CONSCIOUSNESS

86 1. Philosophy
experience supervenes on its (supposed) extended vehicle (namely, the brain coupled with the
(skilled active) body coupled with the environment). It is obviously required that this expected
account should be coherent with the theory, and thus that it does not attribute to the brain
features that would ultimately be compatible with the (rejected) assumption that the brain
could be the sole or the main realizer of perceptual experience. The main arguments and the
structure of this talk are as follows: (1) I first argue that there is currently only one available
model of brain activity that is coherent with these vehicle-externalist theories of perceptual
experience. It can be found in Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s biological theory
of operational closure and autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela, 1980; see also Thompson 2007).
In this model, the nervous system is defined as a closed network of neuronal interactions,
themselves generated by the network. It is an autonomous dynamical system which maintains
the coherence of its own activity. It is organized by the operational closure of a network of
reciprocally related sub-networks giving rise to sets of coherent activity. Its role is to couple
movements with a stream of sensory modulations in a circular fashion, and thus to control the
sensori-motor cycle of the organism in order to ensure its living character. It compensates for
the perturbations and breakdowns of the ongoing perceptual-motor life of the organism. The
sensori-motor coupling between the organism and the environment (coupling on which conscious
experience is supposed to (partially) supervene) modulates and constrains the activity
of the nervous system, which mediates and coordinates this sensori-motor coupling. (2) This
model of neural activity is clearly non-representationalist. That is, it assumes that the activity
of the brain cannot and does not need to include the manufacture, retrieval and use of mental
representations of the environment or of the body. (3) Therefore, if vehicle-externalist theories
of conscious experience endorsed this model of neural activity in order to answer to the (basic)
question ‘what is the brain doing in your theory of perceptual experience?’ (the plausibility
of this hypothesis is high, since these theories have to answer to this basic question, and
that this model is currently the only available coherent answer), they would necessarily accept
a non-representationalist strategy for describing both their explanans and explanandum.
I conclude by examining whether these theories are able to endorse non-representationalism
with coherence, and by assessing the prospects and consequences of such an endorsement,
especially the following points: (a) what would the consequences of non-representationalism
be for an explanation of the nature of the (non-phenomenal) contents of ‘bodily disengaged’
experience (as we can find them in reflexive or monitoring consciousness for instance)?; (b)
Does this non-representationalism amount to a denial of the intentional character of perceptual
experience? P7
93 Seeing Things Outside the Head Leopold Stubenberg
(Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN)
According to Bertrand Russell, common accounts of vision are deeply mysterious. There
are two problems. The first is a version of the hard problem of consciousness: how can a
chain of purely physical events give rise to a visual experience? The second has to do with the
remarkable saltatory (C.D. Broad’s term) power of vision-its ability “to leap the spatial gap
between the percipient’s body and a remote region of space.” How can the visual experience
that exists in me make me visually aware of an object that exists outside of me? My visual
experience is the last link in a long causal chain that started at the external object. How can the
last link of this causal chain make me aware of its first link? How does this visual experience
make me perceptually aware of an object that is causally and spatially remote from itself and
myself? Russell has interesting things to say about the first problem. But this talk is about the
second problem. Direct realist theories of perception as well as intentional or representational
theories of perception appear to address this issue head on. Direct realism introduces a perceptual
relation-such as appearing or acquaintance-that is supposed to bridge the gap between the
perceiver and her object. Russell himself subscribed to an acquaintance view for some time,
but ultimately abandoned it. Intentional or representational theories are also often represented
as addressing the problem by appealing to the special relation-the intentional relation. According
to this view, my visual state is directed at, or is a representation of, or is about the object
I perceive. I get at the remote object by representing it. But the nature of this “relation” as