Barcelona 2012 Final Draft
Perception, Representation and Constancy
Introduction
One of the liveliest recent debates in the philosophy of mind concerns the nature of perception.
According to a traditional view, which might be called representationalism , perception is representational; that is, it represents the world as being a certain way
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. If, for example, it seems to me that there’s a brown table in front of me, we might say that my experience represents to me that there’s a brown table. A key notion that goes along with representationalism is that of perceptual content. A state is representational if and only if it has content, and the content of a perceptual state is how the world is represented to be. Further, contents are taken to be the sort of entities that can be true or false, thus making an experience accurate or inaccurate. In other words, an experience represents accurately or inaccurately states of the world in virtue of its content.
On such a view, perceptual states represent to the subject how her environment and body are. The content of perceptual experiences is how the world is represented to be. Perceptual experiences are then counted as illusory or veridical depending on whether the content is correct and the world is as represented
(Martin 1994, p. 464).
The idea that perception can represent or misrepresent has enjoyed consensus. However, another view has recently become popular: call it relationalism . Relationalism, supported among the others by Brewer (2006, 2011) and Travis (2004), holds that perception is a question of a subject being in relation to a physical object. There are in the literature several understandings of the two positions and of their relationship. In what follows I explain how I think the debate should be articulated, and why in my opinion the two views should be regarded as rival.
I see two key differences between our theories: the first is connected to a general fact about representations. If perception is representational, then we must say that an experience remains the same regardless of whether what is represented exists or not, and also regardless of whether what is represented actually is as it is represented, because it’s not true that if a state (not necessarily perceptual) represents something (that p, for example) then it must be the case that p . Now, this
1 This is the most general way of stating the claim. More precisely, one could say that perception represents objects, properties, relations and states of affairs. I prefer a more general and neutral formulation in order to avoid controversies on what kind of properties and relations perception can represent, and on whether it represents objects, states of affairs or both.

general fact about representations doesn’t seem to extend to relations. If the obtaining of a relation implies the obtaining of its relata, and if perceptual experiences are relations, then it’s not indifferent to the nature of a certain experience whether the object exists or not. At this level the positions have very diverging metaphysical views on experiences. For a representationalist the difference between veridical, illusory and hallucinatory experience does not affect the essence of the experience itself: the peculiar representation that perceptual experience is remains the same across the three cases, while what changes is the world. For relationalists the matter is different. A veridical perception and a corresponding hallucination cannot be instances of the same relation, for the simple fact that in the hallucinatory case one of the relata is missing. Therefore, the presence or absence of the external object does make a difference to the metaphysical status of an experience.
The second key difference is that relationalists tend to reject the idea of perceptual content, because they don’t think that perception, strictly speaking, has anything to do with truth or falsity: perception is a relation to an object
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(not to any representational content whatsoever), and when it is the case that we come to formulate false judgements on the basis of our experiences, that is to be imputed to higher cognitive processes. The role of perception consists in bringing our surroundings into view. Whatever true or false representation follows from that is the result of thought and intellectual activity in general:
Perceiving is not a matter of being saddled with representational content...It is rather a matter of the conscious presentation of actual constituents of physical reality themselves, particular such things, just as they are, which is what makes all contentful representation of that reality in thought even so much as possible (Brewer 2006, p. 172).
My goal in this paper is to give an argument for representationalism. In the first section I examine a powerful criticism advanced by Travis (2004) against the idea that perception has content and accuracy conditions (which are essential features to it, if it is to be representational). In the second section I investigate whether those phenomena known as perceptual constancies can teach us anything on the debate, and whether they can be deployed to a defence of representationalism. I conclude by claiming that Travis has phenomenological problems in accounting for perceptual constancy, whereas representationalism is much better equipped for it.
2 Someone would disagree with my characterization, because one might say, à la McDowell, that the subject is in relation to a fact. However, many relationalists like Brewer and Travis place a lot of emphasis on the relation to an object. The reason is that they want to avoid the over intellectualization of perception which is generated as soon as abstract entities like facts come into the picture. Further, McDowell is keen, for epistemological reasons, to preserve the notion of perceptual content (see for example McDowell 2008).

