IZCHAK
PERCEPTUAL
l.
MILLER
REFERENCE*
INTRODUCTORY
REMARKS
Philosophical interest in the structure of perception is motivated by questions such as these: How does perception function to constrain and justify our empirical theories? How is it possible to perceive an extended process, when at any given moment of our perceiving it only one of its temporal phases is impinging on our senses? What determines the object or objects of perception - those things our experiences are about? The need to answer these and other questions about perception in a satisfactory manner provides adequacy conditions for a theory of perception. The question with which this paper will be primarily concerned is, What internal, or phenomenological, features of a perceptual experience are responsible for determining its object? Some have maintained that the perceptual experience consists of our having something like a mental "picture", which leads us to judge that an object similar to it exists and is present to our senses. Others have claimed, instead, that the perceptual experience involves "ideas" or "sensa" before our mind, which prompt us to infer that there exists an object that is causally responsible for our having them. These, of course, do not exhaust all views; but they have something in common that I reject, namely, that our perception of a physical object is mediated by an "immediate awareness" of something other than the physical object itself. Such views are traditionally grouped together under the title, "Representative Theories of Perception". In this paper I will discuss an alternative to Representativism, one that I attribute to Edmund Husserl. The main characteristics of that theory are as follows: First, perception is "direct" with respect to its (ordinary) physical object, in the negative sense that our perceptual awareness of the (purported) physical object is not mediated by an awareness of something other than that object. When I perceive, say, a tree, it is the tree Synthese 61 (1984) 35-59. 0039-7857/84/0611-0035 $02.50 © 1984 by D. Reidel Publishing Company
36
IZCHAK
MILLER
itself, and nothing else in its stead, that is the "direct" object of my perceptual awareness on that occasion. The general purpose of this paper is to specify the positive sense in which perceptual awareness is "direct" with respect to its (purported) object. 1 Second, one can be perceptually aware of an object even though there fails to exist an object of which one is perceptually aware. The "of-ness" of the perceptual experience, i.e., its "directedness', is an intrinsic (nonrelational) feature of the experience and does not depend on whether or not that perceptual act has, in fact, an object. Third, the relation between the perceptual awareness and its object (flit has one) is a logical ("semantic") relation: the awareness refers to its object. Husserl conceived of the perceptual awareness, the perceptual "act", as having a meaning (noema) associated with it; and, on his view, it is the meaning of the act that determines the object of the act, if there is one. 2 Acqording to Husserl, only a certain component of the noema is in fact responsible for determining the (purported) object of the perceptual act. He calls that component "noematic Sinn" or "noematic content". Husserl distinguishes two main kinds of constituents in the noematic Sinn or "content" of t h e perceptual act. The first kind of constituent I will call "attribute-meaning", although Husserl himself frequently refers to it instead as "predicate-meaning". The second kind of constituent Husserl calls "the determinable-X'. The specific purpose of this paper is to explicate what Husserl means by "the determinable-X". 2.
PERCEPTUAL
ATTRIBUTES
According to Husserl, an object is always experienced by us through the perceptual act "as" having some properties or others. What we experience the (purported) object "as", i.e., what properties we attribute to the (purported) object through the act, depends on the attributive content of the noematic Sinn of the act. This attributive content consists of attribute-meanings, or - as Husserl calls them predicate-meaning. Each property that we attribute to the (purported) object through the act is so attributed by us by virtue of there being an appropriate attribute-meaning component in the noematic Sinn Of the act. For instance, when I see the green tree in my garden ("as" green), the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act on that occasion has as a
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
37
constituent the attribute-meaning "green". This attribute-meaning "green" should, indeed, be distinguished from the property of being green. The latter is a physical characteristic of the tree, while the former is a meaning constituent of the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act. Some of the attribute-meanings in the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act pertain to the front side of the tree, and others pertain to the hidden parts and aspects of that tree. Some of these attribute-meanings are fully determinate, whereas others suffer from various degrees of indeterminacy.3 The attributive content of the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act is not confined to "monadic" attribute-meanings (attribute-meanings that prescribe monadic properties). An object is always perceptually experienced by us not only as thus-and-so intrinsically determined, but also as an object situated in a perceptual field, standing in physical relations to other objects perceptually co-present. The noematic Sinn of a perceptual act contains attribute-meanings that prescribe those relations. 3. T H E D E T E R M I N A B L E - X
The noematic Sinn of a perceptual act contains as constituents many attribute-meanings. However, according to Husserl the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act is not a mere collection of attribute-meanings any more than the physical object that it determines, if there is one, is a mere "bundle" of properties. Husserl states his view as follows (taking into consideration that by 'predicate' Husserl means here - as readers can contextually ascertain for themselves - what I call "attributemeaning", and that terms in quotation marks are used here to refer to meaning-components in the noematic Sinn): But the predicates are predicates of "something", and this " s o m e t h i n g " . . . is the nodal point of connexion for the predicates, their " b e a r e r " . . . . It must be distinguished from these, although it should not be set alongside them and should not be separated from them, as inversely they themselves are its predicates: inconceivable without it and yet distinguishable from it . . . . . There detaches itself as the central noematic phase: the "object", the "objective unity", the "self-same", the "determinable subject of its possible predicates" - the pure X in abstractio n from all predicates - and it disconnects itself from these predicates, or more accurately from the predicate-noemata. 4
The determinable-X, then, is according to Husserl a feature present in
38
IZCHAK
MILLER
the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act, a feature that determines the (purported) object of the act "in abstraction" from its properties. It should be clear that Husserl is not arguing here for an ontological (or a metaphysical) distinction between physical substrata and their properties (although he did believe such a distinction to be ontologically correct). Instead, he is arguing for what he takes to be a phenomenological fact, namely, that our perceptually experiencing a physical object involves an intentional distinction between the object per se and its attributes. Husserl expresses this conviction by insisting that the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act has two logically distinct constituents: a determinable-X, which "determines" the (purported) object per se of the act; and attribute-meanings, which prescribe that object's (purported) properties. As we can also see from the above quotation, Husserl maintained that, although they are logically distinct, both features are always present in the perceptual noematic Sinn. In particular, this reflects the fact that we never perceptually experience "bare" physical individuals. Indeed, objects (which themselves are not "bare") would be experienced by us as "bare" of properties if it were possible for the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act to consist merely of a determinableX. For the determinable-X is conceived by Husserl as a "purely referring" element of the perceptual noematic Sinn, an element which in and by itself contains no conceptual (descriptive or attributive) features. Husserl says of the determinable-X that it is the "bearer" of its attribute-meanings. His use of 'bearer' in this context must, however, be kept apart from the use of this very term to distinguish ontologically between physical objects qua "substrata" and their properties. 5 The logical structure of the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act does, in a sense, "reflect" the (purported) ontological structure of the object it determines, but it does not exemplify that structure. When I (successfully) see a green object, I have, according to Husserl, a perceptual experience the noematic Sinn of which contains a determinable-X and the attribute-meaning "green" as constituents. But in saying that the determinable-X is the "bearer of the attribute-meaning "green", Husserl is not saying that the attribute-meaning "green" is a property of that determinable-X. Instead, he is emphasizing that these meaning elements are joined together in such a way as to form a singular meaning (individual concept) and not a proposition, a singular meaning
