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3. Perception (Perception on PhilPapers)

Bradley, F. H. (1893). Appearance and Reality. Clarendon Press.   (Google)
Broad, C. D. (1914). Perception, Physics, and Reality. New York,Russell & Russell.   (Google)
Child, William (1994). On the Dualism of Scheme and Content. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94:53-71.   (Google)
Coates, Paul (2007). The Metaphysics of Perception: Wilfrid Sellars, Critical Realism, and the Nature of Experience. Routledge.   (Google)
Daly, Chris (1998). Modality and acquaintance with properties. The Monist 81:44--68.   (Google)
Echeverri, Santiago (forthcoming). McDowell's conceptualist therapy for skepticism. European Journal of Philosophy.   (Google)
Abstract: Abstract: In Mind and World , McDowell conceives of the content of perceptual experiences as conceptual. This picture is supposed to provide a therapy for skepticism, by showing that empirical thinking is objectively and normatively constrained. The paper offers a reconstruction of McDowell's view and shows that the therapy fails. This claim is based on three arguments: 1) the identity conception of truth he exploits is unable to sustain the idea that perception-judgment transitions are normally truth conducing; 2) it could be plausible only from an externalist point of view that is in tension with the view of normativity that motivates conceptualism; 3) the identity conception of truth is incompatible with McDowell's recent version of conceptualism in terms of 'non-propositional intuitive contents'
Evans, Gareth (1985). Collected Papers. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Frisby, J. P. (1979). Seeing. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Goodman, Nelson (1951). The Structure of Appearance. Harvard University Press.   (Google)
Harris, Errol E. (1974). Perceptual Assurance and the Reality of the World. Distributed by Crown Publishers.   (Google)
Johnston, Mark (1998). Are manifest qualities response-dependent? The Monist 81:3--43.   (Google)
Johnston, Mark (1997). Postscript: Visual experience. In Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (eds.), Readings on Color I: The Philosophy of Color. The Mit Press.   (Google)
Klemke, E. D. (2000). A Defense of Realism: Reflections on the Metaphysics of G.E. Moore. Humanity Books.   (Google)
Mausfeld, Rainer (2003). Conjoint representations and the mental capacity for multiple simultaneous perspectives. In Heiko Hecht, Robert Schwartz & Margaret Atherton (eds.), Looking Into Pictures. The Mit Press.   (Google)
McDowell, John (1996). Précis of "mind and world". Philosophical Issues 7:231-239.   (Google | More links)
McDowell, John (2009). Why is Sellars's essay called "empiricism and the philosophy of mind"? In Willem A. DeVries (ed.), Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Moore, G. E. (1905). The nature and reality of the objects of perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 6:68--127.   (Google)
G. , Nagarjuna (2006). Layers in the fabric of mind: A critical review of cognitive ontogeny. In Jayashree Ramadas & Sugra Chunawala (eds.), Research Trends in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education. Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR.   (Google)
Abstract: The essay is critically examines the conceptual problems with the influential modularity model of mind. We shall see that one of the essential characters of modules, namely informational encapsulation, is not only inessential, it ties a knot at a crucial place blocking the solution to the problem of understanding the formation of concepts from percepts (nodes of procedural knowledge). Subsequently I propose that concept formation takes place by modulation of modules leading to cross-representations, which were otherwise prevented by encapsulation. It must be noted that the argument is not against modular architecture, but a variety of an architecture that prevents interaction among modules. This is followed by a brief argument demonstrating that module without modularization, i.e. without developmental history, is impossible. Finally the emerging picture of cognitive development is drawn in the form of the layers in the fabric of mind, with a brief statement of the possible implications.
Nelkin, Norton (1997). Consciousness and the origins of thought. Mind and Language 12 (2):178–180.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This book offers a comprehensive and broadly rationalist theory of the mind which continually tests itself against experimental results and clinical data. Taking issue with Empiricists who believe that all knowledge arises from experience and that perception is a non-cognitive state, Norton Nelkin argues that perception is cognitive, constructive, and proposition-like. Further, as against Externalists who believe that our thoughts have meaning only insofar as they advert to the world outside our minds, he argues that meaning is determined 'in the head'. Finally, he offers an account of how we acquire some of our most basic concepts, including the concept of the self and that of other minds
Noë, Alva (2009). Conscious reference. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):470-482.   (Google)
Abstract: The world shows up to perceptual consciousness in virtue of the deployment of distinct sensorimotor and also conceptual skills. The availability of the world to thought is, in contrast, to be explained in connection with the different sorts of skills put to work in thought. I show that thought and experience are varieties of skilful access to the world. The aim of the paper is to present the outlines of a general theory of access
Noë, Alva (2002). On what we see. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83:57--80.   (Google)
Price, Henry Habberly (1941). Review of Ayer's T he foundations of empirical knowledge. Mind 50:273--93.   (Google)
Rowlands, Mark (2003). Externalism: Putting Mind and World Back Together Again. Acumen.   (Google)
Roxbee-Cox, J. W. (1971). An analysis of perceiving in terms of the causation of beliefs I. In F. N. Sibley (ed.), Perception: A Philosophical Symposium. Methuen.   (Google)
Russell, Bertrand (1910). Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 11:108--28.   (Google)
Russell, Bertrand (1914). Our Knowledge of the External World: As a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. Routledge.   (Google)
Abstract: Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning. In Our Knowledge of the External World , Bertrand Russell illustrates instances where the claims of philosophers have been excessive, and examines why their achievements have not been greater
Setiya, Kieran (2004). Transcendental idealism in the 'aesthetic'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1):63–88.   (Google | More links)
Singh, Manish & Hoffman, Donald D. (1999). Perception, inference, and the veridicality of natural constraints. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):395-396.   (Google)
Abstract: Pylyshyn's target article argues that perception is not inferential, but this is true only under a narrow construal of inference. A more general construal is possible, and has been used to provide formal theories of many visual capacities. This approach also makes clear that the evolution of natural constraints need not converge to the “veridical” state of the world
Soteriou, Matthew (2000). The particularity of perception. European Journal of Philosophy 8:173--89.   (Google)
Strawson, P. F. (1988). Perception and its objects. In Jonathan Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Swartz, Robert J. (ed.) (1965). Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing. University of California Press.   (Google)

3.1 The Nature of Perceptual Experience

3.1a Sense-Datum Theories

Aaron, R. I. (1958). The common sense view of sense-perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 58:1-14.   (Google)
Adams, E. M. (1958). The nature of the sense-datum theory. Mind 67 (April):216-226.   (Google | More links)
Aldrich, Virgil C. (1934). Are there vague sense-data? Mind 43 (172):477-482.   (Google | More links)
Aldrich, Virgil C. (1955). Is an after-image a sense-datum? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (3):369-376.   (Google | More links)
Aldrich, Virgil C. (1979). Objective sense-data. Personalist 60 (January):36-42.   (Google)
Allinson, R. E. (1978). A non-dualistic reply to Moore's refutation of idealism. Indian Philosophical Quarterly 5 (July):661-668.   (Google)
Alston, William P. (1957). Is a sense-datum language necessary? Philosophy of Science 24 (1):41-45.   (Google | More links)
Andriopoulos, D. Z. (1979). Did Aristotle assume a sense-data theory? Philosophical Inquiry 1:125-128.   (Google)
Armstrong, David Malet (1979). Perception, sense-data, and causality. In Graham Macdonald (ed.), Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A.~J. Ayer with His Replies. Macmillan.   (Google)
Austin, J. L. (1962). Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 247 | Google)
Austin, J. L. (1964). Sense And Sensibilia; Reconstructed From The Manuscript Notes By G J Warnock. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Ayer, A. J. (1967). Has Austin refuted the sense-datum theory? Synthese 17 (June):117-140.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Ayer, A. J. (1970). Metaphysics and Common Sense. San Francisco,Freeman, Cooper.   (Google)
Abstract: On making philosophy intelligible.--What is communication?--Meaning and intentionality.--What must there be?--Metaphysics and common sense.--Philosophy and science.--Chance.--Knowledge, belief, and evidence.--Has Austin refuted the sense-datum theory?--Professor Malcolm on dreams.--An appraisal of Bertrand Russell's philosophy.--G. E. Moore on propositions and facts.--Reflections on existentialism.--Man as a subject for science.--Philosophy and politics
Ayer, A. J. & Macdonald, Graham (eds.) (1979). Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer, with His Replies. Cornell University Press.   (Google)
Ayer, A. J. (1940). The Foundations Of Empirical Knowledge. Macmillan.   (Cited by 72 | Google)
Ayer, A. J. (1945). The terminology of sense-data. Mind 54 (October):289-312.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Ba, (2004). On the ontological issue of sense data. Philosophia 33 (2):125-154.   (Google)
Barnes, Winston H. F. (1945). The myth of sense-data. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 45:89-118.   (Cited by 11 | Google)
Becroft, H. C. (1925). Professor Norman Kemp Smith's theory of the sensa. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 3 (3):179 – 189.   (Google)
Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000). Naturalized sense data. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2):353-374.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Bergmann, Gustav (1947). Sense data, linguistic conventions, and existence. Philosophy of Science 14 (2):152-163.   (Google | More links)
Bickham, Stephen H. (1975). What is at issue in the Ayer-Austin dispute about sense-data. Midwestern Journal of Philosophy 1:1-8.   (Google)
Biswas, Shokti Charan (1967). The Nature and Status of Sensa. [Allahabad]Dept. Of Philosophy, University of Allahabad.   (Google)
Blyth, John W. (1935). A discussion of mr. price's Perception. Mind 44 (173):58-67.   (Google | More links)
Brain, W. Russell (1960). Space and sense-data. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 11 (November):177-191.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Brain, Walter R. (1959). The Nature Of Experience. London,: Oxford University Press,.   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Bretzevonl, Philip (1974). Cornman, sensa, and the argument from hallucination. Philosophical Studies 26 (December):443-445.   (Google)
Brown, Norman O. (1957). Sense-data and material objects. Mind 66 (April):173-194.   (Google | More links)
Bronaugh, Richard N. (1964). The argument from the elliptical penny. Philosophical Quarterly 14 (April):151-157.   (Google | More links)
Brokes, Audre Jean (2000). The argument from illusion reconsidered. Disputatio 9 (1).   (Google)
Campbell, Charles A. (1947). Sense data and judgment in sensory cognition. Mind 56 (October):289-316.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Caruso, Gregg (1999). A defence of the adverbial theory. Philosophical Writings 10:51-65.   (Google)
Carney, James D. (1962). Was Moore talking nonsense in 1918? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22 (June):521-527.   (Google | More links)
Casullo, Albert (1987). A defense of sense-data. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (September):45-61.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Cash, Peter T. (1979). The argument from the hand. Philosophical Investigations 2:47-70.   (Google)
Chandra, Suresh (1976). Sensible awareness of sense-objects. Indian Philosophical Quarterly 3 (April):355-366.   (Google)
Chisholm, Roderick (1942). Discussions: The problem of the speckled hen. Mind 51 (204).   (Google)
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Chrucky, Andrew (online). The alleged fallacy of the sense-datum inference.   (Google)
Abstract: Sense-data, if they exist, could conceivably provide foundations for empirical knowledge. Those who are opposed to empirical foundationalism are therefore also prone to reject sense-data and arguments for their existence, e.g., Rorty, Bonjour; while foundationalists are prone to accept the existence of sense-data, e.g., Russell, Ayer, Broad, Price, Lewis. An exception to this is the position of Roderick Chisholm who accepts empirical foundationalism but rejects the existence of sense-data
Chubb, J. N. (1973). Are there sense-data, part I. Journal of the Philosophical Association 14 (January-December):135-158.   (Google)
Chuard, Philippe & Corry, Richard (ms). Looks non-transitive!   (Google)
Abstract: Suppose you are presented with three red objects. You are then asked to take a careful look at each possible pair of objects, and to decide whether or not their members look chromatically the same. You carry out the instructions thoroughly, and the following propositions sum up the results of your empirical investigation:
i. red object #1 looks the same in colour as red object #2.
ii. red object #2 looks the same in colour as red object #3
Coates, Paul (online). Sense-data. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Google)
Cooney, William (1985). Some comments on the sense-datum theory and the argument from illusion. Dialogue 28 (October):8-15.   (Google)
Cory, Daniel (1948). Are sense-data in the brain? Journal of Philosophy 45 (September):533-548.   (Google | More links)
Cornman, James W. (1970). Sellars, scientific realism, and sensa. Review of Metaphysics 23 (March):417-51.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Cory, Daniel (1939). The private field of immediate experience. Journal of Philosophy 36 (16):421-427.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Coval, Sam C. & Todd, D. D. (1972). Adjusters and sense-data. American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (January):107-112.   (Google)
Cowley, Fraser (1968). A Critique Of British Empiricism. Macmillan.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Cresswell, M. J. (1980). Jackson on perception. Theoria 46:123-147.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Crossley, David J. (1994). Moore's Refutation of Idealism: The debate about sensations. Idealistic Studies 24 (1):1-20.   (Google)
Culbertson, James T. (1963). The Minds Of Robots: Sense Data, Memory Images, And Behavior In Conscious Automata. Urbana: University Of Illinois Press.   (Cited by 11 | Google)
Davie, G. E. (1954). Common sense and sense-data. Philosophical Quarterly 4 (July):229-246.   (Google | More links)
Dawes Hicks, G. (1912). The nature of sense-data. Mind 21 (83):399-409.   (Google | More links)
De Boer, C. (1931). Sceptical notes on the sense-datum. Journal of Philosophy 28 (19):505-519.   (Google | More links)
Ducasse, Curt J. (1936). Introspection, mental acts, and sensa. Mind 45 (178):181-192.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Ducasse, C. J. (1942). Moore's refutation of idealism. In Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. Open Court.   (Google)
Elder, Crawford L. (2007). Conventionalism and the world as bare sense-data. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):261 – 275.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: We are confident of many of the judgements we make as to what sorts of alterations the members of nature's kinds can survive, and what sorts of events mark the ends of their existences. But is our confidence based on empirical observation of nature's kinds and their members? Conventionalists deny that we can learn empirically which properties are essential to the members of nature's kinds. Judgements of sameness in kind between members, and of numerical sameness of a member across time, merely project our conventions of individuation. Our confidence is warranted because apart from those conventions there are no phenomena of kind-sameness or of numerical sameness across time. There is just 'stuff' displaying properties. This paper argues that conventionalists can assign no properties to the 'stuff' beyond immediate phenomenal properties. Consequently they cannot explain how each of us comes to be able to wield 'our conventions'
Epstein, Joseph (1956). Professor Ayer on sense-data. Journal of Philosophy 53 (13):401-415.   (Google | More links)
Fantl, Jeremy & Howell, Robert J. (2003). Sensations, swatches, and speckled hens. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (4):371-383.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Farnell, Derrick (ms). This is a simulation.   (Google)
Abstract: This article simply provides a very short introduction, aimed at non-philosophers, to the time-lag argument for the representational theory of perception.
Firth, Roderick (1949). Sense-data and the percept theory, part I. Mind 58 (October):434-465.   (Google)
Firth, Roderick (1950). Sense-data and the percept theory, part II. Mind 59 (January):35-56.   (Google)
Firth, Roderick (1949). Sense-data and the percept theory. Mind 58 (232):434-465.   (Google | More links)
Firth, Roderick (1950). Sense-data and the percept theory. Mind 59 (233):35-56.   (Google | More links)
Fischer, Eugen (2005). Austin on sense-data: Ordinary language analysis as 'therapy'. Grazer Philosophische Studien 70 (1):67-99.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The construction and analysis of arguments supposedly are a philosopher's main business, the demonstration of truth or refutation of falsehood his principal aim. In Sense and Sensibilia, J.L. Austin does something entirely different: He discusses the sense-datum doctrine of perception, with the aim not of refuting it but of 'dissolving' the 'philosophical worry' it induces in its champions. To this end, he 'exposes' their 'concealed motives', without addressing their stated reasons. The paper explains where and why this at first sight outrageous aim and approach are perfectly sensible, how exactly Austin proceeds, and how his approach can be taken further. This shows Austin to be a pioneer of the currently much discussed notion of philosophy as therapy, reveals a subtle and unfamiliar use of linguistic analysis that is not open to the standard objections to ordinary language philosophy, and yields a novel and forceful treatment of the sense-datum doctrine
Fish, Michael D. (1968). Are sense-data material things? Logique Et Analyse 11 (December):459-467.   (Google)
Fries, Horace S. (1935). The spatial location of sensa. Philosophical Review 44 (4):345-353.   (Google | More links)
Gallois, Andr (1979). Basic properties and sense datum attributes. Personalist 60 (January):53-60.   (Google)
Ganapathy, T. N. (1984). Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of Sense-Data. Dept. Of Philosophy, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College.   (Google)
Garcia-Carpintero, Manuel (2001). Sense data: The sensible approach. Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):17-63.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I present a version of a sense-data approach to perception, which differs to a certain extent from well-known versions like the one put forward by Jackson. I compare the sense-data view to the currently most popular alternative theories of perception, the so-called Theory of Appearing (a very specific form of disjunctivist approaches) on the one hand and reductive representationalist approaches on the other. I defend the sense-data approach on the basis that it improves substantially on those alternative theories
Gentry, George (1943). The logic of the sensum theory. Philosophy of Science 10 (April):81-89.   (Google | More links)
Gotlind, Erik (1952). Some comments on mistakes in statements concerning sense-data. Mind 61 (July):297-306.   (Google | More links)
Gupta, K. C. (1953). Sense-data and judgment in perceptual knowledge. Philosophical Quarterly (India) 25 (January):243-249.   (Google)
Hahn, Lewis Edwin (1939). Neutral, indubitable sense-data as the starting point for theories of perception. Journal of Philosophy 36 (22):589-600.   (Google | More links)
Hall, Richard J. (1964). The term sense-datum. Mind 73 (January):130-131.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Hardin, C. L. (1985). Frank talk about the colors of sense-data. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63 (December):485-93.   (Google)
Hare, Peter H. & Koehl, Richard A. (1968). Moore and Ducasse on the sense data issue. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28 (March):313-331.   (Google | More links)
Harrison, Jonathan (1993). Science, souls and sense-data. In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Hatfield, Gary (2002). Sense-data and the philosophy of mind: Russell, James, and Mach. Principia 6 (2):203-230.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
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Abstract: I interpret the anti-idealist manoeuverings of the second half of Moore's 'The refutation of idealism', material as widely cited for its discussion of 'transparency' and 'diaphanousness' as it is deeply obscure. The centerpiece of these manoeuverings is a phenomenological argument for a relational view of perceptual phenomenal character, on which, roughly, 'that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact' is a non-intentional relation of conscious awareness, a view close to the opposite of the most characteristic contemporary view going under the transparency rubric. The discussion of transparency and diaphanousness is a sidelight, its principal purpose to shore up the main line of argumentation against criticism; in those passages all Moore argues is that the relation of conscious awareness is not transparent, while acknowledging that it can seem to be.
Johnstone Jr, Henry W. (1951). A postscript on sense-data. Journal of Philosophy 48 (26):809-814.   (Google | More links)
Hicks, G. Dawes (1912). The nature of sense-data. Mind 21 (83):399-409.   (Google | More links)
Hilbert, David R. (2004). Hallucination, sense-data and direct realism. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):185-191.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Howell, Robert J. & Fantl, Jeremy (2003). Sensations, swatches, and speckled hens. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84:371-383.   (Google)
Huemer, Michael (online). Sense-data. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Jackson, Frank (1978). Perception. Philosophical Books 19 (May):49-56.   (Cited by 155 | Google)
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Milkov, Nikolay (2004). G. E. Moore and the greifswald objectivists on the given and the beginning of analytic philosophy. Axiomathes 14 (4):361-379.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Shortly before G. E. Moore wrote down the formative for the early analytic philosophy lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910–1911), he had become acquainted with two books which influenced his thought: (1) a book by Husserl's pupil August Messer and (2) a book by the Greifswald objectivist Dimitri Michaltschew. Central to Michaltschew's book was the concept of the given. In Part I, I argue that Moore elaborated his concept of sense-data in the wake of the Greifswald concept. Carnap did the same when he wrote his Aufbau, the only difference being that he spoke not of sense-data but of Erlebnisse. This means, I argue, that both Moore's sense-data and Carnap'sErlebnisse have little to do with either British empiricists or the neo-Kantians. In Part II, I try to ascertain what made early analytic philosophy different from all those philosophical groups and movements that either exercised influence on it, or were closely related to it: phenomenologists, Greifswald objectivists, Brentanists. For this purpose, I identify the sine qua non practices of the early analytic philosophers: exactness; acceptance of the propositional turn; descriptivism; objectivism. If one of these practices was not explored by a given philosophical school or group, in all probability, it was not truly analytic
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Moore, G. E. (1903). The refutation of idealism. Mind 12 (48):433-453.   (Cited by 98 | Google | More links)
Moore, George Edward (1913). The status of sense-data. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 14:355--81.   (Google)
Moore, George Edward (1957). Visual sense-data. In J. H. Muirhead (ed.), British Philosophy in the Mid-Century. George Allen and Unwin.   (Google)
Morreall, John (1978). Size, shape, seeing, and sense-data. Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 9:101-112.   (Google)
Mundle, Clement W. K. (1971). Perception: Facts And Theories. London,: Oxford University Press,.   (Cited by 14 | Google)
Myers, Charles M. (1959). Phenomenal organization and perceptual mode. Philosophy 34 (October):331-337.   (Google)
Nathan, N. M. L. (2005). Direct realism: Proximate causation and the missing object. Acta Analytica 20 (36):3-6.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Direct Realists believe that perception involves direct awareness of an object not dependent for its existence on the perceiver. Howard Robinson rejects this doctrine in favour of a Sense-Datum theory of perception. His argument against Direct Realism invokes the principle ‘same proximate cause, same immediate effect’. Since there are cases in which direct awareness has the same proximate cerebral cause as awareness of a sense datum, the Direct Realist is, he thinks, obliged to deny this causal principle. I suggest that although Direct Realism is in more than one respect implausible, it does not succumb to Robinson’s argument. The causal principle is true only if ‘proximate cause’ means ‘proximate sufficient cause’, and the Direct Realist need not concede that there is a sufficient cerebral cause for direct awareness of independent objects
Oakes, Robert A. (1993). Representational sensing: What's the problem? In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Google)
O'connor, David (1980). Identification and description in Ayer's sense-datum theory. Modern Schoolman 57 (March):213-242.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Olding, A. (1980). Frank Jackson and the spatial distribution of sense-data. Analysis 40 (June):158-162.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
O'Shaughnessy, Brian (2003). Sense data. In John Searle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Google)
Paul, G. A. (1951). Is there a problem about sense-data? In Gilbert Ryle & Antony Flew (eds.), Logic And Language. Blackwell.   (Cited by 11 | Google)
Persson, Ingmar (1985). The Primacy of Perception: Towards a Neutral Monism. C.W.K. Gleerup.   (Google)
Pitson, A. E. (1985). Frank Jackson and the characterisation of sense-data. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63 (December):428-439.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Pitson, A. E. (1986). The new representationalism. Philosophical Papers 15 (August):41-49.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Presson, Virginia (1951). G.e. Moore's theory of sense-data. Journal of Philosophy 48 (January):34-41.   (Google | More links)
Price, H. H. (1964). Appearing and appearances. American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (January):3-19.   (Cited by 4 | Google)
Prichard, H. A. (1938). The sense-datum fallacy. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 17:1-18.   (Google)
Pustilnik, Jack (1965). Austin on some problems of perception. Southern Journal of Philosophy 3:18-22.   (Google)
Raff, Charles (1974). Moore and the priorities of seeing. Journal of Philosophy 71 (7):722-723.   (Google | More links)
Randle, H. N. (1922). Sense-data and sensible appearances in size-distance perception. Mind 31 (123):284-306.   (Google | More links)
Reynolds, Steven L. (2000). The argument from illusion. Noûs 34 (4):604-621.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Rhees, Rush (1984). The language of sense data and private experience - I: Notes of Wittgenstein's Lectures, 1936. Philosophical Investigations 7 (1):1-45.   (Google)
Rhees, Rush (1984). The language of sense data and private experience - II: Notes of Wittgenstein's lectures, 1936. Philosophical Investigations 7 (2):101-140.   (Google)
Ritchie, A. D. (1952). A defence of sense-data. Philosophical Quarterly 2 (July):240-245.   (Google | More links)
Robinson, Howard M. (1994). Perception. New York: Routledge.   (Cited by 31 | Google)
Abstract: Questions about perception remain some of the most difficult and insoluble in both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Perception provides a highly accessible introduction to the area, exploring the philosophical importance of those questions by re-examining the sense-datum theory, once the most popular theory of perception. Howard Robinson surveys the history of arguments for and against the sense-datum theory, from Descartes to Husserl. Robinson contends that the objections to the theory, particularly Wittgenstein's attack on privacy and those of the physicalists, have been unsuccessful. He argues for returning to the theory in order to understand perception. In doing so, he seeks to overturn a consensus that has dominated the philosophy of perception for nearly half a century
Robinson, Howard (2005). Reply to Nathan: How to reconstruct the causal argument. Acta Analytica 20 (36):7-10.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Nicholas Nathan tries to resist the current version of the causal argument for sense-data in two ways. First he suggests that, on what he considers to be the correct reconstruction of the argument, it equivocates on the sense of proximate cause. Second, he defends a form of disjunctivism, by claiming that there might be an extra mechanism involved in producing veridical hallucination that is not present in perception. I argue that Nathan’s reconstruction of the argument is not the appropriate one, and that, properly interpreted, the argument does not equivocate on proximate cause. Furthermore, I claim that his postulation of a modified mechanism for hallucinations is implausibly ad hoc
Robinson, Howard M. (2005). Sense-Data, Intentionality, and Common Sense. In G. Forrai (ed.), Intentionality: Past and Future. Rodopi NY.   (Google)
Russell, Bertrand (1915). Letter on sense-data. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 12:391--2.   (Google)
Russell, Bertrand (1913). The nature of sense-data.--A reply to dr Dawes Hicks. Mind 22 (85):76-81.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Russell, Bertrand (1914). The relation of sense-data to physics. Scientia 16:1--27.   (Google)
Sambasiva Prasad, B. (1984). A Critique of the Philosophy of Sense-Data. Sri Venkateswara University.   (Google)
Sanford, David H. (1981). Illusions and sense-data. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6:371-385.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Sayward, Charles (2001). Austin and perception. Acta Analytica 16 (27):169-193.   (Google)
Self, Donnie J. (1974). Sense-data and the argument from illusion. Dialogue 16 (January-May):53-56.   (Google)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1982). Sensa or sensings: Reflections on the ontology of perception. Philosophical Studies 41 (January):83-114.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1971). Seeing, sense impressions, and sensa: A reply to Cornman. Review of Metaphysics 24 (March):391-447.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Shearn, Martin (1950). Other people's sense-data. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 50:15-26.   (Google)
Sinha, L. P. N. (1972). Bertrand Russell and the problem of perception. Indian Philosophy and Culture 17 (March):5-13.   (Google)
Smythies, J. R. (1956). Analysis Of Perception. London,: Routledge &Amp; K Paul,.   (Cited by 14 | Google)
Smythies, J. R. (1962). On Space and Sense-Data: A reply to Lord brain. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 13 (August):161-164.   (Google | More links)
Smythies, J. R. (1958). 'Philosophical' and 'scientific' sense-data. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 9 (November):224.   (Google | More links)
Smythies, J. R. (1956). The stroboscope as providing empirical confirmation of the representative theory of perception. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6 (February):332-334.   (Google | More links)
Sosa, David (2007). Perceptual friction. Philosophical Issues 17 (1):245–261.   (Google | More links)
Spät, Patrick (2008). Questioning idealism. Reasoner 2 (4):5-6.   (Google)
Stainsby, H. V. (1970). Sight and sense-data. Mind 79 (April):170-187.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Stieg, Chuck (ms). Mental representations: The new sense-data?   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The notion of representation has become ubiquitous throughout cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience and the cognitive sciences generally. This paper addresses the status of mental representations as entities that have been posited to explain cognition. I do so by examining similarities between mental representations and sense-data in both their characteristics and key arguments offered for each. I hope to show that more caution in the adoption and use of representations in explaining cognition is warranted. Moreover, by paying attention to problematic notions of representations, a less problematic sense of representation might emerge
Streiffer, Robert (ms). The argument from illusion: (1)in delusive cases, we perceive a sense-datum rather than a material object. (2)what we see in veridical cases has the same intrinsic nature as what we see in delusive..   (Google)
Abstract: • A coin appears to be elliptical when looked at from an angle, but it’s round. • A stick appears to be bent when it is partly immersed in water, but it’s straight. • An oasis appears to exist, but it doesn’t. • A bucket of water appears to be two different temperatures to two different hands, but it’s all..
Tibbetts, Paul E. (1972). Phenomenological and empirical inadequacies of Russell's theory of perception. Philosophical Studies 20:98-108.   (Google)
Tucker, John (1958). The television theory of perception. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 9 (33).   (Google | More links)
Tully, R. E. (1978). Sense-data and common knowledge. Ratio 20 (December):123-141.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Turner, J. E. (1927). Dr. broad on perception and matter. Philosophical Review 36 (6):562-572.   (Google | More links)
Turner, J. E. (1914). Mr. Russell on sense-data and knowledge. Mind 23 (90):251-255.   (Google | More links)
Tye, Michael (2009). A new look at the speckled hen. Analysis 69 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: (forthcoming in Analysis) We owe the problem of the speckled hen to Gilbert Ryle. It was suggested to A.J. Ayer by Ryle in connection with Ayer’s account of seeing. Suppose that you are standing before a speckled hen with your eyes trained on it. You are in good light and nothing is obstructing your view. You see the hen in a single glance. The hen has 47 speckles on its facing side, let us say, and the hen ap­ pears speckled to you. On Ayer’s view, in seeing the hen, you directly see a speckled sense-datum or appearance. Ryle wondered how many speckles there are on the sense-datum. After all, intu­ itively, the hen does not appear to you to have 47 speckles. And if this is the case, then it does not present to you an appearance with 47 speckles. Equally, however, the hen does not appear to you not to have 47 speckles. So, it does not present an appearance that lacks 47 speckles either
Unknown, Unknown (online). Sense-data.   (Google)
Vinci, Thomas C. (1984). Theoretical models and the theory of sense-data. Metaphilosophy 15 (April):112-128.   (Google | More links)
Wadia, Pheroze S. (1972). Can 'the way things seem to us' ever guarantee 'the way they really are'? Philosophical Studies 20:90-97.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Wadia, Pheroze S. (1979). Sense-data, 'common sensism' and the linguistic turn. Philosophical Studies 26:96-104.   (Google)
Wallraff, Charles F. (1958). Sense-datum theory and observational fact: Some contributions of psychology to epistemology. Journal of Philosophy 55 (January):20-31.   (Google | More links)
Ward, Andrew (1988). Representationalism and Hume's problem. Southern Journal of Philosophy 26:423-430.   (Google)
Whiteley, C. H. (1969). Sense-data. Philosophy 44 (September):187-192.   (Google)
Wild, John D. (1953). An examination of critical realism with special reference to mr C.d. Broad's theory of sensa. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14 (December):143-162.   (Google | More links)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1968). Notes for lectures on private experience and sense data. Philosophical Review 77 (July):275-320.   (Cited by 19 | Google | More links)
Wright, Edmond L. (1990). New representationalism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 20 (1):65-92.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Wright, Edmond L. (1983). Pre-phenomenal adjustments and Sanford's illusion objection against sense-data. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (July):266-272.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Wright, Edmond Leo (1993). The irony of perception. In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Google)
Wright, Edmond Leo (1987). The new representationalism: A reply to Pitson's the new representationalism. Philosophical Papers 16 (August):125-139.   (Google)
Yolton, John W. (1948). A defence of sense-data. Mind 57 (January):2-15.   (Google | More links)
Yolton, John W. (1960). Sense-data and cartesian doubt. Philosophical Studies 11 (1-2):25-29.   (Google | More links)
Yolton, John W. (1949). The ontological status of sense-data in Plato's theory of perception. Review of Metaphysics 3 (September):21-58.   (Google)
Yost, R. M. (1964). Price on appearing and appearances. Journal of Philosophy 61 (May):328-333.   (Google | More links)