1. Silence of the Senses
I label Travis’ position as
Silence of the Senses (SOS)
SOS: Our perceptual experiences do not represent anything as being any specific way. They bring our surroundings into view; whatever true or false representation follows from that is the result of judgment and intellectual activity in general.
In the rest of this section I discuss Travis’ argument. Let’s start with the assumption that if perceptual content (how the experience represents the world) is determined by anything, then it should be determined by the way things look in perception. Further, assume that, if representationalism is true, then our reports on how things look in experience reflect the contents of perception. If I say, for example, that an object in front of me looks like a lemon, we can infer from my report that my experience represents to me that there’s a lemon: the representational content of an experience could then be “read off of the way, in it, things looked” (Travis 2004, p. 69). For the record, notice that the representationalist doesn’t need the report to reflect literally the contents of perception. If it is true, as a few people think, that higher order properties like being a lemon cannot be represented in perception, then my report doesn’t literally reflect the content of my experience, since perception would only represent basic properties like colour and shape. When I say that the object looks like a lemon, then, the content of my corresponding experience would be that the object is, let’s say, yellow and round. For expository purposes I will suppose that perception does represent properties like being a lemon , but this assumption doesn’t have any general bearing on my paper, because Travis’ argument is supposed to work on either construal of perceptual content.
Travis says that objects exhibit demonstrable, or comparative (following Chisholm’s terminology) looks: public looks such that there’s some object or feature of an object which bears resemblances to other objects or features of objects. Fido might look like a dog, i.e. look like dogs normally look; Fido shares a demonstrable look with other dogs. The shirt looks blue, i.e. looks like blue things look in normal conditions. If representationalism is true, then the way things demonstrably look would constitute the way our experience represents the world, but Travis thinks this is hopeless. Let’ see why.
Suppose there’s something in front of you which demonstrably looks like a lemon, i.e. looks like lemons normally look. Plausibly then, that lemony look should be what determines the content of your experience: your experience has the representational content that there’s a lemon because what you see looks like a lemon. However, things are not as simple as that. There are many other things the object in question looks like and might be taken to look like: a tennis ball seen from a

certain distance, a yellow soap, an orange seen in certain light conditions, and so on. We are thus faced with the following problem: why should we say that our perceptual experience represents a lemon, rather then an orange (or perhaps something yellow rather than something orange seen in certain conditions)?
I think the challenge the representationalist faces could be construed as a dilemma. On the first horn, one should say that the experience represents at the same time the object as a lemon, as a tennis ball, as an orange and so on. The obvious problem is that on this construal our experiences would be totally incoherent. On the second horn we should say that in perception we pick up a specific look among those that the object has (a lemony look rather than an orangy look, let’s say).
However, it’s not clear how that could be accomplished. For suppose you say that the object looks like a lemon, while in fact is an orange seen under certain light conditions. It follows that the orange
(in certain conditions) is among the things that the object looks like. What is the experiential criterion on the basis of which you say that the experience represents the object as a lemon and not as an orange, given that the object in question looks like both? There seems to be none. The fact that the lemon looks like a lemon on a specific occasion, Travis would say, doesn’t amount to perception representing it as a lemon, but is rather a question of occasion sensitivity. Privileging certain looks rather than others is an operation that strictly speaking does not concern perception, but rather what background assumptions and knowledge we are prepared to put in play. If the object is in the fridge, for example, you might be more inclined to judge that it’s a lemon rather than a tennis ball, but these considerations from occasion sensitivity cannot do the job for the representationalist, since they don’t belong to the perceptual domain.
We incur into the same problem when we try to determine the accuracy conditions of an experience. We’ve seen that a lemon might demonstrably look like a lemon, like an orange, like a tennis ball and countless other things. For each of these things there is a way the object should be in order for it to be as it looks (that is, for the experience to be accurate): it should be a lemon, an orange, a tennis ball. But which facts as to how the lemon looks are supposed to determine the content of perception, and which aren’t, and why? To these questions, Travis would say, there simply is no answer. Let’s pretend for the sake of the argument that your experience might be inaccurate: the object looks like a lemon while is in fact an orange in certain light conditions. A representationalist would then say that the experience is inaccurate, because the way things are is different than the way they look. In fact, it follows from our example that an orange is one of the things that the object looks like (along with a lemon, a tennis ball, etc), since it actually is an orange. But then again: in order to have something like perceptual content in place there would need to be something in perception that selects which one of the several facts as to how the object