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
39
that, at best, "reflects" (but does not exemplify) in its structure the (purported) ontological structure of the green individual in its extension. The following is a first approximation of the canonical form of a (first-person) perceptual act "description" designed to accommodate Husserl's conception of the logical structure of the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act. Husserl uses fSp 1 (in contrast with rs is pl) to represent an expression whose sense is a singular meaning, where rS1 refers to an object and rp~ to some property or complex of properties of that object. Taking into account Husserl's notion of the determinable-X, the canonical form of a first-person perceptual act description is represented by the following construction: (1)
I perceivee £ [p, q, r, s , . . . ] ,
where 'perceivee' is to be replaced by a specific experiential perceptual verb, and '£[p, q, r, s . . . . ]' is a singular term reflecting the logical structure of the noematic Sinn of the act. Thus, the sense of '~' is the determinable-X, and the senses of 'p', 'q', etc. are the attributemeanings in that noematic Sinn. I have used 'x' to accommodate Hussed's use of 'x' in 'the determinable-X'. I have put a "bar" over 'x' to indicate that '$', in (1) is not a variable but, rather, something like a "purely referring" term. A more intuitive rendition of (1) might be the following: (1')
I perceivee ~ as p & as q & . . . ;
where 'perceive~ as' is a purely "experiential" version of 'perceive as', defined in such a way that '~', in (1'), need not always refer. The first thing to notice about Husserl's discussion of the determinable-X is that according to him we do not discover the determinable-X by reflecting on the noematic Sinn of any single one of our perceptual acts. We come to recognize its presence only by comparing with one another different acts directed at one and the same object. This is manifest from the examples Husserl presents in arguing for the presence of such a feature in the noematic Sinne of our acts. Consider the following passage that I deleted from the previous quotation, saving it for the present discussion: We say that in the continuous.., process of consciousness we are persistently aware of the intentional [intended] object, but that in this experience the object is ever "presenting itself differently"; it may be "the same", only given with other predicates, with another
40
IZCHAK
MILLER
determining content; "it" m a y display itself only in different aspects whereby the predicates left indeterminate h a v e b e c o m e m o r e closely determined; or " t h e " object m a y
have remained unchanged throughout this stretch of givenness, but now "it", the selfsame, changes, and through this change becomes more beautiful or forfeits some of its utility-value, and so forth .... The self-same intentional "object" separates itself off self-evidently from the shifting and changing "predicates". There detaches itself..• the "self-same', the "determinable subject of its possible predicates" - the pure X in abstraction from all predicates . . . . . 8
W h e r e a s this q u o t a t i o n does establish that Husserl believes we can discern the d e t e r m i n a b l e - X only by c o m p a r i n g different acts d i r e c t e d at o n e and the same o b j e c t , it does not c o n v i n c e us that there is such a " p u r e l y r e f e r r i n g " e l e m e n t in the n o e m a t i c S i n n of the p e r c e p t u a l act until we take into c o n s i d e r a t i o n cases of m i s p e r c e p t i o n s and illusions. 4.
THE
INDEXICALITY
OF PERCEPTION
T h a t c o n s i d e r a t i o n of m i s p e r c e p t i o n s and illusions is not only r e l e v a n t b u t indispensable to the p h e n o m e n o l o g y of p e r c e p t i o n is explicitly insisted u p o n by Husserl: [Such cases] must be no less taken into our phenomenological reckoning .... The courses of perception, in which partial breaches of agreement occur, and the agreement can be maintained only through "corrections", must be systematically described in respect of all its essential constituents .... Over against the continuous synthesis of agreement, the syntheses of conflict.., must come into their rights, for a phenomenology of "true reality" the phenomenology of "vain illusion" is wholly indispensible. 9 P h e n o m e n o l o g i c a l l y , cases of (exposed) m i s p e r c e p t i o n s are cases in which, in the c o u r s e of o u r p e r c e p t u a l e x p e r i e n c e of an o b j e c t , the o b j e c t c o m e s to be e x p e r i e n c e d by us as h a v i n g properties that are i n c o m p a t i b l e with properties it was previously e x p e r i e n c e d by us as having. (This is w h a t Husserl refers to, a b o v e , as a " b r e a c h of a g r e e m e n t " a m o n g o u r experiences). In such cases, Husserl says, the n o e m a of o u r act " e x p l o d e s " - it is f o r c e d to u n d e r g o a ( m o r e or less) radical a d j u s t m e n t ( " c o r r e c t i o n " ) of content. W h a t is of present significance in Husserl's (merger) discussion of such cases is that he m a i n t a i n e d that, in s o m e i m p o r t a n t sense, the " i d e n t i t y " of the o b j e c t ( q u a intended) survives the " e x p l o s i o n " of the n o e m a (even t h o u g h in s o m e o t h e r sense it does not): • . . W e have to m a k e c l e a r . . , the c a s e s . . , where there is disagreement or determination otherwise of the X which we are constantly aware of as one and the s a m e - otherwise, that is, t h a n in h a r m o n y with the original bestowal of m e a n i n g . 1°
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
41
Let us consider some cases of misperception as we would describe them for an ordinary ("natural") standpoint. T a k e for example a "mild", commonplace case of misperception. Suppose I see a certain object as having a smooth surface, and I proceed to walk toward it. As I approach it, I come to realize visually (and it is, in fact, true) that its surface is actually pitted and rough rather than smooth. A more " s e v e r e " case of misperception is the following. Suppose that, while touring the grounds of a Hollywood movie studio, I approach what I at first take to be a tree. As I come near it, I suddenly realize that what I have been approaching is, in fact, not a tree at all but a cleverly constructed stage prop. In each case I have a perceptual experience of an object at the end of which I " g o b a c k " on an earlier attribution. Of present significance is the fact that in each case, although I do " g o back" on an earlier attribution, 1 am continually perceiving one and the same object, and, indeed, I continually experience it "as" one and the same. For I would not have experienced myself now as having made a perceptual mistake about an object unless I experienced the object now as being the very same object I experienced earlier. What makes the examples above cases of (exposed) misperception is, first, the fact that in each case the object perceived remains numerically and (with respect to the relevant properties) qualitatively the same throughout my perceiving it, and, second, the fact that in each case I continually experience the object as being numerically one and the same while I undergo a "change of mind" about one or more of its (abiding) qualities. Either of these two facts can obtain without the other. T h e object may, unknown to me, have been replaced with another just like it (as I was blinking my eyes, say) while I take it to be one and the same. On the other hand, the object may in fact have remained one and the same, but (for whatever reason) I think that it has been changed. Perceptual mishaps may, of course, occur under circumstances other than those described earlier. I may perceptually attribute to an object a property that it does not in fact have, without ever coming to realize my mistake. In such a case I am misperceiving, but 1 do not come to " e x p o s e " that fact to myself. I can also have a " r e v e r s e d " misperception, where my original attribution was, in fact, a correct one and my attributive "change of mind" results in an incorrect attribution. In such a case I think that I have misperceived earlier, whereas unbeknownst to
