Our perception may not be true.

Appearance and Reality.

The accuracy of our perceptions.
Example of color, introduction to Locke:
Should I be skeptical about any property? Maybe there are some properties that are stable? Can I go
wrong with shapes?
Imagine a case in which my mug’ is a triangle, but I perceive it as round. It seems like it is harder to think
about than it is for colors.
For Locke, there are mental and matter too like Descartes.?
Idea: any representational mental content. Whatever I have in my mind with content that is meaningful for
me is an idea.
But how do we get an idea? If there are no innate ideas, the only source you get your ideas is experience.
A baby filled by her ideas with only experience.
No sensation no knowledge about the world.
In addition to the observation of external sensible objects, there are also internal operations of the mind.
but senses are the ultimate source.
Sources: 1. Sensation 2. Reflection.
Reflection: Perception, Thinking, Doubting.
Why perception is reflective?
Because sensation is merely sensing hardness or whiteness but an individual with only sensation is not
capable to recognize the objects as them. I can sense hardness without recognizing it is coming from a
table.
Primary qualities are inseparable from the object.
Secondary qualities are not in objects, but they are powers to produce sensations in us by their primary
qualities.
Power in objects causes changes (by means of the primary qualities in that object) in the primary qualities
of another object.
The power to produce an idea is called property.
Powers in objects cause changes (by means of the primary qualities in that object) in the primary qualities
of another object. Why do waxes begin to melt when there is a fire? Because fire has the power to change
the wax.
When I have an idea of a primary quality, there is a resemblance between the idea and the object but for
secondary qualities, it is not the case. My ideas about secondary qualities do not share resemblances with
the objects.
Perception is the first faculty of mind exercised regarding our ideas. In bare naked perception, the mind is
mostly passive: it cannot avoid perceiving. (Locke here seems to talk about the content we cannot affect)
Ideas received by the senses are also corrected by judgment. For example, I do not perceive this table as
homogeneously colored because light and reflection affect it. But our judgment corrects them. In this
sense, perception is passive.
But what really supports the qualities? Are they floating in space? The substance is the supposed but
unknown support of those qualities. It is what has the qualities.
The substance must hold these qualities but to Locke, it is not an object of knowledge for us.
Knowledge is nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement (or disagreement) of any other
ideas – so it is not merely about receiving data but appropriate connections between ideas.
Knowledge of our own being is intuition, that of God by reason, and all the rest by experience.
Experiential knowledge takes place causally; external objects cause sensations in us.
Locke: Why can we rely on our senses in getting accurate information? I myself think that it makes little
sense to doubt it and that God has given me such assurance. But there are other reasons too.
1. Our organs themselves cannot produce them. Eyes cannot produce vision in dark, we cannot smell
roses in winter.
2. Though I sometimes can imagine, say, vision in a dark room, in actual cases of perception, when
I look at the sun I cannot affect the content.

When someone has a sensation or perception of an object, it is reliable.

Note that, for Locke, it is foolish to expect certainty on matters of fact. However, you have good reasons
to believe that there is an object.
There is always the problem of constituting the bridge between the ideas and their objects.

BERKELEY:

There are no material objects. He is trying to push the ideas of Descartes and Locke to the limit.
The object is always dressed up by perception.

When we are talking about objects, we talk about sensible objects or the ideas of objects. We cannot reach
an unperceived object because all we have in our minds are perceived objects.
When we imagine an unperceived tree, we imagine that tree from a perspective. We cannot perceive a tree
within itself as physically existing. Therefore, all we know is perceptible objects which means to us to be
is to be perceived.
The only kind of substance is mind/spirit.
Only an idea can resemble an idea.
When I have a mental image of a cat and a real cat, I say that my image resembles the cat. Where did I do
this comparison? In my mind.

When you compare a mental image and a physical thing, we cannot do it, to Berkeley, because they are
nothing alike, they are in different categories.
If I had different sense organs my perception of figure and extension would be different.
Notice that he does not say that he is creating his ideas. I have them through other means.

There is nature but under an infinite mind. God is perceiving everything every time.

Locke is the representative of representationism.

Berkeley is the representative of phenomenalism.
Representation means that there are non-mental objects and mental images are their representation.
Phenomenalism says that there is appearance, phenomena but we cannot go beyond that.
A definition of sense-data: Sensory units of immediate awareness.
A collection of individual datum that relates awareness of this particular color or a particular smell.
Sense-data are not as complex as full-fledged knowledge.
When phenomenalist philosophers refuse to take objects in a materialist way. They essentially say that
when I think about objects, I say that it is a collection of sense data.
“I seem to see something appearing to me.”
Would these be our understanding of the concept of an object?
Materiality is contradictory to Berkeley.

There is a problem with objectivity: In any given state, how can I talk about the objectivity of my
perception because perception occurs in my mind and it is subjective?
Locke says we are inclined to believe that our perceptions are objective at some point.
 1. One cannot smell roses in winter.
2. When I touch a fire, I feel pain but when I remember this experience, I remember the experience
without the sensation of pain. There must be something going on non-mental when I touch the
fire.
Berkeley: Existence without perception is a contradiction.
Whiteley supports a contemporary version of phenomenalism.
In representation, there is a problem. How can I refer to something non-mental?
A reference of a term is the object of that term.
The statements about the world can be turned into statements about sense-data which is a reduction. I am
reducing physical objects to my mental content.
Representationalism is acceptable in the context of we are inclined to think that there is a difference
between reality and mental content.
The understanding of an object is objective. An object is stable but sense data are not.

Object definition: the permanent possibility of sensation.

My actual sense-data are limited. How large can it be? It is not stable but possible since data are limitless
and permanent.
A permanent possibility of sensation can cause sense-data at t time.
Now it is stable.

