarity it cannot be true of an object qua observed. Nor, therefore, can it be depicted or imagined, though it might be 'evoked' by something that can be depicted or imagined and no doubt even by

  that thing's being depicted or imagined. But it isn't just evoked in the way a feeling may be evoked, that is, as a modification of a person's psychological state; it is also exhibited.

  What does all this show? It shows at least that the visual 'what' can be corrupted by the visual 'how'. But the aesthetic experience is special, it will be said; in particular it has nothing to do with our practical engagement in the world and the full-bodied thoughts we were talking about in that connection. So the corruptibility of the referential core in these respects has no obvious bearing on the two-sided thought we were left with in the previous section. Whatever the phenomenological curiosities of the aesthetic and the situational 'how', the general terms of Searle's analysis of intentionality remain unaffected. There is still the referential part, on the one hand, and the attitudinal part, on the other.

  This is, however, to underestimate the significance of the visual 'how'. For after all, what its possibility shows is that the world of experience is the kind of world that can be the expression of the experiencing, and acting, subject's situational and conceptual viewpoint, to say the least. (To say more one might add the moral viewpoint.) In that case the idea that a thought in the wider sense combines two distinct parts could well be inadequate. The 'what' (answering to Searle's 'representative content') is not straightforwardly a world of common things in the way assumed by our concept of the world as providing a common vista. It is not a world that can be specified independently of what is special to the modes of individual minds.

  If the world of experience can indeed express the subject's situational, conceptual and whatever other viewpoints, the objects and situations identified in it will be able to reflect or mirror the complex of attitudes which find expression in thoughts in the wider sense, and, what is more, be identified in terms of these reflectings and mirrorings. This complex of attitudes will include not only aesthetic and situational but also dramatic categories, corresponding to the practical judgements or evaluations we make and which are reflected in our perceptual environments – where events appear in this or that light and actions are interpreted according to this or that motive or role. Thoughts in this wider sense are judgements about objects and situations, about people and actions, and perception contains a 'what' that provides the judgements with their 'objective' correlates. But in the perceptual experience itself the 'what' can match the 'how', the world-as-seen can live up, or down, to the attitudes with which it is approached. So even if we retain the distinction between a mental attitude and its reference, the barrier between them is less impregnable than it sounds.

  All of which goes to show the falsity of the narrow-minded view of perception with its 'what' delivered neat to suitably placed observers. The narrow-minded view appeals because we all know what it is like to look out of a window. It even appeals to sophisticated philosophers who assume that the alternative analogy must be looking at a screen wi
th the 'what' hidden irrevocably behind it. Aren't those things out there that we do see all the 'what' we need? And while we can make out things and events in space, where can we

  place these screens? Where (literally) on earth could they be? In people's heads perhaps? Difficulty with that idea pushes one back into robust realism. But robust realism dislocates the phenomenological homogeneity of perception; it artificially separates the 'what' from the 'how' and then finds no place for the latter. Philosophers content with words and signs don't see the problem. For them everything is transformed into distinctions in the logic of expressions, a province where the 'what' and the 'how' can happily coexist without our even suspecting the problem of their true relationship.

  4 But with what does one replace the narrow-minded view of perception if not with a mental screen? Aldrich has another proposal. The world as we experience it immediately in space is a 'primary perceptual field' or 'space of first-order extention' (with Aldrich's 't' to distinguish this spatial notion from the logical one). The attraction of the proposal is that it claims to make the space mental (in a sense) without letting it become a screen. The common objects of our everyday references actually appear in it, but because this space in which they appear is primary in respect of the ways in which we say that we see things as they are in their own space, or as we say that we see them corrupted by the modes of individual minds, these alternatives being secondary, the claim allows for a kind of incorruptible 'what' that can manifest itself in different ways. The space of the primary perceptual field is a space of 'material things' with 'the potential for categorially aspecting [or "functioning"] as physical or nonphysical "objects" ', and in which 'category-neutral' references ('mongrels') belong and are 'simply seen'.20