Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Relationalism is the view that perception is partly constituted by external objects (McDowell Citation1994; Campbell Citation2002; Martin Citation2004). Faced with the hallucination argument, and unsatisfied with the standard disjunctivist reply, some ‘new wave’ relationalists explain away the possibility of hallucinations as mere illusions (Alston Citation1999; Watzl Citation2010; Ali Citation2018; Masrour Citation2020). In this paper, I argue that some of these illusions (as in Chalmers Citation2005; Ali Citation2018) are perceptions of internal objects which appear as external ones. Then, in response to the obvious screening-off objection, I argue for a novel reply called ‘intrameralism’: roughly, external objects are ordinarily perceived because they gain internal parts—they ‘grow into the head’. The preceding hallucinations are thus ultimately explained away as a kind of perceptual synecdoche, in which internal parts appear as their (ordinarily perceived) external wholes. The paper concludes by addressing some objections.
Author: Jonathon VandenHombergh
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4417255261