On Perceptual Presence

Phenom Cogn Sci (2011) 10:439–459 DOI 10.1007/s11097-011-9220-4 On perceptual presence Kristjan Laasik Published online: 27 August 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract In his book Action in Perception, Alva Noë poses what he refers to as the “problem of perceptual presence” and develops his enactive view as solution to the problem. Noë describes the problem of perceptual presence as the problem of how to conceive of the presence of that which, “strictly speaking,” we do not perceive. I argue that the “problem of perceptual presence” is ambiguous between two problems that need to be addressed by invoking very different resources. On the one hand, there is the problem of how to conceive of the presence of objects as wholes, front side and back, and their constant properties. On the other hand, there is the problem of how to account for the presence of unattended detail. I focus on the first problem, which Noë approaches by invoking Husserlian ideas. I argue that Noë’s enactive view encounters difficulties, which can be dealt with by complementing it with Edmund Husserl’s idea of fulfillment and generally restoring the view to its original Husserlian context. Contrary to Noë’s purport, this involves regarding the view not as a theory of perception and perceptual content but as part of a descriptive– clarificatory project of conceptual analysis. The Husserlian phenomenologist analyzes, e.g., the concept of shape or color by investigating the fulfillment conditions pertinent to shape or color. In general, my critique of Noë’s enactive view serves to caution philosophers against unprincipled uses of Husserlian ideas. Keywords Enactive view of perception . Husserlian phenomenology . Fulfillment . Perceptual presence Introduction According to Alva Noë’s enactive view of perception, visual perception requires “sensorimotor knowhow.” This means that the perceiver needs to have certain K. Laasik (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, 1252 Memorial Dr., Ashe 721, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA e-mail: klaasik@gmail.com 440 K. Laasik perceptual skills and sensorimotor expectations, i.e., expectations concerning how the object would appear to her if she moved in certain ways in relation to it. For example, she might have a sensorimotor expectation to the effect that if she moved to look at the tennis ball from the other side, it would appear yellow, though a shade darker than it appears now. In his book Action in Perception, Noë poses what he refers to as the “problem of perceptual presence” and develops his enactive view as solution to the problem. In Noë’s words, the problem of perceptual presence is the problem of how to conceive of “the presence of that which, strictly speaking, we do not perceive” (Noë 2004, p. 60). I believe that Noë is on to an important problem. He has addressed the problem by invoking Husserlian ideas, but the difficulties he encounters suggest that these ideas should not be torn from their original context. Noë presents his enactive view as a theory of perception and perceptual content but the Husserlian ideas are rightly regarded as part of a descriptive–clarificatory project of conceptual analysis. So understood, Noë’s account can avoid certain problems and achieve the original goal of elucidating the role of sensorimotor knowhow in perceptual experience. My critique of Noë’s enactive view should generally caution philosophers against unprincipled uses of Husserlian ideas. I will, firstly, argue that Noë, in discussing the “problem of perceptual presence,” conflates two different problems that need to be addressed by appeal to different resources. On the one hand, there is the problem of how to account for the perceptual presence of what the perceiver experiences as not in view or not currently appearing to him. This issue arises in connection with the object’s back side and occluded parts, but also, as we shall see, for constant properties. I shall call it the Presence Problem. On the other hand, there is a problem that some philosophers and psychologists have raised, based on certain phenomena investigated in cognitive science, viz., perceivers might be confabulating about the nature and extent of their experiences. For example, when looking at Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn Diptych,” one might believe that he experiences an entire wall’s breadth of portraits of Marilyn, but research in cognitive science supports the view that he, at any time, only actually experiences the small area at the focus of his attention. This makes it seem like we are victims to a “Grand Illusion,” a massive illusion about the nature and extent of our experiences, unless there is a way to counter this skeptical scenario. I shall call it the Illusion Problem. Noë regards these two problems as one and the same problem, and proposes to solve it by appealing to sensorimotor knowhow. However, I believe that we are dealing with two very different problems that are solved by invoking different kinds of sensorimotor knowhow. We can therefore distinguish, in Noë’s enactive view, what I would call a Dennettian strand, concerned with the Illusion Problem, and a Husserlian strand, concerned with the Presence Problem. Noë has in no way synthesized these two disparate sets of ideas. Setting aside the Dennettian line, I will, secondly, argue that we can defend the Husserlian aspects of Noë’s view, i.e., Noë’s take on the object’s back side and the constant properties, against objections by invoking further Husserlian ideas, especially the idea of fulfillment. I believe that the most important and largely unappreciated peculiarity of Husserl’s philosophy of perception is that he investigates the content of perceptual experience as determining fulfillment On perceptual presence 441 conditions, not as determining accuracy conditions. To sketch the idea in a preliminary fashion, when I turn an object around and what was its back side comes into view, we can say that the back side comes to fulfillment. However, the fulfillment conditions, i.e., what the back side would have had to look like upon my turning the object around, in order for there to be fulfillment, were determined by the content of the perceptual experience I had to begin with, before turning the object around. We can say that the back side is present to the perceiver in the sense that his experience of the object depends upon expected fulfillments with regard to the back side and that his sensorimotor expectations set the relevant fulfillment conditions. The main body of the paper consists of four sections. In the “What is the problem” section, I will present the “problem of perceptual presence,” introducing what Noë regards as different instances of the problem. In “Two problems, two solutions” section, I will argue that Noë has conflated two very different problems that need to be addressed by invoking different resources. In the “Fulfillment in perception” section, I will articulate one of these problems in the context of Husserl’s philosophy of perception. I will then, in “Phenomenology, not phenomenalism” section, use the idea of fulfillment to deal with objections to Noë’s view. What is the problem? I will now present what Noë refers to as the “problem of perceptual presence” and discuss the various putative instances of the problem. In Chapter 2 of Action in Perception, Noë poses the problem of perceptual presence with regard to various cases: the unattended parts of the perceptual scene, the back side of the perceptual object, and the occluded parts of the object’s front side. In subsequent chapters that he considers the “heart” of his book, he adds the case of constant properties (Noë 2004, p. 34). Most of us are inclined to believe that they see what is before them in considerable detail. For example, we would take ourselves to be seeing the entire wall of portraits of Marilyn Monroe in the Warhol picture, if nothing occludes parts of it. But Noë argues that certain phenomena lend support to the view that we do not see everything we think we see. One of these is the phenomenon of change blindness, i.e., the subject’s failure to notice even certain large and dramatic changes in the visual scene. It can, for example, happen because the change coincides with an eye movement. In one experiment, perceivers overwhelmingly failed to notice when, in a photograph of a Paris street scene, “the color of a car prominently displayed in the foreground change[d] from red to blue” (Ibid., p. 51–52). Noë interprets change blindness as giving rise to the problem of perceptual presence, One of the results of change blindness is that we only see, we only experience, that to which we attend. But surely it is a basic fact of our phenomenology that we enjoy a perceptual