42
IZCI-IAK MILLER
me I am misperceiving now. I may, of course, undergo a "change of mind" about a (purported) abiding quality of an object that fails to exist altogether. In such a case I think that I have misperceived, but, in fact, I have been hallucinating all along. Let us return to the earlier examples of misperception. If, as we assume, in each example the object of my perceptual act at the beginning is numerically the same as the object of my act at the end, then the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act does not determine an object for its act attributively - at least not "purely" so. The classical, Fregean sense in which a singular meaning is said to determine a reference for a singular term is this: the reference of a singular term is the unique object, if any, that satisfies the attributive content of the singular meaning expressed by that tenn. Following Donnellan, I call this way of determining reference "attributive", u I now extend the notion of "attributive determination" to mental acts and their meanings. Thus, the object of an act is attributively determined by the noematic Sinn of that act provided that the object of the act is the one, if any, that happens to satisfy the attributive content of the noematic Sinn of that act. But the object of an act is not always determined in that manner. 12 For what characterizes a case of misperception is precisely the fact that an object, at least part of the time, is determined by the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act despite its failure to satisfy some of the Sinn's attributive content. Thus, in the first of the above examples of misperception, the object of my act is both experienced by me to be numerically the same and is in fact the same throughout, despite the fact that I mistakenly attribute to it, at first, smoothness of surface. Similarly, in the second example, the object of my act is both experienced by me to be numerically the same and is actually the same thoughout, despite the fact that I mistakenly attribute to it, at first, being a tree. We see, then, that the object of a perceptual act is not necessarily the one, if any, that satisfies all the attribute-meanings of the noematic Sinn of that act. However, it might be supposed that, although the object of a perceptual act is not determined by the noematic Sinn of the act attributively in the classical sense, it is still determined by the noematic Sinn attributively, but in a different, more restricted, sense of the latter. The noematic Sinn, it might be supposed, contains a privileged class of attribute-meanings and that privileged class of attribute-meaning does the job of determining an object for the act.
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
43
It might, for instance, be supposed that such a privileged class consists of those attribute-meanings that prescribe the essential qualities of the (purported) object of the act. But this would not be a satisfactory suggestion. For, as the second example of misperception given earlier illustrates, we sometimes make mistakes about the essential qualities of the objects of our acts, yet they still are the objects of the acts. The stage prop was the object of my perceptual act throughout, despite the fact that I attributed to it, at first, an essential quality incompatible with its actual nature, i.e., being a tree. It might be supposed instead that the privileged class consists of those attribute-meanings that prescribe the spatio-temporal qualities of the (purported) object of the act. But, again, taking spatial and temporal misperceptions and illusions into consideration, we can see that this would also be an unsatisfactory suggestion. Suppose I am hiking in a part of the Negev desert. As I come to the crest of a slow rise, I see a tree that I take to be located at the top of the next rise. Craving for some shade, I walk towards it. As I approach the top of the next rise, I suddenly realize that the tree is not located there at all but at the top of the following rise, which was previously obscured from view by the rise on which I am now standing. Again, one and the same tree remains the object of my act throughout my approach, despite the fact that I attribute to it, at first, an incorrect spatial location. More fanciful examples of spatial misperceptions and illusions can easily be cooked up: consider a setup where a cleverly disguised mirror produces an illusion regarding the very direction, not only the place, in which the object of the perceptual act is located. Just the same, the simpler example already demonstrates that I do maintain a perceptual "fix" on an object despite the fact that the object fails (at first) to satisfy the spatial attributions of the noematic Sinn of my act. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that if there is a privileged class of attribute-meanings in the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act, that class does not contain as members spatial attribute-meanings. The same is true about the attribute-meanings that prescribe the temporal properties and relations of the (purported) object of the perceptual act. However, this is not as easy to demonstrate by cases of misperception simply because we rarely, if ever, come to "expose" perceptually our temporal misattributions. 13 Still, we do experience the temporal properties and relations of physical entities in ways that lead us to realize that we must, occasionally or even systematically, be
44
IZCHAK
MILLER
temporally misperceiving them. A simple case in point is the perception of the same event through two or more sense modalities. Thus, I see a distant explosion as occurring at a certain moment in time, while I hear it as occurring at a later moment in time. That is, insofar as my sense of sight is involved, I perceptually attribute to the explosion a certain temporal location, and insofar as my sense of hearing is involved, I perceptually attribute to the same explosion a different temporal location. These two attributions to one and the same event arel clearly, incompatible with one another. Similarly, I visually attribute a certain temporal order to two events, one distant and the other near, while audially I may attribute to them the reverse temporal order. These two attributions are, again incompatible with one another. Since at least one of these attributions is incorrect and since both visually and audially I perceive the very same events, it seems reasonable to conclude that if there is a privileged class of attribute-meanings in the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act, that class does not contain as members temporal attribute-meanings. 14 Let us pause to take stock. We are seeking a_~ answer to one of the questions posed earlier, namely, in what way does the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act determine an object for its act. We first examined as a proposed answer the classical attributive theory. According to that theory (extended to cover the realm of mental acts) the object of a perceptual act is that object, if any, that happens to satisfy all the attribute-meanings in the noematic Sinn of the act. This answer proved unsatisfactory in the face of our misperceptions. The presently relevant feature of a misperception, I pointed out, is that an object is perceptually "picked" by us even though it fails to satisfy some of the attribute-meanings in the noematic Sinn of the act. We considered, next, a variation of the classical theory, one involving the view that there is a proper subclass of attribute-meanings, a "privileged class" of attribute-meanings, that determines the object of the act. We examined a particular suggestion, namely, that the object of the act is determined by those attribute-meanings that prescribe the essential properties of the (purported) object of the act. This particular suggestion, again, proved unsatisfactory in the face of misperceptions involving "kind" attributions. We then examined another suggestion, namely, that the object of the act is determined by those attribute-meanings that prescribe the spatio-temporal location of the (purported)object of the act. This suggestion also proved unsatisfactory, this time in the face of
