This chapter explores the broad thesis that most if not all perceptual experiences are infused or soaked with imaginings. To begin, the author articulates a sense of imagination useful for this discussion, avoids some pitfalls, and incorporates the result into a schematic guidance principle. The thought behind the principle is that imaginative contributions to perceptual experiences are self-generated ingredients to perception that have a reasonably direct, ampliative impact on the relevant perceptual experiences. This framework is then applied to three sets of case studies: object-kind and object-sameness experiences (Strawson 1970); colour (Macpherson 2012); and amodal completion (Nanay 2010) and perceptual constancy. Although the case studies have interesting differences, they all conform to the guidance principle. Since each has the potential to independently justify the thesis that perceptual experiences are infused with imaginings, they collectively provide sound motive to provisionally endorse it.
A dual referent approach to colour theory maintains that colour names have two intended, equally legitimate referents. For example, one might argue that 'red' refers both to red appearances or qualia, and also to the way red objects reflect light, the spectral surface reflectance properties of red things. I argue that normal cases of perceptual relativity can be used to support a dual referent approach, yielding an understanding of colour whose natural extension includes abnormal cases of perceptual relativity. This contrasts with Peacocke's multi-referent view, according to which such abnormal cases force us to introduce a wholly distinct kind of colour experience. I also argue that the two uses of colour names, arising from their two referents, have different extensions, even in normal perceptual circumstances, a consequence which conflicts with the heart of Rosenthal's dual referent view.
I defend indirect perceptual realism against two recent and related charges to it offered by A. D. Smith and P. Snowdon, both stemming from demonstrative reference involving indirect perception. The needed aspects of the theory of demonstratives are not terribly new, but their connection to these objections has not been discussed. The groundwork for my solution emerges from considering normal cases of indirect perception (e.g., seeing something depicted on a television) and examining the role this indirectness plays in demonstrative assertions. I argue that indirectness routinely if not typically plays a justificatory role in such judgements, and not a semantic one, and that the same can be said of such judgements when considered within the indirect realist framework. The denial of this, on my analysis, is essential to the criticisms of Snowdon and Smith. The discussion is extended to include scenarios involving the sorts of misconceptions Smith employs.
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