awareness of at least some unattended features of the scene. So, for example, I may look at you, attending only to you. But I also have a sense of the presence of the wall behind you in the background, or its color, of its distance from you. It certainly seems this way. … [W]e must 442 K. Laasik explain how it is we can enjoy perceptual experience of unattended features of a scene. Let us call this the problem of perceptual presence. More generally, we can ask: In what does our sense of the presence of the detailed environment consist, if not in the fact that we see it? How can it seem to us as if the world is present to us visually in all its details without its seeming to us as if we see all that detail? (Noë 2004, pp. 59–60) If Noë is right, we neither see nor take ourselves to be seeing the environment in all its detail, but it is nevertheless perceptually present to us. The problem is how to account for the perceptual experience of that which we, strictly speaking, are not seeing. Noë regards change blindness as reason to pose the problem of perceptual presence for the unattended aspects of the perceptual scene, aspects that perceivers would usually regard as being plainly in view. However, he regards the problem as also arising for the occluded parts of the front side of the perceptual object and for the back side, as well as for the constant shape and color properties. For example, when we see a cat on the other side of a picket fence, the occluded parts of the cat are perceptually present to us even though we do not experience them as actually seen. The same goes for the back side of a tomato (Ibid., pp., 60, 62). Indeed, Noë regards the cases of the cat’s occluded parts and the tomato’s back side as especially suggestive of the general solution, viz., that all these different aspects of perceptual objects are present to us in the sense that we have sensorimotor expectations about them (Ibid., p. 60). The experience of these expectations is the experience of accessibility or availability as when I take it to be the case that if I went to the other side of the tomato on the table, I would access the tomato’s back side. According to Noë, “we take ourselves to have access, now, to the whole cat. The cat, the tomato, the detailed scene, all are present perceptually in the sense that they are perceptually accessible to us.…” (Ibid., p. 63). He calls the kind of presence he invokes as solution “presence as absence” and “virtual presence.” Another case to which Noë applies the resources of his view is the problem of perceptual constancy. It is the problem of how variable sensations can give rise to the perception of constant properties (Smith 2002, pp. 170–171). In debates on perceptual constancy, the two positions commonly defended are the simple view and the complex view. According to the simple view, a tilted round coin appears elliptical to us. According to the complex view, the tilted round coin appears tilted and round to us.1 Thus, the simple view denies that constant properties are represented in perceptual experience, but the complex view says that they are, while also accommodating the perspectival aspect of perceptual experience by noting that the coin appears tilted. Noë’s view is different from either of these views, and appears a kind of synthesis of the two, as he argues that a tilted round coin appears both elliptical and round to us. Noë’s account of constant shape perception is basically similar to his account of constant color perception, and he regards both cases as giving rise to the problem of perceptual presence. Indeed, he regards the problems of perceptual constancy as just amounting to special cases the problem of perceptual presence. He says that the constant color of a wall is “present but absent, in the same way as the tomato’s backside, or the blocked parts of the cat” (Noë 2004, p. 128). 1 See, for example, Pautz 2009, p. 503. On perceptual presence 443 In the following quotation, Noë elucidates the similarity between color and shape perception, while also indicating a certain difference between the two cases, We experience color as that which is, in a wide range of cases, invariant amid that apparent variation. In this way, then, color perception and shape perception are on a par. You experience the roundness of the plate in the fact that it looks elliptical from here and that its elliptical appearance changes (or would change) in precise ways as your relation to the plate, or the plate’s relation to the environment, changes. In exactly the same way, we experience the color of the wall in the fact that the apparent color of the wall varies as lighting changes (Ibid., pp. 127–128). Noë’s account of color can be found in Chapter 4 of Action in Perception, and his account of shape is in Chapter 5. In the latter chapter, we find a more explicit articulation in the case of shape, of the phenomenal contrast, implicit in the above passage that enables Noë to pose the problem of perceptual presence, “The plate looks to be circular (it really does) and it looks elliptical from here (it really does)…A theory of perceptual content needs to acknowledge and account for this dual aspect of perceptual content” (Ibid., p. 164). We can now conceive of the constant shape as what, in Noë’s terms, is perceptually present, although not experienced as actually seen. The perspectival appearance, by contrast, is experienced as actually seen. The same goes for the constant color and perspectival color appearance respectively. But there is also a certain difference between the cases of color perception and shape perception. Namely, the solution in the case of constant shape depends, first and foremost, on the perceiver’s grasp of and expectations regarding how the shape would appear if one moved in relation to it. On the other hand, according to Noë, the case of the constant also color requires a grasp of and expectations regarding how the color would appear if the lighting changed, and not just expectations regarding movements (Ibid., 128). In Chapter 6, Noë adds to his conception of colors and other perceptual properties by arguing that our experience of them necessarily involves concepts. For the different colors, for example, there are different “formal concepts” or “rules,” thanks to which, “for any given shade, we can embrace it in thought,” and that structure the color space (Ibid., p. 196). It is due to our grasp of such “rules” that an invariant, such as the constant color, can emerge amid the apparent variation. In sum, we see that Noë regards the problem of perceptual presence as arising in various different cases and he believes that we cannot fully appreciate the problem without due consideration of work in cognitive science, viz., on the phenomenon of change blindness. We also get the sense that the idea of sensorimotor knowhow needs to be quite a rich idea in order to solve the problem in the seemingly very different cases of the unattended environmental detail, the objects’ back sides, and constant shapes and colors. Two problems, two solutions I will now argue that what Noë refers to as the problem of perceptual presence is rightly regarded as two different problems that need to be addressed by appeal to 444 K. Laasik very different resources. On the one hand, there is the Illusion Problem, viz., we might be subject to illusion about our experience of the unattended detail of the perceptual scene. Noë addresses this problem by arguing that the unattended detail is present to us, or experienced by us, in the sense that it is possible for us to access it. On the other hand, there is the Presence Problem, i.e., the problem of how to account for the presence of the object’s back side, the occluded parts, and the constant properties. It can be solved by arguing that the back side is present to us, or experienced by us, in the sense that we have certain perceptual expectations in regard to it. Consider the case of the perceiver who is confronted with Andy Warhol’s large painting of Marilyns. Seeing it from a suitable viewing distance, she takes the entire painting to be present to her in the sense of being plainly in view. However, if Noë is right, cases like change blindness support the idea that this is not the case, and we need to take seriously the possibility that we are massively confabulating about the nature and extent of our experience. The perceiver takes it to be the case that while she attends to the Marilyn right in front of her, another Marilyn on the left, outside the scope of her present attention, is nevertheless also experienced by her. She believes that she really is having an experience of the portrait of Marilyn on the left, and not a greatly impoverished experience of a few lines and indeterminate patches of color, or no experience at all. But if this is