looks like determines perceptual content. However, there’s nothing like this “selecting” going on in perception (that’s Travis’ view, at any rate). The conclusion about accuracy conditions follows immediately: a certain perceptual experience might be compatible with a number of incompatible representational contents and sets of accuracy conditions, therefore it’s impossible to determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of the experience in question.
The outcome of Travis’ inquiry is that the content of perception cannot be read off of the way in it things look. On the assumption the perceptual content should be made recognizable to us by the way things look, this amounts to the claim that representationalism should just be abandoned. In the next section I raise a difficulty for Travis and try to show that, even keeping the assumption concerning looks and perceptual content, representationalism can be defended.
2.1 Representationalism and Perceptual Constancies
My claim is that we should reject SOS. There actually is a commitment in our experiences as to how things look, where this commitment arises from the way the experience represents things; when I judge that there’s a circular object, the reason why I judge so can be that my experience represents is as circular, rather than as something elliptical seen from a certain angle. I claim against
Travis that objects are given to be a certain specific way in perception. A lemon can be given as a yellow lemon instead of as an orange seen in certain conditions, and a circular glass can be given as circular rather than as elliptical.
The argument for my claim relies on perceptual constancies. Perceptual constancies are those phenomena in virtue of which objects look to keep the same size, shape and colour despite variations in distance, orientation and light conditions relative to the perceiver. Suppose you have in front of you a glass with a circular shape. As you move the glass around, the image projected by the object onto your retina changes (it becomes elliptical), and yet the glass does not appear to change its shape; it looks to remain constant
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.
Let’s compare the two accounts in respect to constancy. How could Travis explain constancy?
He would have to say something along these lines: the shape demonstrably looks circular as well as elliptical, that is, both a circular object and an elliptical object seen from a certain perspective are among the things that the glass looks like. Whether we take things to be one way or another, he would have to say, depends on judgment and background knowledge (perhaps knowledge to the effect that objects don’t change their shape at random). The fact that we correctly take the shape to remain constant doesn’t imply that our experience represents it. Of course Travis would not be
3 Analogous examples can be constructed for size constancy and colour constancy.

committed to denying that the glass still looks circular when it’s moved sideway, but, he would have to say, the phenomenon is a matter of knowledge and occasion sensitivity, not of perceptual representation
I can see an obvious problem: there’s a distinctively experiential dimension to the constancy phenomenon. The look of the glass to us is not an indeterminate one among many demonstrable looks it shares with other objects in respect to shape; it is constantly given in the experience as circular, and that it is so is obviously confirmed by introspection. Before we go on, a couple of remarks. A relationalist
à la
Brewer (2011) would surely say there’s something like conceptual phenomenology. While at a nonconceptual level an object might indeterminately look like a lemon, or a tennis ball, and so on (Brewer makes the point with the expression “ thin looks”
), at a conceptual level ( thick looks ) is categorised as, let’s say, a lemon, where this conceptualization makes a difference to the overall phenomenology of a subject. Analogous considerations would then apply to constancy. At a nonconceptual level the glass might look both as an elliptical object and a circular from a certain angle, while at a conceptual level we categorize it as circular, where this categorization accounts for the phenomenal dimension that belongs to perceptual constancy
However, that constancy is a distinctively perceptual phenomenon (that is, it doesn’t depend on judgment) is a claim which is also supported by several experiments in comparative vision. Even animals like bees, that arguably lack conceptual phenomenology, are able to recognize the same colour in different viewing conditions, thus a purely perceptual explanation of the phenomenon seems better placed 4 . Brewer’ solution, therefore, faces similar problem as Travis’, because it explains phenomenal differences in terms of judgment, while there’s empirical evidence speaking in favour of constancy as distinctively perceptual.
Representationalism is much better equipped to explain constancy. The representationalist can say that the glass is represented as circular both when it is in front of you and when it is looked at sideways. The clear advantage that representationalism has over Travis’ account concerns the phenomenology of perception: while Travis should explain the phenomenon in terms of judgments, the representationalist can make sense of the relevant phenomenal dimension.
Perceptual constancy, then, seems prima facie to speak in favour of representationalism.
However, there’s one problem which must be addressed.
4 See for example Neumeyer (1998) for empirical sources.

