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2 In recent years, paying close attention to empirical findings about perception seems to be the norm, rather than the exception. What this means is not that philosophy of perception has become theoretical vision science. Rather, philosophical arguments about perception are constrained by, and sometimes supported by, empirical evidence. Even in the case of some of the most genuinely philosophical debates, such as the representationalism versus relationalism debate, many of the arguments use empirical findings as premises (see, e.g., Pautz 2010, Nanay forthcoming c). And the fact that many of these empirical findings are about non-conscious perceptual processes shifts the emphasis away from conscious perceptual experience. Epistemology has always had special ties to philosophy of perception, traditionally because of the role perception is supposed to play in justification. But in contemporary philosophy of perception, perception is no longer interesting only inasmuch as it can tell us something about knowledge. Quite the contrary: epistemological considerations are often used to answer intrinsically interesting questions about perception. 2 The general picture that these methodological commitments outline is one where philosophy of perception is an autonomous field of philosophy that has important ties to other fields but does not depend on them and that is sensitive to the empirical findings of vision science. And this is very similar to the picture that Brand envisaged for philosophy of action but that never in fact materialized. My aim is to argue that since pragmatic representations are not normally accessible to introspection, naturalized action theory is the only plausible option. Philosophy of action should turn toward philosophy of perception for some methodological support (see also Nanay forthcoming a). As pragmatic representations are both perceptual states and the representational components of the immediate mental antecedents of action, it is the joint job of philosophy of action and philosophy of perception to characterize them. And I will argue that this can only be done by relying on the empirical sciences. II. Naturalism about action theory I need to be explicit about what I take to be naturalism about action theory. I have been talking about sensitivity to empirical results, but this is only part of what naturalism entails. The most important naturalist slogan since Quine has been the continuity between science and philosophy. As Quine says, I admit to naturalism and even glory in it. This means banishing the dream of a first philosophy and pursuing philosophy rather as a part of one’s system of the world, continuous with the rest of science (Quine 1984, pp. 430-431).
8 If the argument I presented above is correct, then pragmatic representations are not normally accessible to introspection. Now we can use this argument to conclude the necessity of naturalizing action theory. If we accept that pragmatic representations are not normally accessible to introspection, then we have a straightforward argument for the need to naturalize action theory. If the representational component of the immediate mental antecedent of action is not normally available to introspection, then introspection obviously cannot deliver any reliable evidence about it. Introspection, of course, may not be the only alternative to scientific evidence. There may be other genuinely philosophical ways in which we can acquire information about a mental state: folk psychology, ordinary language analysis, conceptual analysis, etc. But note that none of these philosophical methods is in a position to say much about pragmatic representations. Pragmatic representations are not part of our folk psychology – as we have seen. When we think about other people’s mental states, we think about their beliefs, desires and wishes, and not so much about the ways in which their perceptual system represents the shape properties of the objects in front of them. Similarly, talk about pragmatic representations is not part of our ordinary language – ordinary language analysis will not get us far. How about conceptual analysis? Arguably, the generation of action theorists that gave us the distinction between the cognitive and conative components of the immediate mental antecedents of action (Brand 1984, Bach 1978) did use conceptual analysis, or, more precisely, some version of a transcendental argument: we need to postulate this distinction in order to explain a number of odd features of our behavior. I see nothing wrong with this approach, but it has its limits. We can, and should, postulate certain mental states, more specifically, pragmatic representations, in order to be able to explain some features of our goal-directed actions, but postulating is only the first step. The real work is in figuring out what these representations are, what properties they represent objects as having, how they interact or fail to interact with the rest of our mind, etc. And this is something that conceptual analysis is unlikely to be able to do. Hence, it seems that the only way to find out more about pragmatic representations is by means of empirical research. We have no other option but to turn to the empirical sciences if we want to characterize and analyze them. And as pragmatic representations are the representational components of what makes actions actions, this means that we have no other option but to turn to the empirical sciences if we want to understand what actions are. Relying on empirical evidence is not a nice, optional feature of action theory: it is the only way action theory can proceed. References: Aglioti, S., DeSouza, J.F.X., & Goodale, M.A. (1995). Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Current Biology, 5, 679-685. Bach, Kent (1978), ‘A representational theory of action’, Philosophical Studies 34: 361-379. Block, Ned 1995 A Confusion about Consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 227-247. Brand, Myles (1979), The fundamental question of action theory. Nous 13: 131-151. Brand, Myles (1984), Intending and Acting. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Bridgeman B, Peery S., Anand S, 1997 Interaction of cognitive and sensorimotor maps of visual space. Perception & Psychophysics 59 : 456 - 459. Briscoe, R. 2008 Another look at the two visual systems hypothesis. Journal of Conscious Studies 15: 35-62. Briscoe, R. 2009 Egocentric spatial representation in action and perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79: 423-460. Brogaard, B. forthcoming a Are there unconscious perceptual processes? Consciousness and Cognition.
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The aim of this paper is to give a new argument for naturalized action theory. ... Epistemology has always had special ties to philosophy of perception, ..... Franz, V. (2003), 'Manual size estimation: A neuropsychological measure of perception?

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