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Perception and hallucination: from an analytical approach to an enactive

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Special Issue: 4E Cognition research in Colombia - Opinion

Adaptive Behavior
2019, Vol. 27(1) 105–108
Ó The Author(s) 2018
Perception and hallucination: Article reuse guidelines:
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from an analytical approach to DOI: 10.1177/1059712318813074
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an enactive approach

Ana Lorena Domı́nguez Rojas

Abstract
In this opinion, I examine the benefits of the enactivist approach in the study of perception and hallucination, which have
traditionally been studied in the context of analytic philosophy. I consider some arguments that rescue the role of
objects and the body in the perceptual experience, which allow certain clarities regarding the case of hallucination.

Keywords
Perception, hallucination, enactivism, representationalism, disjunctivism

Handling Editor: Maria Clara Garavito, Colombian National University, Colombia

1. Introduction point of view that recognizes the constitutive role of

In the discussion on philosophy of perception, we find
the problem of perception (Smith, 2002), which involves
two conflicting aspects: on one hand, a conception of
openness to the world in which perception is an imme-
diate conscience of objects that exist independently of
the perceiving conscience; on the other hand, the possi-
bility of having a phenomenally indistinguishable (and
qualitatively identical) experience—hallucination—
about objects that are not present (Crane, 2007).
Nowadays the discussion regarding the difference
between perception and hallucination revolves around
representationalism and disjunctivism. These approaches
take positions regarding certain aspects in the charac-
terization of perception, and they also offer a way to
understand hallucination (Martin, 2004; Nanay, 2015;
Papineau, 2016; Thompson, 2008; Tye, 2014). One of
the spotlights of the debate between disjunctivism and
representationalism focuses on explaining the phenom-
enal characteristics of perception and their relationship
with physical objects. From a representationalist point
of view, perception is determined by an intentional rela-
tion rather than by the openness to objects; conversely,
from a disjunctivist perspective, perception is about sen-
sory consciousness and access to the world.
I will try to argue in favor of the importance of
objects and the subject’s point of view in the characteri-
zation of experience. My main goal is to propose a
objects in the characterization of a perceptive experi-
ence. I intend to do this by aligning these ideas with a
disjunctivist stance and an enactivist stance, both posi-
tions highlighting the role of action, which establishes
the active and dynamic nature of perception in the
organism–environment relationship.
2. Analytic approaches to perception
and hallucination
Hallucinatory phenomena suggest that the relation
with objects is not constitutive since the phenomenal
factor of perception—what is felt—does not depend on
the presence of objects (Crane & French, 2005). Based
on the adoption of the common factor principle—per-
ception and hallucination are the same kind of
experience—the representationalist approach follows
this question: How is it possible to concede that objects
are not constitutive in the cases of hallucination, but
they are constitutive in cases of perception? It is feasible
to consider that physical objects are neither constitutive
Catholic University of Pereira, Pereira, Colombia
Corresponding author:
Ana Lorena Domı́nguez Rojas, Catholic University of Pereira, Avenida
Sur / Las Americas, Cra 21 # 49-95, Pereira 2435, Risaralda, Colombia.
Email: ana.dominguez@ucp.edu.co
106
in cases of perception nor in cases of hallucination
because of the dependence of the phenomenal character
on the intentional content, and it is not necessary that
the latter correspond to a physical object (Tye, 2014).
According to Tye (2015), when having a hallucinatory
experience of something red, one is aware of the color
red; so when we talk about veridical perception, we
would be considering a case in which the experience
that represents red corresponds with the red in the
world. As a consequence, it might seem to a subject
that he sees a red tomato without this property being
locally instantiated in an object. The content of the per-
ceptive experience would be susceptible to ‘‘be filled’’ or
not with objects, but the object itself is not a constitu-
tive part of the experience. The internalist could point
out that while the content determines the phenomenal
factor, the physical existence of objects can determine
the verification conditions (Pautz, 2007).
Now, from a disjunctivist point of view, perception
and hallucination are mental states of different natures