3.1b Adverbialism and Qualia Theories

Berger, G. (1987). On the structure of visual sentience. Synthese 71 (June):355-70.   (Google | More links)
Bestor, Thomas W. (1979). Gilbert Ryle and the adverbial theory of mind. Personalist 60 (July):233-242.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Brown, Harold I. (1987). Observation And Objectivity. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 19 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This book develops an explanation for the roles of observation and theory in scientific endeavor that occupies the middle ground between empiricism and rationalism, and captures the strengths of both approaches. Brown argues that philosophical theories have the same epistemological status as scientific theories and constructs an epistemological theory that provides an account of the role that theory and instruments play in scientific observation. His theory of perception yields a new analysis of objectivity that combines the traditional view of observation as the foundation of scientific objectivity with the contemporary recognition that observation is theory-dependent
Butchvarov, Panayot K. (1980). Adverbial theories of consciousness. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (3):261-80.   (Cited by 12 | Google)
Caruso, Gregg (1999). A defence of the adverbial theory. Philosophical Writings 10:51-65.   (Google)
Casullo, Albert (1983). Adverbial theories of sensing and the many-property problem. Philosophical Studies 44 (September):143-160.   (Google | More links)
Clark, Romane L. (1987). Objects of consciousness. Philosophical Perspectives 1:481-500.   (Google)
Clark, R. (1981). Sensing, perceiving, thinking. Grazer Philosophische Studien 12:273-95.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Clark, Romane L. (1979). Sensing, perceiving, thinking. Grazer Philosophische Studien/ 8:273-295.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Conduct, M. D. (2008). Naïve realism, adverbialism and perceptual error. Acta Analytica 23 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: My paper has three parts. First I will outline the act/object theory of perceptual experience and its commitments to (a) a relational view of experience and (b) a view of phenomenal character according to which it is constituted by the character of the objects of experience. I present the traditional adverbial response to this, in which experience is not to be understood as a relation to some object, but as a way of sensing. In the second part I argue that acceptance of (a) is independent of acceptance of (b). I then present a modified adverbialism that presents experience as relational in nature but whose character is nevertheless to be explained in terms of the way in which one senses an object. Finally, I will offer an explanation of how a naïve realist about experience can adopt this modified adverbialism and in so doing accommodate the possibility of perceptual error
Ducasse, C. J. (1942). Moore's refutation of idealism. In Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. Open Court.   (Google)
Elugardo, Reinaldo (1982). Cornman, adverbial materialism, and phenomenal properties. Philosophical Studies 41 (January):33-50.   (Google | More links)
Fumerton, Richard A. (2000). Relational, non-relational, and mixed theories of experience. In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 5: Epistemology. Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center.   (Google)
Goldstein, Laurence (1983). The adverbial theory of conceptual thought. The Monist 65 (July):379-392.   (Google)
Hatfield, Gary C. (2009). Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology.
Honderich, Ted (1992). Seeing qualia and positing the world. In A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), A. J. Ayer: Memorial Essays. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Jackson, Frank (1975). On the adverbial analysis of visual experience. Metaphilosophy 6 (April):127-135.   (Cited by 12 | Google)
Kalat, James W. (2002). Identism without objective qualia: Commentary on Crooks. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):233-238.   (Google)
Lahav, Ran (1990). An alternative to the adverbial theory: Dis-phenomenalism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (3):553-568.   (Google | More links)
Langsam, Harold (2000). Experiences, thoughts, and qualia. Philosophical Studies 99 (3):269-295.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Le Morvan, Pierre (2008). Sensory experience and intentionalism. Philosophy Compass 3 (4):685-702.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Increasingly prominent in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception, Intentionalism holds that sensory experience is inherently intentional, where to be intentional is to be about, or directed on, something. This article explores Intentionalism's prospects as a viable ontological and epistemological alternative to the traditional trinity of theories of sensory experience: the Sense-Datum Theory, the Adverbial Theory, and the Theory of Appearing
Loar, Brian (2003). Transparent experience and the availability of qualia. In Quentin Smith & Aleksandar Jokic (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 17 | Google)
Loui, Michael C. (1994). Against qualia: Our direct perception of physical reality. In European Review of Philosophy, Volume 1: Philosophy of Mind. Stanford: CSLI Publications.   (Google)
Lycan, William G. (1987). Phenomenal objects: A backhanded defense. Philosophical Perspectives 3:513-26.   (Cited by 6 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Maund, Barry (2003). Perception. Acumen.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Millar, Alan (1991). Reasons and Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Millar argues against the tendency in current philosophical thought to treat sensory experiences as a peculiar species of propositional attitude. While allowing that experiences may in some sense bear propositional content, he presents a view of sensory experiences as a species of psychological state. A key theme in his general approach is that justified belief results from the competent exercise of conceptual capacities, some of which involve an ability to respond appropriately to current experience. In working out this approach the author develops a view of concepts and their mastery, explores the role of groundless beliefs drawing on suggestions of Wittgenstein, illuminates aspects of the thought of Locke, Hume, Quine, and Goldman, and finally offers a response to a sophisticated variety of scepticism
Park, Desiree (1992). Ayerian 'qualia' and the empiricist heritage. In The Philosophy of A Jayer. Peru: Open Court.   (Google)
Rapaport, William J. (1979). An adverbial meinongian theory. Analysis 39 (March):75-81.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1975). The adverbial theory of the objects of sensation. Metaphilosophy 6 (April):144-160.   (Cited by 13 | Google | More links)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2008). Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.
Thomas, Alan (2003). An adverbial theory of consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (3):161-85.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper develops an adverbial theory of consciousness. Adverbialism is described and endorsed and defended from its near rival, an identity thesis in which conscious mental states are those that the mental subject self-knows immediately that he or she is "in". The paper develops an account of globally supported self-ascription to embed this neo-Brentanian view of experiencing consciously within a more general account of the relation between consciousness and self-knowledge. Following O'Shaughnessy, person level consciousness is explained as a feature of the bundle of mental capacities characteristic of persons: person level consciousness involves a capacity holism. Drawing on Kant, it is argued that if a person is in a mental state intentionally directed to an object then such a subject can "self token" such knowledge. The content of that self-knoweldge supervenes on the possession of a global set of capacities, and this capacity for self-ascription depends on the fact that our experience has a perspectival character with, as it were, nothing at the vanishing point of this perspective. The fact that one can attach the cogito to any one of one's representation shows a truth about the unity of the conscious life of a person that cannot be stated and this capacity is distinguished from self-conscious thinking about oneself. This approach is contrasted to Shoemaker's functionalist treatment of the self-tokening of conscious states and of "self-blindness". It is argued that to be fully consistent, Shoemaker has to abandon the claim that introspectionism is guilty of a self-scanning model or rational control as he seems committed to that model too
Tye, Michael (1984). The adverbial approach to visual experience. Philosophical Review 93 (April):195-226.   (Cited by 21 | Google | More links)
Tye, Michael (1975). The adverbial theory: A defence of Sellars against Jackson. Metaphilosophy 6 (April):136-143.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
van Steenburgh, E. W. (1987). Adverbial sensing. Mind 76 (July):376-380.   (Google | More links)
Vinci, Thomas C. (1981). Sellars and the adverbial theory of sensation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (June):199-217.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Wright, Edmond L. (1990). Two more proofs of present qualia. Theoria 56 (1-2):3-22.   (Cited by 25 | Google)

3.1c Intentionalist Theories of Perception

Anscombe, G. E. M. (1965). The intentionality of sensation: A grammatical feature. In Ronald J. Butler (ed.), Analytic Philosophy. Blackwell.   (Cited by 47 | Google)
Armstrong, David M. (2004). In defence of the cognitivist theory of perception. Harvard Review of Philosophy 12:19-26.   (Google)
Armstrong, David M. (1991). Intentionality, perception, and causality. In John Searle and His Critics. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Ben-Ze'ev, Aaron (1983). Toward a different approach to perception. International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (March):45-64.   (Google)
Burge, Tyler (1991). Vision and intentional content. In Ernest LePore & Robert Van Gulick (eds.), John Searle and His Critics. Blackwell.   (Google)
Byrne, Alex (2001). Intentionalism defended. Philosophical Review 110 (2):199-240.   (Cited by 75 | Google | More links)
Coburn, Robert C. (1977). Intentionality and perception. Mind 86 (January):1-18.   (Google | More links)
Crawford, Dan D. (1974). Bergmann on perceiving, sensing, and appearing. American Philosophical Quarterly 11 (April):103-112.   (Google)
Crane, Tim (2009). Is perception a propositional attitude? Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):452-469.   (Google)
Abstract: It is widely agreed that perceptual experience is a form of intentionality, i.e., that it has representational content. Many philosophers take this to mean that like belief, experience has propositional content, that it can be true or false. I accept that perceptual experience has intentionality; but I dispute the claim that it has propositional content. This claim does not follow from the fact that experience is intentional, nor does it follow from the fact that experiences are accurate or inaccurate. I end by considering the relationship between this question and the question of whether experience has non-conceptual content
Dilworth, John B. (2007). Representationalism and indeterminate perceptual content. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6 (3):369-387.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Representationalists currently cannot explain counter-examples that involve _indeterminate _perceptual content, but a _double content_ (DC) view is more promising. Four related cases of perceptual imprecision are used to outline the DC view, which also applies to imprecise photographic content. Next, inadequacies in the more standard single content (SC) view are demonstrated. The results are then generalized so as to apply to the content of any kinds of non-conventional representation. The paper continues with evidence that a DC account provides a moderate rather than extreme realist account of perception, and it concludes with an initial analysis of the failure of nomic covariance accounts of information in indeterminacy cases
Dretske, Fred (2003). The intentionality of perception. In Barry Smith (ed.), John Searle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Google)
Foster, John A. (2004). Reply to Armstrong. Harvard Review of Philosophy 12:27-28.   (Google)
Gluer, Kathrin (ms). Perception and justification.   (Google)
Abstract: 1. Introduction When it comes to perception, representationalism is all the rage. Representationalism is a claim about the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences: According to representationalism, phenomenal character is fully determined by the representational content of perceptual experiences (cf. Tye 2002, 45). In other words, phenomenal character, what it is like, for instance, to have an experience as of something red, is either supervenient upon or identical with that experience
Ha, Jong-Ho (1988). On the propositional theory of perception. Grazer Philosophische Studien 32:205-208.   (Google)
Hellie, Benj (ms). Visual form, attention, and binocularity.   (Google)
Abstract: This somewhat odd paper argues against a representational view of visual experience using an intricate "inversion" type thought experiment involving double vision: two subjects could represent external space in the same way while differing phenomenally due to different "spread" in their double images. The spatial structure of the visual field is explained not by representation of external space but functionally, in terms of the possible locations of an attentional spotlight. I'm fond of the ideas in this paper but doubt I'll be returning to it soon.
Hintikka, Jaakko (1969). The logic of perception. In Jaakko Hintikka (ed.), Models for Modalities. Reidel.   (Google)
Holman, Emmett L. (2003). Sense experience, intentionality, and modularity. Journal of Philosophical Research 28:143-57.   (Google)
Jacquette, Dale (1984). Sensation and intentionality. Philosophical Studies 47 (3):229-40.   (Cited by 1 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Bengson, John; Grube, Enrico & Korman, Daniel Z. (forthcoming). A New Framework for Conceptualism. Noûs.   (Google)
Abstract: Conceptualism is the thesis that, for any perceptual experience E, (i) E has a Fregean proposition as its content and (ii) a subject of E must possess a concept for each item represented by E. We advance a framework within which conceptualism may be defended against its most serious objections (e.g., Richard Heck's argument from nonveridical experience). The framework is of independent interest for the philosophy of mind and epistemology given its implications for debates regarding transparency, relationalism and representationalism, demonstrative thought, phenomenal character, and the speckled hen objection to modest foundationalism.
Kuczynski, John-Michael M. (2004). Some arguments against intentionalism. Acta Analytica 19 (32):107-141.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: Recently, many have argued that phenomenal content supervenes on representational content; i.e. that the phenomenal character of an experience is wholly determined (metaphysically, not causally) by the representational content of that experience. This paper it identifies many counter-examples to intentionalism. Further, this paper shows that, if intentionalism were correct, that would require that an untenable form of representational atomism also be correct. Our argument works both against the idea that phenomenal content supervenes on “conceptual” content and also against the idea that it supervenes on “non-conceptual” content. It is also shown that the distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual content has been wrongly conceived as distinction between different kinds of information: in fact, it is a distinction between ways of packaging information that is, in itself, neither conceptual or non-conceptual
Macpherson, Fiona (1999). Perfect pitch and the content of experience. Philosophy and Anthropology 3 (2).   (Google | More links)
Macpherson, Fiona (2000). Representational Theories of Phenomenal Character. Dissertation, University of Stirling   (Google | More links)
Malcolm, Norman (1983). The intentionality of sense-perception. Philosophical Investigations 6 (July):175-183.   (Google)
Martin Jr, Edwin (1973). The intentionality of observation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (September):121-129.   (Google)
Matthen, Mohan P. (2005). Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 50 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the biological domain; these systems coevolve with an organism's learning and action systems, providing the latter with classifications of external objects in terms of sensory categories purpose--built for their need. On the basis of this central idea, Matthen presents novel theories of perceptual similarity, content, and realism. His work will be a stimulating resource for a wide range of scholars and students across philosophy and psychology
Matthen, Mohan (2008). Seeing, doing, and knowing: A précis. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2):392–399.   (Google | More links)
Maund, Barry (2003). Perception. Acumen.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Millar, Alan (1986). What's in a look? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86:83-98.   (Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1977). On perceptual aboutness. Behaviorism 5:75-97.   (Cited by 8 | Google)
Odegard, Douglas (1972). Anscombe, sensation and intentional objects. Dialogue 11 (March):69-77.   (Google)
Pacherie, (1999). Leibhaftigkeit and representational theories of perception. In Naturalizing Phenomenology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Pautz, Adam (2010). An argument for the intentional view of visual experience. In Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Pautz, Adam (2007). Intentionalism and perceptual presence. Philosophical Perspectives 21 (1):495-541.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: H. H. Price (1932) held that experience is essentially presentational. According to Price, when one has an experience of a tomato, nothing can be more certain than that there is something of which one is aware. Price claimed that the same applies to hallucination. In general, whenever one has a visual experience, there is something of which one is aware, according to Price. Call this thesis Item-Awareness
Pautz, Adam (2006). Sensory awareness is not a wide physical relation: An empirical argument against externalist intentionalism. Noûs 40 (2):205-240.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Phillips, Ian (2005). Experience and Intentional Content. Dissertation, Oxford University   (Google)
Abstract: Strong or Pure Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenal character of any perceptual experience can be exhaustively characterized solely by reference to its Intentional content. Strong or Pure Anti -Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenal character of any perceptual experience can be exhaustively characterized solely by reference to its non-Intentional properties
Reed, Edward S. (1983). Two theories of the intentionality of perceiving. Synthese 54 (January):85-94.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Rey, Georges (2004). A deflated intentionalist alternative to Clark's unexplanatory metaphysics. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):519-540.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Throughout his discussion, Clark speaks constantly of phenomenal and qualitative properties. But properties, like any other posited entities, ought to earn their explanatory keep, and this I don't think Clark's phenomenal or qualitative properties actually do. I argue that all the work he enlists for them could be done better by purely intentional contents of our sentient states; that is, they could better be regarded as mere intentional properties, not real ones. Clark eschews such intentionalism, but I see no reason for him to resist a properly deflated version of it that I sketch. Moreover, such intentionalism seems to me to stand a better chance than Clark's reliance on properties in explaining the peculiar ways in which experience appears to us that so concern the qualiaphile
Reynolds, Steven L. (2000). The argument from illusion. Noûs 34 (4):604-621.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Robinson, Howard M. (1974). The irrelevance of intentionality to perception. Philosophical Quarterly 24 (October):300-315.   (Google | More links)
Ruegsegger, Ronald W. (1980). The propositional attitude in perception. Philosophy Research Archives 1408.   (Google)
Runzo, Joseph (1977). The propositional structure of perception. American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (July):211-220.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Searle, John R. (1991). Response: Perception and the satisfactions of intentionality. In John Searle and His Critics. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Google)
Simmons, Alison (1999). Are cartesian sensations representational? Noûs 33 (3):347-369.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Smith, A. D. (2008). Translucent experiences. Philosophical Studies 140 (2):197--212.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper considers the claim that perceptual experience is “transparent”, in the sense that nothing other than the apparent public objects of perception are available to introspection by the subject of such experience. I revive and strengthen the objection that blurred vision constitutes an insuperable objection to the claim, and counter recent responses to the general objection. Finally the bearing of this issue on representationalist accounts of the mind is considered
Speaks, Jeff (2009). Transparency, intentionalism, and the nature of perceptual content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3):539-573.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that the transparency of experience provides the basis of arguments both for intentionalism -- understood as the view that there is a necessary connection between perceptual content and perceptual phenomenology -- and for the view that the contents of perceptual experiences are Russellian propositions. While each of these views is popular, there are apparent tensions between them, and some have thought that their combination is unstable. In the second half of the paper, I respond to these worries by arguing that Russellianism is consistent with intentionalism, that their conjunction is consistent with both internalism about phenomenology and externalism about perceptual content, and that the resulting view receives independent support from the relationship between hallucination and thought.
Swabey, William C. (1924). The phenomenology of experience and psychologism. Philosophical Review 33 (1):51-66.   (Google | More links)
Travis, Charles S. (2004). The silence of the senses. Mind 113 (449):57-94.   (Cited by 26 | Google | More links)
Abstract: There is a view abroad on which (a) perceptual experience has (a) representational content in this sense: in it something is represented to the perceiver as so. On the view, a perceptual experience has a face value at which it may be taken, or which may be rejected. This paper argues that that view is mistaken: there is nothing in perceptual experience which makes it so that in it anything is represented as so (except insofar as the perceiver represents things to himself as so). In that sense, the senses are silent, or, in Austin's term, dumb. Perceptual experience is not as such either veridical or delusive. It may mislead, but it does not take representation to accomplish that
Tye, Michael (1992). Visual qualia and visual content. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 39 | Google)
Tye, Michael (2007). Intentionalism and the argument from no common content. Philosophical Perspectives 21:589-613.   (Google)
Abstract: Disjunctivists (Hinton 1973, Snowdon 1990, Martin 2002, 2006) often motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception, the subject is directly in contact with the perceived object. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I related to the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. I do not experience the table by experiencing some- thing else over and above the table and its facing surface. I see the facing surface of the table directly
Vesey, Godfrey N. A. (1966). Miss Anscombe on the intentionality of sensation. Analysis 26 (March):135-137.   (Google)
Zahavi, Dan (1994). Intentionality and the representative theory of perception. Man and World 27 (1):37-47.   (Cited by 1 | Google)

3.1d Belief Theories of Perception

Aquila, Richard E. (1975). Perceptions and perceptual judgments. Philosophical Studies 28 (July):17-31.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Armstrong, David M. (1963). Max Deutscher and perception. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 41 (August):246-249.   (Google | More links)
Clark, R. (1973). Sensuous judgments. Noûs 7 (March):45-56.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Crumley, Jack S. (1991). Appearances can be deceiving. Philosophical Studies 64 (3).   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Deutscher, Max (1963). David Armstrong and perception. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 41 (May):80-88.   (Google | More links)
Glüer, Kathrin (2009). In defence of a doxastic account of experience. Mind and Language 24 (3):297-327.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Today, many philosophers think that perceptual experiences are conscious mental states with representational content and phenomenal character. Subscribers to this view often go on to construe experience more precisely as a propositional attitude sui generis ascribing sensible properties to ordinary material objects. I argue that experience is better construed as a kind of belief ascribing 'phenomenal' properties to such objects. A belief theory of this kind deals as well with the traditional arguments against doxastic accounts as the sui generis view. Moreover, in contrast to sui generis views, it can quite easily account for the rational or reason providing role of experience
Gluer-Pagin, Kathrin (online). Perception and justification.   (Google)
Abstract: Any adequate account of perceptual experience has to provide answers to the following questions: What kind, and form of, content do experiences have? What kind of mental states are they? Many, if not most philosophers of perception today agree that experiences have representational contents of the form x is F, where x ranges over material objects and F over sensible properties. I argue that such a "naive semantics" for experiences has to give the wrong answer to the second question. Because of their justificatory role for, and inferential integration into, a subject's belief system, experiences themselves have to be construed as a kind of belief. I also sketch a semantics that allows experiences to be beliefs.
Goldman, Alan H. (1976). Appearing as irreducible in perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (December):147-164.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Goodman, Russell B. (1974). Is seeing believing? Proceedings of the New Mexico-West Texas Philosophical Society 40 (April):45.   (Google)
Heil, John (1982). Seeing is believing. American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (July):229-240.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Kelley, David (1980). The specificity of perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (March):401-405.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Maund, J. Barry (1977). On the distinction between perceptual and ordinary beliefs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 38 (December):209-219.   (Google | More links)
Melchert, Norman P. (1973). A note on the belief theory of perception. Philosophical Studies 24 (November):427-429.   (Google | More links)
Moser, Paul K. (1986). Perception and belief: A regress problem. Philosophy of Science 53 (March):120-126.   (Google | More links)
Nelson, John O. (1964). An examination of D m Armstrong's theory of perception. American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (April):154-160.   (Google)
Pappas, George S. (1977). Perception without belief. Ratio 19 (December):142-161.   (Google)
Pitcher, George (1971). A Theory Of Perception. Princeton: Princeton University Press.   (Cited by 54 | Google)
Pitson, Anthony (1990). Perception: Belief and experience. Southern Journal of Philosophy 28 (1):55-76.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Prado, C. G. (1968). Armstrong and perception. Theoria 34:256-258.   (Google)
Ruegsegger, Ronald W. (1982). Judging, taking, and believing: Three candidates for the propositional attitude in perception. Philosophy Research Archives 1460.   (Google)
Smith, A. D. (2001). Perception and belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (2):283-309.   (Google | More links)
Ziedins, R. (1966). Knowledge, belief and perceptual experiences. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 44 (May):70-88.   (Google | More links)

