What Does Phenomenal Particularity Commit Us to?

Abstract

The phenomenal particularity thesis maintains that perceived external, mind-independent particulars are constituents of perceptual phenomenal character, the phenomenal character we associate with perception. The thesis has emerged as a point of contention between naive realists and other views of experience, in particular representationalism. While cases of misperception offer one traditional reason for rejecting the thesis, a more recent argument focuses on cases of perception. According to the perception argument, the particularity thesis commits us to implausible verdicts on the phenomenal similarities and differences given certain pairs of veridical experience. In response to this argument, a common strategy has been to distinguish different types of phenomenal character, and maintain that only some manifest particularity. In this chapter I argue that this strategy cannot serve the naive realist because it leaves us with conceptions of phenomenal character that fail to preserve the role of perception in the subject’s cognitive life. After presenting the worry and a possible solution, I argue that we can nevertheless defend the particularity of experience. The perception argument assumes a ‘phenomenal reflection principle’, which maintains that differences and similarities in an experience’s constitutive particulars must be reflected in differences and similarities in the experience’s phenomenal character. But this principle is underspecified. When we further specify it, we see that particularists are not committed to implausible verdicts about phenomenal character.