what she believes and if change blindness does indeed strongly support the view that perceivers have at best very impoverished experience of what lies outside the narrow scope of their attention, it seems that we must regard her as victim to a Grand Illusion. However, Noë argues that even though our perceiver has no detailed experience of the Marilyn on the left, she is not massively wrong about the nature and scope of her experience, since it is possible for her to access the Marilyn on the left. Indeed, she can readily access it as well as other details and parts of the scene by shifting her attention from one part of the scene to another and by making eye movements and other movements to explore the scene. We can say that she experiences them in the sense that they are accessible. However, perhaps we have been too quick to draw this conclusion? Indeed, even Husserl agrees that the area of clearest vision is remarkably small, and the rest is seen in a confused and unclear manner (Husserl 1997, p. 294 (340)).2 Why not concede that the perceivers who report the Marilyn on the left to be in plain view rather than expected to come into plain view, are just phenomenologically naïve? I believe we should be very cautious about arguments to the effect that subjects are just wrong about their own phenomenology because they tend to involve highly contentious reductionist or eliminativist presuppositions. In this case, the drastic claim, viz., that the Marilyn on the left is not being accessed at all right now, but is merely accessible, has some plausibility as a view concerning the functioning of the subpersonal visual apparatus. On the personal level, it is plausibly the case that the unattended Marilyns appear somewhat confusedly and unclearly, but this is a far cry 2 This was pointed out to me by an anonymous referee. On perceptual presence 445 from saying that they, strictly speaking, aren’t appearing to the subject at all right now, and are merely expected to come into view.3 On the other hand, there is the object’s back side. Assuming that objects are perceptually present to us as wholes, their back sides are perceptually present to us but there is a sense in which we do not, “strictly speaking,” perceive them. The problem needs to be solved by giving an account of what the perceptual presence of the back side consists in, and Noë does it by arguing that it is the kind of presence that depends upon our possession and exercise of the relevant sensorimotor knowhow. However, he now invokes a different aspect of the idea of sensorimotor knowhow, viz., the back sides are present to us in the sense that we have sensorimotor expectations about them. In one case, the problem is solved by appeal to possible access. In the other case, it is dealt with by invoking sensorimotor expectations. Notice that we cannot combine these resources in dealing with either problem. In the case of the unattended Marilyn to the left of the perceiver, she takes it to be the case that she is experiencing the Marilyn in considerable detail, she takes the Marilyn to be in plain view. She cannot therefore have an expectation to the effect that the Marilyn will come into view when she turns her attention to it or when she makes certain movements. I grant that the perceiver can have various other sensorimotor expectations regarding the unattended Marilyn, but these expectations are always based on and relative to what she takes herself to be experiencing as being in view now. Therefore, we cannot say that the unattended Marilyn is perceptually present to the perceiver partly thanks to her having the expectation that she can easily have an experience of it, or genuinely bring it into view, by turning her attention to it or by making exploratory movements. The case of the object’s back side is different. Now we need to invoke sensorimotor expectations but it makes no sense to say that in order for the back side to be perceptually present, it needs to be possible for the perceiver to access it. Clearly, we cannot always go round to the back of, say, a house, and take a look at the rear. Quite realistically, armed guards could be there to stop us, or there could be some other kind of environmental resistance. Indeed, in parts of Action in Perception Noë does justice to this point by arguing that our perception of objects as wholes needs to be accounted for in terms of our taking certain counterfactuals to be true and these counterfactuals’ being, in fact, true (Noë 2004, pp. 169–175). Consider, for example, the counterfactual, “If I were to go round to the back of the house, its rear wall would appear blue.” The back side is perceptually present insofar as I take such counterfactuals to be true and they are indeed true. We might wonder whether this idea would also work in the case of the unattended detail, restoring cohesion to Noë’s view. But this is clearly not what Noë means by “accessibility” when he says that the unattended detail needs to be accessible. According to Noë, cases like change blindness highlight the fact that we do not, at 3 The idea that subjects are phenomenologically naïve in the sense of being pervasively and drastically mistaken about the extent of what appears to them at a given moment, needs to be sharply distinguished from the kind of naivete with which Husserl contrasts his phenomenological perspective. I believe that the latter kind of naivete centrally consists not in being wrong about the extent of what appears to one or in being oblivious of the nuances of experience but rather in failing to adequately grasp the nature of the project and to abide by the constraints of the phenomenological method. A prime example of such failure is appeals to theories concerning the subpersonal functioning of the perceptual apparatus and how it makes contact with the physical environment. 446 K. Laasik any moment, actually access the entire scene that we take to be in view. But change blindness is a kind of perceptual failure and the enactive view needs to explain how it differs from normal perception. The obvious way to do it is by arguing that, in the normal case, it is possible for the perceiver to access the relevant detail, and in the case of change blindness it is not possible. Nevertheless, even in the change blindness case, when the perceiver cannot attend to the street curb (while taking it to be in plain view), and fails to see it change, the counterfactual “If the perceiver were attending to the street curb, she would see it change,” is true. Therefore, regarding “accessibility” as just amounting to the requirement that certain counterfactuals be true will not enable us to distinguish between normal perception and change blindness cases. Moreover, the Grand Illusion scenario is blocked by the idea of accessibility by exercising perceptual skills. But clearly, the relevant counterfactuals could be true even if the perceiver did not possess such skills or if skillful access were temporarily rendered impossible by some intervening events or circumstances. All of this goes to show that Noë’s solution to the problem concerning the unattended detail is quite different from the solution to the problem about the back side. The way he deals with the Grand Illusion threat depends upon interpretation of empirical results concerning the largely subpersonal functioning of the visual apparatus by virtue of which we can make contact with the perceptual environment, while the solution in the case of the back side, appealing to perceptual expectations, rather than skill-based accessibility, depends in no obvious way on research in the cognitive sciences. One might wonder why Noë’s enactive view has seemed a cohesive set of ideas to many philosophers. I believe the view may seem cohesive because Noë can slide between the two senses of sensorimotor knowhow quite imperceptibly. Consider, for example, the quotation I gave in the previous section, “[W]e take ourselves to have access, now, to the whole cat. The cat, the tomato, the detailed scene, all are present perceptually in the sense that they are perceptually accessible to us.