3.1e Naive and Direct Realism

Armstrong, David M. (1959). Mr Arthadeva and naive realism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 37 (May):67-70.   (Google | More links)
Arthadeva, B. M. (1959). Naive realism and illusions: The elliptical penny. Philosophy 34 (October):323-330.   (Google)
Arthadeva, B. M. (1959). Naive realism and illusions of refraction. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 37 (August):118-137.   (Google | More links)
Arthadeva, B. M. (1961). Naive realism and the problem of color-seeing in dim light. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 21 (June):467-478.   (Google | More links)
Ayer, A. J. & Macdonald, Graham (eds.) (1979). Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer, with His Replies. Cornell University Press.   (Google)
Bayer, Benjamin (ms). In Search of Direct Realist Abstractionism.   (Google)
Abstract: Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Without slipping into naturalism, I apply insight about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realist solutions like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism, as well.
BonJour, Laurence A. (2004). In search of direct realism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2):349-367.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Boulter, Stephen J. (2004). Metaphysical realism as a pre-condition of visual perception. Biology and Philosophy 19 (2):243-261.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Brandom, Robert B. (2002). Non-inferential knowledge, perceptual experience, and secondary qualities: Placing McDowell's empiricism. In Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. New York: Routledge.   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Brandom, Robert B. (1996). Perception and rational constraint: McDowell's mind and world. Philosophical Issues 7:241-259.   (Cited by 21 | Google | More links)
Bretzel, Philip (1974). Cornman, sensa, and the argument from hallucination. Philosophical Studies 26 (5-6).   (Google | More links)
Brewer, Bill (2004). Realism and the nature of perceptual experience. Philosophical Issues 14 (1):61-77.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Realism concerning a given domain of things is the view that the things in that domain exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone
Brown, Harold I. (1992). Direct realism, indirect realism, and epistemology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (2):341-363.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Campbell, Keith (1969). Direct realism and perceptual error. In The Business Of Reason. Routledge & K Paul.   (Google)
Carleton, Lawrence Richard (1978). Toward a defense of direct realism. Auslegung 5 (February):101-111.   (Google)
Conduct, M. D. (2008). Naïve realism, adverbialism and perceptual error. Acta Analytica 23 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: My paper has three parts. First I will outline the act/object theory of perceptual experience and its commitments to (a) a relational view of experience and (b) a view of phenomenal character according to which it is constituted by the character of the objects of experience. I present the traditional adverbial response to this, in which experience is not to be understood as a relation to some object, but as a way of sensing. In the second part I argue that acceptance of (a) is independent of acceptance of (b). I then present a modified adverbialism that presents experience as relational in nature but whose character is nevertheless to be explained in terms of the way in which one senses an object. Finally, I will offer an explanation of how a naïve realist about experience can adopt this modified adverbialism and in so doing accommodate the possibility of perceptual error
Cornman, James W. (1975). Perception, Common Sense And Science. Yale University Press.   (Cited by 13 | Google)
Crooks, Mark (2002). Four rejoinders: A dialogue in continuation. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):249-278.   (Google)
Dewey, John (1905). Immediate empiricism. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 2 (22):597-599.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Dewey, John (1905). The postulate of immediate empiricism. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 2 (15):393-399.   (Cited by 22 | Google | More links)
Dokic, J (2000). Perception as openness to the facts. Facta Philosophica 2:95-112.   (Google | More links)
Dreyfus, Hubert L. (2002). Samuel Todes's account of non-conceptual perceptual knowledge and its relation to thought. Ratio 15 (4):392-409.   (Google | More links)
Elugardo, Reinaldo (1982). Cornman, adverbial materialism, and phenomenal properties. Philosophical Studies 41 (January):33-50.   (Google | More links)
Fish, William (2009). Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Friedman, Michael (1996). Exorcising the philosophical tradition: Comments on John McDowell's Mind and World. Philosophical Review 105 (4):427-467.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Fumerton, Richard A. (2001). Brewer, direct realism, and acquaintance with acquaintance. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2):417-422.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Glendinning, Simon & De Gaynesford, Max (1998). John McDowell on experience: Open to the sceptic? Metaphilosophy 29 (1-2):20-34.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Kennedy, Matthew, Explanation in Good and Bad experiential cases.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Michael Martin aims to affirm a certain pattern of first-person thinking by advocating disjunctivism, a theory of perceptual experience which combines naive realism with the epistemic conception of hallucination. In this paper I argue that we can affirm the pattern of thinking in question without the epistemic conception of hallucination. The first part of my paper explains the link that Martin draws between the first-person thinking and the epistemic conception of hallucination. The second part of my paper explains how we can achieve Martin’s ambition without Martin’s theory. One resource that I enlist for this purpose is a naive-realist friendly conception of first-person access to experience. The metaphysical theory that I enlist is a form of naive realism that endorses an intentionalist or representationalist “common-factor” approach to veridical and hallucinatory experience. The third part of my paper briefly develops this theory
Gram, Moltke S. (1983). Direct Realism: A Study Of Perception. Boston: Nijhoff.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Hauser, Larry (2002). Don't go there: Reply to Crooks. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):223-232.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Hellie, Benj (2006). Beyond phenomenal naivete. Philosophers' Imprint 6 (2):1-24.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The naive realist takes a veridical visual experience to be an immediate relation to external entities. Is this how such an experience is phenomenally, by its phenomenal character? Only if there can be phenomenal error, since a hallucinatory experience phenomenally matching such a veridical experience would then be phenomenally but not in fact such a relation. Fortunately, such phenomenal error can be avoided: the phenomenal character of a visual experience involves immediate awareness of a sort of picture of external entities, as on a representative theory of perception. The attraction of naive realism results from an erroneous projection of the immediacy of the subject's awareness of this picture onto the external entities pictured.
Hellie, Benj (2007). Factive phenomenal characters. Philosophical Perspectives 21 (1):259--306.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper expands on the discussion in the first section of 'Beyond phenomenal naivete'. Let Phenomenal Naivete be understood as the doctrine that some phenomenal characters of veridical experiences are factive properties concerning the external world. Here I present in detail a phenomenological case for Phenomenal Naivete and an argument from hallucination against it. I believe that these arguments show the concept of phenomenal character to be defective, overdetermined by its metaphysical and epistemological commitments together with the world. This does not establish a gappish eliminativism, but a gluttish pluralism, on which there are many imperfect deservers of the name 'phenomenal character'. Different projects in the philosophy of mind -- phenomenology, philosophy of conscious, metaphysics and epistemology of perception -- are concerned with different deservers of the name.
Hellie, Benj (forthcoming). The multidisjunctive conception of hallucination. In Fiona Mapherson (ed.), Hallucination. MIT Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Direct realists think that we can't get a clear view the nature of /hallucinating a white picket fence/: is it /representing a white picket fence/? is it /sensing white-picket-fencily/? is it /being acquainted with a white' picketed' sense-datum/? These are all epistemic possibilities for a single experience; hence they are all metaphysical possibilities for various experiences. Hallucination itself is a disjunctive or "multidisjunctive" category. I rebut MGF Martin's argument from statistical explanation for his "epistemic" conception of hallucination, but his view embeds in my view as a "reference-fixer".
Hickerson, Ryan (2004). An indirect defense of direct realism. Journal of Mind and Behavior 25 (1):1-6.   (Google)
Hoffman, Paul (2002). Direct realism, intentionality, and the objective being of ideas. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2):163-179.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: My aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the distinction between direct realism and representationalism by offering a critical analysis of Steven Nadler
Holman, Emmett L. (1977). Sensory experience, perceptual evidence and conceptual frameworks. American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (April):99-108.   (Google)
Huemer, Michael (2001). Skepticism and the Veil of Perception. Lanham: Rowman &Amp; Littlefield.   (Cited by 35 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This book develops and defends a version of direct realism: the thesis that perception gives us direct awareness, and non-inferential knowledge, of the external...
Kalderon, Mark Eli & Travis, Charles, Oxford realism.   (Google)
Abstract: A concern for realism motivates a fundamental strand of Oxford reflection on perception. Begin with the realist conception of knowledge. The question then will be: What must perception be like if we can know something about an object without the mind by seeing it? What must perception be if it can, on occasion, afford us with proof concerning a subject matter independent of the mind? The resulting conception of perception is not unlike the conception of perception shared by Cambridge realists such as Moore and Russell. Roughly speaking, perception is conceived to be a fundamental and irreducible sensory mode of awareness of mind-independent objects, a non-propositional mode of awareness that enables those with the appropriate recognitional capacities to have propositional knowledge concerning that subject matter. The difference between Oxford and Cambridge realism concerns the extent of this fundamental sensory mode of awareness. Whereas Oxford realists maintained that perception affords us this non-propositional mode of awareness, Cambridge realists maintained that this distinctive mode of awareness has a broader domain. Let experience be the genus of which perception is a species. Cambridge realists maintained that a experience, and not just perception, involves this non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. Cambridge realists are thus committed to a kind of experien- tial monism—the thesis that experience has a unitary nature. Specifically, all experience, perceptual and non-perceptual alike, involves, as part of its nature, a non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. Even subject to illusion or hallucination, there is something of which one is aware. And with that, they were an application of the argument from illusion, or hallucination, or conflicting appearances away from immaterial sense data and a representative realism that tended, over time, to devolve into a form of..
Kaplan, Stephen (1987). Hermeneutics, Holography, and Indian Idealism: A Study of Projection and Gauḍapāda's Māṇḍūkya Kārikā. Motilal Banarsidass.   (Google)
Kelley, David (1986). The Evidence Of The Senses: A Realist Theory Of Perception. Baton Rouge: Louisiana St University Press.   (Cited by 35 | Google)
Kennedy, Matthew (forthcoming). Explanation in Good and Bad Experiential Cases. In Fiona Macpherson & Dimitris Platchias (eds.), Hallucination. MIT Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Michael Martin aims to affirm a certain pattern of first-person thinking by advocating disjunctivism, a theory of perceptual experience which combines naive realism with the epistemic conception of hallucination. In this paper I argue that we can affirm the pattern of thinking in question without the epistemic conception of hallucination. The first part of my paper explains the link that Martin draws between the first-person thinking and the epistemic conception of hallucination. The second part of my paper explains how we can achieve Martin’s ambition without Martin’s theory. One resource that I enlist for this purpose is a naive-realist friendly conception of first-person access to experience. The metaphysical theory that I enlist is a form of naive realism that endorses an intentionalist or representationalist “common-factor” approach to veridical and hallucinatory experience. The third part of my paper briefly develops this theory.
Kennedy, Matthew (2009). Heirs of nothing: The implications of transparency. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3):574-604.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Recently representationalists have cited a phenomenon known as the transparency of experience in arguments against the qualia theory. Representationalists take transparency to support their theory and to work against the qualia theory. In this paper I argue that representationalist assessment of the philosophical importance of transparency is incorrect. The true beneficiary of transparency is another theory, naïve realism. Transparency militates against qualia and the representationalist theory of experience. I describe the transparency phenomenon, and I use my description to argue for naïve realism and against representationalism and the qualia theory. I also examine the relationship between phenomenological study and phenomenal character, and discuss the results in connection with the argument from hallucination
Kennedy, Matthew (2010). Naive realism and experiential evidence. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (1):77-109.   (Google)
Abstract: I describe a naive realist conception of perceptual knowledge, which faces a challenge from the idea that normal perceivers and brains-in-vats have equally justified perceptual beliefs. I defend the naive realist position from Nicholas Silins's recent version of this challenge. I argue that Silins's main objection fails, and that the naive realist understanding of perceptual knowledge can be reconciled with the idea that brains-in-vats have justified perceptual beliefs
Kennedy, Matthew (forthcoming). Naive Realism, Privileged Access, and Epistemic Safety. Nous.   (Google)
Abstract: Working from a naïve-realist perspective, I examine first-person knowledge of one’s perceptual experience. I outline a naive-realist theory of how subjects acquire knowledge of the nature of their experiences, and I argue that naive realism is compatible with moderate, substantial forms of first-person privileged access. A more general moral of my paper is that treating “success” states like seeing as genuine mental states does not break up the dynamics that many philosophers expect from the phenomenon of knowledge of the mind.
Kennedy, Matthew (2007). Visual Awareness of Properties. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2):298-325.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I defend a view of the structure of visual property-awareness by considering the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. I argue that visual property-awareness is a three-place relation between a subject, a property, and a manner of presentation. Manners of presentation mediate our visual awareness of properties without being objects of visual awareness themselves. I provide criteria of identity for manners of presentation, and I argue that our ignorance of their intrinsic nature does not compromise the viability of a theory that employs them. In closing, I argue that the proposed manners of presentation are consistent with key direct-realist claims about the structure of visual awareness.
Koons, Jeremy R. (2004). Disenchanting the world: McDowell, Sellars, and rational constraint by perception. Journal of Philosophical Research 29 (February):125-152.   (Google)
Kultgen, John H. (1973). Intentionality and the publicity of perceptual world. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 33 (June):503-513.   (Google | More links)
Leddington, Jason (2009). Perceptual presence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (4):482-502.   (Google)
Abstract: Plausibly, any adequate theory of perception must (a) solve what Alva Noë calls 'the problem of perceptual presence,' and (b) do justice to the direct realist idea that what is given in perception are garden-variety spatiotemporal particulars. This paper shows that, while Noë's sensorimotor view arguably satisfies the first of these conditions, it does not satisfy the second. Moreover, Noë is wrong to think that a naïve realist approach to perception cannot handle the problem of perceptual presence. Section three of this paper develops a version of naïve realism that meets both of the adequacy conditions above. This paper thus provides strong considerations in favor of naïve realism
le Morvan, Pierre (2004). Arguments against direct realism and how to counter them. American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (3):221-234.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Since the demise of the Sense-Datum independent objects or events to be objects Theory and Phenomenalism in the last cenof perception; however, unlike Direct Retury, Direct Realism in the philosophy of alists, Indirect Realists take this percepperception has enjoyed a resurgence of tion to be indirect by involving a prior popularity.1 Curiously, however, although awareness of some tertium quid between there have been attempts in the literature the mind and external objects or events.3 to refute some of the arguments against Idealists and Phenomenalists agree with Direct Realism, there has been, as of yet, the Indirect Realists
Levine, Steven M. (2007). Sellars' critical direct realism. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (1):53 – 76.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate the structure of Sellars' critical direct realism in the philosophy of perception. This position is original because it attempts to balance two claims that many have thought to be incompatible: (1) that perceptual knowledge is direct, i.e., not inferential, and (2) that perceptual knowledge is irreducibly conceptual. Even though perceptual episodes are not the result of inferences, they must still stand within the space of reasons if they are to be counted not only as knowledge, but also as thoughts directed at the world. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how Sellars elaborates and defends this position
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Macarthur, David (2003). McDowell, scepticism, and the 'veil of perception'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2):175-190.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: McDowell has argued that external world scepticism is a pressing problem only in so far as we accept, on the basis of the argument from illusion, the claim that perceiving that p and hallucinating that p involve a highest common factor
Macarthur, David (2004). Putnam's natural realism and the question of a perceptual interface. Philosophical Explorations 7 (2):167-181.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In his Dewey Lectures,1 Hilary Putnam argues that contemporary philosophy cannot solve nor see its way past the traditional problem of how language or thought hooks on to
Maloney, Christopher (1981). A theory of perception. American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (January):63-70.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
McDowell, John (1996). Reply to Gibson, Byrne, and Brandom. Philosophical Issues 7:283-300.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
McDowell, John (1998). Having the world in view: Sellars, Kant, and intentionality. Journal of Philosophy 95 (9):431-492.   (Google)
Melchert, Norman P. (1967). The independence of the object in critical realism. The Monist 51 (April):206-223.   (Google)
Moncrieff, Malcolm M. (1951). The Clairvoyant Theory Of Perception: A New Theory Of Vision. London,: Faber.   (Google)
Noren, Stephen J. (1974). Direct realism, sensations, and materialism. Southern Journal of Philosophy 12:83-94.   (Google)
Olding, A. (1978). The time-gap argument. Metaphilosophy 9 (January):44-57.   (Google | More links)
Persson, Ingmar (1985). The Primacy of Perception: Towards a Neutral Monism. C.W.K. Gleerup.   (Google)
Phillips, Ian (2005). Experience and Intentional Content. Dissertation, Oxford University   (Google)
Abstract: Strong or Pure Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenal character of any perceptual experience can be exhaustively characterized solely by reference to its Intentional content. Strong or Pure Anti -Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenal character of any perceptual experience can be exhaustively characterized solely by reference to its non-Intentional properties
Pietroski, Paul M. (1996). Experiencing the facts (critical notice of mcdowell). Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26:613-36.   (Google)
Abstract: Paul Pietroski, McGill University The general topic of_ Mind and World_, the written version of John McDowell's 1991 John Locke Lectures, is how `concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world'. And one of the main aims is `to suggest that Kant should still have a central place in our discussion of the way thought bears on reality' (1).1 In particular, McDowell urges us to adopt a thesis that he finds in Kant, or perhaps in Strawson's Kant: the content of experience is conceptualized; _what_ we experience is always the kind of thing that we could also believe. When an agent has a veridical experience, she `takes in, for instance sees, _that things are thus and so_' (9). McDowell's argument for this thesis is indirect, but potentially powerful. He discusses a tension concerning the roles of experience and conceptual capacities in thought, and he claims that the only adequate resolution involves granting that experiences have conceptualized content. The tension, elaborated below, can be expressed roughly as follows: judgments must be somehow constrained by features of the external environment, else judgments would be utterly divorced from the world they purport to be about; yet our judgments must be somehow free of external control, else we could give no sense to the idea that we are responsible for our judgments
Pitcher, George (1978). Sensations and information: A reply to Cornman. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 56 (May):65-67.   (Google | More links)
Putnam, Hilary (2002). McDowell's mind and McDowell's world. In Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. New York: Routledge.   (Google)
Putnam, Hilary (1994). Sense, nonsense, and the senses: An inquiry into the powers of the human mind. Journal of Philosophy 91 (9):445-517.   (Google | More links)
Putnam, Hilary (2000). The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World. Columbia University Press.   (Cited by 91 | Google | More links)
Reynolds, Steven L. (2003). The model theoretic argument, indirect realism, and the causal theory of reference objection. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2):146-154.   (Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1982). Sensa or sensings: Reflections on the ontology of perception. Philosophical Studies 41 (January):83-114.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1971). Seeing, sense impressions, and sensa: A reply to Cornman. Review of Metaphysics 24 (March):391-447.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Shook, John R. (2003). The direct contextual realism theory of perception. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17 (4):245-258.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (2006). Direct realism and perceptual consciousness. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2):378-410.   (Google | More links)
Smart, J. J. C. (2002). The compatibility of direct realism with the scientific account of perception; comment on mark Crooks. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):239-244.   (Google)
Smith, A. D. (2006). In defence of direct realism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2):411-424.   (Google | More links)
Smith, David Woodruff (1982). The realism in perception. Noûs 16 (March):42-55.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Smythies, J. R. & Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. (1997). An empirical refutation of the direct realist theory of perception. Inquiry 40 (4):437-438.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: There are currently two main philosophical theories of perception - Direct Realism and the Representative Theory. The former is supported by most contemporary philosophers, whereas the latter forms the groundwork for most scientific theories in this area. The paper describes a recent experiment involving retinal and cortical rivalry that provides strong empirical evidence that the Direct Realist theory is incorrect. There are of course a large number of related experiments on visual perception that would tend to lead us to the same conclusion, but the experiment described in this paper does so in a singularly direct and straightforward manner. Often the most telling experiments are the simplest
Smythies, J. R. (2002). Comment on Crooks's intertheoretic identification and mind-brain reductionism. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):245-248.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Sollberger, Michael (2008). Naïve realism and the problem of causation. Disputatio 3 (25):1-19.   (Google)
Abstract: In the present paper, I shall argue that disjunctively construed naïve realism about the nature of perceptual experiences succumbs to the empirically inspired causal argument. The causal argument highlights as a first step that local action necessitates the presence of a type-identical common kind of mental state shared by all perceptual experiences. In a second step, it sets out that the property of being a veridical perception cannot be a mental property. It results that the mental nature of perceptions must be exhausted by the occurrence of inner sensory experiences that narrowly supervene on the perceiver. That is, empirical objects fail directly to determine the perceptual consciousness of the perceiver. The upshot is that not only naïve realism, but also certain further forms of direct realism have to be abandoned.
Sollberger, Michael (2007). The Causal Argument against Disjunctivism. Facta Philosophica 9:245-267.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper, I will ask whether naïve realists have the conceptual resources for meeting the challenge stemming from the causal argument. As I interpret it, naïve realism is committed to disjunctivism. Therefore, I first set out in detail how one has to formulate the causal argument against the background of disjunctivism. This discussion is above all supposed to work out the key assumptions at stake in the causal argument. I will then go on to sketch out several possible rejoinders on behalf of naïve realism. It will be shown that they all fail to provide a satisfying account of how causation and perceptual consciousness fit together. Accordingly, the upshot will be that the causal argument provides good reason to abandon disjunctivism and, instead, to promote a common factor view of perception.
Sosa, Ernest (1990). Perception and reality. In Information, Semantics and Epistemology. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Weir, Alan (2004). An ultra-realist theory of perception. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (2):105-128.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I argue for a theory of perception distinct both from classical sense-datum theories and from intentionalist theories, that is theories according to which one perceives external objects by dint of a relation with a propositional content. The alternative I propose completely rejects any representational element in perception. When one sees that an object has a property, the situation or state of affairs of its having that property is one's perception, so that the object and property are literally part of one's mind. The most obvious objection to this view is that it embodies a rampant form of idealism. It is argued to the contrary, via consideration of the metaphysics of situations, that the theory is entirely consistent with a robustly realist view of the world
Zahavi, Dan (2004). Natural realism, anti-reductionism, and intentionality: The 'phenomenology' of Hilary Putnam. In Phenomenology of Hilary Putnam in Space, Time, and Culture. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Zemach, Eddy M. (1991). Perceptual realism, naive and otherwise. In John Searle and His Critics. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 2 | Google)

3.1f Disjunctivism

Aranyosi, István (forthcoming). Silencing the argument from hallucination. In Fiona MacPherson & Dimitris Platchias (eds.), Hallucination (MIT Press).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Ordinary people tend to be realists regarding perceptual experience, that is, they take perceiving the environment as a direct, unmediated, straightforward access to a mindindependent reality. Not so for (ordinary) philosophers. The empiricist influence on the philosophy of perception, in analytic philosophy at least, made the problem of perception synonymous with the view that realism is untenable. Admitting the problem (and trying to offer a view on it) is tantamount to rejecting ordinary people’s implicit realist assumptions as naive. So what exactly is the problem? We can approach it via one of the central arguments against realism – the argument from hallucination. The argument is intended as a proof that in ordinary, veridical cases of perception, perceivers do not have an unmediated perceptual access to the world. There are many versions of it; I propose the following1: 1. Hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptions are possible. 2. If two subjective states are indistinguishable, then they have a common nature. 3. The contents of hallucinations are mental images, not concrete external objects. 4. Therefore, the contents of veridical perceptions are mental images rather than concrete external objects. The key move is, I believe, from the fact that hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from cases of veridical perception are possible to an alleged common element, factor, or nature, in the form of a mental state, in the two cases – that is, premise 2. Disjunctivism, at its core, can be taken as simply denying this move, and arguing that all that follows from the premise stating the possibility of hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from cases veridical perception is that there is a broader category, that of “experience as of...”, which encompasses both cases..
Blatti, Stephan (2006). Disjunctivism. In A. Grayling, A. Pyle & N. Goulder (eds.), Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy. Thoemmes Continuum.   (Google)
Abstract: A theory is disjunctive insofar as it distinguishes genuine from non-genuine cases of some phenomenon P on the grounds that no salient feature of cases of one type is common to cases of the other type. Genuine and non-genuine cases of P are, in this sense, fundamentally different. Those who advocate disjunctivist theories have (for the most part) been concerned with perception and perceptual knowledge. This entry outlines two such theories: the disjunctivist theory of experience (cf. Brewer, Hinton, Martin, Snowdon, Travis) and the disjunctivist theory of appearances (McDowell)
Brewer, Bill (2008). How to account for illusion. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: The question how to account for illusion has had a prominent role in shaping theories of perception throughout the history of philosophy. Prevailing philosophical wisdom today has it that phenomena of illusion force us to choose between the following two options. First, reject altogether the early modern empiricist idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience. Instead we must characterize perceptual experience entirely in terms of its representational content. Second, retain the early modern idea that the core subjective character of experience is simply constituted by the identity of its direct objects, but admit that these must be mind-dependent entities, distinct from the mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. I argue here that the early modern empiricists had an indispensable insight. The idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience is more fundamental than any appeal to perceptual content, and can account for illusion, and indeed hallucination, without resorting to the problematic postulation of any such mind-dependent objects.
Brogaard, Berit, Disjunctivism by.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Naive realism is one of the oldest theories of perception. To a first approximation, naive realism is the view that perception is a direct relation between a subject and an object. Many historical philosophers (from Locke to Russell) argued that naive realism must be rejected on the grounds that hallucinations are perceptual experiences without an object. Contemporary philosophers have resurrected the theory by insisting that genuine cases of perception have a different structure or a different metaphysical status than non-genuine ones. This version of naive realism has come to be known as ‘disjunctivism’. Epistemological disjunctivism and disjunctivism about phenomenal belief, or what I shall call ‘Epistemological disjunctivism’, have also gained popularity in recent years. More recently disjunctivist accounts of bodily movements, abilities and reasons for action have entered the philosophical scene. This entry focuses on the contemporary debate about disjunctivism: its characterization, its motivation and its potential shortcomings
Brogaard, Berit, Primitive knowledge disjunctivism.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that McDowell-style disjunctivism, as the position is often cashed out, goes wrong because it takes the good epistemic standing of veridical perception to be grounded in “manifest” facts which do not necessarily satisfy any epistemic constraints. A better form of disjunctivism explains the difference between good and bad cases in terms of epistemic constraints that the states satisfy. This view allows us to preserve McDowell’s thesis that good cases make facts manifest, as long as manifest facts must satisfy epistemic constraints
Burge, Tyler (2005). Disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. Philosophical Topics 33 (1):1-78.   (Google)
Abstract: This essay is a long one. It is not meant to be read in a single sitting. Its structure is as follows. In section I, I explicate perceptual anti-individualism. Section II centers on the two aspects of the representational content of perceptual states. Sections III and IV concern the nature of the empirical psychology of vision, and its bearing on the individuation of perceptual states. Section V shows how what is known from empirical psychology undermines disjunctivism and hence certain further views that entail it, including naive realism. In Section VI, I raise a further point against disjunctivism. Section VII indicates how general reflection on perceptual perspective and epistemic ability supports the constraints from empirical psychology. It also explains how reflection on veridicality conditions, psychological explanation, and cognitive ability conspire to force recognition of the two kinds of representation mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In the Appendix, I criticize attempts to support disjunctivism.
Byrne, Alex & Logue, Heather (2009). Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. MIT Press.   (Google)
Byrne, Alex & Logue, Heather (2008). Either/or. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This essay surveys the varieties of disjunctivism about perceptual experience. Disjunctivism comes in two main flavours, metaphysical and epistemological.
Byrne, Alex & Logue, Heather (2009). Introduction. In Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. MIT Press.   (Google)
Child, William (1994). Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Philosophers of mind have long been interested in the relation between two ideas: that causality plays an essential role in our understanding of the mental; and that we can gain an understanding of belief and desire by considering the ascription of attitudes to people on the basis of what they say and do. Many have thought that those ideas are incompatible. William Child argues that there is in fact no tension between them, and that we should accept both. He shows how we can have a causal understanding of the mental without having to see attitudes and experiences as internal, causally interacting entities and he defends this view against influential objections. The book offers detailed discussions of many of Donald Davidson's contributions to the philosophy of mind, and also considers the work of Dennett, Anscombe, McDowell, and Rorty, among others. Issues discussed include: the nature of intentional phenomena; causal explanation; the character of visual experience; psychological explanation; and the causal relevance of mental properties
Child, William (1992). Vision and experience: The causal theory and the disjunctive conception. Philosophical Quarterly 42 (168):297-316.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Coates, Paul (1996). Idealism and theories of perception. In Current Issues in Idealism. Bristol: Thoemmes.   (Google)
Comesana, Juan (2005). Justified vs. warranted perceptual belief: Resisting disjunctivism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2):367-383.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that one reason for being a disjunctivist advanced by McDowell (having to do with the indefeasibility of perceptual knowledge) fails because it ignores the distinction between justification and warrant.
Conee, Earl (2007). Disjunctivism and anti-skepticism. Philosophical Issues 17 (1):16–36.   (Google | More links)
Dancy, Jonathan (1995). Arguments from illusion. Philosophical Quarterly 45 (181):421-438.   (Cited by 17 | Google | More links)
Smith, A. D. (2008). Husserl and externalism. Synthese 160 (3).   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: It is argued that Husserl was an “externalist” in at least one sense. For it is argued that Husserl held that genuinely perceptual experiences—that is to say, experiences that are of some real object in the world—differ intrinsically, essentially and as a kind from any hallucinatory experiences. There is, therefore, no neutral “content” that such perceptual experiences share with hallucinations, differing from them only over whether some additional non-psychological condition holds or not. In short, it is argued that Husserl was a “disjunctivist”. In addition, it is argued that Husserl held that the individual object of any experience, perceptual or hallucinatory, is essential to and partly constitutive of that experience. The argument focuses on three aspects of Husserl’s thought: his account of intentional objects, his notion of horizon, and his account of reality
Dorsch, Fabian, Experience and introspection.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: One central fact about hallucinations is that they may be subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions. Indeed, it has been argued by M. G. F. Martin and others that the hallucinatory experiences concerned cannot — and need not — be characterised in any more positive general terms. This epistemic conception of hallucinations has been advocated as the best choice for proponents of experiential (or ‘na¨ıve realist’) disjunctivism — the view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their introspectible subjective characters. In this chapater, I aim to formulate and defend an intentional alternative to experiential disjunctivism called experiential intentionalism. This view does not only enjoy some advantages over its rival, but also can hold on to the epistemic conception of perception-like hallucinations. First of all, I try to spell out in a bit more detail in which sense hallucinations may be subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions, and why this leads us to erroneously judge them to be perceptions (cf. sections I–III and VIII). Then, I raise three challenges each for experiential disjunctivism and its orthodox intentionalist counterparts (cf. sections IV and V), notably in respect of the need to explicate why a perception-like hallucination still makes the same judgements reasonable from the subject’s perspective as the corresponding perceptions. And, finally, I propose my alternative both to experiential disjunctivism and to orthodox intentionalism. Experiential intentionalism takes perceptions and perception-like hallucinations to share a common character partly to be spelled out in intentional — and, hence, normative — terms (cf. sections VI and VII). The central thought is that the hallucinations concerned are intentionally — and erroneously — presented to us as perceptual relations to the world. I aim to show that the resulting view can meet all six challenges (cf. sections VI–VIII). I end..
Dorsch, Fabian, Transparency and imagining seeing.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: One of the most powerful arguments against intentionalism and in favour of disjunctivism about perceptual experiences has been formulated by M. G. F. Martin in his paper The Transparency of Experience. The overall structure of this argument may be stated in the form of a triad of claims which are jointly inconsistent
Fish, William C. (2005). Disjunctivism and non-disjunctivism: Making sense of the debate. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (1):119-127.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Fish, William C. (2008). Disjunctivism, indistinguishability, and the nature of hallucination. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: In the eyes of some of its critics, disjunctivism fails to support adequately the key claim that a particular hallucination might be indistinguishable from a certain kind of veridical perception despite the two states having nothing other than this in common. Scott Sturgeon, for example, has complained that disjunctivism ‘‘offers no positive story about hallucination at all’’ (2000: 11) and therefore ‘‘simply takes [indistinguishability] for granted’’ (2000: 12). So according to Sturgeon, what the disjunctivist needs to provide is a plausible explanation of just how two mental states which have no common component might be indistinguishable for their subject and this in turn will require the telling of a positive story about hallucination. This is the goal of the present essay
Fish, William (2009). Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Garcia-Carpintero, Manuel (2001). Sense data: The sensible approach. Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):17-63.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I present a version of a sense-data approach to perception, which differs to a certain extent from well-known versions like the one put forward by Jackson. I compare the sense-data view to the currently most popular alternative theories of perception, the so-called Theory of Appearing (a very specific form of disjunctivist approaches) on the one hand and reductive representationalist approaches on the other. I defend the sense-data approach on the basis that it improves substantially on those alternative theories
Glendinning, S. (1998). Perception and hallucination: A new approach to the disjunctive conception of experience. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 29:314-19.   (Google)
Goldstick, D. (1980). The leninist theory of perception. Dialogue 19 (March):1-19.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Gomes, Anil (online). Characterizing disjunctivism.   (Google)
Gomes, Anil (forthcoming). McDowell's Disjunctivism and Other Minds. Inquiry.   (Google)
Abstract: John McDowell’s original motivation of disjunctivism occurs in the context of a problem regarding other minds. Recent commentators have insisted that McDowell’s disjunctivism should be classed as an epistemological disjunctivism about epistemic warrant, and distinguished from the perceptual disjunctivism of Hinton, Snowdon and others. In this paper I investigate the relation between the problem of other minds and disjunctivism, and raise some questions for this interpretation of McDowell.
Gundersen, Lars Bo (2009). Disjunctivism, contextualism and the sceptical aporia. Synthese 171 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: We know things that entail things we apparently cannot come to know. This is a problem for those of us who trust that knowledge is closed under entailment. In the paper I discuss the solutions to this problem offered by epistemic disjunctivism and contextualism. The contention is that neither of these theories has the resources to deal satisfactory with the problem
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Hawthorne, John & Kovakovich, Karson (2006). Disjunctivism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 80 (1):145-83.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Hellie, Benj (2010). An externalist's guide to inner experience. In Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes /seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors/. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be "phenomenally" the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!

Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) /reflective indiscriminability/. I build a "displaced perception" account of reflection on which indiscriminability stems from shared "qualia". Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does /seeing/; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its "transparency"; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment.

