On the phenomenology and normativity of multisensory perception Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian analyses

Abstract

Sense interaction is ubiquitous. All conscious experiences involve at least some interaction between the senses. One of the most debated questions in recent scholarship concerns the proper way of characterizing the phenomenology of multisensory experiences. According to Bayne and Spence (2015), the phenomenal character of multisensory integration is reducible to the co-conscious sum of modality-specific features. The main goal of the chapter is to refute this thesis. By drawing conceptual resources in the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, I explain why the phenomenal character of experience cannot be reduced to the “what it’s like” character of experience that Spence and Bayne assumes as it includes various forms of bodily self-experiences and felt possibilities of action and behaviors. Building on this insight, the chapter outlines a phenomenological account of multimodal perception and sensory interaction and draws two additional conclusions. First, it argues that all perceptual experience constitutively depends on the interplay of two or more senses. Second, the chapter specifies the intrinsic relation between normativity and perception and argues that the mechanisms responsible for multimodality make a phenomenological difference evaluable in normative terms.