Is Perceptual Experience Metaphysically Disunified?

Ross Pain

Traditionally it has been held that the phenomenology of perceptual consciousness is unified, in that it is composed of one fundamental type of psychological state or event. Recently this has been challenged (see Bengson 2013, Brogaard 2013, Reiland 2013 and Tucker 2011) by those who claim that our visual experiences are disunified. Typically, this involves the claim that there is a low level, non-conceptual and non-propositional sensory aspect to experience which determines phenomenal character, and a high level conceptual and propositional judgment that is representational in nature. As neither constituent can be reduced to the other, perceptual consciousness must be metaphysically disunified. All this recalls Wilfrid Sellars’ two component analysis of perception. Whilst I believe Sellars’ two component model is sound from a third person perspective, it is less so from the first person.  This is because the argument (called the “subtraction argument”) used to motivate first person perceptual disunification is shaky at best. I will look at ways in which the subtraction argument is employed by contemporary thinkers (such as Paul Coates, 2009), why the argument is problematic, and suggest a new argument that might replace it.