The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up.
Hellie, Benj (ms). Must the disjunctivist be so negative?   (Google)
Hellie, Benj (forthcoming). The multidisjunctive conception of hallucination. In Fiona Mapherson (ed.), Hallucination. MIT Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Direct realists think that we can't get a clear view the nature of /hallucinating a white picket fence/: is it /representing a white picket fence/? is it /sensing white-picket-fencily/? is it /being acquainted with a white' picketed' sense-datum/? These are all epistemic possibilities for a single experience; hence they are all metaphysical possibilities for various experiences. Hallucination itself is a disjunctive or "multidisjunctive" category. I rebut MGF Martin's argument from statistical explanation for his "epistemic" conception of hallucination, but his view embeds in my view as a "reference-fixer".
Hinton, J. M. (1973). Experiences: An Inquiry Into Some Ambiguities. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 33 | Google | More links)
Hinckfuss, I. C. (1970). J.m. Hinton on visual experiences. Mind 79 (April):278-280.   (Google | More links)
Hinton, J. M. (1980). Phenomenological specimenism. Analysis 40 (January):37-41.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Hinton, J. M. (2009). Selections from experiences. In Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. MIT Press.   (Google)
Hinton, J. M. (1996). Sense-experience revisited. Philosophical Investigations 19 (3):211-236.   (Google)
Hinton, J. M. (1967). Visual experiences. Mind 76 (April):217-227.   (Cited by 16 | Google | More links)
Hinton, J. M. (1973). Visual experiences: A reply to I.C. Hinckfuss. Mind 82 (April):278-279.   (Cited by 16 | Google | More links)
Lowe, E. J. (2008). Against disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Martin, Michael G. F. (2006). On being alienated. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 11 | Google | More links)
Martin, Michael G. F. (2004). The limits of self-awareness. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):37-89.   (Cited by 25 | Google | More links)
Martin, Michael G. F. (1997). The reality of appearances. In M. Sainsbury (ed.), Thought and Ontology. Franco Angeli.   (Cited by 19 | Google)
Martin, Michael G. F. (manuscript). Uncovering Appearances.   (Google)
McDowell, John (1982). Criteria, defeasibility, and knowledge. Proceedings of the British Academy 68:455-79.   (Cited by 114 | Google)
McDowell, John (2009). Selections from criteria, defeasibility, and knowledge. In Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. MIT Press.   (Google)
McDowell, John (2008). The disjunctive conception of experience as material for a transcendental argument. In Fiona Macpherson & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
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Neta, Ram (2008). In defense of disjunctivism. In Fiona Macpherson & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Right now, I see a computer in front of me. Now, according to current philosophical orthodoxy, I could have the very same perceptual experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing a computer in front of me. Indeed, such orthodoxy tells us, I could have the very same experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing anything at all in front of me, but simply suffering from a hallucination. More generally, someone can have the very same perceptual experience no matter whether she is enjoying a veridical perception of some mindindependent object, or merely hallucinating. What differs across these two kinds of case is not the kind of experience that she has, but rather the connections between her experience and the rest of the world. So say most philosophers
Pritchard, Duncan (2007). How to be a neo-Moorean. In Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Much of the recent debate regarding scepticism has focussed on a certain template sceptical argument and a rather restricted set of proposals concerning how one might deal with that argument. Throughout this debate the ‘Moorean’ response to scepticism is often cited as a paradigm example of how one should not respond to the sceptical argument, so conceived. As I argue in this paper, however, there are ways of resurrecting the Moorean response to the sceptic. In particular, I consider the prospects for three such proposals in this regard: a classical epistemic internalist neo-Mooreanism, a classical epistemic externalist neo-Mooreanism, and a non-classical McDowellian epistemic internalist neo-Mooreanism, and maintain that the last two of these proposals (both of which make appeal to a disjunctivist account of perception, broadly conceived) merit further exploration. Indeed, I claim that a suitably qualified version of neo-Mooreanism would actually sit quite well with the general philosophical motivations behind other key anti-sceptical views and I argue that given this fact neo-Mooreanism is actually at a dialectical advantage relative to other views when it comes to dealing with the sceptical problem as it is typically conceived.
Pritchard, Duncan (2006). McDowellian neo-mooreanism. In Fiona Macpherson & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Robinson, Howard (2005). Reply to Nathan: How to reconstruct the causal argument. Acta Analytica 20 (36):7-10.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Nicholas Nathan tries to resist the current version of the causal argument for sense-data in two ways. First he suggests that, on what he considers to be the correct reconstruction of the argument, it equivocates on the sense of proximate cause. Second, he defends a form of disjunctivism, by claiming that there might be an extra mechanism involved in producing veridical hallucination that is not present in perception. I argue that Nathan’s reconstruction of the argument is not the appropriate one, and that, properly interpreted, the argument does not equivocate on proximate cause. Furthermore, I claim that his postulation of a modified mechanism for hallucinations is implausibly ad hoc
Robinson, Howard (2009). Selections from perception. In Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. MIT Press.   (Google)
Ruben, David-Hillel (2008). Disjunctive theories of perception and action. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Schantz, R. (2005). Direct realism, disjunctivism, and the common sensory content. Schriftenreihe-Wittgenstein Gesellschaft 34:321.   (Google)
Sedivy, Sonia (2008). Starting afresh disjunctively : Perceptual engagement with the world. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Setiya, Kieran (2009). Review of 'Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge'. Mind 118:834-840.   (Google)
Siegel, Susanna (2004). Indiscriminability and the phenomenal. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):91-112.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (online). The dog and the zombie.   (Google)
Siegel, Susanna (2008). The Epistemic Conception of Hallucination. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action and Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Early formulations of disjunctivism about perception refused to give any positive account of the nature of hallucination, beyond the uncontroversial fact that they can in some sense seem to the same to the subject as veridical perceptions. Recently, some disjunctivists have attempt to account for hallucination in purely epistemic terms, by developing detailed account of what it is for a hallucinaton to be indiscriminable from a veridical perception. In this paper I argue that the prospects for purely epistemic treatments of hallucinations are dim, and that this undermines the case for disjunctivism
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Snowdon, Paul F. (2005). The formulation of disjunctivism: A response to fish. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105:129-141.   (Google | More links)
Sollberger, Michael (2008). Naïve realism and the problem of causation. Disputatio 3 (25):1-19.   (Google)
Abstract: In the present paper, I shall argue that disjunctively construed naïve realism about the nature of perceptual experiences succumbs to the empirically inspired causal argument. The causal argument highlights as a first step that local action necessitates the presence of a type-identical common kind of mental state shared by all perceptual experiences. In a second step, it sets out that the property of being a veridical perception cannot be a mental property. It results that the mental nature of perceptions must be exhausted by the occurrence of inner sensory experiences that narrowly supervene on the perceiver. That is, empirical objects fail directly to determine the perceptual consciousness of the perceiver. The upshot is that not only naïve realism, but also certain further forms of direct realism have to be abandoned.
Sollberger, Michael (2007). The Causal Argument against Disjunctivism. Facta Philosophica 9:245-267.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper, I will ask whether naïve realists have the conceptual resources for meeting the challenge stemming from the causal argument. As I interpret it, naïve realism is committed to disjunctivism. Therefore, I first set out in detail how one has to formulate the causal argument against the background of disjunctivism. This discussion is above all supposed to work out the key assumptions at stake in the causal argument. I will then go on to sketch out several possible rejoinders on behalf of naïve realism. It will be shown that they all fail to provide a satisfying account of how causation and perceptual consciousness fit together. Accordingly, the upshot will be that the causal argument provides good reason to abandon disjunctivism and, instead, to promote a common factor view of perception.
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Sturgeon, Scott (2008). Disjunctivism about visual experience. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
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Sturgeon, Scott (1998). Visual experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 72 (2):179-200.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Sytsma, Justin, Searching for evidence of phenomenal consciousness in ncc research.   (Google)
Abstract: Recent scientific work aiming to give a neurobiological explanation of phenomenal consciousness has largely focused on finding neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). The hope is that by locating neural correlates of phenomenally conscious mental states, some light will be cast on how the brain is able to give rise to such states. In this paper I argue that NCC research is unable to produce evidence of such neural correlates. I do this by considering two alternative interpretations of NCC research—an eliminativist and a disjunctivist interpretation. I show that each of these interpretations is compatible with the scientific data and yet is more parsimonious than accounts involving the supposed phenomenon of phenomenal consciousness
Tanesini, Alessandra (2010). The Non-Conjunctive Nature of Disjunctivism. Teorema 29 (1):95-103.   (Google)
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Travis, Charles (2005). Frege, father of disjunctivism. Philosophical Topics 33 (1):307-334.   (Google)
Travis, Charles (ms). Gazing inward.   (Google)
Van Cleve, James (2004). Externalism and disjunctivism. In Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge. De Gruyter.   (Google)
Vega Encabo, Jes (2006). Appearances and disjunctions: Empirical authority in McDowell's space of reasons. Teorema 25 (1):63-81.   (Google)
Vega-Encabo, Jesús (2010). Hallucinations for disjunctivists. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the so-called disjunctive views on hallucinations. I argue that neither of the options open to the disjunctivist is capable of accommodating basic phenomenological facts about hallucinatory experiences and the explanatory demands behind the classical argument from hallucination. A positive characterization of the hallucinatory case is not attractive to a disjunctivist once she is disposed to accept certain commonalities with veridical experiences. Negative disjunctivism glosses the hallucinatory disjunct in terms of indiscriminability. I will argue that this move either renounces to characterize phenomenally the hallucinatory experience or does not take seriously questions about why indiscriminability is possible in the phenomenal realm
Webber, Jonathan (2000). Seeing-in-the-world. Philosophical Writings 14:3-14.   (Google)
Wright, Crispin (2008). Comment on John McDowell's "The disjunctive conception of experience as material for a transcendental argument". In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action and Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)

3.1g The Nature of Perceptual Experience, Misc

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Chudnoff, Elijah (forthcoming). What Intuitions Are Like. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: What are intuitions? According to doxastic views, they are doxastic attitudes or dispositions, such as judgments or inclinations to make judgments. According to perceptualist views, they are—like perceptual experiences—pre-doxastic experiences that—unlike perceptual experiences—represent abstract matters as being a certain way. In this paper I argue against doxasticism and in favor of perceptualism. I describe two features that militate against doxasticist views of perception itself: perception is belief-independent and perception is presentational. Then I argue that intuitions also have both features. The upshot is that intuitions are importantly similar to perceptual experiences, and so should not be identified with doxastic attitudes or dispositions. I consider a popular argument from the introspective absence of sui generis intuition experiences in favor of doxasticism. I develop a conception of intuition experiences that helps to defuse this argument.
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Abstract: In this paper we consider, and reject, Harold Langsams defenceof the Theory of Appearing, in this journal (1997), in the faceof three standard arguments against it. These arguments are:the argument from hallucination; the argument from the samecause-same effect principle; and the argument from perceptualtime-gap
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Abstract: It is argued that both neuroscience and physics point towards a similar re-assessment of our concepts of space, time and 'reality', which, by removing some apparent paradoxes, may lead to a view which can provide a natural place for consciousness and language within biophysics. There are reasons to believe that relationships between entities in experiential space and time and in modern physicists' space and time are quite different, neither corresponding to our geometric schooling. The elements of the universe may be better described not as 'particles' but as dynamic processes giving rise, where they interface with each other, to the transfer, and at least in some cases experience, of 'pure'or 'active'information, the mental and physical just reflecting different standpoints. Although this analy-sis draws on general features of quantum dynamics, it is argued that purely quantum level events (and their 'interpretations') are unlikely to be relevant to the understanding of consciousness. The processes that might be able to give rise, within brain cells, to an experience like ours are briefly reviewed. It is suggested that the elementary signals that are integrated to generate a spatial experience may have features more in common with words than pixels. It is further suggested that the laws of integration of words in language may provide useful clues to the way biophysical integration of signals in neurons relates to integration of elements in experiential space
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Gibson, Quentin (1966). Is there a problem about appearances? Philosophical Quarterly 16 (October):319-328.   (Google | More links)
Gledhill, A. R. (1970). An Analysis Of Sense Experience. Regency Press.   (Google)
Hawkins, Denis J. B. (1945). The Criticism Of Experience. Sheed & Ward,.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
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Hirst, R. J. (1959). The Problems Of Perception. Macmillan.   (Cited by 23 | Google)
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Lamprecht, Sterling P. (1922). The metaphysical status of sensations. Journal of Philosophy 19 (7):169-181.   (Google | More links)
Langsam, Harold (1997). The theory of appearing defended. Philosophical Studies 87 (1):33-59.   (Cited by 13 | Google | More links)
Leighton, Joseph A. (1910). Perception and physical reality. Philosophical Review 19 (1):1-21.   (Google | More links)
Macpherson, Fiona (2000). Representational Theories of Phenomenal Character. Dissertation, University of Stirling   (Google | More links)
Malinovich, Stanley (1964). Perception: An experience or an achievement? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 25 (December):161-168.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Manzotti, Riccardo (2006). A process oriented view of conscious perception. Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (6):7-41.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: I present a view of conscious perception that supposes a processual unity between the activity in the brain and the perceived event in the external world. I use the rainbow to provide a first example, and subsequently extend the same rationale to more complex examples such as perception of objects, faces and movements. I use a process-based approach as an explanation of ordinary perception and other variants, such as illusions, memory, dreams and mental imagery. This approach provides new insights into the problem of conscious representation and phenomenal consciousness. It is a form of anti- cranialism different from but related to other kinds of externalism
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Abstract: What sort of an episode is perception? What are the objects of such episodes? What is the grammatical and logical form of perceptual reports, direct and indirect? Each of these questions has been the subject of recent discussion. In what follows I set out one answer to each of them and explore some of the ways these answers support and complement each other. The answers adopted are: to perceive - and I shall normally only have in mind visual perception - is not to judge or to conceptualize but a sui generis mental mode or activity involving non-conceptual content; perception is of particulars only; the complements of perceptual verbs are, with one exception, non-propositional and indirect perceptual reports are made true by direct perceptual relations between subjects and particulars of various sorts
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Nelson Wieman, Henry (1924). Experience, mind, and the concept. Journal of Philosophy 21 (21):561-572.   (Google | More links)
Price, H. H. (1952). Seeming, part II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 215:215-234.   (Google)
Quinton, Anthony M. (1952). Seeming, part III. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 235:235-252.   (Google)
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Reichenbach, Hans (1951). On observing and perceiving. Philosophical Studies 2 (December):92-93.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Sedivy, Sonia (2004). Wittgenstein's diagnosis of empiricism's third dogma: Why perception is not an amalgam of sensation and conceptualization. Philosophical Investigations 27 (1):1-33.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1982). Sensa or sensings: Reflections on the ontology of perception. Philosophical Studies 41 (January):83-114.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Shieber, Joseph (forthcoming). On the Possibility of Conceptually Structured Experience: Demonstrative Concepts and Fineness of Grain. Inquiry.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I consider one of the influential challenges to the notion that perceptual experience might be completely conceptually structured, a challenge that rests on the idea that conceptual structure cannot do justice to the fineness of grain of perceptual experience. In so doing, I canvass John McDowell’s attempt to meet this challenge by appeal to the notion of demonstrative concepts and review some criticisms recently leveled at McDowell’s deployment of demonstrative concepts for this purpose by Sean D. Kelly. Finally, I suggest that, though Kelly’s criticisms might challenge McDowell’s original presentation of demonstrative concepts, a modified notion of demonstrative concept is available to the conceptualist that is proof against Kelly’s criticisms.
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Abstract: In this paper we shall address some issues concerning the relation between the content and the nature of perceptual experiences. More precisely, we shall ask whether the claim that perceptual experiences are by nature relational implies that they cannot be intentional. As we shall see, much depends in this respect on the way one understands the possibility for one to be wrong about the phenomenal nature of one's own experience. We shall describe and distinguish a series of errors that can occur in our introspective access to our perceptual experiences. We shall argue that once the nature of these different kinds of error are properly understood, the metaphysical claim that perceptual experiences are relational can be seen to be compatible with the view that they are intentional
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Thalberg, Irving (1973). Ingredients of perception. Analysis 33 (April):145-155.   (Google)
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Travis, Charles S. (2005). The face of perception. In Hilary Putnam (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Valberg, Jerome J. (1992). The Puzzle of Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 14 | Google)
Abstract: In examining the puzzle of experience, and its possible solutions, Valberg discusses relevant views of Hume, Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Strawson, as well as ideas from the recent philosophy of perception. Finally, he describes and analyzes a manifestation of the puzzle outside philosophy, in everyday experience
Walsh, Dorothy (1968). Appearances. Philosophical Quarterly 18 (January):61-65.   (Google | More links)
Wilkie, Sean (1995). Searle's theory of visual experience. Philosophical Quarterly 45 (178):70-78.   (Google | More links)
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3.10 The Perceptual Relation

Fish, William (2009). Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Leddington, Jason (2009). Perceptual presence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (4):482-502.   (Google)
Abstract: Plausibly, any adequate theory of perception must (a) solve what Alva Noë calls 'the problem of perceptual presence,' and (b) do justice to the direct realist idea that what is given in perception are garden-variety spatiotemporal particulars. This paper shows that, while Noë's sensorimotor view arguably satisfies the first of these conditions, it does not satisfy the second. Moreover, Noë is wrong to think that a naïve realist approach to perception cannot handle the problem of perceptual presence. Section three of this paper develops a version of naïve realism that meets both of the adequacy conditions above. This paper thus provides strong considerations in favor of naïve realism

3.10a The Causal Theory of Perception

Aldrich, Virgil C. (1932). Taking the causal theory of perception seriously. Journal of Philosophy 29 (3):69-78.   (Google | More links)
Aranyosi, Istv (2008). Review of Roy Sorensen's Seeing Dark Things. The Philosophy of Shadows. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3):513-515.   (Google)
Aranyosi, István, The reappearing act.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In a recent article, Roy Sorensen proposed a very interesting puzzle involving shadows – The Disappearing Act puzzle (2006). It was left unsolved there. Nevertheless, in his latest book he has added a new thought in guise of a solution to it (2008: 73-75). In what follows I will argue that Sorensen’s solution has some shortcomings, and will offer an alternative to it
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Byrne, Alex & Hilbert, David R. (1995). Perception and causation. Journal of Philosophy 92 (6):323-329.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Campbell, Scott (2002). Causal analyses of seeing. Erkenntnis 56 (2):169-180.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Child, William (1994). Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Philosophers of mind have long been interested in the relation between two ideas: that causality plays an essential role in our understanding of the mental; and that we can gain an understanding of belief and desire by considering the ascription of attitudes to people on the basis of what they say and do. Many have thought that those ideas are incompatible. William Child argues that there is in fact no tension between them, and that we should accept both. He shows how we can have a causal understanding of the mental without having to see attitudes and experiences as internal, causally interacting entities and he defends this view against influential objections. The book offers detailed discussions of many of Donald Davidson's contributions to the philosophy of mind, and also considers the work of Dennett, Anscombe, McDowell, and Rorty, among others. Issues discussed include: the nature of intentional phenomena; causal explanation; the character of visual experience; psychological explanation; and the causal relevance of mental properties
Child, William (1994). Vision and causation: Reply to Hyman. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (176):361-369.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Child, William (1992). Vision and experience: The causal theory and the disjunctive conception. Philosophical Quarterly 42 (168):297-316.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Coates, Paul (2000). Deviant causal chains and hallucinations: A problem for the anti-causalist. Philosophical Quarterly 50 (200):320-331.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The subjective character of a given experience leaves open the question of its precise status. If it looks to a subject K as if there is an object of a kind F in front of him, the experience he is having could be veridical, or hallucinatory. Advocates of the Causal Theory of perception (whom I shall call
Coates, Paul (1998). Perception and metaphysical skepticism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 72 (72):1-28.   (Google)
Abstract: Much recent discussion about the nature of perception has focused on the dispute between the Causal Theory of Perception and the rival Disjunctive View. There are different versions of the Causal Theory (the abbreviation I shall use), but the point upon which they agree is that perception involves a conscious experience which is logically distinct from the particular physical object perceived. 1 On the opposed Disjunctive View, the perceptual experience is held to be inseparable from the object perceived; what is directly present to conscious experience is, literally, part of the physical environment. 2 One prima facie difficulty the Causal Theory appears to face is the problem of deviant causal chains, of providing sufficient conditions for perception; I shall not address this difficulty directly, though some of my concluding remarks will bear on it. My main aim in this paper is to show that, despite the deviant causal chains problem, the Causal Theory is to be preferred to the rival Disjunctive View
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Dilworth, John B. (2005). A reflexive, dispositional approach to perception. Southern Journal of Philosophy 43 (4):583-601.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper will investigate the basic question of the nature of perception, as theoretically approached from a purely naturalistic standpoint. An adequate theory must not only have clear application to a world full of pre-existing biological examples of perception of all kinds, from unicellular perception to conscious human perception, but it must also satisfy a series of theoretical or philosophical constraints, as enumerated and discussed in Section 1 below. A perceptual theory invoking _reflexive dispositions_--that is, dispositions directed toward the very same worldly perceived objects or properties that caused them--will be defended as one legitimate such naturalistic theory
Dilworth, John B. (2004). Naturalized perception without information. Journal Of Mind And Behavior 25 (4):349-368.   (Cited by 4 | Google)
Abstract: The outlines of a novel, fully naturalistic theory of perception are provided, that can explain perception of an object X by organism Z in terms of reflexive causality. On the reflexive view proposed, organism Z perceives object or property X just in case X causes Z to acquire causal dispositions reflexively directed back upon X itself. This broadly functionalist theory is potentially capable of explaining both perceptual representation and perceptual content in purely causal terms, making no use of informational concepts. However, such a reflexive, naturalistic causal theory must compete with well entrenched, supposedly equally naturalistic theories of perception that are based on some concept of information, so the paper also includes some basic logical, naturalistic and explanatory criticisms of such informational views
Dilworth, John B. (2005). Perceptual causality problems reflexively resolved. Acta Analytica 20 (3):11-31.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Causal theories of perception typically have problems in explaining deviant causal chains. They also have difficulty with other unusual putative cases of perception involving prosthetic aids, defective perception, scientifically extended cases of perception, and so on. But I show how a more adequate reflexive causal theory, in which objects or properties X cause a perceiver to acquire X-related dispositions toward that very same item X, can provide a plausible and principled perceptual explanation of all of these kinds of cases. A critical discussion of David Lewis's perceptual descriptivist views is also provided, including a defense of the logical possibility of systematic misperception or perceptual error for a perceiver, in spite of its empirical improbability
Dilworth, John B. (2005). The reflexive theory of perception. Behavior and Philosophy 33:17-40.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Dore, Clement (1964). Ayer on the causal theory of perception. Mind 73 (290):287-290.   (Google | More links)
Frost, Thomas B. (1990). In defense of the causal representative theory of perception. Dialogue 32 (2-3):43-50.   (Google)
Grice, H. P. (1961). The causal theory of perception, part I. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121:121-152.   (Google)
Grice, H. P. (1988). The causal theory of perception. In Jonathan Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Hyman, John (1994). Reply to vision. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (176):369-376.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Hyman, John (1992). The causal theory of perception. Philosophical Quarterly 42 (168):277-296.   (Cited by 13 | Google | More links)
Hyman, John (1993). Vision, causation and occlusion. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (171):210-214.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Kim, Jaegwon (1977). Perception and reference without causality. Journal of Philosophy 74 (October):606-620.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Le Catt, Bruce (1982). Censored vision. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 60 (June):158-162.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Lewis, David (1980). Veridical hallucination and prosthetic vision. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (September):239-249.   (Cited by 38 | Google | More links)
Lowe, E. J. (1992). Experience and its objects. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 7 | Google)
Lowe, E. J. (1993). Perception: A causal representative theory. In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Google)
Maxwell, Grover (1972). Scientific methodology and the causal theory of perception. In Herbert Feigl, Wilfrid Sellars & Keith Lehrer (eds.), New Readings in Philosophical Analysis. Appleton-Century-Crofts.   (Google)
McLaughlin, Brian P. (1996). Lewis on what distinguishes perception from hallucination. In Kathleen Akins (ed.), Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Mclaughlin, Brian P. (1984). Perception, causation, and supervenience. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9:569-592.   (Google)
Newman, M. H. A. (1928). Mr. Russell's causal theory of perception. Mind 5 (146):26-43.   (Cited by 39 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Noe, Alva (2003). Causation and perception: The puzzle unravelled. Analysis 63 (2):93-100.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Oakes, Robert A. (1978). How to rescue the traditional causal theory of perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 38 (March):370-383.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Pappas, George S. (1990). Causation and perception in Reid. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (4):763-766.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Pears, David F. (1976). The causal conditions of perception. Synthese 33 (June):25-40.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Pendlebury, Michael J. (1994). Content and causation in perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (4):767-785.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Pickering, F. R. (1974). A refutation of an objection to the causal theory of perception. Analysis 34 (March):129-132.   (Google)
Price, Carolyn S. (1998). Function, perception and normal causal chains. Philosophical Studies 89 (1):31-51.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Robinson, Howard M. (1990). The objects of perceptual experience--II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 151:151-166.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Rogers, G. A. J. (1975). The veil of perception. Mind 84 (April):210-224.   (Google | More links)
Shope, Robert K. (1991). Non-deviant causal chains. Journal of Philosophical Research 16:251-291.   (Google)
Smith, Peter K. (1991). On The Objects of Perceptual Experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91:191-196.   (Google)
Snowdon, Paul F. (1998). Strawson on the concept of perception. In The Philosophy of P.F. Strawson. Chicago: Open Court.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Strawson, Peter F. (1998). Reply to Paul Snowdon. In The Philosophy of P.F. Strawson. Chicago: Open Court.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Szubka, Tadeusz (2002). The causal theory of perception and direct realism. In Pragmatism and Realism. New York: Routledge.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Teichman, Jenny (1971). Perception and causation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71:29-41.   (Google)
Tye, Michael (1982). A causal analysis of seeing by Michael Tye. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42 (March):311-325.   (Google)
Vesey, Godfrey N. A. (1971). Perception. Anchor Books.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Vision, Gerald (1993). Animadversions on the causal theory of perception. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (172):344-356.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Vision, Gerald (1997). Problems of Vision: Rethinking the Causal Theory of Perception. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this book Gerald Vision argues for a new causal theory, one that engages provocatively with direct realism and makes no use of a now discredited subjectivism
Watling, J. (1950). The causal theory of perception. Mind 59 (October):539-540.   (Google | More links)
White, Alan R. (1961). The causal theory of perception, part II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 153:153-168.   (Google)
Whiteley, C. H. (1940). The causal theory of perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 40:89-102.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Wilkie, Sean (1996). The causal theory of veridical hallucinations. Philosophy 71 (276):245-254.   (Google)

