Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

142725

What could have been done (but wasn't)

on the counterfactual status of action in Alva Noë's theory of perception

Gunnar Declerck

pp. 765-784

Abstract

Alva Noë's strategy to solve the puzzle of perceptual presence entirely relies on the principle of presence as access. Unaccessed or unattended parts or details of objects are perceptually present insofar as they are accessible, and they are accessible insofar as one possesses sensorimotor skills that can secure their access. In this paper, I consider several arguments that can be opposed to this claim and that are chiefly related to the modal status of action, i.e. the fact that the action that would secure access to the absent aspects is a possibility, something that can (or maybe could) be done. The main difficulty Noë's account must face is –as several situations demonstrate– that the action that should be performed for the absent aspects to be actually accessed does not have to be itself available for these aspects to be perceptually present. What matters for the absent aspects to be present is not their de facto (i.e. effective) accessibility, but their de jure accessibility. To overcome those difficulties, I propose to rely on a ternary model of the role of action possibilities in perceptual awareness. This model builds on Husserl's analysis of the role of perceptual circumstances in perception and connection between sense (Sinn) registering and horizontal intentionality.

Publication details

Published in:

(2017) Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (5).

Pages: 765-784

DOI: 10.1007/s11097-016-9474-y

Full citation:

Declerck Gunnar (2017) „What could have been done (but wasn't): on the counterfactual status of action in Alva Noë's theory of perception“. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (5), 765–784.