Visual indeterminacy and the puzzle of the speckled hen

Abstract

I identify three aspects to the puzzle of the speckled hen: A general puzzle, an epistemic puzzle, and a puzzle for the representationalist. These puzzles rely on an underlying "pictorialist" assumption, that we visually perceive general, determinable properties only in virtue of determinate properties or more specific, local features of our visual experience. This assumption is mistaken: Visual perception frequently starts from a position of uncertainty, and is routinely able to acquire information about general properties in the absence of more specific information. Acknowledging that visual indeterminacy is structured this way resolves all three puzzles of the speckled hen.

The puzzle of cross‐modal shape experience

“…xxiii I do not endorse the more extreme claim that sensory imagery of a dimension requires maximal determinacy along that dimension. Experience sometimes represents determinables without any corresponding determinate (Block, 1983;Stazicker, 2018;Munton, 2020). xxiv I do not claim that all visual imagery obligatorily recruits array representations-only the detailed imagery of shape.…”

“…2323I do not endorse the more extreme claim that sensory imagery of a dimension requires maximal determinacy along that dimension. Experience sometimes represents determinables without any corresponding determinate (Block, 1983; Stazicker, 2018; Munton, 2020). …”

Philosophy of Perception in the Psychologist’s Laboratory

“…The authors interpret these findings in terms of the original philosophical puzzle: "the answer to Molyneux's question is likely negative" (Held et al 2011, 552). 1 Beyond providing novel and unique data, this study has opened new avenues for thinking about Molyneux's question, and even reformulating it. While some philosophers accept that this result resolves (some renditions of) Molyneux's question, others argue it reveals that the original thought experiment is ill-suited for probing intermodal commensurability.…”

“…How do our minds generate a percept having some particular number of speckles while remaining ignorant of that number? This is the problem of the speckled hen —specifically, its “representationalist” variant (Munton, 2021)—first posed by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle.…”

“…This puzzle is attributed to Gilbert Ryle, who suggested it to A. J. Ayer as a challenge to sense-datum theories of perception. Many variations and aspects of this puzzle exist, with different philosophical upshots; the aspect we focus on here is what Munton (2021) calls the “representationalist puzzle.” (b) One path to resolving this puzzle lies in the insight that general properties and specific properties are processed by distinct perceptual mechanisms. Providing evidence for this solution, Burr and Ross (2008) asked whether the perceived numerosity of a set can exhibit visual adaptation, independent of the elements making up the set.…”