No abstract

The debate between relationalism and representationalism in the philosophy of perception seems to have come to a standstill where opponents radically disagree on methodological principles or fundamental assumptions. According to Fish (this volume) this is because, not unlike Kuhnian scientific paradigms, the debate displays some elements of incommensurability. This diagnosis makes advancing the debate impossible. I argue that what is hindering progress is not a clash of research programmes, but a series of misunderstandings that can be avoided by disentangling the different questions each theory is invested in and by making explicit the hidden assumptions at play in the debate. One such central assumption is what I call the Superficiality Constraint. This is the idea that the phenomenal character of experience is superficial with respect to introspection. I argue that we can make progress in the debate by assessing to what extent and at what cost relationalism can accommodate this constraint.

In the original publication of the article, the M. G. F. Martin quotation under the section "Relational Views" cited as (2004: 93) is from p. 83 of his (1997) The reality of appearances, in Sainsbury M. (ed) Thought and ontology, Franco Angeli, Milano, pp. 81-106, reprinted on p. 93 of Byrne A., Logue H. (eds) (2009) Disjunctivism: contemporary readings, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 91-115.

Today, Austin seems confined to a (not memorable) page in history of philosophy. As Warnock remarked, his reception has been marked Austin's method was described as a pedantic description of how English is used, "the philosophical interest of which [...] is by no means always clear" and which, moreover, is so trivial that "a fine scholar of English could have made a better job of it" (Harrod 1963). His focus on ordinary language was interpreted as a substantial lack of interest in the phenomena studied, as a deliberate refusal to see the source of philosophical problems, and as mocking philosophical enquiry 2 . Alternatively his method was depicted as aiming at solving or dissolving philosophical problems only by means of looking at how words are ordinarily used. Austin was hence seen as assuming that the mere observation of ordinary language would reveal metaphysical and factual truths about our object of enquiry and that any use of language which departs from the ordinary use is false. 3