Against "Appearances"
Chisholm (1957) and Jackson (1977) distinguish an epistemic from a phenomenal sense of the word "appears".
The epistemic sense: If I say "It appears the Democrats are headed for defeat", normally I'm expressing a kind of hedged judgment. I'm expressing the view that the Democrats are headed for defeat, qualified with a recognition that my judgment may be wrong. I'm not saying anything in particular about my "phenomenology" or stream of experience. I'm not claiming for example, to be entertaining a mental image of defeated Democrats or to hear the word "defeat" ringing in my mind in inner speech.
The phenomenal sense: If I say, looking at a well-known visual illusion, "The top line appears longer", I'm not expressing a judgment about the line. I know the lines are the same length. Instead, I'm making a claim about my phenomenology, my visual experience.
These senses sometimes come together in perception: If I say, looking at two peaks in the distance, "The one on the left appears higher", I might be saying something about the peaks, or I might be saying something about my experience, or (more interestingly) I might be saying something about the peaks by way of saying something about my experience. I might be saying: "My visual experience is a left-looking-higher kind of visual experience; based on that I tentatively conclude that the left peak is higher."
Now how often do we actually do that last type of thing? If not in conversation with others, in our own cognition? How often, that is, do we reach judgments about outward objects on the basis of our knowledge of our own experience?
Traditional "veil of perception" views of perception (e.g., Descartes and Locke, on standard interpretations) suggest that that is what we do all the time in perception. We know outward things only by knowing our own minds first (and better), in particular by knowing our inner experiences of those things. What we know directly is our own sensory experience; our knowledge of the outside world is derivative of that. (Thus, it is as though our sensory experience stands like a veil between us and the world, preventing direct contact with things as they are in themselves.)
I worry that the word "appearance", as philosophers of perception typically use it, invites something like this view, by blurring together the phenomenal and the epistemic senses of "appears". I worry that it invites the view that our judgments about the things we see -- the real, physical objects around us -- are grounded in facts about how those objects are experienced phenomenally. I worry it invites the view that when I say "It (visually) appears that there is a coffee cup on the table" I mean both that I (visually) am inclined to judge that there is a coffee mug on the table and that I am having a visual experience of a certain sort -- a coffee-muggish experience; and that these two events are integrated in a certain way, as different aspects of the "appearance" perhaps. It's because I have the visual experience that I reach the visual judgment.
But here's the question: Do we reach judgments about the properties of objects based on the sensory experiences they produce in us? Or is the visual experience we have of an object the product of, or something created in parallel with, our judgments about the object? If I'm right that talk of "visual appearances" tends to invite the former view, that's reason to be wary of it, if the latter view has merit.