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between them. Thirdly, the nerves which go from the brain to the organ,
must receive some impression by means of that which was made upon
the organ; and probably, by means of the nerves some impression must
be made upon the brain. Fourthly, the impression made upon the organ,
nerves, and brain, is followed by a sensation. And, last of all, this sensa-
tion is followed by the perception of the object. (IHM VI, xxi [186a b;
B 174])
We ve known for some time that Reid wants this passage to be
read with the understanding that in good measure he is laying
out causal necessities, not logical necessities. God could have
created us with a different design plan for perception from that
with which he did in fact create us; what s described here is just
the design plan that we do in fact have. But now we learn that the
passage is to be read with an important additional understanding.
We are to read the passage as only describing how things go when
we are functioning properly. They don t always go that way. One
way in which we can function abnormally is that some brain state
appropriate for perception may occur without the normal causal
antecedents thereof occurring  those causal antecedents which,
if things were working properly, would cause that sort of brain
state. In such a case, the brain state may still do its downstream
work, with the consequence that perception occurs, but without
there being any object of the perception.
So far, no problem. But now let s look at those conceptions and
beliefs that Reid identifies as lying at the very core of perception.
I have all along interpreted Reid as using  conception in such a
way that if one has a conception, then there exists some entity of
which one has that conception. I have likewise all along inter-
preted him as holding that the sort of belief that is ingredient in
perception is a de re/predicative belief; and that some mental
entity is a de re/predicative belief only if there exists some entity
such that, in holding the belief, one believes something about that
entity. In short, I have interpreted him as picking out, with the
words  conception and  belief, certain relationships between
mind and reality. Then on the central issue I have interpreted him
as contending that the objectivation that constitutes the essence
of perception consists in believing, about something in one s
environment, that it exists as external. This interpretation is pow-
erfully suggested by a multitude of passages  for example, the
Reid s Analysis of Perception 129
one quoted earlier in this chapter: the perception of an external
object consists of
First, Some conviction or notion of the object perceived. Secondly, A
strong and irresistible conviction and belief of its present existence. And,
thirdly, That this conviction and belief are immediate, and not the effect
of reasoning. (EIP II, v [258a])
But these mind-to-world relationships are missing in the case of
hallucination. There s no object, and hence no relationship of
mind to world. All we have are two sorts of purely mental phe-
nomena, two sorts of noematic phenomena (from the Greek:
noema = thought), not two sorts of relationships of mind to world.
The world isn t of the right sort for there to be the relationships
 the relationship of the mind, to some external object, of appre-
hending it, and the relationship of the mind, to that same exter-
nal object, of believing something about it. Of course the person
suffering from the hallucination believes that there are those
relationships; but she s wrong about that, there aren t.
So what to do? One thing to do would be to alter our inter-
pretation of Reid: When he over and over uses the formula  con-
ception and belief of an external object, to understand him as
claiming that the objectivation that lies at the heart of perception
consists of sensations immediately evoking mental phenomena
that the person believes to be about entities in the environment and
that are of such a sort that they would be about the environment
if the environment were of the right sort.
That seems to me not the best course, however  for the reason
that over and over Reid says that whereas we can conceive things
that don t exist (namely, universals), we cannot perceive or be
conscious of things that don t exist, nor remember things that
never existed:  What never had an existence cannot be remem-
bered; what has no existence at present cannot be the object of
perception or of consciousness (EIP I, i [223a]).26 Given this
repetitive claim on Reid s part, what he should have said about
hallucination is that it seems to the person suffering the halluci- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]