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
45
spatio-temporal misperceptions. But these are not the only candidates for a privileged class of attribute-meanings. It might still be maintained that there is a proper subclass of attribute-meanings that must be satisfied by the object, but the properties prescribed by the members of that privileged class do not necessarily constitute the essential properties of the object. They may, for example, constitute the epistemologically distinguishing marks of the object. It seems evident from considerations of misperceptions and illusions, however, that all except the most general of the attribute-meanings of the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act can fail to be satisfied by the object of the perceptual act, yet it be the object of the act. Indeed, the object of a perceptual act, if there is one, cannot fail to satisfy such general attributions as being in time (having some temporal location), being in space (having some spatial location) and being material (having some material characteristics, such as chemical characteristics, causal characteristics, etc.). But these general attributions are satisfied by all physical objects to the same extent, and, therefore, they cannot single out a particular object for the perceptual act from all the rest of the objects that there are. The suggestion that the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act contains a privileged class of attribute-meanings that determines that the object of the act, if any, by prescribing its "epistemologically distinguishing marks" is as unsatisfactory as the previously considered suggestions. For either these attributions are all general attributions, in which case they cannot determine a unique object for the act; or they involve more specific attributions, in which case, since an object can be the object of an act even if it fails to satisfy them, they cannot be the attributions that determine the object of a perceptual act. The same criticism applies to a modified version of the last suggestion. According to this version there exists some proper subclass of attribute-meanings in the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act that must be satisfied by the object of the act, if there is one, but we cannot specify which proper subset this is until perhaps a sufficient amount of experience of the object has accumulated. Clearly, this suggestion is susceptible to the same objections raised against the previous one. Given these various considerations, it is reasonable to conclude that there is a feature in the noematic Sinn of our perceptual experience in virtue of which our experience maintains a "fix" on its object, if it
46
IZCHAK
MILLER
exists, independently of whether or not that object satisfies the attributive content of the noematic Sinn of that experience. I will refer to that feature as an "indexical" feature, or a "demonstrative" feature, in the perceptual act. I will, indeed, maintain that what Husserl means by the determinable-X in the perceptual noematic Sinn corresponds to that "indexical" element.
5. T H E
EXPERIENCE
OF MISPERCEPTION
We must distinguish a misperception, whether "exposed" or not, from the experience of misperception. A case of misperception is simply a case in which we perceive an object as having a property that it fails, in fact, to have. A case of experience of misperception, on the other hand, is a perceptual experience in the course of which we experience a (purported) object that we continually take to be one and the same while we undergo a "change of mind" about one or more of its (purported) abiding qualities. Clearly, we can be the victim of a misperception without experiencing it as a misperception, and we can experience a misperception even though we are not, in fact, misperceiving. For instance, suppose I perceive an object that unbeknownst to me, actually undergoes a color change from blue to green while I am approaching it. At first I perceive the object as blue, and at a certain point during my approach I suddenly perceive it as green. Both perceptions are, as a matter of fact, veridical, but I may take myself to have misperceived the color of the object at first. Thus, there is no logically necessary connection between the having of the experience of misperception and the having of a misperception. Correspondingly, we should distinguish two different, though related, questions: first, what is there to be learned from misperceptions (and, I should add, illusions) about how the noematic Sinn of our perceptual act determines the object of its act?; second, what is there to be learned from experiences of misperception about the structure of the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act? We have at least a partial answer to the first question, namely, that the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act determines an object, if any, for its act "indexically" ("referentially,'), not attributively. Let us consider now the experiences of misperception involved in the cases of exposed misperceptions presented earlier. In developing the
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
47
account of the structure of the perceptual noematic Sinn we are not concerned with whether the object of the act in fact satisfies the attributive content of that act. Indeed, we are not concerned with whether the act has an object altogether. Earlier, I characterized cases of experiences of misperception as cases in which, in the course of our perceptual experience of a (purported) object, the object comes to be experienced by us as having properties that are incompatible with properties it was previously experienced by us as having. T h e significant feature of such cases is that the perceptual experience of the (purported) object remains as an experience of the same object despite the radical change of content the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act is forced to undergo. Indeed, it is an essential feature of the experience of misperception that it remains as an experience of the same object even though I undergo a radical "change of mind" about its (purported) abiding qualities. For I would not have experienced myself now as having made a perceptual mistake about an (purported) object unless I experienced the object now as being the very same object I experienced earlier. If we consider the earlier cases of experiences of misperception, 15 and others like them, and if we " v a r y " them in our imagination to cover additional possibilities, we come to realize that we can " g o b a c k " on all except the most general of the attribute-meanings of the noematic Sinn of our perceptual experience, while its (purported) object is still experienced by us as being one and the same. It must, then, be the case that there is a feature in the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act that determines the (purported) object of the act in abstraction from its (purported) properties, a feature that provides us with an intentional "fix" on that (purported) object through a course of experience along which the attribute-meanings of our act shift and change radically. That feature of the perceptual noematic Sinn is what Husserl calls "the d e t e r m i n a b l e - X ' . It seems that what Husserl has in mind is that the determinable-X of the perceptual act is a "purely referring" element of meaning, 16 something like the meaning of an indexical, probably (at least part of) the meaning of the word 'this'. 17 But the significance of experiences of misperception teaches us still more about the structure of the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act: it dictates that a certain relation must hold between the determinable-X's of those experiences involved in misperception, indeed across any experiences where we experience the purported object as one and the same.