(Soteriou, 2009) because objects are constitutive of per-
ception but are not constitutive of hallucination.
Therefore, disjunctivists establish this disjunction: an
experience is either a perception—that is, a genuine
experience of a determined object—or a hallucination of
an object (Soteriou, 2009). The disjunctivist rejects the
common factor principle because the relation between
subject and object is a constitutive relation of percep-
tion. According to the disjunctivist perspective, it is not
possible to have an experience without a relation with
an object and for it to be of the same nature as an expe-
rience in which there is an object involved (Vega-
Encabo, 2010). To perceive the meows of a cat is not
only to be conscious of certain characteristics but to be
in relation with it as being part of the world.
Fish (2008) shows that a hallucination cannot be con-
sidered qualitatively identical to a genuine perception; in
the most vivid cases, the hallucinated object merely looks
identical to a real one, but phenomenal appearance can-
not be taken as a reason in favor of the common factor
principle in both experiences. Fish argues that objects
are constitutive elements of the phenomenal character of
experience. According to this approach, due to the
important role of objects (their positions, characteristics,
the place that they occupy in space, the ways the object
can be encountered, etc.), it is posited that hallucinations
cannot be phenomenologically equal to perceptions,
because in the former these elements are absent (Fish,
2010). Fish thinks that the similarity of the introspective
beliefs of perception and hallucination is the key aspect
to understanding why someone could identify a halluci-
nation state as a perceptive one.
3. The enactivist approach
Although it is possible to recognize certain similarities
with the disjunctivist approach, the enactivist approach
Adaptive Behavior 27(1)
is much more decisive in arguing in favor of the inter-
dependence of the embodied subject with perceptive
experience (Di Paolo, 2016). The enactivist approach
provides theoretical and empirical elements that allow
the disjunctivist approach to enlarge the primary con-
ception for the role of objects and the role of the perci-
pient in the explanation of the nature of perception
(Campbell, 2009; Fish, 2009; Martin, 2004). I will argue
in favor of this idea starting with a short description of
the enactivist approach.
Enactivism, in the context of contemporary cogni-
tive sciences, unites an increasing number of research-
ers interested in understanding what the mind is and
how it is related with the world, in an epistemological
and experiential way (Gallagher, 2017). According to
Di Paolo, Buhrmann, and Barandiaran (2017), under-
standing the ‘‘cognitive systems as embodied and situ-
ated in an environment, and of cognition as the result
of complex, dynamical, and emergent interactive pat-
terns, led to another insight that began to draw the
attention of cognitive scientists: the primacy of action’’
(p. 16). From an enactivist approach, the phenomenal
factor relies in both the qualities of the object (color,
size, texture, etc.) and the possible actions of the body.
In Gallagher’s (2011) words,
What it’s like to experience the color red or green is not
just an abstract state of phenomenal consciousness—it is
affected by, and it affects our postural readiness to act,
which may be experienced as a feeling of discomfort or
awkwardness, or alternatively, a feeling of extreme readi-
ness pertaining to engaging in a particular action. (p. 12)
This statement invites us to study the dynamic rela-
tion between object and percipient, the interaction con-
text, the necessary ability for an optimal interaction
adjustment, as well as other elements (Gallagher, 2011,
2013). Next, I will analyze some ideas involved in per-
ception from the enactivist approach. In the final part,
I argue that while the hallucination seems to connect
the subject with the world, in perception this is not an
appearance but a reality (Beaton, 2016).
3.1. Perception and hallucination
Perception plays a vital function in our survival and
adaptation to the environment. This function can be
explained thanks to adjustments of a series of basic
attentional processes of discrimination or selection of
relevant information that make our everyday actions
possible. Perception also implies establishing adjustable
strategies that depend on the subject’s needs, the envi-
ronmental conditions, and the situational context
(Gallagher, 2013).
Following Farkas (2013) and Dorsch (2010), there is
a group of elements that, in a non-exhaustive way, we
Domı́nguez Rojas
could consider as relevant in the configuration of the
sense of reality in perspective experiences. The follow-
ing factors indicate that we are in a perceptive relation
with objects: (a) the particularity and independence of