…” (Ibid., p. 63). We move from the idea of perceptual expectations to the very different idea of possible access, but the transition seems so smooth that it goes unnoticed. Throughout Action in Perception, Noë keeps moving back and forth between two senses of sensorimotor knowhow, viz., perceptual expectations and skill-based accessibility.4 4 Husserl, too, has discussions that bind together perceptual expectations on the one hand, and bodily skills and habits on the other. Given that I find fault with Noë’s view, would I also object to Husserl’s? However, there is a difference. Husserl accounts for the genesis of the relevant perceptual expectations in terms of associations between series of visual sensations and kinesthetic sensations: at least on the “constitutive” stratum pertaining to the “phantom,” i.e., the spatial object, actual experienced movements seem to be needed (see Husserl 1997, Section IV). While it seems that if we move to the higher “constitutive” strata, actual movements are not always needed, it is also the case that the constitutive Bodily involvement becomes more complex, involving skills and habits (Husserl 1989, pp. 266–269, 253– 257). But the point is that all these discussions are at the level of experience or at what we might nowadays call the personal level, even if they are concerned with aspects of experience to which we do not attend and of which we are only marginally aware; and all these discussions concern the “constitution” of sensuous objectivity in experience. Noë, on the other hand, as I try to argue in the paper, shifts back and forth between the personal and the subpersonal levels. Sometimes we find aspects of a Husserlian “constitutive” account, at other times reduction of perceptual experience to the subpersonal workings of perceptual mechanisms as when he discusses “access.” Thus, we may have Noë speaking about skills in a Husserlian vein but also arguing for his view by appealing to the ways in which the subpersonal mechanisms “skillfully” access the perceptual environment. On perceptual presence 447 Not only are the two kinds of sensorimotor knowhow markedly different from each other, so are the two problems that Noë calls the “problem of perceptual presence.” The Illusion Problem depends on the idea that perceivers could be wrong about the extent and nature of their experiences or what appears to them and what does not. However, the Presence Problem arises due to the perceiver’s sense that while only the front side currently appears to her, the object is nevertheless present to her as a whole, front side and back. If we approached the case of the back side in the same spirit in which the former problem is posed, we might simply dismiss the problem concerning the back side by suggesting that perceivers may well be wrong about what they do or do not experience. Their belief that they experience objects’ back sides might be false. In response, Noë might argue that he always takes perceptual phenomenology seriously, including when he poses the problem concerning the unattended detail, based on phenomena like change blindness. He might suggest that I regard him as dismissive of the phenomenological data because I subscribe to the “snapshot view” of perceptual experience. According to this view, the entire scene is, at any one moment, uniformly present in complete detail. The snapshot view gives rise to the problem of Grand Illusion but Noë rejects the snapshot view as phenomenologically inadequate (Noë 2004, p. 57). To appreciate the phenomenological point, consider that perceivers surely have expectations to the effect that if they turned their attention to the Marilyn on the left or moved closer to it, they would see it in greater detail. It is because experiences are not snapshot-like that Noë can regard unattended details as, “strictly speaking,” not experienced by perceivers, while doing justice to the phenomenological data. Indeed, I may have conflated the problem that Noë raises with regard to unattended details with the decidedly different skeptical problem of a Grand Illusion. However, the “snapshot view” is a red herring. Even if we reject the snapshot view, the problem concerning the unattended detail remains a skeptical problem based on skeptical disregard for the phenomenological data. We can agree with Noë that the extreme “snapshot view” does not do justice to the phenomenology of ordinary perceptual experience but neither does his own equally extreme view that gives rise to the Illusion Problem. Change blindness can occur even with regard to what the perceiver takes to be plainly in view. Perceivers believe that they do, “strictly speaking,” experience the street curb in front of them, but according to Noë’s view it, like the unattended portrait of Marilyn, is only present virtually, present as accessible. Indeed, Noë even argues that all perceptual presence is virtual (Noë 2004, pp.134-135). In a recent article, Noë reaffirms that this has been his view: “The radical claim of Action in Perception is that all perceptual presence is the presence of access” (Noë 2008, p. 697). I maintain that such radicalism has no basis in the phenomenology of perceptual experience. In sum, Noë’s “problem of perceptual presence” amounts to two very different problems. Insofar as Noë addresses the Illusion Problem, he pursues what I would call a Dennettian line.5 Insofar as he deals with the Presence Problem, he pursues a 5 Noë pays tribute to Dennett as “[t]he thinker who has done most to articulate the new skepticism [concerning experience] and give it punch.” He points out that Dennett did so before change blindness was discovered and even predicted change blindness (Noë 2004, p. 54). 448 K. Laasik Husserlian line. As for the Dennettian line, and the access-based set of ideas, some of the ideas that Noë develops in this vein seem rather problematic. Clearly, I have skillful access to some very distant objects that are plainly out of view but does this render them perceptually present? Noë believes that it does, and develops an account of perceptual presence by degrees, with the objects it is easier to access being present to a greater degree than the objects it is more difficult to access. He readily admits that his view has the consequence that if I am now in New York and my friend is in Berlin, my friend is perceptually present to me—but to a very small degree (Noë 2009, p. 480). I believe that this is absurd. However, I will now set aside the Dennettian line and take a closer look at the Husserlian strand. Fulfillment in perception I will argue that we encounter the Presence Problem raised by Noë with regard to the object’s back side, as well as for the constant properties, in Husserl’s philosophy of perception, and Husserl addresses it by invoking the ideas of perceptual expectations and fulfillment. Consider the experience of a tomato in front of you. The front side is experienced differently from the back side. To capture this phenomenal difference, let us say that the front side is experienced “intuitively” and the back side is experienced “emptily.” Let us also adopt the term “fulfillment” (Erfüllung) to stand for the transfer of emptily given content to intuitive givenness as when we turn the tomato around. Alternatively, we may also call the fulfilling intuition “fulfillment,” since this will enable us to say that when we turn the tomato around, the back side “comes to fulfillment.” The front side of the tomato is given intuitively and the back side emptily, and the back side comes to fulfillment when I turn the tomato around. But when I do that, what happens to what was initially the front side? Indeed, let us consider a more complex situation. What if I rotate the tomato little by little, always in one direction, thereby coming to experience different perspectival appearances of the tomato? The task is to account for this situation in terms of intuitive and empty givenness, and what comes to fulfillment. Crucially, for Husserl, the parts that go out of view are retained as having been intuitively given. In this way, by rotating the tomato, I can bring to fulfillment not just new parts of the tomato. The tomato itself progressively comes to fulfillment. The appearances of the tomato that one has already experienced continue to be part of the perceptual experience as retained, and the appearances one has not yet had are part of the perceptual experience in the sense that one expects to have them. The expectations are future-directed, but insofar as I have them now, they furnish a certain kind of experience of the object now, viz., an empty experience. On Husserl’s view, the visuo-kinesthetic expectations, i.e., expectations regarding how the object would look to us if we moved in a certain way in relation to it, set the fulfillment conditions of the perceptual experience.6 6 This paragraph summarizes my understanding of several Husserlian discussions. See, especially, Husserl 1997, Sections II and III, and Husserl 1966a, b, Einleitung (Introduction). On perceptual presence 449 Husserl applies these ideas to account for our perceptual experience of not only objects as wholes, but also constant properties. Returning to the example of the tomato, it should be clear that the relevant expectations cannot be just any random expectations that one may have while looking at the tomato. Instead, we need to invoke the idea of rule-governed expectations. Thus, according to Husserl’s view, there is a rule for the tomato, governing how the different appearances