48
IZCHAK
MILLER
T a k e a case of a continual perceptual experience along which the (purported) object is experienced by me as one and the same. At any given m o m e n t of the duration of the perceptual experience, I have a perceptual act the noematic Sinn of which contains a determinable-X. Let us focus on two different moments along my experience. Let the first moment, tl, be (roughly) the first m o m e n t in which I am perceptually aware of the (purported) object, and let the second moment, t2, be some other moment, shortly after the first one, along that e x p e r i e n c e J 8 Assume further that my experience at the first m o m e n t is still within my "retentional span" at the second m o m e n t (the significance of this will be clarified shortly). T h e following are the schematic descriptions of these two acts: (2)
I perceivee ~(tl)[p, q, r . . . . ],
(3)
I perceivee Y(t2)[p, q, r . . . . ].
Again, a more intuitive rendition of (2) and (3) are, respectively, (2')
I perceivee at tl Y as p & as q & as r & . . . .
(3')
I perceive~ at t2 ~ as p & as q & as r & . . . .
Let us consider now what must be involved in my experiencing the (purported) object of my act at t2 as being the same as the (purported) object of my act at tl. From the previous considerations it is clear that at t2 1 can " g o b a c k " on all the attributes I attributed to the (purported) object at tl and still experience the (purported) object at t2 as being the same object I experienced at tl. So, my experiencing the (purported) object at I2 as being the same object I experienced at tl does not consist in an attributive "re-identification" of the (purported) object. Instead, it consists in a straightforward identification of the (purported) object of my present act with the (purported) object of my previous act by attributing an identity to the presently experienced object with the earlier experienced one. It is not that we never use attributive criteria to identify an object as being the same object we experienced earlier. Indeed, we often do employ attributive criteria for such an end, as we do sometimes decide by attributive considerations that an object we experience now is, actually, not the same object we experienced earlier, even though we at first thought it was. For instance, I use attributive criteria (specified in advance) to identify a r e c o v e r e d stolen object of mine in a police
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
49
"line-up" of objects like it, and I may discover by attributive criteria that the coat I picked off the rack as I left the restaurant is actually not mine at all but almost like it." However, what the experiences of misperception teach us is that the continual perceptual experience of the sameness of an object does not consist in a continual attributive "re-identification" of that object. Instead, as I have just argued, it consists in a straightforward attribution of identity. What I have in mind is represented by the following schematic description of my act at tz: (4)
I perceivee ~(t2)[=£(tl), p, q, r . . . ] ,
where "[=if(t1) . . . . ]" may be taken to read, "as identical with (perceivede) at tl and a s . . . " . It is important to notice that our continual experience of the sameness of the (purported) object of our perceptual act depends on our temporal awareness. For I would not experience the (purported) object of my perceptual act at t2 as being the same as the (purported) object of my act at t~ unless I were aware at t2 of what was the (purported) object of my act at t~. In Husserl's terminology, I would not experience the (purported) object of my act at t2 as the same as the (purported) object of my act at tl unless I retained at 12 the content of my act at t~. Each mental p r o c e s s . . , is followed.., by a "retentional" consciousness.., by virtue of which the primitive mode, "given at present", goes over, in a continuous synthesis, into the modified form, the Same that "just now" was . . . . This undergoing of continuous
retentional modification is the essential initial part of the constitution [the consciousness] of an identical object, one that, in the broadest sense, persists. 19
For the present purposes, we may consider what Husserl means by " r e t e n t i o n " to be what some psychologists call "short-term m e m o r y " . 2° Precisely how far into the past our retentional span extends is an empirical question that I leave to psychologists to answer. It is assumed, however, that my act at tl is still within my retentional span at t2. 2~ Still, (4) does not reflect all the relevant details of the story. What I am retentionally aware of at t2 is not just "which" (purported) object was the (purported) object of my act at t~, but also what I experienced it "as" at that earlier moment in time. T h a t we retain the attributive content of our earlier acts is vividly evident from experiences of misperception. T h e experience of a misperception does, indeed, require that the cross-act identity of the (purported) object be experienced, but it also requires that the attributive content of the earlier perceptual act
50
IZCHAK
MILLER
be retained. Otherwise, it would not be possible for us to experience an incompatibility between the present attributions and the earlier ones; nor, of course, would it be possible to experience the " h a r m o n y " between them. That we retain the attributive content of earlier acts is, then, an important feature of our perceptual experience. In particular, it is an important feature of my act at t2. It is accommodated by adding the appropriate details to (4). The description of my act at t2 reads, now, as follows: (5)
I perceivee ~(t2) [=~(tl) [p, q, r . . . . ], p, q, r . . . . ].
We have, now, a sufficient amount of structure in the schematic description of the perceptual act to represent the different perceptual situations discussed earlier. First, there is the case described by (5) itself. As I constructed the example, (5) describes my act at a certain moment within a continuous, uninterrupted, "harmonious" perceptual experience throughout which the (purported) object is continually experienced by me as the same. In fact, (5) reflects not only the fact that my perceptual act at t2 is "harmonious" with my (earlier) perceptual act at tl, but also that at least with respect to the three attributions, p, q and r, there was no change in my (purported) perspective of the (purported) object. If the attributes that were left out in (5)are all the same in the retention as they are in the present act, then I experience myself at t2 as being stationary (since tl) vis&-vis the (purported) object. For an object is always perceptually experienced by me as from a certain perspective, and the perspectival givenness of the object is necessarily reflected in the attributive content of the act that "prescribes" the spatial orientation of the object of the act. I said above that (5) reflects the fact that my perceptual act at t2 is "harmonious" with my perceptual act at ta. This, of course (given the way the case was set up), happens to be a fact. But it is important to notice that it does not follow from the fact that the content of my retention at t2 is "harmonious" with the content of my perceptual act as that moment, that the content of my past perceptual act is "harmonious" with the content of my present perceptual act. For my retentions are not necessarily veridical. Thus, it is indeed possible that although the course of my acts has, in fact, been "harmonious" I have, at a certain moment, an experience of "disharmony" due to distorted retentions.
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
51
The experiences of misperception discussed earlier are all cases of "disharmonious" experiences. Suppose that instead of the act described by (5) I have at t2 a different act, say, the one described as follows: (6)
I perceivee ~(t2) [ = ~ (t~} [p, q, r , . . . ] , ~, q, r . . . . ],
where " p " and "[~" are incompatible abiding attributes. On the assumption that it is part of my conceptual framework that these are, indeed, incompatible attributes, I have at t2 an experience of misperception. A more radical case of "disharmony" is one in which I "go back" on the very identity of the (purported) object. Suppose that instead of the act described by (6) I have at t2 the act described as follows: ' (7)
I perceivee ~ (t~) [ ~ ( t l ) [p, q, r . . . . ], p, q, r , . . . ] .
