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The heterogeneity of the sense of reality: intentional reality, qualitative reality and modal reality| old_uid | 11491 |
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| title | The heterogeneity of the sense of reality: intentional reality, qualitative reality and modal reality |
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| start_date | 2016/06/02 |
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| schedule | 16h-18h |
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| online | no |
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| details | Commentator: Roberto Casati (CNRS, IJN) |
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| summary | In the recent years, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists and anthropologists have been increasingly interested in exploring the sense (or feeling) of reality (or presence). Unlike judgments of reality (JR), which refer to high-level attributions of reality, the sense of reality (SR) strictly refers to the low-level processes through which things are non-reflectively recognized as present and/or real. For example, even if I am a metaphysical nihilist judging that nothing exists, it is very likely that while facing a snake I will still experience the snake as real. JR and SR should thus clearly be decoupled.
Several authors have proposed specific theories aiming to define what the SR consists in (for example: Billon, Dokic & Martin, Frith, Gerrans, Matthen, Noë, Ratcliffe, Seth, Slater, etc.). I will review some of these theories but then argue that none of them is entirely satisfactory. Indeed, all these theories endorse a common but highly questionable assumption, to wit that the concept of SR pinpoints a single clear-cut natural kind.
The modus operandi through which I will impugn the “homogeneity view” will be very simple. I will consider several case studies (watching a movie, being in a virtual environment, having a derealized experience, having a psychotic experience, having a hallucinogenic experience, etc.); next, I will show that when presented with these cases we all have relatively uncontroversial intuitions as to whether a SR is involved or not. I will then suggest that the SR (or the absence thereof) involved in all these cases is not homogeneous and consists instead of three distinct concepts of SR. As a consequence, researchers should either not trust their intuitions when theorizing about the SR or trust them but then be consistent and discard the “homogeneity view” and adopt the “heterogeneity view”. The conceptual, the phenomenological and the neurobiological landscape of the heterogeneous view I am advocating will be finally presented. |
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| responsibles | Gasparri, Murez |
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