2.2. A Puzzle With Constancies
I’ve said that a circular glass looks the same both when it’s in front of you and when you see it at a skewed angle. However, that might raise problems. Indeed, introspection tells us that the way we experience the circularity of a glass seen sideways is not the same as the way we experience it when the object is in front of us; something changes. At the same time introspection tells us that the glass looks to keep its shape despite variations in perspective. But if introspection simply delivers contradictory results, then one might feel sympathetic to Travis and say that the notion of perceptual representation is incoherent. The problem can be appreciated even more clearly with colours.
Consider a white wall seen at noon and at sunset. If we stick to colour constancy, we should say that the wall looks white in both conditions. At the same time, we could point out that at sunset there’s a pinkish-reddish shade to the wall that we don’t see at noon, therefore it looks different in the two cases. The contrast is brought into sharpest relief if you imagine to put a chip of pink paper next to the wall: the colours of the chip and of the wall would perhaps match at sunset, but not at noon.
How are we supposed to keep these things together?
The key, I think, is to notice that in most debates on constancy philosophers are concerned with what properties we should attribute to objects, were we solely to rely on appearances. It follows that there are those who are willing to pose a variability of appearances (the glass looks circular or elliptical depending on perspective) and those who are willing to stick to constant appearances. The consequence would be that introspection is a totally unreliable guide, or perhaps that philosophers cannot even agree on elementary facts. I’ll try to delineate a more appealing solution.
I’m particularly sympathetic to a proposal formulated by Matthen (2010), which he calls scene parsing . The driving idea is that in experience a wider range of entities than material objects are assigned a property, that is, the visual scene is parsed into more constituents than it is traditionally supposed to be. Recall our problem: introspection would allegedly incline us to say that the wall seen at sunset looks white and at the same time that it looks pink. However, if more entities than material objects can be assigned a property in experience, we could say that the properties white and pink do not seem to belong to the same entity: it’s the wall that looks white, while it’s the light that looks pink. This solution would allow us to have everything we want: first, we can make sense of constancy, while at the same time respecting the fact that there’s something phenomenally different when you see the wall at sunset
5 . Second, we don’t need to throw introspection away. Quite the contrary: scene parsing allows us to enrich introspection in a way which is suitable to overcome the
5 In the case of shape constancy it’s easy to say that the orientation of the object plays the same role as the light does in the case of colour constancy.

problem we would have otherwise. Finally, it helps to make sense of one distinction which could otherwise be puzzling. It is one thing the colour (or shape) that an object looks to have, and another thing the way that colour or shape looks to us, i.e. the wall seen at sunset looks to be white, but the way the colour looks to us is tinged with pink. If perceptual representation is determined by the way things look, one might say, then there is an incoherence in the representation. The scene parsing hypothesis can once again be helpful. If it is the light that looks pink, then we avoid incoherence and explain why the way we experience the colour changes from noon to sunset: because of the pink light of the sunset; despite this phenomenal change, the wall looks to be white both at noon and at sunset.
I’m finally in a position to formulate my conclusion and come back to one of Travis’ points.
Conclusion
I’ve argued in favour of representationalism through perceptual constancies. While this is probably not the only way to defend my favourite account
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, it brings out one problem that those willing to endorse a position like SOS meet: they seem bound to accommodate differences in how things appear by means of differences in judgment, while this difference is given in the phenomenology of perceptual experiences before the formulation of judgments.
One last remark is in order. I’ve endorsed one specific way of explaining constancy ( scene parsing), which I think is particularly indicated to counter argue against Travis, because it denies what seems to me an implicit premise in his reasoning: that in perceptual experiences a discrimination is not effectuated between different sets of conditions (light, perspective, orientation). Indeed, only if this is the case can Travis say that there’s nothing in experience which makes it so that a lemon is represented to us rather than an orange in specific light conditions.
Remember the dilemma I’ve described earlier for the representationalist: on the first horn she should say that our experiences are incoherent. On the second, that we pick on a certain specific look among many that an object instantiates, but perception doesn’t do this selection for us. After the discussion on perceptual constancy, however, I think there can be such selection in perceptual experience. Following scene parsing, we can say that the lemon might look yellow, while the light might look orangish. It’s therefore not true that conditions are not discriminated in perceptual experience, and thus what Travis thinks to be the second horn of the dilemma turns out to be a
6 Another possible route could be through the semantics of look statements. Travis works with a comparative notion of looks: on that construal, to say that a ball looks red is to say that it looks the way red objects look in respect to colour.
One might then wonder if there’s room for a different, phenomenal notion of looks: on this alternative construal a ball might look red simpliciter .

viable solution for the representationalist. We thus have one specific way the experience represents the world and a coherent set of accuracy conditions: the experience is accurate if and only if there’s a yellow lemon and an orangish light out there.
My conclusion is that there are good phenomenological arguments in favour of representationalism.
References
- Brewer, B. (2006) 'Perception and Content', European Journal of Philosophy, 14 (2), pp. 165-
181.
- Brewer, B. (2011) Perception and its Objects . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Martin, M (1994) 'Perceptual Content', in Guttenplan, S. (ed.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind . Oxford: Blackwell.
- Matthen, M. (2010) 'How Things Look (and What Things Look That Way)', in Nanay, B. (ed.)
Perceiving the World . New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 226-51.
- McDowell, J. (2008) 'Avoiding the Myth of the Given', in Lindgaard, J. (ed.) Experience,
Norm, and Nature . Oxford: Blackwell.
- Neumeyer, C. (1998) 'Comparative Aspects of Colour Constancy', in Walsh, V. and
Kulikowsky, J. (eds.) Perceptual Constancy: Why Things Look as They Do . Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 323-51.
- Travis, C. (2004) 'The Silence of the Senses', Mind 113 , pp. 57-94.