Here I experience, at t2, the (purported) object of my act as not identical with, but as qualitatively similar to, the (purported) object of my act at tl. In such a case I come to believe, say, that the original object has somehow been replaced by another object very much like it. An important comment: although Husserl's own discussion of the determinable-X is a bit hesitant, = it seems to be motivated, in part, by a basic - and, in my opinion, a correct - intuition that the attribution of cross-act identity to the (purported) objects of our perceptual acts is a primitive feature of our conscious activity, something like a "schema" in terms of which our empirical experiences are passively (involuntarily) organized. 6. I N D E X I C A L
MULTIPLICITY
An act of perception is a uniquely directed act. Its unique directedness is accounted for by the presence of an indexical element in the perceptual act that "determines" the object of the perceptual act, if any, regardless of whether that object satisfies the attributive content of the act. But this focusing of " t h e " (unique) object of the perceptual act is somewhat misleading. For one thing, even when a particular (purported) object is " t h e " object of our perceptual act, rarely is it alone in our perceptual field. For another, a perceptual act may, to begin with, be directed at a pair of objects, or a large number of (individually discerned) objects, rather than at a single one. Let us consider the former fact first. When I look at the blooming tree in my garden there is a clear sense
52
IZCHAK
MILLER
in which it is an object perceptually " f a v o r e d " by me, even though it is not the only object of which I am perceptually aware on that occasion. I am, for instance, also aware of a second tree that is not blooming and that is located next to the blooming tree. T h e r e are, in fact, additional objects in my garden of which I am perceptually aware on that occasion. If we ignore the "favoritism" exercised by me toward the blossoming tree, how many (purported) objects are there to my act on that occasion, or on any other given occasion? T h e answer is: as many as I "individuate" (single out) in my perceptual field. Of course, it need not be the case that each object in the portion of space that constitutes my perceptual field on a given occasion is one that is "individuated" by me on that occasion. Nor need it be the case that each "individuated" (purported) object is, in fact, an object in that portion of space (one or more of the purported objects may, in fact, fail to exist). As there is a sense in which a certain (purported) object can be " t h e " (purported) object of my perceptual act on a given occasion, so there is an equally legitimate sense in which the number of (purported) objects of my a c t is identical with the number of (purported) objects I perceptually "individuate" on that occasion. By considerations of experiences of misperception Husserl argues for the presence of a determinable-X in the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act pertaining to "the (purported) object of my act. But the same considerations apply not only to " t h e " (purported) object, but also to each (purported) object "individuated" by me through that perceptual act. It must, therefore, be the case that there are determinable-X's in the noematic Sinn of the act corresponding to each (purported) object "individuated" by me through that act. Most acts of perceiving involve a multiplicity of determinable-X's and, thus, a multiplicity of indexicals (as well as a network of relational attributes), thanks to which we are aware of a " g r i d " of (purported) objects in the (purported) portion of space that constitutes our perceptual field on that occasion. Let us return to the case of my perceiving the garden scene. T h e r e are - as I described that case - two trees of which I am perceptually aware on that occasion. Let us ignore my awareness of additional (purported) objects on that occasion and concentrate on my perceptual awareness of those two trees. T h a t the blooming tree, rather than the other tree of which I am also perceptually aware, is " t h e " object of my perceptual act on that occasion is due to the fact that my attention is invested in it. Attention, according to Husserl, is a sui generis "selec-
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
53
tor" function of the mind. 23 With a mere shift of attention the other tree, rather than the blooming one, can become " t h e " object of my perceptual act. I will call the attentionally favored (purported) object of a perceptual act the primary (purported) object of that act. In general, An (purported) object of my perceptual act is the primary (purported) object of that act just in case it is the (purported) object of my attention on that occasion. 24 In the present case, the blooming tree is the primary object of my perceptual act. Corresponding to the two trees that I "individuate" through my perceptual act there are two determinable-X's in the noematic Sinn of my act. Let "~1" express the determinable-X through which I am aware of the blooming tree, and let "x2" express the determinable-X through which I am aware of the other tree. Let us assume that after a while I shift my attention from the blooming tree to the other tree. Let tl be a time in which the primary object of my perceptual act is the blooming tree, and let t2 be a time in which the primary object of my perceptual act is the other tree. The following are the schematic descriptions of my perceptual acts at these two different moments: (8)
I seee
(9)
I seee a Xa (t2) [u, v, r (Yl (tz) [p, q , . . . ] ) . , , ,].
a 3~1
(tl) [p, q, r (x2 (ti) [u, v . . . . ]) . . . . ],
Where "I seee a etc.", in (8) and (9), is to be read as "I seee attentively etc." The phrase "r(22 (tl) [...)]", in (8), expresses a relational attribute-meaning in the noematic Sinn of my perceptual act at ta, an attribute-meaning that "prescribes" a certain relation, say, a spatial relation, r, as obtaining between Xl and x2 at that moment. Similarly, the phrase "r(~l (re) [...])", in (9), expresses a relational attributemeaning in the noematic Sinn of my act at t2 that "prescribes", again, a certain spatial relation, r, as obtaining between ~z and Yl at that second moment. However, the primary (purported) object of a perceptual act need not be a single (purported) object, such as a tree or a person; this is the second fact mentioned at the beginning of this section. Indeed, examples of a group of (purported) objects being, as a group, the primary object of a perceptual act are as abundant as are examples of single (purported) objects occupying that position. Seeing a marching band, a horse-drawn buggy, a bouquet of flowers, etc. are examples involving
54
IZCHAK
MILLER
acts of perceiving whose primary objects are "composite" objects. What is important here, of course, is not the fact that, say, a marching band is composed of different individual (marching) musicians. For, as experience teaches us, every ordinary (enduring) object that we perceive is a composite object in the sense of having parts etc.; and, as science teaches us, every such ordinary object is a "composite" object involving molecules, atoms, and other sub-particles. T h e difference between my perceiving something that I take perceptually to be a "basic" individual object and my perceiving something that I take perceptually to be a " c o m p o s i t e " object is not so much a difference in the object. Rather, it is a difference consisting in the fact that in the second case, unlike the first, I perceptually "individuate" (at least some of the) constituent parts, of the " c o m p o s i t e " object in addition to my "individuating" the " c o m p o s i t e " object as a whole. What is o f present significance, then, about my perceiving the marching band, for instance, is that although I do (as a matter of fact) perceptually "individuate" each m e m b e r of that marching band, no one m e m b e r is perceptually " f a v o r e d " by me over the other. Instead, the band as a whole is the " f a v o r e d " object of my perceptual act on that occasion. Husseri maintains - as indeed he should - that apart from the determinable-X's corresponding to each "individuated" (purported) m e m b e r of a group, the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act whose " f a v o r e d " (purported) object is the whole group contains a determinable-X that determines the group as a whole as the (purported) object of the act. Husserl calls such an act a "synthetic" or "polythetic" act, and he states his view about it as follows: Our discussion passes from the monothetic acts to the synthetic, or, to be more distinct, to the polythetic, Every member of a thetically articulated consciousness has the prescribed noematic structure; each has its X with its "determining content"; but in addition the noema of the synthetic total act, with reference to the "leading" thesis, has the synthetic X and its determining c o n t e n t Y
As the noematic Sinn of a polythetic act contains a determinable-X that determines the (purported) group as a whole in addition to determinable-X's that in a subsidiary way, determine the "individuated" (purported) members of that group, so does it contain attribute-meanings ("determining content") pertaining to the group as a whole in addition to attribute-meanings attached to the subsidiary determinable-X's individually.