3.10b Direct and Indirect Perception

Banerjee, Kali K. (1955). Perception and direct awareness. Philosophical Quarterly (India) 28 (April):41-47.   (Google)
Buras, Todd (2008). Three grades of immediate perception: Thomas Reid's distinctions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):603–632.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: 1. Introduction. Like other direct realists, Thomas Reid offered an alternative to indirect realist and idealist accounts of perception. Reids alternative aimed to preserve the indirect realists commitment to realism about the objects of perception, and the idealists commitment to the immediacy of the minds relation to the objects of perception. Reid holds that what you perceive is mind independent or external; and your relation to such objects in perception is direct or immediate. In his own words, something which is extended and solid, which may be measured and weighed, is the immediate object of my touch and sight. And this object I take to be matter, and not an idea (IP II xi, 154)
Carrier, Leonard S. (1969). Immediate and mediate perception. Journal of Philosophy 66 (July):391-403.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Carrier, Leonard S. (1972). Time-gap myopia. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (May):55-57.   (Google | More links)
Carrier, Leonard S. (1969). The time-gap argument. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 47 (December):263-272.   (Google | More links)
Chemero, Tony (forthcoming). Information and direct perception: A new approach. In Priscila Farias & Jo (eds.), Advanced Issues in Cognitive Science and Semiotics.   (Google)
Abstract: Since the 1970s, Michael Turvey, Robert Shaw, and William Mace have worked on the formulation of a philosophically-sound and empirically-tractable version of James Gibson
Child, William (1994). Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Philosophers of mind have long been interested in the relation between two ideas: that causality plays an essential role in our understanding of the mental; and that we can gain an understanding of belief and desire by considering the ascription of attitudes to people on the basis of what they say and do. Many have thought that those ideas are incompatible. William Child argues that there is in fact no tension between them, and that we should accept both. He shows how we can have a causal understanding of the mental without having to see attitudes and experiences as internal, causally interacting entities and he defends this view against influential objections. The book offers detailed discussions of many of Donald Davidson's contributions to the philosophy of mind, and also considers the work of Dennett, Anscombe, McDowell, and Rorty, among others. Issues discussed include: the nature of intentional phenomena; causal explanation; the character of visual experience; psychological explanation; and the causal relevance of mental properties
Chisholm, Roderick M. (1950). The theory of appearing. In Max Black (ed.), Philosophical Analysis. Prentice Hall.   (Google)
Copenhaver, Rebecca (2004). A realism for Reid: Mediated but direct. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (1):61 – 74.   (Google | More links)
Copenhaver, Rebecca (ms). Thomas Reid's direct realism.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Thomas Reid thought of himself as a critic of the representative theory of perception, of what he called the ‘theory of ideas’ or ‘the ideal theory’.2 He had no kind words for that theory: “The theory of ideas, like the Trojan horse, had a specious appearance both of innocence and beauty; but if those philosophers had known that it carried in its belly death and destruction to all science and common sense, they would not have broken down their walls to give it admittance.”3 Many have supposed that his opposition to the representative theory was grounded in his direct realism.4 A direct realist theory of perception holds that perception of external objects is not mediated by any mental entity whose intrinsic character licenses a move from the mental entity to the external object presented in perception. Reid himself, in an oration of 1759, delivered at graduation ceremonies over which he presided as regent and professor of philosophy at King’s College in Aberdeen, said that he did not “understand what need there is of an intermediate object for thought about something to be possible.”5 Hence, if Reid was not a direct realist, philosophers and historians would have to ask whether and to what degree Reid was what he thought himself to be
Cornman, James W. (1972). On direct perception. Review of Metaphysics 26 (September):38-56.   (Google)
Costall, Alan & Still, Arthur (1989). Gibson's theory of direct perception and the problem of cultural relativism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 19 (4):433–441.   (Google | More links)
De Jaegher, Hanne (2009). Social understanding through direct perception? Yes, by interacting. Consciousness & Cognition 18 (2):535-542.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper comments on Gallagher’s recently published direct perception proposal about social cognition [Gallagher, S. (2008a). Direct perception in the intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(2), 535–543]. I show that direct perception is in danger of being appropriated by the very cognitivist accounts criticised by Gallagher (theory theory and simulation theory). Then I argue that the experiential directness of perception in social situations can be understood only in the context of the role of the interaction process in social cognition. I elaborate on the role of social interaction with a discussion of participatory sense-making to show that direct perception, rather than being a perception enriched by mainly individual capacities, can be best understood as an interactional phenomenon.
Dilworth, John B. (2005). The perception of representational content. British Journal Of Aesthetics 45 (4):388-411.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: How can it be true that one sees a lake when looking at a picture of a lake, since one's gaze is directed upon a flat dry surface covered in paint? An adequate contemporary explanation cannot avoid taking a theoretical stand on some fundamental cognitive science issues concerning the nature of perception, of pictorial content, and of perceptual reference to items that, strictly speaking, have no physical existence. A solution is proposed that invokes a broadly functionalist, naturalistic theory of perception, plus a double content analysis of perceptual interpretation, which permits non-supervenient, culturally autonomous modes of reference to be generated and artistically exploited even in a purely physical world. In addition, a functionalist concept of broad or 'spread' reference replaces the traditional precise intentional concept of reference, which previously made reference to non-existent items theoretically intractable
Fish, William C. (2004). The direct/indirect distinction in contemporary philosophy of perception. Essays in Philosophy 5 (1):1-13.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Givner, David A. (1982). Direct perception, misperception and perceptual systems: J. J. Gibson and the problem of illusion. Nature and System 4 (September):131-142.   (Google)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Hanna, Robert (1993). Direct reference, direct perception, and the cognitive theory of demonstratives. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2):96-117.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Hudson, Robert G. (2000). Perceiving empirical objects directly. Erkenntnis 52 (3):357-371.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
James McDermid, Douglas (2001). What is direct perceptual knowledge? A fivefold confusion. Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):1-16.   (Google)
Abstract: When philosophers speak of direct perceptual knowledge, they obviously mean to suggest that such knowledge is unmediated ? but unmediated by what? This is where we find evidence of violent disagreement. To clarify matters, I want to identify and briefly describe several important senses of "direct" that have helped shape our understanding of perceptual knowledge. They are (1) "Direct" as Non-Inferential Perception; (2) "Direct" as Unmediating by Objects of Perception; (3) "Direct" as Conceptually Unmediated Perception; (4) "Direct" as Independent Verification of Perceptual Beliefs; and (5) "Direct" as Perception of What is Epistemically Prior
Johnston, Mark (1996). Is the external world invisible? Philosophical Issues 7:185-198.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Jones, Raya (1999). Direct perception and symbol forming in positioning. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 29 (1):37–58.   (Google | More links)
Kalansuriya, A. D. P. (1980). Fred I. Dretske and the notion of direct perception. Indian Philosophical Quarterly 7 (July):513-517.   (Google)
Kaplan, Stephen (1987). Hermeneutics, Holography, and Indian Idealism: A Study of Projection and Gauḍapāda's Māṇḍūkya Kārikā. Motilal Banarsidass.   (Google)
Kennedy, Matthew (2007). Visual Awareness of Properties. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2):298-325.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I defend a view of the structure of visual property-awareness by considering the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. I argue that visual property-awareness is a three-place relation between a subject, a property, and a manner of presentation. Manners of presentation mediate our visual awareness of properties without being objects of visual awareness themselves. I provide criteria of identity for manners of presentation, and I argue that our ignorance of their intrinsic nature does not compromise the viability of a theory that employs them. In closing, I argue that the proposed manners of presentation are consistent with key direct-realist claims about the structure of visual awareness.
Kuczynski, John-Michael M. (2002). Elements of Virtualism: A Study in the Philosophy of Perception. Dartford: Traude Junghans Cuxhaven Verlag.   (Google)
Loui, Michael C. (1994). Against qualia: Our direct perception of physical reality. In European Review of Philosophy, Volume 1: Philosophy of Mind. Stanford: CSLI Publications.   (Google)
Lowe, E. J. (1981). Indirect perception and sense data. Philosophical Quarterly 31 (October):330-342.   (Cited by 47 | Google | More links)
Lowe, E. J. (1986). What do we see directly? American Philosophical Quarterly 23 (July):277-286.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Luce, Arthur Aston (1954). Sense Without Matter or Direct Perception. [Edinburgh]Nelson.   (Google)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Malcolm, Norman (1953). Direct perception. Philosophical Quarterly 3 (October):301-316.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Malmgren, Helge (1971). Moore's concept of indirect apprehension. Theoria 37:185-208.   (Google | More links)
Maund, J. Barry (1993). Representation, pictures and resemblance. In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
McCabe, Viki (1982). The direct perception of universals: A theory of knowledge acquisition. Synthese 52 (3).   (Google)
Abstract:   A theory is presented which proposes that knowledge acquisition involves direct perception of schematic information in the form of structural and transformational invariances. Individual components with salient verbal descriptions are considered conscious place-holders for non-conscious invariant schemes. It is speculated that theories positing mental construction have three related causes: The first is a lack of consciousness of the schema processing capacities of the right hemisphere; the second is the paucity of adequate words to express schematic relationships; and the last involves the dominance of verbal processes in consciousness. Philosophical theories are reviewed and schematic data relevant to biological survival is offered. Applications to education are suggested
McDermid, Douglas J. (2001). What is direct perceptual knowledge? A fivefold confusion. Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):1-16.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: When philosophers speak of direct perceptual knowledge, they obviously mean to suggest that such knowledge is unmediated ? but unmediated by what? This is where we find evidence of violent disagreement. To clarify matters, I want to identify and briefly describe several important senses of "direct" that have helped shape our understanding of perceptual knowledge. They are (1) "Direct" as Non-Inferential Perception; (2) "Direct" as Unmediating by Objects of Perception; (3) "Direct" as Conceptually Unmediated Perception; (4) "Direct" as Independent Verification of Perceptual Beliefs; and (5) "Direct" as Perception of What is Epistemically Prior
Mergner, Thomas & Becker, Wolfgang (2001). A different way to combine direct perception with intersensory interaction. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):228-230.   (Google)
Millar, Roderick (1982). A defence of direct surface realism. Philosophy 57 (July):339-355.   (Google)
Mulaik, Stanley A. (1995). The metaphoric origins of objectivity, subjectivity, and consciousness in the direct perception of reality. Philosophy of Science 62 (2):283-303.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Nathan, N. M. L. (2005). Direct realism: Proximate causation and the missing object. Acta Analytica 20 (36):3-6.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Direct Realists believe that perception involves direct awareness of an object not dependent for its existence on the perceiver. Howard Robinson rejects this doctrine in favour of a Sense-Datum theory of perception. His argument against Direct Realism invokes the principle ‘same proximate cause, same immediate effect’. Since there are cases in which direct awareness has the same proximate cerebral cause as awareness of a sense datum, the Direct Realist is, he thinks, obliged to deny this causal principle. I suggest that although Direct Realism is in more than one respect implausible, it does not succumb to Robinson’s argument. The causal principle is true only if ‘proximate cause’ means ‘proximate sufficient cause’, and the Direct Realist need not concede that there is a sufficient cerebral cause for direct awareness of independent objects
No, (2002). Direct perception. In The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Macmillan.   (Google)
Abstract: experiences are qualitatively indistinguishable, experience by engaging in a constructive process then you are aware of one and the same thing of inference or conjecture. A perception, in the when you see a red tomato and hallucinate a red phrase of Helmholtz, is an `unconscious inference'. tomato. Hence, when you see a red tomato, you are Empirical research on perception focuses on under- aware not of a tomato but of a tomato-like sense standing the mechanisms, neural and psycho- datum. logical, that make up the brain's ability to perform 00170005 That perception is in this way indirect appears to
No, (2002). On what we see. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (1):57-80.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Oakes, Robert A. (1982). Seeing our own faces: A paradigm for indirect realism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42 (March):442-448.   (Google | More links)
Peper, C. & Beek, Peter J. (2001). Direct perception of global invariants is not a fruitful notion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):235-235.   (Google)
Persson, Ingmar (1985). Phenomenal realism. Erkenntnis 23 (May):59-78.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Piatt, D. A. (1928). Immediate experience. Journal of Philosophy 25 (18):477-492.   (Google | More links)
Reynolds, Steven L. (2000). The argument from illusion. Noûs 34 (4):604-621.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Sapontzis, S. F. (1977). Direct perception, some further comments. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (4):556-565.   (Google | More links)
Schwartz, Robert (1996). Directed perception. Philosophical Psychology 9 (1):81-91.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: Recently it has been argued that a model of directed perception provides an alternative to both indirect and direct accounts of the nature of vision. An examination of this proposal serves as a basis for challenging the meaningfulness and empirical import of the theoretical and ontological differences said to separate these models. Although focusing on James Cutting's work, the analysis is meant to speak more generally to the supposed significance of the distinctions among indirect, direct, and directed theories of perception
Schellenberg, Susanna (2008). The Situation-Dependency of Perception. The Journal of Philosophy 105 (2):55-84.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that perception is necessarily situation-dependent. The way an object is must not just be distinguished from the way it appears and the way it is represented, but also from the way it is presented given the situational features. First, I argue that the way an object is presented is best understood in terms of external, mind-independent, but situation-dependent properties of objects. Situation-dependent properties are exclusively sensitive to and ontologically dependent on the intrinsic properties of objects, such as their shape, size, and color, and the situational features, such as the lighting conditions and the perceiver’s location in relation to the perceived object. Second, I argue that perceiving intrinsic properties is epistemically dependent on representing situation-dependent properties. Recognizing situation-dependent properties yields four advantages. It makes it possible to embrace the motivations that lead to phenomenalism and indirect realism by recognizing that objects are presented a certain way, while holding on to the intuition that subjects directly perceive objects. Second, it acknowledges that perceptions are not just individuated by the objects they are of, but by the ways those objects are presented given the situational features. Third, it allows for a way to accommodate the fact that there is a wide range of viewing conditions or situational features that can count as normal. Finally, it makes it possible to distinguish perception and thought about the same object with regard to what is represented.
Sedgwick, H. A. (2003). Relating direct and indirect perception of spatial layout. In Heiko Hecht, Robert Schwartz & Margaret Atherton (eds.), Looking Into Pictures. The Mit Press.   (Google)
Shuger, Scott (1986). Hintikka and the analysis of direct perception. Philosophia 16 (December):365-376.   (Google | More links)
Snowdon, Paul F. (1992). How to interpret direct perception. In The Contents of Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 19 | Google)
Sosa, David (1996). Getting acquainted with perception. Philosophical Issues 7:209-214.   (Google | More links)
Strong, Charles A. (1931). Is perception direct, or representative? Mind 40 (158):217-220.   (Google | More links)
Stroll, Avrum (1989). Wittgenstein's nose. In Brian McGuinness & Rudolf Haller (eds.), Wittgenstein in Focus--Im Brennpunkt: Wittgenstein. Rodopi.   (Google)
Todd, D. D. (1975). Direct perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 35 (March):352-362.   (Google | More links)
Todd, D. D. (1977). Response to Sapontzis. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (June):566-568.   (Google | More links)
Ullman, S. (1980). Against direct perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3:333-81.   (Cited by 114 | Google)
Van Woudenberg, René (1994). Alston on direct perception and interpretation. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36 (2).   (Google)
Villanueva, Enrique (1996). Would more acquaintance with the external world relieve epistemic anxiety? Philosophical Issues 7:215-218.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Ward, Andrew (1976). Direct and indirect realism. American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (October):287-294.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Warwick-Evans, Lawrence (2004). Multi-sensory processing facilitates perception but direct perception of global invariants remains unproven. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (6):891-892.   (Google)
Abstract: The existence of sensory convergence does not establish that the senses function as a single unified perceptual system. Reality is fully specified only by a one:many mapping onto the totality of energy arrays, and these provide alternative frames of reference for movement. It is therefore possible that higher order crossmodal relationships are detected by skilled perceivers, but this has not been confirmed empirically
Zeimbekis, John (2009). Phenomenal and objective size. Noûs 43 (2):346-362.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Definitions of phenomenal types (Nelson Goodman’s definition of qualia, Sydney Shoemaker’s phenomenal types, Austen Clark’s physicalist theory of qualia) imply that numerically distinct experiences can be type-identical in some sense. However, Goodman also argues that objects cannot be replicated in respect of continuous and densely ordered types. In that case, how can phenomenal types be defined for sizes, shapes and colours, which appear to be continuously ordered types? Concentrating on size, I will argue for the following points. (§2) We cannot deny the possibility of replication in respect of dense types, because this would imply that particulars have determinable sizes, shapes and colours. (§3) Phenomenal sizes and shapes are determinable types; objective, or super-determinate, sizes and shapes are unknowable. (§4) We can define and know, prior to verification, groupings of objective sizes for which indiscriminability is transitive. (§5) Phenomenal identity has to be defined on the basis of these transitive groupings, because finer-grained criteria (such as Goodman’s) lead to definition of objective identity. The quality space of phenomenal types consists of overlapping but not dense types, and this prevents a collapse of phenomenal types.

3.10c The Objects of Perception

Alspector-Kelly, Marc (2006). Pretending to see. Philosophical Psychology 19 (6):713-728.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: There are three distinct projects - ontological, phenomenological, and conceptual - to pursue in the philosophy of perception. They are, however, rarely distinguished. Failure to distinguish them has resulted in their being pursued as one. Their completion then requires that they admit of the same solution, while accommodating the existence of misperception and the scientific facts concerning the perceptual process. The lesson to learn from misperceptions and those facts is, however, that no such common solution is possible, and that the projects must, and can, be pursued separately. Pursuit of the phenomenological and conceptual projects then requires a context in which discourse concerning objects of perception is permitted without ontological commitment to such objects. This is supplied by treating certain uses of perceptual locutions as within a context of pretense
Alspector-Kelly, Marc (2004). Seeing the unobservable: Van Fraassen and the limits of experience. Synthese 140 (3):331-353.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I. Introduction “We can and do see the truth about many things: ourselves, others, trees and animals, clouds and rivers—in the immediacy of experience.”1 Absent from Bas van Fraassen’s list of those things we see are paramecia and mitochondria. We do not see such things, van Fraassen has long maintained, because they are unobservable, that is, they are undetectable by means of the unaided senses.2 But notice that these two notions—what we can see in the “immediacy” of experience and what is detectable by means of the unaided senses—are not the same. There is no incoherence in maintaining that the immediacy of experience is capable of disclosing to us truths concerning entities that are not detectable by the naked eye. And so, I claim, it does; science and technology provide us with the means to see things we have never seen before. Some of those things are van Fraassen’s unobservables. That suggestion is nothing new. Grover Maxwell long ago emphasized the continuity between seeing with and without instrumentation.3 Van Fraassen originally provided two responses to Maxwell’s arguments: some things that you can see with instruments you can also see without instruments (and those are the observables); and..
Aranyosi, Istv (2008). Review of Roy Sorensen's Seeing Dark Things. The Philosophy of Shadows. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3):513-515.   (Google)
Averill, Edward W. (1958). Perception and definition. Journal of Philosophy 55 (July):690-698.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Barnett, Samuel (1916). In what sense two persons perceive the same thing. Philosophical Review 25 (6):837-842.   (Google | More links)
Barwise, Jon (1981). Scenes and other situations. Journal of Philosophy 78 (7):369-397.   (Google | More links)
Bode, Boyd H. (1912). Consciousness and its object. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 9 (19):505-513.   (Google | More links)
Bogdan, Radu J. (1986). The Objects of Perception. In Radu J. Bogdan (ed.), Roderick Chisholm. Reidel: Dordrecht.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: Our perceptions, beliefs, thoughts and memories have objects. They are about or of things and properties around us. I perceive her, have beliefs about her, think of her and have memories of her. How are we to construe this aboutness (or ofness) of our cognitive states?' There are four major choices on the philosophical market. There is an interaction approach which says that the object of cognition is fixed by and understood in terms of what cognizers physically and sensorily interact with - or, alternatively, in terms of what the information delivered by such interaction is about. There is the satisfactional approach which says that the object of a cognitive state is whatever satisfies the representation constitutive of that state. There is also a hybrid approach which requires both physical/sensory interaction and representational satisfaction in the fixation of the object of cognition. And there is, finally, the direct acquaintance approach which says that only an immediate cognitive contact with things and properties can establish them as objects of cognition. The latter, as far as I can tell, goes the way perception goes, so only the remaining three approaches look like serious contenders
Brewer, Bill (2007). Perception and its objects. Philosophical Studies 132 (1):87-97.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Physical objects are such things as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in. (1) therefore expresses a commonsense commitment to physical realism: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone
Brown, Harold I. (1972). Perception and meaning. American Philosophical Quarterly 6:1-9.   (Google)
Campbell, Scott (2004). Seeing objects and surfaces, and the 'in virtue of' relation. Philosophy 79 (309):393-402.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Carrier, Leonard S. (1981). Experience And The Objects Of Perception. Washington: University Press Of America.   (Google)
Dilworth, John B. (2006). A reflexive dispositional analysis of mechanistic perception. Minds and Machines 16 (4):479-493.   (Google | More links)
Abstract:   The field of machine perception is based on standard informational and computational approaches to perception. But naturalistic informational theories are widely regarded as being inadequate, while purely syntactic computational approaches give no account of perceptual content. Thus there is a significant need for a novel, purely naturalistic perceptual theory not based on informational or computational concepts, which could provide a new paradigm for mechanistic perception. Now specifically evolutionary naturalistic approaches to perception have been—perhaps surprisingly—almost completely neglected for this purpose. Arguably perceptual mechanisms enhance evolutionary fitness by facilitating sensorily mediated causal interactions between an organism Z and items X in its environment. A ‘reflexive’ theory of perception of this kind is outlined, according to which an organism Z perceives an item X just in case X causes a sensory organ zi of Z to cause Z to acquire a disposition toward the very same item X that caused the perception. The rest of the paper shows how an intuitively plausible account of mechanistic perception can be developed and defended in terms of the reflexive theory. Also, a compatibilist option is provided for those who wish to preserve a distinct informational concept of perception
Drake, Durant (1915). Where do perceived objects exist? Mind 24 (93):29-36.   (Google | More links)
Dretske, Fred (1964). Observational terms. Philosophical Review 73 (January):25-42.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Goldman, Alvin (1977). Perceptual objects. Synthese 35 (3).   (Cited by 11 | Google | More links)
Harrison, Ross (1970). Strawson on outer objects. Philosophical Quarterly 20 (July):213-221.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Hocutt, Max O. (1968). What we perceive. American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (January):43-53.   (Google)
Kraut, R. (1982). Sensory states and sensory objects. Noûs 16 (May):277-93.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Kriegel, Uriah (2005). The status of appearances revisited. Iyyun 54 (July):287-304.   (Google)
Kriegel, Uriah (2011). The Veil of Abstracta. Philosophical Issues 21.   (Google)
Abstract: Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory’s: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world.
Mathrani, G. N. (1942). Do we perceive physical objects? Philosophical Quarterly (India) 18 (October):175-182.   (Google)
Matthen, Mohan P. (2004). Features, places, and things: Reflections on Austen Clark's theory of sentience. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):497-518.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The paper argues that material objects are the primary referents of visual states -- not places, as Austen Clark would have it in his A Theory of Sentience.
Minissale, Gregory (2010). Beyond Internalism and Externalism: Husserl and Sartre's Image Consciousness in Hitchcock and. Buñuel. Film-Philosophy 14 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: Husserl and Sartre’s analyses of mental imagery and some of the latest cognitive research on vision provide a framework for understanding a number of films by Hitchcock (Psycho and Rear Window) and Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou), films which similarly probe the subtleties and uses of mental imagery. One of the many ways to enjoy these films is to see them as explorations of visual phenomenology; they allow us to enact, as well as reflect upon, mental images as part of the film experience.





Myers, Charles M. (1957). On actually seeing. Philosophical Studies 8 (1-2):28-32.   (Google | More links)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1983). What are the objects of perceptual consciousness? American Journal of Psychology 96:435-67.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Neta, Ram (2007). Contextualism and a puzzle about seeing. Philosophical Studies 134 (1):53-63.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Contextualist solutions to skeptical puzzles have recently been subjected to various criticisms. In this paper, I will defend contextualism against an objection prominently pressed by Stanley 2000. According to Stanley, contextualism in epistemology advances an empirically implausible hypothesis about the semantics of knowledge ascriptions in natural language. It is empirically implausible because it attributes to knowledge ascriptions a kind of semantic context-sensitivity that is wholly unlike any well- established type of semantic context-sensitivity in natural language
O'Callaghan, Casey (2007). Echoes. The Monist 90 (3):403-414.   (Google)
Abstract: Echo experiences are illusory experiences of ordinary primary sounds. Just as there is no new object that we see at the surface of a mirror, there is no new sound that we hear at a reflecting surface. The sound that we hear as an echo just is the original primary sound, though its perception involves illusions of place, time, and qualities. The case of echoes need not force us to adopt a conception according to which sounds are persisting object-like particulars that travel through space.
O’Callaghan, Casey (2008). Object perception: Vision and audition. Philosophy Compass 3 (4):803-829.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Vision has been the primary focus of naturalistic philosophical research concerning perception and perceptual experience. Guided by visual experience and vision science, many philosophers have focused upon theoretical issues dealing with the perception of objects. Recently, however, hearing researchers have discussed auditory objects. I present the case for object perception in vision, and argue that an analog of object perception occurs in auditory perception. I propose a notion of an auditory object that is stronger than just that of an intentional object of audition, but that does not identify auditory objects with the ordinary material objects we see
O'Callaghan, Casey (2007). Sounds: A Philosophical Theory. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: ... ISBN0199215928 ... Abstract: Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science traditionally has focused on a visual model. This book presents a systematic treatment of sounds and auditory experience. It demonstrates how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships among multiple sense modalities enriches our understanding of perception. It articulates the central questions that comprise the philosophy of sound, and proposes a novel theory of sounds and their perception. Against the widely accepted philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, and against the scientific view that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium such as air or water, the book argues that sounds are events in which objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium. This does not imply that sounds propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near their sources. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time and situates sounds in the world. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities. It also provides a powerful account of echoes, interference, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories. Investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. This book concludes by arguing that a surprising class of cross-modal perceptual illusions demonstrates that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that a visuocentric model for theorizing about perception — according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry — ought to be abandoned.
Odegard, Douglas (1978). Perception. Dialogue 17:72-91.   (Google)
O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1965). Material objects and perceptual standpoint. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 65:77-98.   (Google)
Persson, Ingmar (1985). The Primacy of Perception: Towards a Neutral Monism. C.W.K. Gleerup.   (Google)
Ramsperger, Albert G. (1940). Objects perceived and objects known. Journal of Philosophy 37 (May):291-297.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Richman, Robert J. (1958). The whereabouts of percepts. Journal of Philosophy 55 (April):344-347.   (Google | More links)
Rosenkrantz, Gary S. (1984). Acquaintance. Philosophia 14 (August):1-24.   (Google | More links)
Sanford, David H. (1976). The primary objects of perception. Mind 85 (April):189-208.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Ontological Minimalism about Phenomenology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense-data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perceptual experience are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind-independent objects or property-instances. Since a hallucinating subject is not related to any such objects or property-instances, the concepts she employs remain unsaturated. I argue that the phenomenology of hallucinations and perceptions can be identified with employing concepts and analogous nonconceptual structures. By doing so, I defend a minimalist view of the phenomenology of experience that (1) satisfies the Aristotelian principle according to which the existence of any type depends on its tokens and (2) amounts to a naturalized view of the phenomenology of experience.
Shwayder, D. S. (1961). The varieties and the objects of visual phenomena. Mind 70 (July):307-330.   (Google | More links)
Snowdon, Paul F. (1990). The objects of perceptual experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 64:121-50.   (Cited by 18 | Google)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2008). Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.
Sorenson, Roy (2006). The disappearing act. Analysis 66 (4):319-325.   (Google | More links)
Spruit, Leen (1994). Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. Brill.   (Google)
Abstract: v. 1. Classical roots and medieval discussions -- v. 2. Renaissance controversis, later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy.
Strawson, Peter F. (1961). Perception and identification, part II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97:97-120.   (Google)
Stuart Fullerton, George (1913). Percept and object in common sense and in philosophy. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (3):57-64.   (Google | More links)
Stuart Fullerton, George (1913). Percept and object in common sense and in philosophy. II. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (6):149-158.   (Google | More links)
Suchting, W. A. (1969). Perception and the time-gap argument. Philosophical Quarterly 19 (January):46-56.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Susan Stebbing, L. (1926). Professor Whitehead's "perceptual object". Journal of Philosophy 23 (8):197-213.   (Google | More links)
Willard, Dallas (1970). Perceptual realism. Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 1:75-84.   (Google)
Wright, Henry W. (1916). The object of perception versus the object of thought. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13 (16):437-441.   (Google | More links)

3.10d The Perceptual Relation, Misc

Baker, M. J. (1955). Seeing. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (March):377-385.   (Google | More links)
Bradley McGilvary, Evander (1912). The relation of consciousness and object in sense-perception. Philosophical Review 21 (2):152-173.   (Google | More links)
Campbell, John (2007). What's the role of spatial awareness in visual perception of objects? Mind and Language 22 (5):548–562.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I set out two theses. The first is Lynn Robertson’s: (a) spatial awareness is a cause of object perception. A natural counterpoint is: (b) spatial awareness is a cause of your ability to make accurate verbal reports about a perceived object. Zenon Pylyshyn has criticized both. I argue that nonetheless, the burden of the evidence supports both (a) and (b). Finally, I argue conscious visual perception of an object has a different causal role to both: (i) non-conscious perception of the object, and (ii) experience, e.g. hallucination, that may be subjectively indiscriminable from, but is not, perception of the object
Crane, Tim (2006). Is there a perceptual relation? In T. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Abstract: P.F. Strawson argued that ‘mature sensible experience (in general) presents itself as … an immediate consciousness of the existence of things outside us’ (1979: 97). He began his defence of this very natural idea by asking how someone might typically give a description of their current visual experience, and offered this example of such a description: ‘I see the red light of the setting sun filtering through the black and thickly clustered branches of the elms; I see the dappled deer grazing in groups on the vivid green grass…’ (1979: 97). In other words, in describing experience, we tend to describe the objects of experience – the things which we experience – and the ways they are when we are experiencing them. Some go further. According to Heidegger
Ebersole, Frank B. (1961). On seeing things. Philosophical Quarterly 11 (October):289-300.   (Google | More links)
Kalderon, Mark Eli (forthcoming). Color Illusion. Nous.   (Google)
Abstract: As standardly conceived,an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.
Pacherie, Elisabeth (1995). Do we see with microscopes? The Monist 78 (2):171-188.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Pitson, A. E. (1984). Basic seeing. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (September):121-130.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Platchias, Dimitris (2004). The veil of perception and contextual relativism. Sorites 15 (December):76-86.   (Google | More links)
Schwartz, Robert (2004). To Austin or not to Austin, that's the disjunction. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):255-263.   (Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (2006). How does phenomenology constrain object-seeing? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (3):429 – 441.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Perception provides a form of contact with the world and the other people in it. For example, we can learn that Franco is sitting in his chair by seeing Franco; we can learn that his hair is gray by seeing the colour of his hair. Such perception enables us to understand primitive forms of language, such as demonstrative expressions
Siegel, Susanna (2002). The role of perception in demonstrative reference. Philosophers' Imprint 2 (1):1-21.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Siegel defends "Limited Intentionism", a theory of what secures the semantic reference of uses of bare demonstratives ("this", "that" and their plurals). According to Limited Intentionism, demonstrative reference is fixed by perceptually anchored intentions on the part of the speaker
Sorensen, Roy A. (1999). Seeing intersecting eclipses. Journal of Philosophy 96 (1):25-49.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2004). We see in the dark. Noûs 38 (3):456-480.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Stroll, Avrum (1992). Reflections on surfaces. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (2):191-210.   (Google)
Stuart Fullerton, George (1907). In what sense two persons perceive the same thing. Philosophical Review 16 (5):506-518.   (Google | More links)
Thilly, Frank (1912). The relation of consciousness and object in sense-perception. Philosophical Review 21 (4):415-432.   (Google | More links)
Warnock, G. J. (1955). Seeing. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55:201-218.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Woodbridge, Frederick J. E. (1912). Consciousness and object. Philosophical Review 21 (6):633-640.   (Google | More links)
Zemach, Eddy M. (1969). Seeing, seeing, and feeling. Review of Metaphysics 23 (September):3-24.   (Cited by 3 | Google)

