The nature of hallucinatory experience

This dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of the nature of hallucinatory experience. It defines and contrasts the two major current theories about the nature of perceptual experience: representationalism and naïve realism. I then argue that most (if not all) current versions of these theories do not offer a satisfactory account of hallucination. Finally, I propose and defend a schematic version of a Kaplanian theory for perceptual experience that can arguably give a satisfactory account of the distinctive nature of hallucination. I compare my proposal with similar candidates and argue that it offers a more promising way of accounting for the relevant desiderata in a harmonious way. In short, I propose that hallucinatory experiences are failed experiences of a special sort. By having a hallucination, the subject fails to be in contact with worldly objects, and this special kind of failure can be accounted for in terms of a failed reference to putative objects. On my proposal, a hallucinatory state purports to represent a specific state-of-the-world, but it fails to do so. This renders hallucinatory states incapable of being (properly speaking) either veridical or falsidical. This peculiar aspect of hallucination, I claim, is not properly captured by most (if not all) theories to date.