Hansen Mette Kristine
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Front Psychol. 2024 Sep 4;15:1388852. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1388852. eCollection 2024.
In this study, I defend the claim that we can perceptually experience what objects afford when we engage with objects belonging to natural or artificial categorical high-level kinds. Experiencing affordances perceptually positions us to act in specific ways. The main aim of this study was to argue that this view has explanatory advantages over alternative views. An increasingly popular view within the philosophy of perception, most famously defended by Susanna Siegel, claims that we sometimes visually experience natural and artificial objects as belonging to categorical high-level kinds. When visually experiencing a lemon, one does not only experience its low-level properties such as shape and color, sometimes one also experiences the object as a lemon. A challenge arises when attempting to explain what happens when one experiences an object that is experientially indistinguishable from another object, yet these objects belong to different high-level categorical kinds. For instance, if someone perceptually experiences a lemon as a lemon, her experience can be considered as accurately representing or presenting a lemon. However, if the subject perceptually experiences a lemon-shaped soap bar, which cannot be discriminated from a real lemon by sight alone, the experience is deemed inaccurate because there is no real lemon present. The problem is that such a judgment seems counterintuitive; unlike with hallucinations and illusions, there seems to be nothing wrong with how the object appears. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how the mistake could be a perceptual mistake. I will first present arguments supporting the claim that when we visually encounter objects such as lemons, we sometimes also perceive the affordances of these objects-what they provide or offer us. I will further argue that this perspective on affordances offers a more compelling explanation than other alternative accounts when it comes to our perception of visually indistinguishable objects that nonetheless belong to categorically distinct high-level kinds.
在本研究中，我捍卫这样一种观点：当我们与属于自然或人工范畴的高级类别物体互动时，我们能够通过感知体验到这些物体所提供的功能。通过感知体验功能，能让我们以特定方式采取行动。本研究的主要目的是论证这一观点相较于其他观点具有解释优势。在感知哲学中，一种越来越流行的观点（最著名的是由苏珊娜·西格尔所捍卫）认为，我们有时会在视觉上体验到自然物体和人工物体属于范畴性的高级类别。当在视觉上体验一个柠檬时，人们不仅体验到它的低级属性，如形状和颜色，有时还会将该物体体验为一个柠檬。当试图解释当一个人体验到一个在体验上与另一个物体无法区分，但这些物体属于不同的高级范畴类别的物体时会发生什么时，就会出现一个挑战。例如，如果有人在感知上把一个柠檬体验为一个柠檬，她的体验可以被认为是准确地表征或呈现了一个柠檬。然而，如果主体在感知上体验到一块柠檬形状的肥皂，仅通过视觉无法将其与真正的柠檬区分开来，那么这种体验就被认为是不准确的，因为实际上并没有真正的柠檬。问题在于，这样的判断似乎有违直觉；与幻觉和错觉不同，物体呈现的方式似乎没有任何问题。因此，很难理解这种错误怎么会是一种感知错误。我将首先提出论据，支持当我们在视觉上遇到柠檬等物体时，我们有时也会感知到这些物体的功能——它们为我们提供或给予我们的东西这一观点。我将进一步论证，当涉及到我们对在视觉上无法区分但属于截然不同的高级类别的物体的感知时，这种关于功能的观点比其他替代解释提供了更有说服力的解释。