3.11 The Contents of Perception

3.11a Conceptual and Nonconceptual Content

Ablondi, Frederick R. (2002). Kelly and McDowell on perceptual content. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 7.   (Google)
Abstract: [0] In a recent issue of _EJAP_, Sean Kelly [1998] defended the position that perceptual content is non-conceptual. More specifically, he claimed that John McDowell's view that concepts involved in perception can be understood as expressible through the use of demonstratives is ultimately untenable. In what follows, I want to look more closely at Kelly's position, as well as suggest possible responses one could make on McDowell's behalf
Alm, Jan (2008). Affordances and the nature of perceptual content. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (2):161 – 177.   (Google)
Abstract: According to John McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. This paper criticizes this view by claiming that there is a certain kind of representational and non-conceptual perceptual content that is sensitive to bodily skills. After a brief introduction to McDowell's position, Merleau-Ponty's notion of body schema and Gibson's notion of affordance are presented. It is argued that affordances are constitutive of representational perceptual content, and that at least some affordances, the so-called 'conditional affordances', are essentially related to the body schema. This means that the perceptual content depends upon the nature of the body schema. Since the body schema does not pertain to the domain that our conceptual faculties operate upon, it is argued that this kind of perceptual content cannot be conceptual. At least some of that content is representational, yet it cannot feature as non-demonstrative conceptual content. It is argued that if it features as demonstrative conceptual content, it has to be captured by private concepts. Since McDowell's theory does not allow for the existence of a private language, it is concluded that at least some representational perceptual content is non-conceptual
Alston, William P. (1998). Perception and conception. In Pragmatism, Reason, and Norms: A Realistic Assessment. New York: Fordham University Press.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Ayers, Michael R. (2002). Is perceptual content ever conceptual? Philosophical Books 43 (1):5-17.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Balog, Katalin (2009). Jerry Fodor on Non-conceptual Content. Synthese 167 (3).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Proponents of non-conceptual content have recruited it for various philosophical jobs. Some epistemologists have suggested that it may play the role of “the given” that Sellars is supposed to have exorcised from philosophy. Some philosophers of mind (e.g., Dretske) have suggested that it plays an important role in the project of naturalizing semantics as a kind of halfway between merely information bearing and possessing conceptual content. Here I will focus on a recent proposal by Jerry Fodor. In a recent paper he characterizes non-conceptual content in a particular way and argues that it is plausible that it plays an explanatory role in accounting for certain auditory and visual phenomena. So he thinks that there is reason to believe that there is non-conceptual content. On the other hand, Fodor thinks that non-conceptual content has a limited role. It occurs only in the very early stages of perceptual processing prior to conscious awareness. My paper is examines Fodor’s characterization of non-conceptual content and his claims for its explanatory importance. I also discuss if Fodor has made a case for limiting non-conceptual content to non-conscious, sub-personal mental states.
Barber, Michael D. (2008). Holism and horizon: Husserl and McDowell on non-conceptual content. Husserl Studies 24 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: John McDowell rejects the idea that non-conceptual content can rationally justify empirical claims—a task for which it is ill-fitted by its non-conceptual nature. This paper considers three possible objections to his views: he cannot distinguish empty conception from the perceptual experience of an object; perceptual discrimination outstrips the capacity of concepts to keep pace; and experience of the empirical world is more extensive than the conceptual focusing within it. While endorsing McDowell’s rejection of what he means by non-conceptual content, and appreciating his insight into the experiential synthesis of intuition and conception (in particular, its role in grasping objects), I will argue that Edmund Husserl presents an even more comprehensive account of perceptual experience that explains how we experience the contribution of receptivity and sensibility and how they cooperate in perceptual discrimination. Further, it reveals “horizons”—a unique kind of contents, surplus content (rather than independent non-conceptual content)—beyond the synthesis of intuitive and conceptual contents through which objects are grasped. Such horizons play a constitutive role, making experience with its conceptual dimensions and justificatory potential possible; they in no way function like a bare given that is to fulfill some independent justificatory role. Whereas McDowell focuses on how experience does not take place in isolation from the exercise of conceptual capacities, Husserl complements his view by situating experience in a more encompassing whole and by elucidating the surplus-horizons that exceed the conceptual content of experience; play an inseparable, constitutive role within it; and indicate the limits of conceptual comprehension
Bermúdez, José Luis (1999). Cognitive impenetrability, phenomenology, and nonconceptual content. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):367-368.   (Google)
Abstract: This commentary discusses Pylyshyn's model of perceptual processing in the light of the philosophical distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual content of perception. Pylyshyn's processing distinction maps onto an important distinction in the phenomenology of visual perception
Bermudez, Jose Luis & Macpherson, Fiona (1998). Nonconceptual content and the nature of perceptual experience. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6.   (Cited by 11 | Google)
Abstract: [1] Recent philosophy of mind and epistemology has seen an important and influential trend towards accounting for at least some features of experiences in content-involving terms. It is a contested point whether ascribing content to experiences can account for all the intrinsic properties of experiences, but on many theories of experiences there are close links between the ascription of content and the ways in which experiences are ascribed and typed. The issues here have both epistemological and psychological dimensions. On the one hand, a theory of experiential content has a fundamental role in explaining how knowledge of the world can be acquired through experience. On the other hand, there are important psychological questions about the phenomenology of experiences and the conditions under which content ascriptions are made
Bermudez, Jose Luis (1995). Nonconceptual content: From perceptual experience to subpersonal computational states. Mind and Language 10 (4):333-69.   (Cited by 75 | Google | More links)
Bermudez, Jose Luis (online). Nonconceptual mental content. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Bermudez, Jose Luis (1994). Peacocke's argument against the autonomy of nonconceptual representational content. Mind and Language 9 (4):402-18.   (Cited by 20 | Google | More links)
Bermúdez, José Luis (2007). What is at stake in the debate on nonconceptual content? Philosophical Perspectives 21 (1):55–72.   (Google | More links)
Brewer, Bill (2005). Perceptual experience has conceptual content. In Ernest Sosa & Matthias Steup (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Blackwell.   (Cited by 7 | Google)
Abstract: I take it for granted that sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs; indeed this claim forms the first premise of my central argument for (CC). 1 The subsequent stages of the argument are intended to establish that a person has such a reason for believing something about the way things are in the world around him only if he is in some mental state or other with a conceptual content: a conceptual state. Thus, given that sense experiential states do provide reasons for empirical beliefs, they must have conceptual content
Brinck, Ingar (1999). Nonconceptual content and the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5):760-761.   (Google)
Abstract: The notion of nonconceptual content in Dienes & Perner's theory is examined. A subject may be in a state with nonconceptual content without having the concepts that would be used to describe the state. Nonconceptual content does not seem to be a clear-cut case of either implicit or explicit knowledge. It underlies a kind of practical knowledge, which is not reducible to procedural knowledge, but is accessible to the subject and under voluntary control
Byrne, Alex (2003). Consciousness and nonconceptual content. Philosophical Studies 113 (3):261-274.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Byrne, Alex (2005). Perception and conceptual content. In Ernest Sosa & Matthias Steup (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Blackwell.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links)
Byrne, Alex (1996). Spin control. In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview.   (Google)
Chadha, Monima (2009). Contents of experience. Sophia 48 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I aim to situate the Naiyayika theory of perception in contemporary philosophy of mind. Following the ancients, I suggest we reconsider the taxonomy and the assumed interactions between kinds of perceptual content. This reclassification will lead us to reconsider some aspects of the Cartesian conception of mind that continue to influence the work of contemporary theorists. I focus attention on different accounts of sensory perception favoured by ancient Indian Naiyayika philosophers and Descartes as a starting point for reconsidering contemporary accounts of perceptual content.I show that Descartes' account of sensory perception provides the impetus for a causal-explanatory account of conceptual content in terms of its non-conceptual counterpart. Though contemporary philosophers claim to have cast off their Cartesian heritage, my discussion reveals that some of its tenets continue to influence the work of contemporary philosophers. I offer reasons for rejecting yet another Cartesian influence and recommend that we follow the Nyaya taxonomy of perceptual states
Chakrabarti, Arindam (2003). Perception, apperception and non-conceptual content. In Perspectives on Consciousness. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Chrisley, Ron & Parthemore, J. (2007). Synthetic phenomenology:Exploiting embodiment to specify the non-conceptual content of visual experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7):44-58.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Not all research in machine consciousness aims to instantiate phenomenal states in artefacts. For example, one can use artefacts that do not themselves have phenomenal states, merely to simulate or model organisms that do. Nevertheless, one might refer to all of these pursuits -- instantiating, simulating or modelling phenomenal states in an artefact -- as 'synthetic phenomenality'. But there is another way in which artificial agents (be they simulated or real) may play a crucial role in understanding or creating consciousness: 'synthetic phenomenology'. Explanations involving specific experiential events require a means of specifying the contents of experience; not all of them can be specified linguistically. One alternative, at least for the case of visual experience, is to use depictions that either evoke or refer to the content of the experience. Practical considerations concerning the generation and integration of such depictions argue in favour of a synthetic approach: the generation of depictions through the use of an embodied, perceiving and acting agent, either virtual or real. Synthetic phenomenology, then, is the attempt to use the states, interactions and capacities of an artificial agent for the purpose of specifying the contents of conscious experience. This paper takes the first steps toward seeing how one might use a robot to specify the non- conceptual content of the visual experience of an (hypothetical) organism that the robot models
Chrisley, Ronald L. (1994). Taking embodiment seriously: Nonconceptual content and robotics. In Kenneth M. Ford, C. Glymour & Patrick Hayes (eds.), Android Epistemology. MIT Press.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Chuard, Philippe (2006). Demonstrative concepts without reidentification. Philosophical Studies 130 (2):153-201.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Conceptualist accounts of the representational content of perceptual experiences have it that a subject _S_ can experience no object, property, relation, etc., unless _S_ "i# possesses and "ii# exercises concepts for such object, property, or relation. Perceptual experiences, on such a view, represent the world in a way that is conceptual
Chuard, Philippe (ms). Perceptual reasons.   (Google)
Abstract: According to Conceptualists like John McDowell and Bill Brewer, the representational content of perceptual experiences is wholly conceptual. One of the main!and only!arguments they advance for this claim has to do with the epistemological role of perceptual experiences. I focus on Bill Brewers "1999# version of the argument. I show why Brewer fails to satisfactorily motivate the premises of his argument, and suggest that opponents of Conceptualism could accept these premises without thereby endorsing the conclusion. Finally, I consider whether the conclusion really supports Conceptualism
Chuard, Philippe (2007). The Riches of experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (s 9-10):20-42.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Suppose you see a red ball. Unless you happen to be in a psychologist
Clark, Andy (ms). Connectionism, nonconceptual content, and representational redescription.   (Annotation | Google)
Coliva, Annalisa (2003). The argument from the finer-grained content of colour experiences: A redefinition of its role within the debate between McDowell and non-conceptual theorists. Dialectica 57 (1):57-70.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Crane, Tim (1988). Concepts in perception. Analysis 48 (June):150-53.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Crane, Tim (1992). The nonconceptual content of experience. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 110 | Google)
Crane, Tim (1988). The waterfall illusion. Analysis 48 (June):142-47.   (Cited by 18 | Google)
Crowther, T. M. (2006). Two conceptions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism. Erkenntnis 65 (2):245-276.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Though it enjoys widespread support, the claim that perceptual experiences possess nonconceptual content has been vigorously disputed in the recent literature by those who argue that the content of perceptual experience must be conceptual content. Nonconceptualism and conceptualism are often assumed to be well-defined theoretical approaches that each constitute unitary claims about the contents of experience. In this paper I try to show that this implicit assumption is mistaken, and what consequences this has for the debate about perceptual experience. I distinguish between two different ways that nonconceptualist (and conceptualist) proposals about perceptual content can be understood: as claims about the constituents that compose perceptual contents or as claims about whether a subject
Cunningham, Suzanne (1989). Perception, meaning, and mind. Synthese 80 (August):223-241.   (Google | More links)
Cussins, Adrian (2003). Content, conceptual content, and nonconceptual content. In York H. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content. MIT Press.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Cussins, Adrian (1993). Nonconceptual content and the elimination of misonceived composites. Mind and Language 8 (2):234-52.   (Google)
Cussins, Adrian (1990). The connectionist construction of concepts. In Margaret A. Boden (ed.), The Philosophy of AI. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 107 | Annotation | Google)
Abstract: The character of computational modelling of cognition depends on an underlying theory of representation. Classical cognitive science has exploited the syntax/semantics theory of representation that derives from logic. But this has had the consequence that the kind of psychological explanation supported by classical cognitive science is
_conceptualist_:
psychological phenomena are modelled in terms of relations that hold between concepts, and between the sensors/effectors and concepts. This kind of explanation is inappropriate for the Proper Treatment of Connectionism (Smolensky 1988)
Dokic, J (2001). Shades and concepts. Analysis 61 (3):193-201.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Dretske, Fred (2003). Sensation and perception (1981). In Essays on Nonconceptual Content. Cambridge MA: Bradford Book/MIT Press.   (Google)
Duhau, Laura (2009). Conceptuality and Generality: A Criticism of an Argument for Content Dualism. Crítica 41 (123):39-63.   (Google)
Forman, David (2006). Learning and the Necessity of Non-Conceptual Content in Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". In Michael P. Wolf & Mark Lance (eds.), The Self-Correcting Enterprise: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars. Rodopi.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: For Sellars, the possibility of empirical knowledge presupposes the existence of "sense impressions" in the perceiver, i.e., non-conceptual states of perceptual consciousness. But this role for sense impressions does not implicate Sellars' account in the Myth of the Given: sense impressions do not stand in a justificatory relation to instances of perceptual knowledge; their existence is rather a condition for the possibility of the acquisition of empirical concepts. Sellars suggests that learning empirical concepts presupposes that we can remember certain past facts that we could not conceptualize at the time they obtained. And such memory presupposes, in turn, the existence of certain (past) non-conceptual sensory states that can be conceptualized
Ginsborg, Hannah (2006). Empirical concepts and the content of experience. European Journal of Philosophy 14 (3):349-372.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Gómez-Torrente, Mario (1998). Report of an unsuccessful search for nonconceptual content. Philosophical Issues 9:369-379.   (Google | More links)
Gonzalez Arnal, Stella (2006). Non-articulable content and the realm of reasons. Teorema 25 (1):121-131.   (Google)
Gunther, York H. (2001). Content, illusion, partition. Philosophical Studies 102 (2):185-202.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Philosophers of mind have recently sought to establish a theoret- ical use for nonconceptual content. Although there is disagreement about what nonconceptual content is supposed to be, this much is clear. A state with nonconceptual content is mental. Hence, while one may deny that refrigerators and messy rooms have conceptual capacities, their states, as physical and not mental, do not have nonconceptual content. A state with nonconceptual content is also intentional, which is to say that it represents a feature of the world for a subject. It may be tempting to think of qualitative states as having nonconceptual content since they can be experienced by indi- viduals independently of their possession of the requisite concepts, e.g. someone could experience pains, itches or tingles without possessing the concept pain, itch or tingle. But on such a view, one would have to assume that qualitative states are representational since mental states cannot be candidates for nonconceptuality unless they have intentional properties.2
Gunther, York H. (ed.) (2003). Essays on Nonconceptual Content. MIT Press.   (Cited by 28 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Recent work by philosophers of mind and psychology on nonconceptual content.
Hamlyn, David W. (1994). Perception, sensation, and non-conceptual content. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (175):139-53.   (Google | More links)
Hanna, Robert (2005). Kant and nonconceptual content. European Journal Of Philosophy 13 (2):247-290.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Hanna, Robert (2008). Kantian non-conceptualism. Philosophical Studies 137 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: There are perceptual states whose representational content cannot even in principle be conceptual. If that claim is true, then at least some perceptual states have content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content. Furthermore the intrinsically “orientable” spatial character of essentially non-conceptual content entails not only that all perceptual states contain non-conceptual content in this essentially distinct sense, but also that consciousness goes all the way down into so-called unconscious or subpersonal mental states. Both my argument for the existence of essentially non-conceptual content and my theory of its structure and function have a Kantian provenance
Heck, Richard G. (2007). Are there different kinds of content? In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell.   (Google)
Abstract: In an earlier paper, "Non-conceptual Content and the 'Space of Reasons'", I distinguished two forms of the view that perceptual content is non-conceptual, which I called the 'state view' and the 'content view'. On the latter, but not the former, perceptual states have a different kind of content than do cognitive states. Many have found it puzzling why anyone would want to make this claim and, indeed, what it might mean. This paper attempts to address these questions
Heil, John (1991). Perceptual experience. In Dretske and His Critics. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Hopp, Walter (2009). Conceptualism and the myth of the given. European Journal of Philosophy 17 (3):363-385.   (Google | More links)
Hutto, Daniel D. (1998). Nonconceptual content and objectivity. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: Aristotle once developed the difference between man and animal in the following way: animals can understand each other by indicating to each other what excites their desire so they can seek it, and what injures them, so they can flee from it. To men alone is logos given as well, so that they can make manifest to each other what is useful and harmful, and therefore what is right and wrong. A profound thesis. -- Gadamer, "Man and Language"
Heck Jr, Richard G. (2000). Nonconceptual content and the "space of reasons". Philosophical Review 109 (4):483-523.   (Google | More links)
Kelly, Sean D., Articles.   (Google)
Abstract: I begin by examining a recent debate between John McDowell and Christopher Peacocke over whether the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual. Although I am sympathetic to Peacocke’s claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual, I suggest a number of ways in which his arguments fail to make that case. This failure stems from an over-emphasis on the “fine-grainedness” of perceptual content – a feature that is relatively unimportant to its non-conceptual structure. I go on to describe two other features of perceptual experience that are more likely to be relevant to the claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual. These features are 1) the dependence of a perceived object on the perceptual context in which it is perceived and 2) the dependence of a perceived property on the object it is perceived to be a property of
Kelly, Sean D. (2001). Demonstrative concepts and experience. Philosophical Review 110 (3):397-420.   (Cited by 21 | Google | More links)
Kelly, Sean D. (2001). The non-conceptual content of perceptual experience: Situation dependence and fineness of grain. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3):601-608.   (Cited by 29 | Google | More links)
Kelly, Sean D. (2002). What makes perceptual content non-conceptual? Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: the world. 1 Whereas the content of our beliefs, thoughts, and judgements necessarily involves "conceptualization" or "concept application", the content of our perceptual experiences is, according to Evans, "non-conceptual". Because Evans takes it for granted that we are often able to entertain thoughts about an object in virtue of having perceived it, a central problem in
Kjosavik, Frode (2003). Perceptual intimacy and conceptual inadequacy: A Husserlian critique of McDowell's internalism. In Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.   (Google | More links)
Bengson, John; Grube, Enrico & Korman, Daniel Z. (forthcoming). A New Framework for Conceptualism. Noûs.   (Google)
Abstract: Conceptualism is the thesis that, for any perceptual experience E, (i) E has a Fregean proposition as its content and (ii) a subject of E must possess a concept for each item represented by E. We advance a framework within which conceptualism may be defended against its most serious objections (e.g., Richard Heck's argument from nonveridical experience). The framework is of independent interest for the philosophy of mind and epistemology given its implications for debates regarding transparency, relationalism and representationalism, demonstrative thought, phenomenal character, and the speckled hen objection to modest foundationalism.
Kovacs, David Mark (2009). Memory and Imagery in Russell's The Analysis of Mind. Prolegomena 8 (2):193-206.   (Google)
Abstract: According to the theory Russell defends in The Analysis of Mind, ‘true memories’ (roughly, memories that are not remembering-hows) are recollections of past events accompanied by a feeling of familiarity. While memory images play a vital role in this account, Russell does not pay much attention to the fact that imagery plays different roles in different sorts of memory. In most cases that Russell considers, memory is based on an image that serves as a datum (imagebased memories), but there are other cases in which memory judgment requires an image without being based on it (answer-memories). A good example for the former is when a person, asked what the colour of the sea was last afternoon, recalls an image and forms a judgment on this basis. In the second case she may recognize the sea and entertain a memory image of it without ‘reading off’ the memory judgment from this picture. That is, the image does not prompt but itself is part of the propositional content of answer memories. Since in this latter case the feeling of familiarity is constitutive of the recollection but cannot serve as its explanans, answer memories do not conform to Russell’s account. According to Lindsay Judson this is not a vice of the theory, since Russell never meant to extend it to answer memories. Despite having a certain appeal of benevolence, Judson’s interpretation is not supported by textual evidence. Taking side with David Pears, I will argue that Russell did not properly differentiate between image-based memory and answer memory, and illegitimately extended his theory to the latter.
Kriegel, Uriah (2004). Perceptual experience, conscious content, and nonconceptual content. Essays in Philosophy 5 (1):1-14.   (Google)
Kulvicki, John (2007). Perceptual Content is Vertically Articulate. American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (4):357-369.   (Google)
Laurier, Daniel (2004). Nonconceptual contents vs nonconceptual states. Grazer Philosophische Studien 68 (1):23-43.   (Google)
Abstract: The question to be discussed is whether the distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual is best understood as pertaining primarily to intentional contents or to intentional states or attitudes. Some authors have suggested that it must be understood in the second way, in order to make the claim that experiences are nonconceptual compatible with the idea that one can also believe what one experiences. I argue that there is no need to do so, and that a conceptual content can be understood as being simply one which is composed of concepts, without compromising this intuitive view of the relation between beliefs and experiences
Lerman, Hemdat (2010). Non-conceptual experiential content and reason-giving. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1):1-23.   (Google)
Abstract: According to John McDowell and Bill Brewer, our experiences have the type of content which can be the content of judgements - content which is the result of the actualization of specific conceptual abilities. They defend this view by arguing that our experiences must have such content in order for us to be able to think about our environment. In this paper I show that they do not provide a conclusive argument for this view. Focusing on Brewer's version of the argument, I show that it rests on a questionable assumption - namely, that if a subject can recognize the normative bearing of a mental content upon what she should think and do, then this content must be the result of the actualization of conceptual capacities (and in this sense conceptual). I argue that considerations regarding the roles played by experience and concepts in our mental lives may require us to reject this assumption
Luntley, Michael (2003). Nonconceptual content and the sound of music. Mind and Language 18 (4):402-426.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Mandik, Pete (ms). Color-Consciousness Conceptualism.   (Google)
Abstract: The goal of the present paper is to defend against a certain line of attack the view that conscious experience of color is no more fine-grained that the repertoire of non- demonstrative concepts that a perceiver is able to bring to bear in perception. The line of attack in question is an alleged empirical argument - the Diachronic Indistinguishability Argument (DIA) - based on pairs of colors so similar that they can be discriminated when simultaneously presented but not when presented across a memory delay. My aim here is to show that this argument fails.
Martin, Michael G. F. (1992). Perception, concepts, and memory. Philosophical Review 101 (4):745-63.   (Cited by 26 | Google | More links)
Matthen, Mohan (2008). Reply to Egan and Clark. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2):415–421.   (Google | More links)
McDowell, John (1994). Lecture III: Non-conceptual content. In Mind and World. Harvard University Press.   (Google)
McDowell, John (1986). Singular thought and the extent of ``inner space''. In John McDowell & Philip Pettit (eds.), Subject, Thought, and Context. Clarendon Press.   (Google)
McFarland, Duncan (1998). Crane on concepts and experiential content. Analysis 58 (1):54-58.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Mellor, D. H. (1988). Crane's waterfall illusion. Analysis 48 (June):147-50.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Millar, Alan (1991). Concepts, experience, and inference. Mind 100 (399):495-505.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Montague, Michelle (2009). The Content of Perceptual Experience. In B. McLaughlin & A. Beckermann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind.   (Google)
Neale, Stephen (1998). Grain and content. Philosophical Issues 9:353-358.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: lt is widely held that entertaining a belief or forming a judgement involves the exercise of conceptual capacities; and to this extent the representational content of a belief or judgement is said to be "con— ceptual". According to Gareth Evans (1980), not all psychological states have conceptual content in this sense. In particular, perceptual states have non—conceptual content; it is not until one forms a judgement on the basis of a perceptual experience that one touches the realm of conceptual content
Nes, S. Anders (2006). Content in Thought and Perception. Dissertation, Oxford University. Dissertation, Oxford University   (Google)
Nes, Anders (2006). Content in thought and perception. Dissertation, Oxford University   (Google)
Abstract: The dissertation addresses a debate in the philosophy of perception between conceptualists and nonconceptualists. Its principal thesis is that the intentional content of a perceptual experience is the content of a thought that a reflective subject is in a position to think if she has the experience. I call this claim, endorsed by conceptualists, the thesis of content congruence. Two principal lines of argument are put forward for it. The first, ‘simple’ argument contends that a perceptual experience is a state in which it perceptually appears to the subject that things are thus and so; that a reflective subject who has an experience is in a position to think that things are thus and so; and that the subject in question, in doing so, thinks a thought with the same content as her experience. The second line of argument appeals to the role of perceptual experience in intentional explanation of observational beliefs. It makes the case that such explanation presumes that there is a non-trivial, non-vacuous law linking perceptual experiences with observational beliefs, and argues that an adherent of content congruence is significantly better placed to formulate such a law (consistently with her view) than her ‘content nonconceptualist’ opponent. The thesis of content congruence has often been associated in the literature with the thesis of state conceptualism, i.e. the claim that the representational capacities in virtue of the activation of which a perceptual experience has the content it has are conceptual. I reject the latter, and explain why we should not expect the denial of that claim, i.e. state nonconceptualism, to be incompatible with content congruence. I defend moreover the thesis of content congruence against the objection that it confuses sense and reference, and the objection that it leads to a viciously circular or otherwise inadequate account of observational or demonstrative concepts.
Noe, Alva (ms). Perception, action, and nonconceptual content.   (Google)
Abstract: profile deforms as we move about it. As perceivers we are masters of the patterns of sensorimotor contingency that shape our perceptual interaction with the world. We expect changes in such things as apparent size, shape and color to occur as we actively explore the environment. In encountering perspective-dependent changes of this sort, we learn how things are quite apart form our particular perspective. Our possession of these skills is constitutive of our ability to see (and generally to perceive). This is confirmed by the fact that we can disrupt a person
Pacherie, Elisabeth (2000). Levels of perceptual content. Philsophical Studies 100 (3):237-54.   (Google | More links)
Pappas, George S. (2003). On some philosophical accounts of perception. In Philosophy in America at the Turn of the Century (APA Centennial Supplement Journal of Philosophical Research). Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Peacocke, Christopher (1992). Anchoring conceptual content: Scenarios and perception. In Cognition, Semantics and Philosophy. Norwell: Kluwer.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Peacocke, Christopher (2001). Does perception have a nonconceptual content? Journal of Philosophy 98 (5):239-264.   (Cited by 51 | Google | More links)
Peacocke, Christopher (1998). Nonconceptual content defended. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2):381-388.   (Cited by 36 | Google | More links)
Peacocke, Christopher (1994). Nonconceptual content: Kinds, rationales, and relations. Mind and Language 4 (4):419-29.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Peacocke, Christopher (2001). Phenomenology and nonconceptual content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3):609-615.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links)
Phillips, Ian (2005). Experience and Intentional Content. Dissertation, Oxford University   (Google)
Abstract: Strong or Pure Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenal character of any perceptual experience can be exhaustively characterized solely by reference to its Intentional content. Strong or Pure Anti -Intentionalism is the claim that the phenomenal character of any perceptual experience can be exhaustively characterized solely by reference to its non-Intentional properties
Poellner, Peter (2003). Non-conceptual content, experience and the self. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 (2):32-57.   (Cited by 8 | Google)
Poston, Ted (online). Cognitive abilities and the conceptualist/nonconceptualist debate (long version).   (Google)
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (ms). Visual indexes and nonconceptual reference.   (Google)
Raftopoulos, Athanassios & Müller, Vincent C. (2006). Nonconceptual demonstrative reference. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2):251-285.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The paper argues that the reference of perceptual demonstratives is fixed in a causal nondescriptive way through the nonconceptual content of perception. That content consists first in spatiotemporal information establishing the existence of a separate persistent object retrieved from a visual scene by the perceptual object segmentation processes that open an object-file for that object. Nonconceptual content also consists in other transducable information, that is, information that is retrieved directly in a bottom-up way from the scene (motion, shape, etc). The nonconceptual content of the mental states induced when one uses a perceptual demonstrative constitutes the mode of presentation of the perceptual demonstrative that individuates but does not identify the object of perceptual awareness and allows reference to it. On that account, perceptual demonstratives put us in a de re relationship with objects in the world through the non-conceptual information retrieved directly from the objects in the environment.
Raftopoulos, Athanasios (2008). Perceptual systems and realism. Synthese 164 (1).   (Google)
Abstract:  Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism one has to show first that perception relates us directly with the world without any intermediary conceptual framework. The result of this direct link is the nonconceptual content of experience. Second, one has to show that part of the nonconceptual content extracted from the environment correctly represents features of mind independent objects. With regard to the first condition, I have argued elsewhere that a part of visual processing, which I call “perception,” is theory-neutral and nonconceptual. In this paper, facing the second demand, I argue that a part of the nonconceptual content of perception presents properties that are the properties of mind independent objects. I claim first that nonconceptual content is the appropriate level of analysis of the issue of realism since it avoids the main problems besetting various types of analysis of the issue at the level of beliefs about the world. Then I claim that a subset of the nonconceptual content presents features of objects in the environment as they really are
Roskies, Adina L. (2008). A new argument for nonconceptual content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):633–659.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper provides a novel argument against conceptualism, the claim that the content of human experience, including perceptual experience, is entirely conceptual. Conceptualism entails that the content of experience is limited by the concepts that we possess and deploy. I present an argument to show that such a view is exceedingly costly—if the nature of our experience is entirely conceptual, then we cannot account for concept learning: all perceptual concepts must be innate. The version of nativism that results is incompatible with naturalistic accounts of concept learning. This cost can be avoided, and concept learning accounted for if nonconceptual content of experience is admitted
Runzo, Joseph (1982). The radical conceptualization of perceptual experience. American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (July):205-218.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (2006). Sellarsian perspectives on perception and non-conceptual content. In Mark Lance & Michael P. Wolf (eds.), The Self-Correcting Enterprise: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars. Rodopi.   (Google | More links)
Sedivy, Sonia (1996). Must conceptually informed perceptual experience involve nonconceptual content? Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):413-31.   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Shieber, Joseph (forthcoming). On the Possibility of Conceptually Structured Experience: Demonstrative Concepts and Fineness of Grain. Inquiry.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I consider one of the influential challenges to the notion that perceptual experience might be completely conceptually structured, a challenge that rests on the idea that conceptual structure cannot do justice to the fineness of grain of perceptual experience. In so doing, I canvass John McDowell’s attempt to meet this challenge by appeal to the notion of demonstrative concepts and review some criticisms recently leveled at McDowell’s deployment of demonstrative concepts for this purpose by Sean D. Kelly. Finally, I suggest that, though Kelly’s criticisms might challenge McDowell’s original presentation of demonstrative concepts, a modified notion of demonstrative concept is available to the conceptualist that is proof against Kelly’s criticisms.
Shim, Michael K. (2005). The duality of non-conceptual content in Husserl's phenomenology of perception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2):209-229.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Recently, a number of epistemologists have argued that there are no non-conceptual elements in representational content. On their view, the only sort of non-conceptual elements are components of sub-personal organic hardware that, because they enjoy no veridical role, must be construed epistemologically irrelevant. By reviewing a 35-year-old debate initiated by Dagfinn F
Speaks, Jeff (2005). Is there a problem about nonconceptual content? Philosophical Review 114 (3):359-98.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In the past twenty years, issues about the relationship between perception and thought have largely been framed in terms of the question of whether the contents of perception are nonconceptual. I argue that this debate has rested on an ambiguity in `nonconceptual content' and some false presuppositions about what is required for concept possession. Once these are cleared away, I argue that none of the arguments which have been advanced about nonconceptual content do much to threaten the natural view that perception and thought are relations to the same kind of content.
Stalnaker, Robert (2003). What might nonconceptual content be? In York H. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content. MIT Press.   (Cited by 31 | Google | More links)
Stalnaker, Robert (1998). What might nonconceptual content be? Philosophical Issues 9:339-352.   (Google | More links)
Stoltz, Jonathan (2006). Sakya pandita and the status of concepts. Philosophy East and West 56 (4).   (Google)
Abstract: : The thirteenth-century Tibetan thinker Sakya Pandita was a diehard supporter of nominalism with respect to abstract entities. Here, two arguments given by Sakya Pandita against the robust existence of concepts (don spyi) are analyzed and elucidated. The first argument is rooted in the Buddhist idea that conceptual thought is unsound, whereas the second argument arises from considerations of intersubjectivity and verification. By presenting these arguments we gain both a fuller picture of the central role played by concepts within the Tibetan tradition of philosophy of mind and a better appreciation of the philosophical acuity of the Tibetan polymath Sakya Pandita
Toribio, Josefa (2007). Nonconceptual content. Philosophy Compass 2 (3):445–460.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Toribio, Josefa (2002). Perceptual experience and its contents. Journal Of Mind And Behavior 23 (4):375-392.   (Google | More links)
Toribio Matea, Josefa (2002). Perceptual experience and its contents. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (4):375-392.   (Google)
Toribio, Josefa (2008). State versus content: The unfair trial of perceptual nonconceptualism. Erkenntnis 69 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: It has recently been pointed out that perceptual nonconceptualism admits of two different and logically independent interpretations. On the first (content) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the kind of content perceptual experiences have. On the second (state) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the relation that holds between a subject undergoing a perceptual experience and its content. For the state nonconceptualist, it thus seems consistent to hold that both perceptual experiences and beliefs share the same (conceptual) content, but that for a subject to undergo a perceptual experience, the subject need not possess the concepts involved in a correct characterization of such content. I argue that the consistency of this position requires a non-Fregean notion of content that fails to capture the way the subject grasps the world as being. Hence state nonconceptualism leaves perceptual content attribution unsupported. Yet, on a characterization of content along the relevant (neo-Fregean) lines, this position would become incoherent, as it would entail that a subject could exercise cognitive abilities she doesn’t possess. I conclude that, given the notion of content demanded by the debate, the state view does entail the content view after all
Tye, Michael (1995). A representational theory of pains and their phenomenal character. Philosophical Perspectives 9:223-39.   (Cited by 30 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Tye, Michael (2006). Nonconceptual content and fineness of grain. In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Tye, Michael (2006). Nonconceptual content, richness, and fineness of grain. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 13 | Google)
Tye, Michael (2005). On the nonconceptual content of experience. Schriftenreihe-Wittgenstein Gesellschaft.   (Google)
Abstract: I suppose that substantive philosophical theses are much like second marriages. The philo- sophical thesis I wish to discuss in this paper is the thesis that experiences have nonconceptual content. I shall not attempt to argue that _all_ experiences have nonconceptual content nor that the only contents experiences have are nonconceptual. Instead, I want to ? esh out the thesis of nonconceptual content for experience in more detail than has been offered hithertofore and to provide a variety of motivations for the view
Wolff, Franklin F. (1939). Concept, percept, and reality. Philosophical Review 48 (4):398-414.   (Google | More links)
Wrathall, Mark A. (2005). Non-rational grounds and non-conceptual content. Synthesis Philosophica 2 (40):265-278.   (Google | More links)
Wright, Wayne (2003). McDowell, demonstrative concepts, and nonconceptual representational content. Disputation.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In giving an account of the content of perceptual experience, several authors, including Fred Dretske, Gareth Evans, Christopher Peacocke, and Michael Tye, have employed the notion of nonconceptual representational content.[1]
Wu, Wayne (2008). Visual attention, conceptual content, and doing it right. Mind 117 (468).   (Google)
Abstract: Reflection on the fine-grained information required for visual guidance of action has suggested that visual content is non-conceptual. I argue that in a common type of visually guided action, namely the use of manipulable artefacts, vision has conceptual content. Specifically, I show that these actions require visual attention and that concepts are involved in directing attention. In acting with artefacts, there is a way of doing it right as determined by the artefact’s conventional use. Attention must reflect our understanding of the function and appropriate ways to use these artefacts, understanding that requires possession of the relevant concept. As a result, we attend to the artefact’s relevant functional properties. In these cases, attention is structured by concepts. This discussion has a bearing on the dual visual stream hypothesis. While it is often held that the two visual streams are functionally independent, the argument of this essay is that the constraints on attention suggest a functional interaction between them.

