Perceptual Content Defended

Abstract

Recently, the thesis that experience is fundamentally a matter of representing the world as being a certain way has been questioned by austere relationalists. I defend this thesis by developing a view of perceptual content that avoids their objections. I will argue that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with perceptual experience being representational. As it will show that most objections to the thesis that experience has content apply only to accounts of perceptual content on which perceptual relations to the world play no explanatory role. With austere relationalists, I will argue that perceptual experience is fundamentally relational. But against austere relationalists, I will argue that it is fundamentally both relational and representational. P1:If a subject is perceptually related to the world (and not suffering from blindsight etc.), then she is aware of the world. P2: If a subject is aware of the world, then the world seems a certain way to her. P3: If the world seems a certain way to her, then she has an experience with content C, where C corresponds to the way the world seems to her. Conclusion 1: If a subject is perceptually related to the world (and not suffering from blindsight etc.), then she has an experience with content C, where C corresponds to the way the world seems to her. P4: The world is either the way it seems to her or it is different from the way it seems to her. P5: If a subject has an experience with content C, then C is either accurate (if the world is the way it seems to her) or inaccurate (if the world is not the way it seems to her).

Reviving the naïve realist approach to memory

“…Many philosophers find this approach implausible, holding that stimuli always "look" or "appear" some way in experience, thus introducing content (Byrne, 2009;French, 2013;Logue, 2014;Schellenberg, 2011;Siegel, 2010;Siewert, 1998). In reply, some naïve realists accept some version of experiential content, but point out that while perception is an intrusion of sensory stimuli themselves into consciousness, that intrusion is (of course) facilitated by sensory systems which work to reveal the stimuli.…”

Perceptual science and the nature of perception

“…When philosophers discuss the issue of underdetermination and how perceptual systems deal with it, they often do so by simultaneously endorsing the view according to which the faculty of perception -like many other individual-level mental faculties-is inherently representational, that is, perceptual states always represent external objects and their properties as being one way or another (Schellenberg, 2011). Additionally, this view is committed to the idea that perceptual states can be more or less accurate in representing the world: if, to use our previous example, we seem to experience a red ball in natural white light while, in fact, what's in front of us is a white ball illuminated by red light, our experience is representing the world inaccurately, i.e.…”

Phenomenologists on Perception and Hallucination: Husserl and Merleau‐Ponty

“…Although the term ‘chasm’ might suggest an unbridgeable gap between the relational and representational camps, it seems it is possible to maintain that perceptual experiences are fundamentally both relations and representations (Logue, 2014; cf. McDowell, 2013; Schellenberg, 2011). While some relationalists deny altogether that perceptual experiences are representations (or have correctness conditions) (Brewer, 2006; Travis, 2004), I take it that all classical phenomenologists would have opposed such a view.…”