Senses

Abstract

Abstract Multisensory phenomena have been used to challenge the distinctness of our senses. Perceptual processes interact extensively and perform joint functions, while perceptual experience is constitutively and irreducibly multisensory. This chapter presents an account of the senses and what differentiates them. According to this proposal, each sense is a family of perceptual capacities unified and distinguished by the way in which those capacities are exercised. The relevant manner is an information-gathering activity type individuated by the information it functions to extract and the medium from which it does so. Perceiving involves exercising perceptual capacities in one or more sensory manners. Thus, perceptual episodes and experiences may be typed accordingly, without appealing to their phenomenology. The key to this approach is distinguishing the task of individuating senses from that of ascribing modalities to experiences. This account rejects the independence of the senses while preserving their distinctness. It illuminates richly multisensory perception and captures why it matters.