3.11b Color Experience

Baldwin, Thomas (1992). The projective theory of sensory content. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 12 | Google)
Berchielli, Laura (1995). Representing color: Discussions and problems. In Bilder Im Geiste. Amsterdam: Rodopi.   (Google)
Billock, Vincent A. & Tsou, Brian H. (2004). Color, qualia, and psychophysical constraints on equivalence of color experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (1):164-165.   (Google)
Abstract: It has been suggested that difficult-to-quantify differences in visual processing may prevent researchers from equating the color experience of different observers. However, spectral locations of unique hues are remarkably invariant with respect to everything other than gross differences in preretinal and photoreceptor absorptions. This suggests a stereotyping of neural color processing and leads us to posit that minor differences in observer neurophysiology may be irrelevant to color experience
Brogaard, Berit, Perceptual content and monadic truth: On Cappelen and Hawthorne's relativism and monadic truth.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: They call T1-T5 the ‘simple view’ or ‘Simplicity’ for short (I will use ‘Simplicity’ and ‘the monadic truth package’ synonymously). C & H say that Simplicity is neutral on what exactly propositions are. They may be Russellian or of some different variety. This, however, does not seem quite right. For example, it is not obvious that Simplicity and Fregeanism are compatible. The 1- intension of ‘That instantiates a property that normally gives rise to red sensations in me’ has a truth-value only relative to a centered world (or a triple of a world, an individual and a time) (Chalmers 2006b). So, Simplicity rules out a treatment of 1-intensions as propositions (and..
Hilbert, David R. & Byrne, Alex (web). How do things look to the color blind? In J. Cohen & M. Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science. MIT Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: forthcoming in Color Ontology and Color Science, ed. J. Cohen and M. Matthen (MIT)
Chalmers, David J. (2006). Perception and the fall from Eden. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 17 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory
Churchland, Paul M. (2005). Chimerical colors: Some phenomenological predictions from cognitive neuroscience. Philosophical Psychology 18 (5):527-560.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The Hurvich-Jameson (H-J) opponent-process network offers a familiar account of the empirical structure of the phenomenological color space for humans, an account with a number of predictive and explanatory virtues. Its successes form the bulk of the existing reasons for suggesting a strict identity between our various color sensations on the one hand, and our various coding vectors across the color-opponent neurons in our primary visual pathways on the other. But anti-reductionists standardly complain that the systematic parallels discovered by the H-J network are just empirical correspondences, constructed post facto, with no predictive or explanatory purchase on the intrinsic characters of qualia proper. The present paper disputes that complaint, by illustrating that the H-J model yields some novel and unappreciated predictions, and some novel and unappreciated explanations, concerning the qualitative characters of a considerable variety of color sensations possible for human experience, color sensations that normal people have almost certainly never had before, color sensations whose accurate descriptions in ordinary language appear semantically ill-formed or even self-contradictory. Specifically, these "impossible" color sensations are activation-vectors (across our opponent-process neurons) that lie inside the space of neuronally possible activation-vectors, but outside the central 'color spindle' that confines the familiar range of sensations for possible objective colors. These extra-spindle chimerical-color sensations correspond to no reflective color that you will ever see objectively displayed on a physical object. But the H-J model both predicts their existence and explains their highly anomalous qualitative characters in some detail. It also suggests how to produce these rogue sensations by a simple procedure made available in the latter half of this paper. The relevant color plates will allow you to savor these sensations for yourself
Cohen, Jonathan, Color relationalism and color phenomenology.   (Google)
Abstract: Color relationalism is the view that colors are constituted in terms of relations between subjects and objects. The most historically important form of color relationalism is the classic dispositionalist view according to which, for example red is the disposition to look red to standard observers in standard conditions (mutatis mutandis for other colors).1 However, it has become increasingly apparent in recent years that a commitment to the relationality of colors bears interest that goes beyond dispositionalism (Cohen, 2004; Matthen, 1999, 2001, 2005; Thompson, 1995). Accordingly, it is an important project for those interested in the metaphysics of color to sort through and assess different forms of color relationalism. There is, however, a powerful and general cluster of objections that has been thought by many to amount to a decisive refutation of any and all forms of color relationalism. Although this idea has been developed in a number of ways, the basic thought is that relationalism — qua theory of color — is at odds with the manifest evidence of color phenomenology, and that this clash between theory and data should be resolved by giving up the theory
Cohen, Jonathan & Matthen, Mohan (2010). Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science. Mit Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The Introduction discusses determinables and similarity spaces and ties together the contributions to Color Ontology and Color Science.
Davis, Steven (ed.) (2000). Color Perception: Philosophical, Psychological, Artistic, and Computational Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 4 | Google)
Abstract: Color has been studied for centuries, but has never been completely understood. Digital technology has recently sparked a burgeoning interdisciplinary interest in color. The fact that color is a quality of perception rather than a physical quality brings up a host of interesting questions of interest to both artists and scholars. This volume--the ninth in the Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science series--brings together chapters by psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists, and artists to explore the nature of human color perception with the aim to further our understanding of color by encouraging interdisciplinary interaction
Egan, Frances (2008). The content of color experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2):407–414.   (Google | More links)
Eli Kalderon, Mark (online). The multiply qualitative.   (Google)
Abstract: What is the relation between colors and our experience of them? A na?ve thought is this?the phenomenal character of color experience is determined by the qualitative character of the perceived color. When Norm perceives a red tomato, the qualitative character of his color experience is determined by the qualitative character of the color manifest in his experience of the tomato. If however, colors are mind- independent qualities of material objects, as they seem, pre-philosophically to be, then this can seem to con?ict with the possibility, if it is one, of veridical perceptual variation. Indeed, it is largely on this basis that Shoemaker ?????? criticizes the version of representationalism defended by Hilbert and Kalderon ??????
Fisher, Justin C. (online). Color representations as hash values.   (Google)
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to answer the following question: When we have mental states that represent certain things as being colored, what properties are our mental states representing these things as having?
Fogelin, Robert J. (1984). Hume and the missing shade of blue. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (December):263-272.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Harman, Gilbert (1996). Explaining objective color in terms of subjective reactions. Philosophical Issues 7:1-17.   (Cited by 28 | Google | More links)
Harman, Gilbert (1996). Qualia and color concepts. Philosophical Issues 7:75-79.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Hardin, C. L. (2000). Red and yellow, green and blue, warm and cool: Explaining color appearance. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (8-9):113-122.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Hellie, Benj (2005). Noise and perceptual indiscriminability. Mind 114 (455):481-508.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Perception represents colors inexactly. This inexactness results from phenomenally manifest noise, and results in apparent violations of the transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. Whether these violations are genuine depends on what is meant by 'transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability'.
Holman, Emmett L. (2002). Color eliminativism and color experience. Pacific Philosophical Quareterly 83 (1):38-56.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Jakab, Zoltan (2003). Phenomenal projection. Psyche 9 (4).   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Jakab, Zolt (2006). Revelation and normativity in visual experience. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (1):25-56.   (Google | More links)
Kalderon, Mark Eli, Color and the problem of perceptual presence.   (Google)
Abstract: Very often, objects in the scene before us are somehow perceived to be constant or uniform or unchanging in color, shape, size, or position, even while their appearance with respect to these features somehow changes. This is a familiar and pervasive fact about perception, even if it is notoriously difficult to describe accurately let alone adequately account for. These difficulties are not unrelated—how we are inclined to describ the phenomenology of perceptual constancy will affect how we are inclined to accoun for it
Kalderon, Mark Eli (forthcoming). Color Illusion. Nous.   (Google)
Abstract: As standardly conceived,an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.
Kalderon, Mark Eli (2008). Metamerism, constancy, and knowing which. Mind 117 (468):549-585.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: When Norm perceives a red tomato in his garden, Norm perceives the tomato and its sensible qualities
Kalderon, Mark Eli (online). The multiply qualitative.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Kemmerling, Andreas (2007). "The property of being red": On Frank Jackson's opacity puzzle and his new theory of the content of colour experience. Erkenntnis 66 (1-2).   (Google)
Abstract: Frank Jackson has a new objectivist and representationalist account of the content of colour-experience. I raise several objections both against the account itself and, primarily, against how he tries to support it. He argues that the new account enables us to see what is wrong with the so-called Opacity Puzzle. This alleged puzzle is an argument in which a seemingly implausible conclusion is derived from three premises of which seem plausible to an representationalist. Jackson
Kennedy, Matthew (2007). Visual Awareness of Properties. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2):298-325.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I defend a view of the structure of visual property-awareness by considering the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. I argue that visual property-awareness is a three-place relation between a subject, a property, and a manner of presentation. Manners of presentation mediate our visual awareness of properties without being objects of visual awareness themselves. I provide criteria of identity for manners of presentation, and I argue that our ignorance of their intrinsic nature does not compromise the viability of a theory that employs them. In closing, I argue that the proposed manners of presentation are consistent with key direct-realist claims about the structure of visual awareness.
Krivin, Richard (2004). The what and how of color experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (1):165-166.   (Google)
Abstract: Palmer (1999) and the commentators examine whether qualia are produced by the relational processes of functionalism. This is an exploration of how qualia are produced. The wealth of data provided by the target article and the commentaries also provide information about what qualia are. The present commentary further explores this topic
Levine, Joseph (2006). Color and color experience: Colors as ways of appearing. Dialectica 60 (3):269-282.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: (i) physicalism about the non-mental world, (ii) consistency with what is known from color science, and (iii) transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral re?ectance, subjectivism, dispositional- ism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all three constraints. By treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences (particularly hallucinations) and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems
Macpherson, Fiona (2005). Colour inversion problems for representationalism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1):127-152.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I examine whether representationalism can account for various thought experiments about colour inversions. Representationalism is, at minimum, the view that, necessarily, if two experiences have the same representational content then they have the same phenomenal character. I argue that representationalism ought to be rejected if one holds externalist views about experiential content and one holds traditional exter- nalist views about the nature of the content of propositional attitudes. Thus, colour inver- sion scenarios are more damaging to externalist representationalist views than have been previously thought. More specifically, I argue that representationalists who endorse externalism about experiential content either have to become internalists about the content of propositional attitudes or they have to adopt a novel variety of externalism about the content of propositional attitudes. This novel type of propositional attitude externalism is investigated. It can be seen that adopting it forces one to reject Putnam
Macpherson, Fiona (forthcoming). 'Cognitive penetration of colour experience: Rethinking the issue in light of an indirect mechanism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one’s cognitive system, for example, one’s thoughts or beliefs? Ifone thinks that this can happen [at least in certain ways that are identWed in the paper] then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitivelv impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case ofcognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typicallv use to explain away alleged cases. The case is one in which it seems subjects’ beliefs about the typical colour of objects ajfects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitivelv penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generallv sympathetic to the idea ofcognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation ofthis plausible mechanism
Macpherson, Fiona (2003). Novel colours and the content of experience. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (1):43-66.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore that one cannot fully explain the nature of the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences using a naturalistic conception of representation
Matthen, Mohan (2009). Truly blue: An adverbial aspect of perceptual representation. Analysis 69 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: It commonly occurs that one person sees a particular colour chip B as saturated blue with no admixture of red or green (i.e., as “uniquely blue”), while another sees it as a somewhat greenish blue. Such a difference is often accompanied by agreement with respect to colour matching – the two persons may mostly agree when asked whether two chips are of the same colour, and this may be so across the whole range of colours. Asked whether B is the same or different from other chips, they mostly agree – though they continue to disagree about whether B is uniquely blue. I shall argue that in such cases neither individual misperceives what colour B is. They differ, rather, in how they perceive the colour of B
Matthen, Mohan P. (1999). The disunity of color. Philosophical Review 108 (1):47-84.   (Cited by 18 | Google | More links)
Abstract: What is color? What is color vision? Most philosophers answer by reference to humans: to human color qualia, or to the environmental properties or "quality spaces" perceived by humans. It is argued, with reference to empirical findings concerning comparative color vision and the evolution of color vision, that all such attempts are mistaken. An adequate definition of color vision must eschew reference to its outputs in the human cognition and refer only to inputs: color vision consists in the use of wavelength discrimination in the construction of visual representations. A color quality is one that is generated from such processing
McLaughlin, Brian P. (2003). Color, consciousness, and color consciousness. In Quentin Smith & Aleksandar Jokic (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 20 | Google)
Menzies, Peter (2009). The Folk Theory of Colours and the Causes of Colour Experience. In Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Morreall, John (1982). Hume's missing shade of blue. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42 (March):407-415.   (Google | More links)
Palmer, Stephen E. (1999). On qualia, relations, and structure in color experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6):976-985.   (Google)
Abstract: In this Response, I defend the notion of intrinsic qualities of experience, discuss the distinction between relational experience and relational structure, clarify the difference between narrow and broad interpretations of color experience, argue against externalist approaches to color experience, defend the concept of isomorphism as a limitation in understanding color experiences, examine critiques of the color machine and color room arguments, and counter objections to within-subject experiments based on memory limitations
Pautz, Adam (web). Can color structure be explained in terms of color experience? Australasian Journal of Philosophy.   (Google)
Abstract: Hardin argues that Reflectance Physicalism about color fails because it cannot accommodate color structure. David Lewis and others have replied that the Reflectance Physicalist may explain color structure in terms of color experience. I argue that this reply fails
Peacocke, Christopher (1984). Colour concepts and colour experience. Synthese 58 (March):365-82.   (Cited by 41 | Google | More links)
Rey, Georges (2007). Phenomenal content and the richness and determinacy of colour experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (s 9-10):112-131.   (Google)
Ross, Peter W. (1999). An externalist approach to understanding color experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6):968-969.   (Google)
Abstract: Palmer demarcates the bounds of our understanding of color experience by symmetries in the color space. He claims that if there are symmetries, there can be functionally undetectable color transformations. However, even if there are symmetries, Palmer's support for the possibility of undetectable transformations assumes phenomenal internalism. Alternatively, phenomenal externalism eliminates Palmer's limit on our understanding of color experience
Schroer, Robert (2002). Matching sensible qualities: A skeleton in the closet for representationalism. Philosophical Studies 107 (3):259-73.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The intransitivity of matching sensible qualities of color is a threat not only to the sense-data theory, but to all realist theories of sensible qualities, including the current leading realist theory: representationalism. I save representationalism from this threat by way of a novel yet empirically plausible hypothesis about the introspective classification of sensible qualities of color. I argue that due to limitations of the visual system's ability to extract fine-grained information about color from the environment, introspective classification of sensible qualities of color is sensitive to features of context. I finish by arguing for the superiority of my solution over two alternative solutions: one by Nelson Goodman, the other by C.L. Hardin.
Schier, Elizabeth (2007). The represented object of color experience. Philosophical Psychology 20 (1):1 – 27.   (Google)
Abstract: Despite a wealth of data we still have no clear idea what color experiences represent. In fact, color experiences vary with so many factors that it has been claimed that they do not represent anything at all. The primary challenge for any representational account of color experience is to accommodate the various psychophysical results that demonstrate that color appearance depends not only on the spectral nature of the target but also on the spectral, spatial and figural nature of the surround. A number of theorists have proposed that this dependence is an aspect of the visual system's constancy mechanism. However this does not in and of itself tell us what, if anything, is represented in color experience. Ultimately the answer to this question will be informed by one's theory of representational content. I will argue that adopting a molecular scheme of representation enables the development of an account of the represented object of color experience that can do justice to the psychophysical data
Shoemaker, Sydney (2006). On the way things appear. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Shoemaker, Sydney (2007). Thau on perception. Philosophical Studies 132 (3):595-606.   (Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (ms). Comments on David Chalmers' "perception and the fall from Eden".   (Google)
Speaks, Jeff (forthcoming). Spectrum inversion without a difference in representation is impossible. Philosophical Studies.   (Google)
Abstract: Even if spectrum inversion of various sorts is possible, spectrum inversion without a difference in representation is not. So spectrum inversion does not pose a challenge for the intentionalist thesis that, necessarily, within a given sense modality, if two experiences are alike with respect to content, they are also alike with respect to their phenomenal character. On the contrary, reflection on variants of standard cases of spectrum inversion provides a strong argument for intentionalism. Depending on one's views about the possibility of various other sorts of spectrum inversion, the impossibility of spectrum inversion without difference in representation can also be used as an argument against a wide variety of reductive theories of mental representation.
Thau, Michael (2007). Response to Shoemaker. Philosophical Studies 132 (3):637-659.   (Google | More links)
Thompson, Brad J. (2006). Color constancy and Russellian representationalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1):75-94.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Representationalism, the view that phenomenal character supervenes on intentional content, has attracted a wide following in recent years. Most representationalists have also endorsed what I call 'standard Russellianism'. According to standard Russellianism, phenomenal content is Russellian in nature, and the properties represented by perceptual experiences are mind-independent physical properties. I argue that standard Russellianism conflicts with the everyday experience of colour constancy. Due to colour constancy, standard Russellianism is unable to simultaneously give a proper account of the phenomenal content of colour experience and do justice to its phenomenology
Thompson, Evan (1995). Colour vision, evolution, and perceptual content. Synthese 104 (1):1-32.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Abstract: b>. Computational models of colour vision assume that the biological function of colour vision is to detect surface reflectance. Some philosophers invoke these models as a basis for 'externalism' about perceptual content (content is distal) and 'objectivism' about colour (colour is surface reflectance). In an earlier article (Thompson et al. 1992), I criticized the 'computational objectivist' position on the basis of comparative colour vision: There are fundmental differences among the colour vision of animals and these differences do not converge on the detection of any single type of environmental property. David R. Hilbert (1992) has recently defended computational objectivism against my 'comparative argument;' his arguments are based on the externalist approach to perceptual content originally developed by Mohan Matthen (1988) and on the computationally inspired theory of the evolutionary basis for trichromacy developed by Roger N. Shepard (1990). The present article provides a reply to Hilbert with extensive criticism of both Matthen's and Shepard's theories. I argue that the biological function of colour vision is not to detect surface reflectance, but to provide a set of perceptual categories that can apply to objects in a stable way in a variety of conditions. Comparative research indicates that both the perceptual categories and the distal stimuli will differ according to the animal and its visual ecology; therefore externalism and objectivism must be rejected
Westphal, Jonathan (1987). Colour: Some Philosophical Problems From Wittgenstein. Blackwell.   (Google)
White, Stephen L. (1994). Color and notional content. Philosophical Topics 22:471-503.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Wright, Wayne (2003). Projectivist representationalism and color. Philosophical Psychology 16 (4):515-529.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper proposes a subjectivist approach to color within the framework of an externalist form of representationalism about phenomenal consciousness. Motivations are presented for accepting both representationalism and color subjectivism, and an argument is offered against the case made by Michael Tye on behalf of the claim that colors are objective, physical properties of objects. In the face of the considerable difficulties associated with finding a workable realist theory of color, the alternative account of color experience set out, projectivist representationalism, claims that the color properties we encounter in experience exist only in the representational contents of our experiences. Color experiences are caused by the physical structure of objects, but objects are never actually colored and color experiences systematically misrepresent objects as colored. However, despite being an error theory of color, projectivist representationalism does not do violence to our everyday use and understanding of color concepts and terms, nor does it undermine the role of color experience in aiding the perceiving subject in navigating through the world