of the tomato may follow each other. This brings us to a contentious point of interpretation. In Ideas I and in other texts, Husserl refers to the perceived thing as the “determinable X.” 7 According to Husserl, the thing itself is always given emptily, i.e., we can never bring it to consummate fulfillment, but in its emptiness it prescribes the rule that directs the expectations regarding the course of fulfillments (Husserl 1966a, b, pp. 5–6). Strictly speaking, the expression “determinable X” stands for the perceiver’s idea of the “absolute individual essence” of the thing, and this idea directs, or regulates, the course of expected fulfillments (Ibid., pp. 20–21). In putting forward this interpretation, I take myself merely to be accepting a solidly established interpretative line, articulated, for example, by Ernst Tugendhat in the below quotation. I regard it as a very clear statement of the view, provided that the reader accepts that by “self” Tugendhat means the thing itself, the perceptual object, The thing is not transcendent in the sense of being separate from its givenness and thereby from the consciousness. Instead, it is given precisely so that it transcends the simple presence (and this means, for Husserl, the reell immanence). Thus, we see that in the relation of perspective and the thing itself a new sense of “self” is given, one that does not permit of a reduction to a relation of representation, as was apparently the case in the LI. Here, as everywhere, the meaning of the word “self” can only be gleaned from the essence of the corresponding fulfillment and disappointment…Every signitive intention is directed to a “self” and fulfills itself in perception. But the same signitive intention that is directed to a “self,” which is essentially a rule, an identical of manifold perspectives, fulfills itself only in a continuous and harmonious perceptual nexus (Ideen 97-). A rule is something that does not at all come to “presentation” in single adumbrations, but only in a series of perceptions; in it, however, it comes to the original self-givenness that is peculiar to it (Ideen II 43, 122) but nevertheless inadequate (Tugendhat 1967, p. 77). 8 The idea that the perceptual object, the determinable X, needs to be understood by recourse to the idea of fulfillment conditions is central to my interpretation. However, some philosophers, notably D.W. Smith, reject this interpretation of the phrase “determinable X.” Smith interprets the expression as standing for an indexical element in the perceptual sense (Sinn), complementing the descriptive aspects (Smith 2007, p. 284). He regards the “X” as similar to the variable “x” in Fregean predicate logic (Ibid.). Since I lack the space to adequately weigh all the relevant textual evidence, I cannot engage in anything like a refutation of Smith’s view, but I must do enough to be able to present the line I pursue as being at least somewhat plausible despite there being an a competing interpretation. I will therefore make some critical remarks concerning 7 8 See Husserl 1982, §§ 131, 143, and 144; but also Husserl 1966a, b, pp. 5–6 and 20–21. Kristjan Laasik—author of the present submission. 450 K. Laasik Smith’s view. My main argument against Smith’s interpretation is that the idea of there being an indexical aspect of perceptual content cannot be reconciled with the idea that Husserl’s phenomenology investigates the constitution of objectivity in experience, in terms of the relevant fulfillment conditions. Within the constraints of the phenomenological method, it is illegitimate to argue that the perceptual experience of the Statue of Liberty is a different experience from that of a perfect replica from Twin Earth, based on the idea that perceptual experiences have indexical content, or content that is individuated relative to the particulars that they are about. Smith is basically borrowing a notion, viz., indexicality, from linguistic theory and invoking it in a phenomenological account of perceptual experience, but I take this move, within Husserlian phenomenology, to be just as illegitimate as invokiing neurophysiological concepts. It is probably more instructive to compare the “determinable X” with a mathematical function than with the Fregean variable “x”: it is a rule that associates the appearances one is having (argument, input) with the appearances to be expected (value, output). Indeed, I believe that Husserl does not borrow the symbol “X” from Frege: the “X” is used by Kant to refer to the transcendent thing, the Ding an sich (Kant 1965), p. 268 (A250, B—), and Husserl probably gets it from Kant. However, what if it were suggested that the indexicality involved is of a more innocuous kind, and does not involve illegitimate appeals to linguistics? Can the “determinable X” simply capture the idea that, in having a perceptual experience of an object, the perceiver experiences it, this object, as being here, now. But this idea is simply captured by the fulfillment modification and we do not need any additional apparatus to account for it: in perceptual experience, unlike, say, acts of remembrance, objects are given with some degree of intuitive fullness. Having presented and argued for a certain interpretation of Husserl’s view, it should now be possible to see how Husserl can account for perceptual constancies. The constant properties, too, can be thought of in terms of a rule-governed series of appearances, where the perceiver is now experiencing a certain appearance of the object—say, an elliptical perspectival appearance of a round coin—has retained other appearances of the object and is expecting to experience yet other appearances of it. As the perceiver goes through the series of appearances, the constant property increasingly comes to fulfillment. The expectations that are relevant to the perception of the constant shape property are the visuo-kinesthetic (or sensorimotor) expectations, but in the case of the constant color property, they do not suffice and are probably not of the foremost importance. Instead, we need expectations regarding how the property interacts with its experienced environment—in particular, how its appearances change as the lighting changes.9 9 For how Husserl regards color, see Husserl 1989, pp. 46–47 (43). In order to accept that this is indeed Husserl’s view of shape and color constancy, one needs to adequately grasp Husserl’s notion of transcendence, but also how the discussions in Thing and Space and Ideas II complement each other, as concerning different “constitutive” strata. Husserl’s notion of transcendence is that of constancy in the flux of experience (Husserl 1997, p. 315 (355)). The shape and color properties, just as the object itself, are transcendent. The discussion of what Husserl calls the spatiotemporal “schema” or “phantom,” in Thing and Space, is rightly interpreted as an account of the transcendence of shape properties, and it requires visuo-kinesthetic expectations. However, the discussion of the transcendence of the “material thing” in Ideas II is distinguished from that of the “phantom” in that it involves objects’ “causal” interactions with other objects and their environment, and the interactions of color with the changing lighting context are a special case of that. In order to set the relevant fulfillment conditions, we need expectations concerning how the color will appear if the lighting context changes. On perceptual presence 451 The account of perceptual experience that I have just articulated differs from many other accounts in the following respect: Husserl investigates perceptual content as determining fulfillment conditions, not as determining accuracy conditions. For Husserl, perceptual experience succeeds by fulfillment, not by being accurate. Fulfillment, not accuracy, is the norm of perceptual experience. To more clearly distinguish the two conceptions, let me elucidate the difference between accuracy and fulfillment by example, with further explications to follow in the next section. On the one hand, consider the case where I experience a tennis ball in front of me, and there is a tennis ball there, but when I turn it around, a demon intervenes so as to make it impossible for me to bring the back side to intuitive givenness. In this case, my initial experience of the ball was accurate but did not lead to fulfillments. On the other hand, consider the case where I experience a tennis ball in front of me, but there is no tennis ball there, and yet the demon intervenes so that if I take myself to be turning the ball around, its back side comes to intuitive givenness. Now my initial experience issued in fulfillments but was not accurate. At this point, someone might wonder whether the accuracy-based approach and the idea that there is fulfillment of perceptual expectations could