mind: perception is always of something and that some-
thing is an object or a group of objects situated on
space and whose existence is not dependent on the sub-
ject; (b) the spatial-temporal location: whenever we per-
ceive objects that are presenting in our field, these do
not appear and disappear spontaneously—our experi-
ence about them is characterized by stability or conti-
nuity, which make contextual interaction possible
(Ratcliffe, 2013); (c) determination: refers to the way we
enter in a relation with objects whose sensory proper-
ties are central for the constitution of the phenomenal
character of our own perception (in relation to this
point, Beaton (2013, 2016) points out that, for the
enactivist approach, objects are constituted not only by
their physical properties but also by the way in which
the agent’s structure is able to capture these properties);
and (d) the public character: even when perceptive expe-
rience involves a qualitative ‘‘what is like’’ component,
objects can be experienced by other agents in a shared
action, that is to say, I can establish links with the
world and understand how the other relates with the
world at the same time (Beaton, 2016; Merleau-Ponty,
1975).
The source of knowledge of how to act or what
actions to deploy in each situation is based on the
dynamic interaction between the agent and the environ-
ment through the body (Gallagher, 2017). The percep-
tive process of pre-linguistic babies shows the
fundamental value of body and action in adjusting with
the environment (Gallagher, 2013). This early form of
embodied exploration (grabbing, sucking on objects)
allows the baby to assemble knowledge (that, initially,
does not require concepts) about the world, acquiring
an expertise level that facilitates their adaptation and
allows them to have significant experiences of the world
(Zeedyk, 2006). Perception not only depends on what
happens in the brain, it also involves the relation
between different abilities of the perceiver and
objects—with the body as the natural-essential medium
of interaction (Noë, 2005; Silverman, 2018).
These aspects of perception have a special value in
the understanding of perceptive experience and in dis-
tinguishing it from hallucination. According to Beaton
(2016), an adequate strategy for explaining hallucina-
tion would consist in a detailed revision of the similari-
ties and differences between perception and
hallucination, taking as a central point: ‘‘the actions
that an agent would take (if appropriately tested) when
imagining (or hallucinating or having an illusion of or
dreaming about) a given object (or property, etc.) and
when actually perceiving such an object’’ (p. 271). The
phenomenological richness of perception depends, to a
large degree, in our capacity to move around and
107
couple are actions with objects in different ways.
According to Noë (2005), the characterization of per-
ception as a ‘‘doing’’ (which involves the involvement
of the body and a set of sensorimotor abilities) collides
with the idea of internist perception which sees percep-
tion as a purely representational and cerebral matter. If
the enactivist perspective on perception is correct, then
hallucinations are phenomenologically quite different
from perceptions.
4. Conclusion
Research on perception and hallucination still has a
long road to travel (Macpherson & Platchais, 2013). It
must aim to integrate conceptual analysis and empirical
evidence. For example, even if the brain plays a consti-
tutive role in the configuration of perceptive experience,
the complexity of perceptive experience of a rose is not
summarized in neural activity or representational con-
tent (Gallagher, 2017). Understanding perceptive expe-
rience implies a series of situated and particular actions
that happen when our hands get in touch with the rose
and we feel its texture with our hands, we smell its fra-
grance or observe certain aspects of the rose visible
from this or that position, and so on. All these aspects,
as a group, configure a qualitatively singular experience
in relation to the rose that we experience from our
embodied agency (Gallagher, 2013). Perception, prop-
erly understood, cannot be confused with the appear-
ance of perception; it is an entering into a relation with
an object in a given environment, through embodied
action (Beaton, 2016; Gallagher, 2011, 2013; Silverman,
2018).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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About the Author
Ana Lorena Domı́nguez Rojas received MSc in Philosophy of Science with Cognitive Science
emphasis from National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is psychologist from the
National University of Colombia and psychology teacher at Catholic University of Pereira.
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Adaptive Behavior 27(1)
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