Ordinary objects affect each other. We imagine that it is not happening in our minds. Causation is
physical.
Can a room get warm by sensing data? Can sense data cause any physical effect?
We perceive causation but is it real?
Hume says that when you claim that you perceive causation, do you really perceive the causal power?
What we are seeing is observing object B occurs after object A.
Are you seeing additional causation? No.
There is no doubt that we have an idea of causation. Where does this idea come from?
There must be repetition and succession of events.
The idea is a habit.
You are seeing repetition and you are getting habituated.
What we are seeing is constant conjunction. Out of these observations, we reach the causation.
It will happen tomorrow? Do we know that? No.
We really don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow.

Reality: mind-independent stability.

World: the construction of the framework. It can be mind-dependent

Without a causal connection between physical and mental, we cannot explain perception.
When we talk about mental states, something is lacking when we do not refer to physiological proprieties.
I can start with my mental states and I can clarify epistemological states concerning my mental states.
But how can one explain why all of our perceptions are similar?
When I have an image of a cat, I don’t imagine my neighbor’s image of the cat is different completely.
To explain this similarity, we must find a cause that gives all of us the same sense data. This cause is
reality.

Percepts are not sharable, but it is checkable (by referencing to other people=

I am looking at the moon, and I get the percept of the moon which is the size of a coin but my knowledge
of reality says that the moon is larger than that.

Perceptual space is private.

For Russell, there must be a causal relationship between physical space and perceptual space.
I construct a perceptual space by the cause of the physical space. (commonsensical)

If there is a construction of the physical space in my mind as perceptual space then there must be a causal
relationship.
Russell is not proving this situation but making it attractive. We can say that perceptual space is caused by
physical space with the help of other minds and correcting that our perceptual spaces are similar.
My perception is happening in physiology, but I am constructing the mental space in my mind.
Trad. When I see a cat, I see the image of the cat and I see that experience, not the object.
Searle: No, we see the object, not the experience.

Are our eyes and brains in or outside of us? According to the traditional view, they are out.
With human beings, it is impossible to separate the representational and non-representational sides of us.
Suppose you have a mom who can cook anything. When someone asks my mom how can she cook
something that delicious she would say I know how to do it but I cannot explain it. What is going on is she
cannot represent her know-how in propositions.
You are at a party, somebody touches your shoulder. You wouldn’t be surprised.
You are in your room, alone. Somebody touches your shoulder. You are in shock.
In both senses, you were not thinking about actively the situation of your environment, but you are aware
of it unconsciously. Hypothesis processer.

Suppose you are having a hallucination; suppose you see a car as an illusion. How can it be a success?

To Searle, you are not seeing a car, but you are experiencing a car. Experiences involve no success in
terms of correctly representing reality.
Mental functions such as perception have an important quality or power: intentionality (not to be confused
with the intention)

When I am thinking something, my mind has a directedness to something.

What is your cat about? This is a weird question because physical objects are not about anything.
Intending is just one of the forms of intentionality.
You cannot desire or think without an object. Perception is also an intentional process or function, it is
always of objects.

He started with ontology by saying what’s happening when we perceive.

We perceive physical objects. In other words, Searle thinks that we should focus on the perception of
states of affairs. Consequently, perception has a propositional structure. When we perceive we do not
perceive only objects but what is going on with that object as state-of-affairs.

What does it mean? It is like beliefs.

B1: Snow is white
B2: Rome is the capital of Japan.

Beliefs satisfaction conditions are out there. The condition is satisfied by the world.
Both belief and perception have a similar propositional structure.

The content of belief and perception: the blue part is the intentional content of belief and perception.

S believes that snow is white. The mind turns itself into a state of the world. There is an intentionality
going on. The content of this is “snow is white.”
Intensionality:

The object which satisfies the term is the extension of it.

Intension of a term is its meaning of it.
Examples: The extension of the terms “human” and “Socrates” The extension of human is the whole set of
human beings in the world. The human being who lived in ancient Greece and the teacher of Plato is the
extension of the term “Socrates.”
The concept of co-extensionality: “morning star” and “evening star” are One object but several intensions.
They are co-extensional terms; they share the same extension.
In extensional contexts, co-extensional terms can be exchanged without the loss of truth values in
propositions. Instead of saying “Venus is the brightest object in the evening sky, we can say “Evening star
is the brightest object in the evening sky.”

Why is this important?

It is an extensional term because we change the term and the value of it didn’t change.

This is not sound right in the green context.

John doesn’t know that he is the tallest man.
If you don’t have the background knowledge that the bank manager is the tallest guy in the town then you
cannot see that the tallest man in town is standing in front of the building.

“Causally self-referential” means that the mental state must be caused by its conditions of satisfaction in
the world.
We must maintain the causal relation, if not, there is no perception.

Perception and belief are different, John can successfully have a true belief about the white sheep but not a
perception of the sheep in the second case. The object really must be the cause of my perception.

Perception and belief in propositional context, my mind must be fitted to the world if they are successful
but in desire, the world must be fitted to my mind.

It is not my responsibility; I can still talk about my desire without reference to the world.
We are perceiving different aspects of the image. When we are seeing an aspect of an object, we refer to
our backgrounds. A person who has never seen a duck would see a rabbit in this image. Without knowing
any ducks, that person wouldn’t have been able to see a duck.
There is a single figure but it can cause different experiences.

It happens in the context of the environment.

We tend to think that sky is more flattened than it really is.
The moon is at the same time all the time but because of our system’s background, it seems like it changes
in size manner.

In this case, according to Searle, the content of one’s experience is the moon is changing size.