perhaps be combined. Could one say that the expectations themselves are either accurate or inaccurate? Not on the account that I have limned. Husserlian phenomenology concerns itself with objectivity as it is constituted in experience, and it cannot do so while presupposing that the objects are also just out there, in such a way that aspects of our experience can be accurate or inaccurate of them. Also, the expectation-based approach is developed in order to account for the givenness of sensuous objectivity. It would defeat the purpose if we regarded the expectations as distinct intentional acts in their own right, directed to objects or parts thereof. This is another reason why we cannot speak of these expectations as accurate or inaccurate of objects or their properties. This view of perceptual experience also raises other pressing questions, some of which I will try to answer in the present paper, but I will first articulate the connection with Noë’s “problem of perceptual presence,” or, more specifically, with the problem Noë raises with regard to the back side and the constant properties. Based on what I have said about Husserl’s view, it should be clear that we encounter the same problem in Husserl’s phenomenology, viz., how to account for our experience of objects as wholes including the parts that are not now appearing to us, such as the back side. But the problem is there, not only with regard to our experience of constant objects but also constant properties. To rephrase, it is the task of finding out what the relevant fulfillment conditions are and which perceptual expectations are needed in order to set the fulfillment conditions.10 For example, as part of the analysis of color concepts, the Husserlian phenomenologist will investigate the relevant pre-predicative structures of experience and report what the fulfillment conditions are for color and which expectations are needed to set them, and how the fulfillment conditions for color relate to the fulfillment conditions 10 Indeed, according to Bernet, Kern and Marbach, “[i]t is the first and most fundamental task of a phenomenological analysis of the perception of a thing to make intelligible this necessary connection between partial or perspectival givenness and the whole or uniform thing” (Bernet et al. 1993, p. 116). 452 K. Laasik for other properties. In this way, the “problem of perceptual presence” arises as part of a project of grounding predicative thought in pre-predicative experience.11 Phenomenology, not phenomenalism Insofar as Noë discusses the object’s back side and the problems of perceptual constancy, his account is distinctively Husserlian. He gives us the Husserlian picture involving perceptual expectations on the one hand, and objects and their constant properties conceived in terms of rule-governed series of appearances on the other. However, these ideas will appear torn from their context unless complemented with the idea of fulfillment and they cannot be well understood unless we consider the nature of the Husserlian account of perceptual experience. I will discuss certain problems that arise for Noë’s enactive view, and point out how they can be solved if we interpret the view as part of Husserl’s view. First, Noë claims that all perceptual presence is virtual (Noë 2004, pp. 134– 135; 2008, p. 697). He may mean either that all perceptual presence needs to be conceived in terms of possible access or that all perceptual presence needs to be conceived in terms of perceptual expectations, or he may mean both. But it seems that all these readings give rise to something like the following question. If everything is always merely accessible or available or if I always merely expect that something will come into view, what do perceivers gain by all the perceptual exploration and manipulation that they engage in, according to Noë? He gives no answer to that question, but we can easily give an answer by invoking the idea of fulfillment. When perceivers engage in perceptual exploration of objects, they increasingly bring objects and their properties to fulfillment. Nevertheless, all presence is virtual because perceivers never attain consummate fulfillments. Whichever object or property we consider, there are always some relevant unfulfilled expectations. In that sense, all perceptual presence is indeed virtual. Second, Noë claims that the problem of perceptual presence arises with regard to objects’ back sides. However, this presupposes that the back sides are indeed perceptually present to us and Noë has provided no argument for the view. For example, consider the case where I perceive a house and have the sense that the rear side is blue. If it turns out that the rear side was not blue, surely it seems incorrect to characterize my perception as inaccurate or to say that I misperceived. This suggests that whatever sense or hunch that I had about the color of the back side should not be regarded as part of the perceptual experience. The mainstream approaches, based on the idea that content determines accuracy conditions, do justice to this intuition insofar as they may incorporate the idea that perceptual content includes the proposition that the object has a back side, or that perceptual content constitutively 11 In Husserlian terminology, we can rephrase this claim in terms of grounding “active syntheses” in “passive syntheses.” Details aside, the idea is that the predicative ego-activities in acts of judgment presuppose passive syntheses, based on the psychological laws of association (or “motivation”). Where to draw the line between passive and active synthesis seems a somewhat complicated matter, regarding which Husserl changed views. See, for example, Roland Breeur’s editorial preface to Husserl (2000), Einleitung (Introduction). On perceptual presence 453 depends on the expectation that the object has a back side. Such ideas do not have the upshot that the back side is perceptually present, or that it is seen. Noë’s view clearly is not similar to either of the views I have just described. He believes that the back side is perceptually present in some detail or with some measure of determinacy. Otherwise, how could he appeal to sensorimotor knowhow to account for it? There is no sensorimotor knowhow pertaining to back sides as such: the sensorimotor expectations and skills are always more specific. Also, the constant properties regarded as an analogous case by Noë are present thanks to the perceiver’s specific expectations regarding which appearances will follow the appearance he is now having and not just the general expectation of further appearances. However, we can make sense of the back side’s perceptual presence on Husserl’s view, since he regards perceptual content as determining fulfillment conditions, not accuracy conditions. The idea of fulfillment as the norm of perceptual experience is naturally conjoined with the idea that certain aspects of objects are perceptually present in the sense of being experienced emptily i.e., without fulfillment and the back side is a case of that. Third, Charles Siewert has argued that Noë’s view of perceptual constancy renders perceptual content pervasively self-contradictory (Siewert 2006, pp. 4–8). Noë argues that the tilted round coin appears simultaneously both elliptical and round (Noë 2004, p. 164). This certainly seems to render content self-contradictory. Noë insists that an account of perceptual constancy needs to do justice to both the perspectival nature of perceptual experience and the fact that we experience constant properties. However, it seems that the mainstream complex view does precisely that, by maintaining that the coin appears tilted and round, without raising worries of selfcontradiction.12 What is the motivation for Noë’s view given that we may go with the complex view instead? Why should we regard Noë’s view as a principled alternative to the complex view? The Husserlian response to the worry of self-contradictoriness is that constant properties can be described as amounting to rule-governed series of appearances. We can therefore regard the elliptical appearance as part of the constant property. The appearance is given intuitively, the constant property is given with a certain degree of fulfillment depending on how much the perceiver has been exploring it. The distinction between intuitive and empty givenness enables us to express Noë’s view in such a way that it no longer seems to render perceptual content self-contradictory. However, this does not yet answer the question why we should prefer Noë’s view to the complex view. To address this question, consider a response someone might make to the discussion so far. Namely, it might be argued that Noë certainly needs to reject the present interpretation of his view in Husserlian terms, because Noë is explicitly committed to giving a direct realist view (Noë 2008, pp. 693, 702), while the Husserlian view, as I have presented it, seems phenomenalist. It seems to be a kind of phenomenalism because Husserl regards perception as succeeding by fulfillment instead of being accurate of objects in the real world, and he views objects and properties as amounting to series of appearances. It might be added that Noë is right 12 See, for example, Pautz 2009, p. 503. 