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
55
T o simplify matters, let us suppose that a (purported) "composite" object that is the primary object of my visual experience at t l is composed of just two (purported) objects, each of which is also perceptually "individuated" by me on that occasion. A schematic description of my act at tl might look say, like this: (10)
I seee a ~(t~)[P(~,(t,)[p, q,..]), P(~2(t,)[u, v , . . ] ) , a, b , . . ]
where "P(~i)", in (10), expresses an attribute prescribing, say, a part-whole relation as obtaining between Yi and Y; and " a " , " b " , etc. express attributes of ~, i.e., of the "composite" object as a whole. That a group of objects can be, as a group, indexically the object of a perceptual act is a significant fact, not only for the present discussion, but also for an account of our temporal awareness. For the (purported) " c o m p o s i t e " object of a perceptual act need not be an enduring object. It may also be a process whose constituent events are not simultaneous with one another. For instance, the "composite" object in question might be the utterance of a sentence consisting of, say, three words. Let it be the utterance, "It is raining". Let the time in which each word is uttered be t~, t2 and t3, respectively. 26 For convenience, let me call the indexical element in the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act directed at an event " d e t e r m i n a b l e - E ' , rather than " d e t e r m i n a b l e - X ' . Now, let us pick up my act of perceiving this uttered sentence at t3. A schematic description of my act at t3 is the following: (11)
I heare a ~(t3)[P(g,(t,)["It"]), P(e2(t2)["is"]), P(g3(t 3)["raining"])],
where " g " expresses the determinable-E that (indexically) determines the whole utterance as the object of my act at t3; and " ~ " , "~2", and "e3" express subsidiary determinable-E's that (indexically) determine the constituent utterances "it", "is", and "raining", respectively. 7. A D D I T I O N A L
REMARKS
I conclude with a few comments about the relation between "experimental perceptual verbs" and "relational perceptual verbs". As was suggested earlier (cf. Note 8), one cannot be said to perceive an object in the relational sense unless that object exists and is appropriately impinging on one's senses. I have argued elsewhere 27 that one cannot be said to perceive an object in the relational sense unless one
56
IZCHAK
MILLER
"individuates" that object, i.e., unless one perceives it in the experiential sense. These, I maintain, are individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for perceiving in the relational sense, and I represent them schematically as follows: (12)
I perceiver o iff (3y) (I perceivee ~[p, q , . . . ] & y = ~ & ~ = o & y is appropriately impinging on my senses),
where 'perceiver' and 'perceivee' are to be replaced by a (specific) relational perceptual verb and a matching experiential perceptual verb, respectively. Precisely what counts as "appropriate impingment" on the senses I leave open. It should be noticed that the truth of the right-hand side of the bi-conditional is compatible with the case being a case of misperception: o may fail to satisfy some of the attributive content of my perceptual experience; still, I perceiver o. But more importantly, it should be noticed that (12) is not a statement in standard quantificational logic: First, '£', in (12), is a new piece of syntax, an indexical term that cannot be treate ~,as a bound variable. I do assume that we can formally treat indexicals. Second, even if '£[p, q . . . . ]' is grammatical in a language including indexicals, the syntax of that language must be such that it forbids substitutivity of co-referring terms for '£' and substitutivity o f coextensive predicates occurring within the square brackets. '~' not attached to the square brackets is just an ordinary (indexical) expression meaning roughly something like "this object in question which is in front of me". It either denotes a unique object or fails to denote. Taken as a piece of syntax not attached to the square brackets, it is an extensional term; just as 'I' is taken as an extensional term in normal extensional contextsfl 8 The formal system presupposed by (12) still needs to be worked out. Nevertheless, I think that (12), as well as the rest of the formulae in this essay, brings across as precisely as possible what Husserl had in mind; moreover, I believe that any adequate logic of perception must take (12) as its central element. Much is left still untold about the indexicality of perception. In the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act there are other indexical elements besides the determinable-X: there are indexical features that ascribe the spatial and temporal (purported) locations of the (purported) object(s) of the act, " t h e r e " and " n o w " ; and there are "rigid" ascrip-
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
57
tions of (at least some of) the (purported) properties of the (purported) object(s) of the act. But the discussion of these features must be left for another occasion.