454 K. Laasik to reject this phenomenalist view since phenomenalism is deeply problem-ridden and widely regarded as untenable. I agree that phenomenalism is a deeply problem-ridden view, but I do not believe that Husserl is a phenomenalist.13 He regards objects and properties that are perceptually present to us as amounting to rule-governed series of appearances. However, he is not giving us a theory of perception, and for that reason it is not appropriate to raise the question whether it is a phenomenalist or direct realist theory. Instead, he gives a description of perceptual experience as part of a project of conceptual analysis that involves grounding concepts in prepredicative experience.14 This is why invoking Husserlian ideas, such as fulfillment, does not render Noë’s enactive view phenomenalist. Indeed, it seems that Noë should invoke the idea of fulfillment and re-interpret his enactive view as not a theory of perception but part of a Husserlian descriptive–clarificatory project. Perceptual constancy is a topic at the core of the Husserlian project. Indeed, the Presence Problem can be construed as a problem concerning perceptual constancy, viz., as the problem of accounting for how constant objects and properties emerge through the flux of experience, or through the changing perspectives. In his recent paper, “Real Presence,” Noë acknowledges the centrality of perceptual constancy to his enactive approach, when he discusses “a puzzle about veridicality” (Noë 2005, p. 260), Perceptual experiences are not representations, but this fact does not mean that it is inappropriate to speak of their veridicality or nonveridicality. It does mean we need a new model of what this veridicality or nonveridicality can amount to. On a representationalist conception of perceptual content, the question is, in effect, one of matching or satisfaction. How must things be for things to be the way this experience represents them as being? What can we say about the nature of veridicality if we reject the idea that perceptual experiences have representational content? (Ibid.) Noë’s solution is to the “puzzle about veridicality” involves the idea that nonveridicality of perception should be conceived in terms of breakdown of perceptual constancy. This seems to bring him very close to the Husserlian ideas of 13 It is noteworthy that Jason Leddington has recently argued that Noë’s enactive view creates a strong pull towards phenomenalism, Noë’s view threatens to collapse into a form of phenomenalism: what is given in perceptual experience is merely mind-dependent sensory stimulation or appearance, and the sense that we are encountering a world of mind-independent objects is reconstructed from our sense of being able to alter the course of experience in predictable ways (Leddington 2009, p. 491). I lack the space to offer a discussion of Leddington’s detailed argument, but Leddington’s worry should come as no surprise, since Husserl’s view may easily seem phenomenalist, and Noë’s enactive view incorporates Husserlian ideas. 14 For a statement concerning the nature of his project, see Husserl’s articulation of what he refers to as the Principle of All Principles (Husserl 1982, p. 44 (43–44)). As for calling the project “conceptual analysis,” I do not believe that Husserl has ever done that. I have adopted this label because I wish to make connections between conceptual analysis and phenomenology in my future work, and because I regard it as significant that the philosophers working in these traditions had reservations about metaphysical speculation of the kind that has once more gained considerable currency in recent decades. I look to varieties of what I refer to as “conceptual analysis” for alternatives and challenges to today’s prevalent philosophical approaches. On perceptual presence 455 fulfillment and disappointment. However, Noë fleshes out his solution not in terms of Husserlian ideas but in terms of access. He invokes two examples to relate the idea of misperception to breakdown of perceptual constancy. Regarding perceptual experiences not as representations but as “episodes of contact with a scene” (Ibid.), he discusses, first, our visual experience of the stars in the night sky. He says that the stars are, in a manner of speaking, too far in order for us to be able to make perceptual contact with them. It seems to us as if there were certain stars in the night sky but they could have gone extinct millions of years ago. Based on this consideration, he draws in the following quotation, a conclusion about our experience of the stars and moves on to his second example, The case of seeing stars is one where perceptual constancy breaks down. This breakdown introduces nonveridicality. Perceptual constancy also breaks down, for example, when you look down from the height of a very tall skyscraper at cars and people below. The people look to be the size of ants! That is to say, you can’t really experience the people from the top of the skyscraper. After all, there’s nothing in the least ant-like about people (in respect of size). That they look the size of ants is intelligible, of course. This means, roughly, that what you see takes up about the same amount of visual field as an ant would when looked at from a normal upright position. What can’t be denied is that this is an incorrect experience of the people. For what would make such an experience veridical? The actual presence of ant-sized people! (Ibid.) He contrasts these cases with the veridical perception of the elliptical appearance of the coin and the variations in the brightness of how a uniformly colored wall appears to us. The “puzzle about veridicality,” according to Noë, consists in the question as to what the difference is between these two cases. His answer involves the idea that we come into contact with objects through their perspectival properties and the sensorimotor understanding enables us to make contact with them through the perspectival properties. In the case of the stars far above and the people down below, there is what he refers to as “failure to make or preserve contact” (Ibid., p. 52). Therefore, there is no veridical perception in these cases. Instead of invoking the relevant Husserlian ideas, viz., fulfillment and disappointment, Noë has attempted to solve the “puzzle about veridicality” in terms of the access-based approach. However, it is rather doubtful whether his examples of nonveridical perception are cases of a breakdown of perceptual constancy. In the case of the stars, he does not specify which constancy it is that breaks down. Of course, his point may be precisely that we cannot even begin to speak about perceptual constancy here. However, it seems to me that we still have some constancy phenomena. For example, I may look up and shake my head from side to side. The location of the stars in my visual field changes back and forth but nevertheless I see them as being at a constant location. In the case of the people below, Noë must take there to be a failure of size constancy: experience is transformed, so that I begin to see the people as being the size of ants, and only judge that they are the size of normal people whom I am seeing from very far. But it is not clear that this is a case of a breakdown of size constancy. Rather, due to the great distance and the unusual angle, I do not get a good view of many of the features that distinguish people from other creatures and objects. Hence, they 456 K. Laasik may look like more like ants than people to me, but not due to a breakdown of size constancy. My point is not to deny that breakdowns in size constancy occur. For example, I could fail to experience some relatively nearby object, say a ball, as moving away from me, and instead see it as diminishing in size. But this representative case of a failure of size constancy seems adequately describable as a case of inaccurate perception, whereas Noë argues that failures of perceptual constancy need to be regarded as failures of access, not failures of accuracy of representation. In order to argue that failures of perceptual constancy are rightly regarded as failures of access, Noë brings examples of objects that are tremendously far away, as if too far for us to make perceptual contact with them. However, these are more plausibly cases of losing sight of objects or their parts, rather