NOTES * I am grateful to Alan Berger, Dagfinn F011esdal, Paul Horwich, Nathan Salmon, David Shatz, and David Smith, whose comments on an earlier draft of this paper helped improve it considerably. [This paper was received in May, 1982. Ed.] i In order to avoid confusion, it should be stressed from the outset that that positive sense in which perception is "direct" with respect to its object does not entail our having an epistemically privileged access to the object of perception. 2 Cf. FCdlesdal [1969] and, for a detailed discussion of Husserl's theory of intentionality, see Smith and Mclntyre [1982], esp. chapters III and IV. 3 Husserl [1962], p. 336. 4 Husserl [1962], p. 337. It is contextually evident that the quotation marks enclosing phrases within this quotation are instances of "inverted commas". Husserl uses these commas in act descriptions to indicate that the expressions enclosed by them refer to features of the meaning (noema) associated with the act, and not to whatever is their customary reference. See Husserl [1962], p. 240; cf. Smith and Mclntyre [1982], pp. 187-192. 5 Husserl's saying of the determinable-X that it is the "bearer" of its attribute-meanings is, therefore, rather unfortunate - despite his attempt to keep this notion of "bearer" apart from the ontological one by an explicit use of inverted commas. 6 The choice of a direct-object perceptual construction for the canonical form of a perceptual act description is to accommodate Husserl's view that the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act is a singular meaning. Most linguists maintain that there is a "success condition" attached to our use of perceptual verbs, i.e., that one cannot be said to perceive an object unless that object exists and is appropriately impinging on one's senses. I refer to verbs used in this way as "relational perceptual verbs". By contrast, I define "experiential perceptual verbs" as verbs whose use in perceptual statements carries with it only the commitment to an Occurrence of a perceptual experience. Thus, (1) does not admit of existential generalization. 7 It has been suggested that the sense of 'x' may be considered to be the sense of a bound variable in cases where the act has, in fact, an object. The point, however, is that the noematic Sinn of a perceptual act, according to Husserl, contains a determinable-X as a constituent regardless of whether the act has an object. 8 Husserl [1962], p. 337. Ibid., p. 388. io Ibid., p. 356. ~ Donnellan describes an attributive use of a definite description. Used attributively, the object referred to by a definite description is the one, if any, that happens to satisfy the predicative content of that definite description. Cf. Donnellan [1966]. 12 In addition to the arguments I shall be giving, this conclusion is further buttressed by Ronald McIntyre's arguments in Mclntyre [1982a and 1982b].
58
IZCHAK
MILLER
13 This is so, perhaps, because we cannot go back and forth in time as we can in space. We have only " o n e shot", so to speak, at perceiving an event. If time travel were possible, we could have maintained a perceptual "fix" on an event while traveling back in time toward it. Combined with space travel, such time travel could have allowed us to "get a closer look" at an event that might have led in turn to a perceptual "change of mind" about its, say, temporal location. ~4 T h e r e is more to be said about this issue in the face of the "time gap" that exists between the perception aand the perceived. 15 T h e present considerations are restricted to cases of continuous, uninterrupted, perceptual experience of an object. However, the account is generalizable to other cases of perceptual re-experiencing of objects perceived earlier. ~6 T h e contemporary reader is apt to identify "meaning" with "attributive meaning". However, for Husserl "meaning" (Sinn) is a generic notion only one instance of which is an "attributive" meaning, such as the meaning of a definite description; but another instance is an "indexical" meaning, which according to Husserl is a sui generis species of meaning, i.e., one that is not reducible to an attributive meaning. The determinable-X is an example of the latter kind of meaning. ~7 This interpretation is supported by numerous textual examples of Husserl's use of 'this' in what are, clearly, phenomenological descriptions of perceptual experiences. See also Smith [1982]. is These two moments are moments in my "internal time", i.e., in the temporal ordering of my experiences. I leave open questions about the relation between "internal time" and "world time". These questions are discussed in Miller [1982]. 19 Husserl [1969], pp. 318-319. Emphasis mine. 2o This comparison between "retention" and "short-term memory" is intended for heuristic purposes only. Strictly speaking, memory - short-term or otherwise - requires a retentional structure. Consequently, the above two features should not be identified with one another. 21 A detailed discussion of Husserl's notion of retention is undertaken in Miller [1982]. 22 I believe that Husserl himself, who was at first committed to what I called earlier the classical account of reference, found the conclusions of his own thoughts about the determinable-X hard to assimilate. For instance, he never brings himself to say that the determinable-X is an indexical meaning (in his lexicon, an "essentially occasional" meaning), even though his own arguments for the presence of such a component of meaning in the noematic Sinn of the perceptual act leave room for no other conclusion. 23 Husserl [1962], pp. 246-250. Husserl distinguishes different "kinds", or " m o d e s " , of attention. One is that just mentioned - the "selector" function. This function is an "on=off" function, and it is this attentional function that Husserl often calls "the glancing ray of the ego". There are according to Husserl other attentional modes that, unlike the "selector" function, admit of degree. 24 Attention, according to Husserl, is a feature of the Gegebenheitsweise (mode of givenness) of the act. It "modifies" the thetic character of the act, and, thus, in the act's description it is represented by a modifier of the verb-phrase. 25 Husserl [1962], p. 339. This is one of two senses in which Husserl uses "synthetic". In the first sense, "synthetic act" is used to designate a propositional act. T h e term "polythetic" does, indeed, seem more appropriate for the present purpose.
PERCEPTUAL
REFERENCE
59
26 For the present purposes I assume that tl, t2, and t3 are (short) intervals of time, and I ignore the time-gap between the perception and the perceived. For a more detailed account of Husserl's theory of temporal awareness see my "Husserl's Account of our Temporal awareness", cited in note 17. 27Cf. Miller [1982]. 28 Alan Berger has contributed to the formulation of the points in this section. REFERENCES Donnellan, Keith: 1966, 'Reference and Definite Descriptions', The Philosophical Review 75, 281-304. Dreyfus, Hubert: 1982, Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass. F011esdal, Dagfinn: 1969, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema', The Journal of Philosophy 66, 680-687; reprinted in Dreyfus [1982], pp. 73-80. Husserl, Edmund: 1962, Ideas: General Introduction to Pare Phenomenology, W. R. Boyce Gibson (trans.), Collier Books, New York. Husserl, Edmund: 1969, Formal and Transcendental Logic, Dorion Cairns (trans.), Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague. Husserl, Edmund: 1973a, Cartesian Meditations, Dorion Cairns (trans.), Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague. Husserl, Edmund: 1973b, Experience and Judgment, James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (trans.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, I11. McIntyre, Ronald: 1982a, 'Husserl's Phenomenological Conception of Internationality and its Difficulties', Philosophia 11, 223-248. Mclntyre, Ronald: 1982b, 'Intending and Referring', in Dreyfus [1982], pp. 215-231. Miller, Izchak: 1982, 'Husserl's Account of our Temporal Awareness', in Dreyfus [1982], pp. 125-146. Smith, David Woodruff: 1982, 'Husserl on Demonstrative Reference and Perception', in Dreyfus [1982], pp. 193-213. Smith, David Woodruff and Mclntyre, Ronald: 1982, Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language, D. Reidel, Dordrecht. Department of Philosophy University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 U.S.A.