than failures of perceptual constancy.15 In sum, we can see that Noë provides a Husserlian account of shape and color constancy, but it runs into problems. The Husserlian ideas appear torn out of their proper context, and Noë fails to develop them adequately. The problems can be dealt with if we restore the view to its original Husserlian context, especially by invoking the ideas of fulfillment and disappointment. Fourth, in a paper entitled “Experience of the World in Time,” Noë replies to a challenge posed for his enactive view by Andy Clark. Clark argues that the idea of presence by possible access does not work with regard to what is already in the past. Consider cases like hearing a piece of music or the long drawn-out sound of a steam whistle. Undoubtedly, I must be experiencing the sound as having lasted for a while, and as having been experienced by me for a while and yet I do not have access to the past phases of the sound event. Clark indicates that this should be a problem for Noë’s enactive view since the view understands perceptual presence in terms of sensorimotor access (Clark 2006, p. 23), Noë responds to the challenge as follows, You don’t need access to past sounds to experience the sound event (the temporal extent of the sustained note). What you hear when you experience the temporal extent of the note is not the sounds that have already passed out of existence (any more than you hear the sounds that are yet to come). What you experience, rather, is, to a first approximation, the rising of the current sounds out of the past; you hear the current sounds as surging forth from the past. You hear them as a continuation. This is to say, moving on to a better approximation, you hear them as having a certain trajectory or arc, as unfolding in accordance with a definite law or pattern. It is not the past that is present in the current experience; rather, it is the trajectory or arc that is present now, and of course the arc describes the relation of what is now to what has already happened (and to what may still happen). In this way, what is present, 15 There is also another reason why Noë’s example with the people below is questionable as a case of a failure of perceptual constancy. Consider that, on one hand, I can fail to perceptually experience a ball that starts to roll away from me as maintaining its constant size. On the other hand, I can just be mistaken about the size of the ball to begin with. I believe that only the former case is rightly regarded as a failure of perceptual constancy, and Noë’s example is analogous to the latter case. However, Noë can change his example to accommodate this criticism, e.g., by having his subjects go up in an elevator with a view of the street below. On perceptual presence 457 strictly speaking, refers to or is directed toward what has happened and what will happen. Just as in a way the front of the tomato is directed toward the back—indicates the space where the back is to be found—so the present sound implicates a temporal structure by referring backwards and forwards in time (Noë 2006, p. 29). In sum, Noë says that the past phases of the sound of the whistle or a piece of music do not need to be accessible, but rather they are present to us in terms of an arc, or a trajectory, that describes the relation of that which is present to what has already happened and to what is expected to happen. He regards this is analogous to the difference between hearing the acoustic properties of someone’s speech right now and understanding the meaning that is borne by his speech as it surges from the past, through the present, into the future (Ibid, p. 27). He adds that the arc is a rule similar to the rules he talks about in Action in Perception as part of his discussion of perceptual constancy (Noë 2004, p. 196). I will argue that Noë’s reply to Clark is not entirely satisfactory. Although Clark presents his challenge in terms of Noë’s access-related set of ideas, Noë replies to it in terms of the Husserlian idea of rule-governed appearances. However, his Husserlian response is incomplete as it stands. To see this, consider a case where John has been in the room, listening to a recording of Lohengrin Overture from the beginning to somewhere around the middle, when the door opens and Mary comes in. Mary instantly recognizes the piece as Lohengrin Overture, reaching into its fifth minute. (Both John and Mary know the overture well.) Like John, she now experiences the overture as surging forth from the past and has expectations regarding how it will continue. Yet she does not experience the overture as having been experienced by her for more than 4 min already, while John, on the contrary, does experience the overture as having been experienced by him for several minutes already. Therefore, the appeal to the arc of meaning does not adequately account for our experience of the long drawn-out steam whistle as something we have been hearing for quite a while now. Both John and Mary experience the arc, but only John experiences the overture as something he has been hearing for a while. Perhaps Noë could reply that John’s arc (or rule) for the overture has become changed by his having actually listened to the piece and that there is therefore a shade of a difference between his experience and Mary’s? But the difference between John’s and Mary’s experiences is not one of nuance. On the contrary, the difference is obvious and clear. One of them has and the other one has not experienced the first half of the piece just now. Noë does not succeed in accounting for the difference is between John’s and Mary’s experiences of the Lohengrin Overture. Nor can Noë tell us the difference between the experiences of a person who has been exploring a tennis ball for a while and another person who spots a tennis ball and instantly recognizes it as one. What is the difference between John’s and Mary’s experience? The answer is that the difference is one of fulfillment. John has attained certain fulfillments with regard to the Lohengrin Overture, while Mary has not. The same goes for the difference between the experiences of a person who has been exploring a tennis ball from different angles and the experiences of a person who has just noticed the tennis ball 458 K. Laasik and recognized it as one. Once again, we need the idea of fulfillment, and also the idea of retention, to respond to critical objections to Noë’s view. But lastly, consider a possible reaction to this discussion. Someone might suggest that the difference between John and Mary is simply that John remembers having heard the first half of the overture, while Mary does not. Why not say this, instead of invoking complicated and unfamiliar notions? This is a fair point, except if we are pursuing the Husserlian project of accounting for the constitution of sensuous objectivity. Remembrance is an object-directed intentional act in its own right—in this case, directed to the first half of the overture. But in order to account for the experience of any sensuous objectivity in the first place, we need the apparatus of retentions and “protentions,” i.e., the peculiar kind of expectation that I have already discussed “Fulfillment in perception” section.16 Noë starts us down this path by appealing to “rules” and “arcs of meaning,” but if he does this he needs to give us the full Husserlian account, which he fails to do. Conclusion Noë’s enactive view is a response to two problems that Noë conflates, viz., the problem that perceivers may be confabulating about the nature and extent of their experiences (the Illusion Problem) and the problem of accounting for the perceptual presence of objects as wholes and constant properties, in spite of their always appearing perspectivally to us (the Presence Problem). These problems reflect quite different philosophical outlooks and need to be dealt with by invoking very different resources, viz., skill-based accessibility on the one hand and perceptual expectations and fulfillment on the other. Addressing the latter problem is, in effect, the central task of Husserlian phenomenology and Noë approaches it by articulating Husserlian ideas without acknowledging a debt to Husserl. Pursuing the Husserlian line, Noë discusses the perceptual experience of objects and constant properties in terms of rule-governed series of appearances and as involving perceptual expectations. Noë’s enactive view faces various problems, but they can be dealt with by restoring it to its Husserlian context. I have pointed out that doing so involves regarding the enactive view not as a theory of perception and perceptual content, but as part of a descriptive–clarificatory project of conceptual analysis, conceived as an investigation of fulfillment conditions. 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