3.11c Spatial Experience

Albertazzi, Liliana (ed.) (2002). Unfolding Perceptual Continua. Amsterdam: J Benjamins.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The book analyses the differences between the mathematical interpretation and the phenomenological intuition of the continuum.
Battro, Antonio M. (1977). Visual riemannian space versus cognitive euclidean space. Synthese 35 (4).   (Google)
Brewer, Bill (1993). The integration of spatial vision and action. In Spatial Representation. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Brewer, Bill (1992). Unilateral neglect and the objectivity of spatial representation. Mind and Language 7 (3):222-39.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: Patients may show a more-or-less complete deviation of the head and eyes towards the right (ipsilesional) side [that is, to the same side of egocentric space as the brain lesion responsible for their disorder]. If addressed by the examiner from the left (contralesional) side [the opposite side to their lesion], patients with severe extrapersonal neglect may fail to respond or may look for the speaker in the right side of the room, turning head and eyes more and more to the right. Frequently these patients will not pick up food from the left half of the plate. Given a crossword puzzle, they may complete only the squares to the right. If walking is not prevented by hemiparesis, neglect patients may lose their bearings, since they do not make use of left sided cues
Briscoe, Robert (forthcoming). Perceiving the Present: Systematization of Illusions or Illusion of Systematization? Cognitive Science.   (Google)
Briscoe, Robert (2008). Vision, action, and make-perceive. Mind and Language 23 (4):457-497.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I critically assess the enactive account of visual perception recently defended by Alva Noë (2004). I argue inter alia that the enactive account falsely identifies an object’s apparent shape with its 2D perspectival shape; that it mistakenly assimilates visual shape perception and volumetric object recognition; and that it seriously misrepresents the constitutive role of bodily action in visual awareness. I argue further that noticing an object’s perspectival shape involves a hybrid experience combining both perceptual and imaginative elements – an act of what I call ‘make-perceive.’
Browning, Lorin (1973). On seeing 'everything' upside down. Analysis 34 (December):48-49.   (Google)
Bryant, David J. (1997). Representing space in language and perception. Mind and Language 12 (3-4):239-264.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Campbell, John (1996). Shape properties, experience of shape and shape concepts. Philosophical Issues 7:351-363.   (Google | More links)
Campbell, John (2006). What is the role of location in the sense of a visual demonstrative? Reply to Matthen. Philosophical Studies 127 (2):239-254.   (Google | More links)
Campbell, John (2007). What's the role of spatial awareness in visual perception of objects? Mind and Language 22 (5):548–562.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I set out two theses. The first is Lynn Robertson’s: (a) spatial awareness is a cause of object perception. A natural counterpoint is: (b) spatial awareness is a cause of your ability to make accurate verbal reports about a perceived object. Zenon Pylyshyn has criticized both. I argue that nonetheless, the burden of the evidence supports both (a) and (b). Finally, I argue conscious visual perception of an object has a different causal role to both: (i) non-conscious perception of the object, and (ii) experience, e.g. hallucination, that may be subjectively indiscriminable from, but is not, perception of the object
Casullo, Albert (1989). Perceptual space is monadic. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (September):131-134.   (Google | More links)
Cassam, Quassim (2005). Space and objective experience. In José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Casullo, Albert (1986). The spatial structure of perceptual space. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (June):665-671.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Clark, Austen (online). Location, location, location.   (Google)
Abstract: Forthcoming in Lana Trick & Don Dedrick (eds.), Cognition, Computation, and Pylyshyn. MIT Press. Presented at the Zenon Pylyshyn Conference (ZenCon), University of Guelph, 1 May 2005
Cutting, James E. (2003). Reconceiving perceptual space. In Heiko Hecht, Robert Schwartz & Margaret Atherton (eds.), Looking Into Pictures. The Mit Press.   (Google)
Drummond, John J. (1983). Objects' optimal appearances and the immediate awareness of space in vision. Man and World 16:177-206.   (Google)
Drummond, John J. (1979). On seeing a material thing in space: The role of kinaesthesis in visual perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (September):19-32.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Eilan, Naomi M. (ed.) (1993). Spatial Representation. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 36 | Google)
Falkenstein, Lorne (1989). Is perceptual space monadic? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49 (June):709-713.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Ford, E. (1893). The original datum of space-consciousness. Mind 2 (6):217-218.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
French, Robert E. (1987). The Geometry Of Vision And The Mind Body Problem. Lang.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
French, Robert (1987). The geometry of visual space. Noûs 21 (June):115-133.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Grush, Rick (1998). Skill and spatial content. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (6).   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Abstract: [1] It is well-known that Evans laid the groundwork for a truly radical and fruitful theory of _content_ -- a theory according to which content is a genus with at least conceptual and nonconceptual varieties as species, and in which nonconceptual content plays a very significant role. It is less well-recognized that Evans was also in the process of working out the details of a truly radical and groundbreaking theory of _representation_, a task he was unfortunately unable to bring to any satisfactory stage of fruition. I am here drawing the distinction between a theory of
Grush, Rick (2000). Self, world and space: The meaning and mechanisms of ego- and allocentric spatial representation. Brain and Mind 1 (1):59-92.   (Cited by 18 | Google | More links)
Abstract: b>: The problem of how physical systems, such as brains, come to represent themselves as subjects in an objective world is addressed. I develop an account of the requirements for this ability that draws on and refines work in a philosophical tradition that runs from Kant through Peter Strawson to Gareth Evans. The basic idea is that the ability to represent oneself as a subject in a world whose existence is independent of oneself involves the ability to represent space, and in particular, to represent oneself as one object among others in an objective spatial realm. In parallel, I provide an account of how this ability, and the mechanisms that support it, are realized neurobiologically. This aspect of the article draws on, and refines, work done in the neurobiology and psychology of egocentric and allocentric spatial representation
Harrison, Jonathan (1961). The third dimension. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 61:151-168.   (Google)
Hatfield, Gary C. (2009). Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology.
Hatfield, Gary (2003). Representation and constraints: The inverse problem and the structure of visual space. Acta Psychologica 114:355-378.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Visual space can be distinguished from physical space. The ?rst is found in visual experi- ence, while the second is de?ned independently of perception. Theorists have wondered about the relation between the two. Some investigators have concluded that visual space is non- Euclidean, and that it does not have a single metric structure. Here it is argued (1) that visual space exhibits contraction in all three dimensions with increasing distance from the observer, (2) that experienced features of this contraction (including the apparent convergence of lines in visual experience that are produced from physically parallel stimuli in ordinary viewing con- ditions) are not the same as would be the experience of a perspective projection onto a fronto- parallel plane, and (3) that such contraction is consistent with size constancy. These properties of visual space are di?erent from those that would be predicted if spatial perception resulted from the successful solution of the inverse problem. They are consistent with the notion that optical constraints have been internalized. More generally, they are also consistent with the notion that visual spatial structures bear a resemblance relation to physical spatial structures. This notion supports a type of representational relation that is distinct from mere causal cor- respondence. The reticence of some philosophers and psychologists to discuss the structure of phenomenal space is diagnosed in terms of the simple materialism and the functionalism of the 1970s and 1980s.
Hatfield, Gary (1991). The Natural and the Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception From Kant to Helmholtz. Cambridge: MIT Press.   (Cited by 50 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of Kant and...
Haymond, William S. (1961). Is distance an original factor in vision? Modern Schoolman 39 (November):39-60.   (Google)
Heelan, Patrick A. (1983). Space-Perception And The Philosophy Of Science. University Of California Press.   (Cited by 91 | Google | More links)
Hellie, Benj (ms). Visual form, attention, and binocularity.   (Google)
Abstract: This somewhat odd paper argues against a representational view of visual experience using an intricate "inversion" type thought experiment involving double vision: two subjects could represent external space in the same way while differing phenomenally due to different "spread" in their double images. The spatial structure of the visual field is explained not by representation of external space but functionally, in terms of the possible locations of an attentional spotlight. I'm fond of the ideas in this paper but doubt I'll be returning to it soon.
Hunter, J. F. M. (1987). Seeing dimensionally. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (September):553-566.   (Google)
James, William (1893). The original datum of space-consciousness. Mind 2 (7):363-365.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
James, William (1887). The perception of space. (I.). Mind 12 (45):1-30.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
James, William (1887). The perception of space (III.). Mind 12 (47):321-353.   (Google | More links)
James, William (1887). The perception of space (II.). Mind 12 (46):183-211.   (Google | More links)
Jastrow, Joseph (1886). The perception of space by disparate senses. Mind 11 (44):539-554.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Kemp, G. Neville (1991). Metaphor and aspect-perception. Analysis (March) 84 (March):84-90.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Kline, A. David (1980). Berkeley, Pitcher, and distance perception. International Studies in Philosophy 12:1-8.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Lawrence, Nathaniel M. (1953). Single location, simple location and misplaced concreteness. Review of Metaphysics 7 (December):225-247.   (Google)
Lee, G. (2006). The experience of left and right. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Lewis, H. D. (1953). Private and public space. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 53:79-94.   (Google)
Lowe, E. J. (1986). The topology of visual appearance. Erkenntnis 25 (November):271-274.   (Google | More links)
Macpherson, Fiona (2006). Ambiguous figures and the content of experience. Noûs 40 (1):82-117.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counter-example to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judge- ments to account for Gestalt switching. I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position
Mandik, Pete (2005). Phenomenal consciousness and the allocentric-egocentric interface. Endophysics.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I propose and defend the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface Theory of Con- sciousness. Mental processes form a hierarchy of mental representations with maxi- mally egocentric (self-centered) representations at the bottom and maximally allocentric (other-centered) representations at the top. Phenomenally conscious states are states that are relatively intermediate in this hierarchy. More speci
Mandik, Pete (1999). Qualia, space, and control. Philosophical Psychology 12 (1):47-60.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Abstract: According to representionalists, qualia-the introspectible properties of sensory experience-are exhausted by the representational contents of experience. Representationalists typically advocate an informational psychosemantics whereby a brain state represents one of its causal antecedents in evolutionarily determined optimal circumstances. I argue that such a psychosemantics may not apply to certain aspects of our experience, namely, our experience of space in vision, hearing, and touch. I offer that these cases can be handled by supplementing informational psychosemantics with a procedural psychosemantics whereby a representation is about its effects instead of its causes. I discuss conceptual and empirical points that favor a procedural representationalism for our experience of space
Mattens, Filip (2009). Perception, body, and the sense of touch: Phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Husserl Studies 25 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel
Morris, David (2004). The Sense of Space. State University of New York Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The Sense of Space brings together space and body to show that space is a plastic environment, charged with meaning, that reflects the distinctive character of human embodiment in the full range of its moving, perceptual, emotional, expressive, developmental, and social capacities. Drawing on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson, as well as contemporary psychology to develop a renewed account of the moving, perceiving body, the book suggests that our sense of space ultimately reflects our ethical relations to other people and to the places we inhabit
Munsterberg, Hugo (1904). Perception of distance. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 1 (23):617-623.   (Google | More links)
O'Callaghan, Casey (2010). Perceiving the locations of sounds. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: Frequently, we learn of the locations of things and events in our environment by means of hearing. Hearing, I argue, is a locational mode of perceiving with a robustly spatial nature. I defend three proposals. First, audition furnishes information about the locations of things and events in one's environment because auditory experience itself is spatial. Audition represents space. Second, we hear the locations of things and events by or in hearing locational information about their sounds. Third, we auditorily experience sounds themselves as having relatively stable distal locations. I reject skepticism about spatial audition tracing to Strawson's Individuals, and suggest that spatial audition supports the view that audition and vision share a dimension of perceptual content
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). The locations of sounds.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: When you hear the sound of a car drive by on the street outside your window, you learn not only whether the car has a hole in its muffler or has squealing brakes. You also learn something about the location of the car because hearing furnishes information about the locations of its objects. By listening, you learn not only about the character of the things and happenings around you, but also about where they are in the surrounding environment. The question I wish to address is this: Do we hear the locations of sounds themselves, or do we merely hear the locations of sound sources—the objects and events that produce sounds? I shall argue that frequently we do hear the locations of sounds themselves, and that this is required in order to hear and learn the locations of sound-producing sources. This feature of auditory experience has consequences for the metaphysics of sounds. If we veridically hear the locations of sounds, then the most prominent conception of sounds is mistaken and we must revise our ontology
O'Keefe, John (1993). Kant and the sea-horse: An essay in the neurophilosophy of space. In Spatial Representation. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Google)
Peacocke, Christopher (1992). Scenarios, concepts, and perception. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 42 | Google)
Pitkin, Walter B. (1909). Some neglected paradoxes of visual space. I. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 6 (22):601-608.   (Google | More links)
Politz, Alfred (1979). On the origin of space perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (December):258-264.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Randle, H. N. (1922). Sense-data and sensible appearances in size-distance perception. Mind 31 (123):284-306.   (Google | More links)
Roberts, Fred S. & Suppes, Patrick (1967). Some problems in the geometry of visual perception. Synthese 17 (June):173-201.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Sanford, David H. (1983). The perception of shape. In Knowledge And Mind: Phil Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (2007). Action and self-location in perception. Mind 115 (463):603-632.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I offer an explanation of how subjects are able to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects, given that subjects always perceive from a particular location. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that a conception of space is necessary to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects. This conception of space is spelled out by showing that perceiving intrinsic properties requires perceiving objects as the kind of things that are perceivable from other locations. Second, I show that having such a conception of space presupposes that a subject represent her location in relation to perceived objects. More precisely the thesis is that a subject represents her location as the location from which she both perceives objects and would act in relation to objects were she to act. So I argue that perception depends on the capacity to know what it would be to act in relation to objects
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Perceptual Experience and the Capacity to Act. In N. Gangopadhay, M. Madary & F. Spicer (eds.), Perception, Action, and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Shoemaker, Sydney (2003). Content, character, and color. Philosophical Issues 13 (1):253-78.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links)
Smith, A. D. (2000). Space and sight. Mind 109 (435):481-518.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper, which has both a historical and a polemical aspect, investigates the view, dominant throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that the sense of sight is, originally, not phenomenally three-dimensional in character, and that we must come to interpret its properly two-dimensional data by reference to the sense of 'touch'. The principal argument for this claim, due to Berkeley, is examined and found wanting. The supposedly confirming findings concerning 'Molyneux subjects' are also investigated and are shown to be either irrelevant or disconfirming. Recent investigations on infant and neonatal perception are discussed and are also found to be disconfirming. An innatist version of the theory is then considered and is shown to be undermined by the largely 'Gibsonian' character of early space-perception. Finally three recent arguments in favour of the theory - two from psychologists, one from a philosopher - are considered and answered
Smith, Leslie (1981). Space perception and parallax. Philosophy 56 (April):248-252.   (Google)
Smuts, Aaron (2003). Haunting the house from within: Disbelief, mitigation, and spatial experience. In Steven Jay Schneider & Daniel Shaw (eds.), Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror. Scarecrow Press.   (Google)
Abstract: In this chapter I attempt to explain the lasting effectiveness and critical success of Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) by roughly sketching the role that spectator belief might play in a revised version of the so-called “Thought Theory” of emotional response to fiction. I argue that The Haunting engages viewers in a process of “disbelief mitigation”—the sheltering of nontrivial, tenuously held beliefs required for optimal viewer response—that helps make the film work as horror, and prevents it from sliding into comedy. Haunted house films do not have to extend much effort to keep us from walking away, since most viewers come to the theater ready to entertain the idea that haunted houses exist. Using the experiential philosophy of John Dewey, I propose that this willingness has to do with a fundamental aspect of our relationship with space. It is common to speak of places as “charged” or “tense,” to get feelings of dread or nostalgia from certain spots. Some haunted house films leverage this experiential characteristic to fuel the horror, and without it, the subgenre would probably not exist
Spencer, Herbert (1890). Our space-consciousness: A reply. Mind 15 (59):305-324.   (Google | More links)
Stanley Hall, G. (1878). The muscular perception of space. Mind 3 (12):433-450.   (Google | More links)
Strong, C. A. (1926). Discussions: Mr. Randle on sensations and projection. Mind 35 (140).   (Google)
Sully, James (1878). The question of visual perception in germany. Mind 3 (10):167-195.   (Google | More links)
Thompson, Brad J. (2010). The spatial content of experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1):146-184.   (Google | More links)
Van Cleve, James (2002). Thomas Reid's geometry of visibles. Philosophical Review 111 (3):373-416.   (Google | More links)
Vision, Gerald (1989). Sight and cognition. Metaphilosophy 20 (January):12-33.   (Google | More links)
Vosgerau, Gottfried (2007). Conceptuality in spatial representations. Philosophical Psychology 20 (3):349 – 365.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The notion of conceptuality is still unclear and vague. I will present a definition of conceptual and nonconceptual representations that is grounded in different aspects of the representations' structures. This definition is then used to interpret empirical results from human and animal navigation. It will be shown, that the distinction between egocentric and allocentric spatial representations can be matched onto the conceptual vs. nonconceptual distinction. The phenomena discussed in spatial navigation are thereby put into a wider context of cognitive abilities, which allows for new explanations of certain features of spatial representations and how they are linked to other capacities, like perception and reasoning
Wagner, Mark S. (2006). The Geometries of Visual Space. Routledge.   (Google)
Wiesenthal, L. (1983). Visual space from the perspective of possible-worlds semantics, I. Synthese 56 (August):199-238.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)

3.11d The Experience of Objects

Bach, Kent (online). Searle against the world: How can experiences find their objects?   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Here's an old question in the philosophy of perception: here I am, looking at this pen [I hold up a pen in my hand]. Presumably I really am seeing this pen. Even so, I could be having an experience just like the one I am having without anything being there. So how can the experience I am having really involve direct awareness of the pen? It seems as though the presence of the pen is inessential to the way the experience is
Battro, Antonio M. (1977). Visual riemannian space versus cognitive euclidean space. Synthese 35 (4).   (Google)
Bernal, Sara (2005). Object lessons: Spelke principles and psychological explanation. Philosophical Psychology 18 (3):289-312.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: There is general agreement that from the first few months of life, our apprehension of physical objects accords, in some sense, with certain principles. In one philosopher's locution, we are 'perceptually sensitive' to physical principles describing the behavior of objects. But in what does this accordance or sensitivity consist? Are these principles explicitly represented or merely 'implemented'? And what sort of explanation do we accomplish in claiming that our object perception accords with these principles? My main goal here is to suggest answers to these questions. I argue that the object principles are not explicitly represented, first addressing some confusion in the debate about what that means. On the positive side, I conclude that the principles supply a competence account, at Marr's computational level, and that they function like natural constraints in vision. These are among their considerable explanatory benefits - benefits endowed by rules and principles in other cognitive domains as well. Characterizing the explanatory role of the object principles is my main project here, but in pursuing certain sub-goals I am led to other conclusions of interest in their own right. I address an argument that the object principles are explicitly represented which assumes that object perception is substantially thought-like. This provokes a jaunt off the main path which leads to interesting territory: the boundary between thought and perception. I argue that object apprehension is much closer to perception than to thought on the spectrum between the two
Brewer, Bill (1994). Thoughts about objects, places and times. In Objectivity, Simulation and the Unity of Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Campbell, John (2006). Does visual reference depend on sortal classification? Reply to Clark. Philosophical Studies 127 (2):221-237.   (Google | More links)
Clark, Austen (2004). Feature-placing and proto-objects. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):443-469.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper contrasts three different schemes of reference relevant to understanding systems of perceptual representation: a location-based system dubbed "feature-placing", a system of "visual indices" referring to things called "proto-objects", and the full sortal-based individuation allowed by a natural language. The first three sections summarize some of the key arguments (in Clark, 2000) to the effect that the early, parallel, and pre-attentive registration of sensory features itself constitutes a simple system of nonconceptual mental representation. In particular, feature integration--perceiving something as being both F and G, where F and G are sensible properties registered in distinct parallel streams--requires a referential apparatus. Section V. reviews some grounds for thinking that at these earliest levels this apparatus is location-based: that it has a direct and nonconceptual means of picking out places. Feature-placing is contrasted with a somewhat more sophisticated system that can identify and track four or five "perceptual objects" or "proto-objects", independently of their location, for as long as they remain perceptible. Such a system is found in Zenon Pylyshyn's fascinating work on "visual indices", in Dana Ballard's notion of deictic codes, and in Kahneman, Treisman, and Wolfe's accounts of systems of evanescent representations they call "object files". Perceptual representation is a layered affair, and I argue that it probably includes both feature-placing and proto-objects. Finally, both nonconceptual systems are contrasted with the full-blooded individuation allowed in a natural language
Cohen, Jonathan (2004). Objects, places, and perception. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):471-495.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In Clark (2000), Austen Clark argues convincingly that a widespread view of perception as a complicated kind of feature-extraction is incomplete. He argues that perception has another crucial representational ingredient: it must also involve the representation of "sensory individuals" that exemplify sensorily extracted features. Moreover, he contends, the best way of understanding sensory individuals takes them to be places in space surrounding the perceiver. In this paper, I'll agree with Clark's case for sensory individuals (
Duncker, Karl (2003). Phenomenology and epistemology of consciousness of objects. International Gestalt Journal 26 (1):79-128.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Evans, Gareth (1980). Things without the mind. In Philosophical Subjects. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 40 | Google)
Fern, (2006). Particularity and reflexivity in the intentional content of perception. Theoria 21 (56):133-145.   (Google)
Fern, (1999). Perceptual consciousness and the reflexive character of attention. In Jos Falguera (ed.), La Filosof. Santiago de Compostela: S.I.E.U..   (Google)
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Hampshire, Stuart N. (1961). Perception and identification, part I. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 81:81-96.   (Google)
Hinton, J. Michael (1967). Perception and identification. Philosophical Review 76 (October):421-435.   (Google | More links)
Honderich, Ted (1994). Seeing things. Synthese 98 (1):51-71.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Knuuttila, Simo & Kärkkäinen, Pekka (eds.) (2008). Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Springer.   (Google)
Kulvicki, John (2007). What is what it's like? Introducing perceptual modes of presentation. Synthese 156 (2).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The central claim of this paper is that what it is like to see green or any other perceptible property is just the perceptual mode of presentation of that property. Perceptual modes of presentation are important because they help resolve a tension in current work on consciousness. Philosophers are pulled by three mutually inconsistent theses: representational externalism, representationalism, and phenomenal internalism. I throw my hat in with defenders of the first two: the externalist representationalists. We are faced with the problem of explaining away intuitions that favor phenomenal internalism. Perceptual modes of presentation account for what it is like to see properties in a way that accommodates those intuitions without vindicating phenomenal internalism itself. Perceptual MoPs therefore provide a new way of being an externalist representationalist
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Matthen, Mohan (2010). On the diversity of auditory objects. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (1):63-89.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper defends two theses about sensory objects. The more general thesis is that directly sensed objects are those delivered by sub-personal processes. It is shown how this thesis runs counter to perceptual atomism, the view that wholes are always sensed indirectly, through their parts. The more specific thesis is that while the direct objects of audition are all composed of sounds, these direct objects are not all sounds—here, a composite auditory object is a temporal sequence of sounds (whereas a composite visual object is a spatial composite). Many composite objects are directly heard in the sense just mentioned. There is a great variety of such composite auditory objects—melodies, harmonies, sequences of phonemes, individual voices, meaning-carrying sounds, and so on. This diversity of auditory objects has an important application to aesthetics. Perceivers do not naturally or easily attend simultaneously to auditory objects that overlap in time. Yet, aesthetic appreciation depends on such an allocation of attention to overlapping objects
Matthen, Mohan P. (2006). On visual experience of objects: Comments on John Campbell's reference and consciousness. Philosophical Studies 127 (2):195-220.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: John Campbell argues that visual attention to objects is the means by which we can refer to objects, and that this is so because conscious visual attention enables us to retrieve information about a location. It is argued here that while Campbell is right to think that we visually attend to objects, he does not give us sufficient ground for thinking that consciousness is involved, and is wrong to assign an intermediary role to location. Campbell’s view on sortals is also queried, as is his espousal of the so-called Referential View of Experience
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Natsoulas, Thomas (1984). On the causal self-referentiality of perceptual experiences and the problem of concrete perceptual reference. Behaviorism 12:61-80.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
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Natsoulas, Thomas (2002). The experiential presence of objects to perceptual consciousness: Wilfrid Sellars, sense impressions, and perceptual takings. Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):293-316.   (Google)
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Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (2001). Connecting vision with the world: Tracking the missing link. In Joao Branquinho (ed.), The Foundations of Cognitive Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Abstract: You might reasonably surmise from the title of this paper that I will be discussing a theory of vision. After all, what is a theory of vision but a theory of how the world is connected to our visual representations? Theories of visual perception universally attempt to give an account of how a proximal stimulus (presumably a pattern impinging on the retina) can lead to a rich representation of a three dimensional world and thence to either the recognition of known objects or to the coordination of actions with visual information. Such theories typically provide an effective (i.e., computable) mapping from a 2D pattern to a representation of a 3D scene, usually in the form of a symbol structure. But such a mapping, though undoubtedly the essential purpose of a theory of vision, leaves at least one serious problem that I intend to discuss here. It is this problem, rather than a theory of vision itself, that is the subject of this talk
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (2001). Visual indexes, preconceptual objects, and situated vision. Cognition.   (Cited by 130 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper argues that a theory of situated vision, suited for the dual purposes of object recognition and the control of action, will have to provide something more than a system that constructs a conceptual representation from visual stimuli: it will also need to provide a special kind of direct (preconceptual, unmediated) connection between elements of a visual representation and certain elements in the world. Like natural language demonstratives (such as `this' or `that') this direct connection allows entities to be referred to without being categorized or conceptualized. Several reasons are given for why we need such a preconcep- tual mechanism which individuates and keeps track of several individual objects in the world. One is that early vision must pick out and compute the relation among several individual objects while ignoring their properties. Another is that incrementally computing and updating representations of a dynamic scene requires keeping track of token individuals despite changes in their properties or locations. It is then noted that a mechanism meeting these requirements has already been proposed in order to account for a number of disparate empiri- cal phenomena, including subitizing, search-subset selection and multiple object tracking (Pylyshyn et al., Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 48(2) (1994) 260). This mechanism, called a visual index or FINST, is brie
Raftopoulos, Athanassios & Müller, Vincent C. (2006). The phenomenal content of experience. Mind and Language 21 (2):187-219.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: We discuss in some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties
Richardson, Robert C. (1988). Objects and fields. In Perspectives On Mind. Dordrecht: Kluwer.   (Google)
Rorty, Richard (1970). Strawson's objectivity argument. Review of Metaphysics 24 (December):207-244.   (Cited by 12 | Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (2007). Action and self-location in perception. Mind 115 (463):603-632.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I offer an explanation of how subjects are able to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects, given that subjects always perceive from a particular location. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that a conception of space is necessary to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects. This conception of space is spelled out by showing that perceiving intrinsic properties requires perceiving objects as the kind of things that are perceivable from other locations. Second, I show that having such a conception of space presupposes that a subject represent her location in relation to perceived objects. More precisely the thesis is that a subject represents her location as the location from which she both perceives objects and would act in relation to objects were she to act. So I argue that perception depends on the capacity to know what it would be to act in relation to objects
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Perceptual content defended. Noûs.   (Google)
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 the objections of austere relationalists. The main thesis of the paper is that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with perceptual experience being representational. I argue that most austere relationalist objections to the thesis that experience has content are objections only against 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
Siegel, Susanna (ms). Particularity and presence in visual perception.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: What is the difference between perception and mere sensation? Take a typical perceptual experience, such as an experience of seeing a fish or a table, and a merely sensory experience, such as the experience of
Siegel, Susanna (2002). Review of A Theory of Sentience, by Austen Clark. Philosophical Review 111 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: First, what it is for a sentient being to sense is for it to employ two distinct capacities: one for representing places-at-times; the other for representing "features" (60, cf. 70). Exercised together, the result is akin to feature-placing, which brings us to the second thesis: what sensory systems represent is that features are instantiated at place-times. Accordingly, sensory systems do not, for instance, attribute properties to objects, such as trees, tables, bodies, or persons (163)
Siegel, Susanna (2005). Subject and object in the contents of visual experience. Philosophical Review 115 (3):355--88.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: What is the difference between perception and mere sensation? Take a typical perceptual experience, such as an experience of seeing a fish or a table, and a merely sensory experience, such as the experience of ‘seeing stars’ or of enjoying a red phosphene (a phosphene is a kind of afterimage). One difference between these experiences is that in the first case, there is an external object that one sees. But this difference is not the only difference. On the face of it, typical perceptual experiences and mere sensations also differ in their phenomenal character. How can this difference be understood?
Soteriou, Matthew (2000). The particularity of visual perception. European Journal of Philosophy 8 (2):173-189.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Thomas, Alan (online). Perceptual knowledge, representation and imagination.   (Google)
Abstract: The focus of this paper will be on the problem of perceptual presence and on a solution to this problem pioneered by Kant [1781; 1783] and refined by Sellars [Sellars, 1978] and Strawson [Strawson, 1971]. The problem of perceptual presence is that of explaining how our perceptual experience of the world gives us a robust sense of the presence of objects in perception over and above those sensory aspects of the object given in perception. Objects possess other properties which are, one might say, phenomenologically present even though they are admittedly sensorily absent. The general form of the solution to this problem that Kant developed seems to me to be a neglected resource in contemporary work on perceptual consciousness. Kant solves the problem of perceptual presence by appealing to that which he called the productive use of the imagination. This faculty of mind supplies schematic representations of the object of perception that explains a phenomenological sense of perceptual presence even of those features that are not, in a sense to be further clarified,
Tye, Michael (2007). Intentionalism and the argument from no common content. Philosophical Perspectives 21 (1):589–613.   (Google)
Tye, Michael (2009). The admissible contents of visual experience. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):541-562.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: My purpose is to take a close look at the nature of visual content. I discuss the view that visual experiences have only existential contents, the view that visual experiences have either singular or gappy contents, and the view that visual experiences have multiple contents. I also consider a proposal about visual content inspired by Kaplan's well known theory of indexicals. I draw out some consequences of my discussion for the thesis of intentionalism with respect to the phenomenal character of visual experience
Welker, David D. (1988). On the necessity of bodies. Erkenntnis 28 (May):363-385.   (Google | More links)

3.11e The Experience of High-Level Properties

Appelbaum, Irene (1998). Fodor, modularity, and speech perception. Philosophical Psychology 11 (3):317-330.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Abstract: Fodor argues that speech perception is accomplished by a module. Typically, modular processing is taken to be bottom-up processing. Yet there is ubiquitous empirical evidence that speech perception is influenced by top-down processing. Fodor attempts to resolve this conflict by denying that modular processing must be exclusively bottom-up. It is argued, however, that Fodor's attempt to reconcile top-down and modular processing fails, because: (i) it undermines Fodor's own conception of modular processing; and (ii) it cannot account for the contextually varying top-down influences that characterize speech perception
Basile, Pierfrancesco (2007). Whitehead, Hume and the phenomenology of causation. In Subjectivity, Process, and Rationality (Process Thought, Volume 14). Heusenstamm Bei Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.   (Google)
Bayne, Tim (2009). Perception and the reach of phenomenal content. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):385-404.   (Google)
Abstract: The phenomenal character of perceptual experience involves the representation of colour, shape and motion. Does it also involve the representation of high-level categories? Is the recognition of a tomato as a tomato contained within perceptual phenomenality? Proponents of a conservative view of the reach of phenomenal content say 'No', whereas those who take a liberal view of perceptual phenomenality say 'Yes'. I clarify the debate between conservatives and liberals, and argue in favour of the liberal view that high-level content can directly inform the phenomenal character of perception
Bayne, Tim, Perceptual experience and the reach of phenomenal content.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The phenomenal character of perceptual experience involves the representation of colour, spatial and temporal properties, but does it also involve the representation of high-level categories? Is the recognition of an object as a tomato encoded in the phenomenology of perception? Proponents of a conservative view of the reach of phenomenal content say “no”, whereas those who take a liberal view of perceptual phenomenology say “yes”. This paper clarifies the debate between conservatives and liberals, and provides a case in favour of the liberal position: high-level content can inform perceptual phenomenology
Bayne, Tim (forthcoming). The phenomenology of agency. Philosophy Compass.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The phenomenology of agency has, until recently, been rather neglected, overlooked by both philosophers of action and philosophers of consciousness alike. Thankfully, all that has changed, and of late there has been an explosion of interest in what it is like to be an agent. 1 This burgeoning field crosses the traditional boundaries between disciplines: philosophers of psychopathology are speculating about the role that unusual experiences of agency might play in accounting for disorders of thought and action; cognitive scientists are developing models of how the phenomenology of agency is generated; and philosophers of mind are drawing connections between the phenomenology of agency and the nature of introspection, phenomenal character, and agency itself. My aim in this paper is not to provide an exhaustive survey of this recent literature, but to provide a..
Bayne, Tim, The sense of agency.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Where in cognitive architecture do experiences of agency lie? This chapter defends the claim that such states qualify as a species of perception. Reference to ‘the sense of agency’ should not be taken as a mere façon de parler but picks out a genuinely perceptual system. The chapter begins by outlining the perceptual model of agentive experience before turning to its two main rivals: the doxastic model, according to which agentive experience is really a species of belief, and the telic model, according to which agentive experience is really a species of agency. I conclude by defending the perceptual model against a number of objections to it, and by briefly exploring its implications for the question of how to approach the study of perception
Beebee, Helen (2003). Seeing causing. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (3):257-280.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Singularists about causation often claim that we can have experiences as of causation. This paper argues that regularity theorists need not deny that claim; hence the possibility of causal experience is no objection to regularity theories of causation. The fact that, according to a regularity theorist, causal experience requires background theory does not provide grounds for denying that it is genuine experience. The regularity theorist need not even deny that non-inferential perceptual knowledge of causation is possible, despite the fact that such knowledge would sometimes allow us to make inferences about what happens in far-off places and times.
Budd, Malcolm (1987). Wittgenstein on seeing aspects. Mind 96 (January):1-17.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Butterfill, S. (2009). Seeing causings and hearing gestures. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):405-428.   (Google)
Abstract: Can humans see causal interactions? Evidence on the visual perception of causal interactions, from Michotte to contemporary work, is best interpreted as showing that we can see some causal interactions in the same sense as that in which we can hear speech. Causal perception, like speech perception, is a form of categorical perception
Byrne, Alex (2009). Experience and content. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):429-451.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The 'content view', in slogan form, is 'Perceptual experiences have representational content'. I explain why the content view should be reformulated to remove any reference to 'experiences'. I then argue, against Bill Brewer, Charles Travis and others, that the content view is true. One corollary of the discussion is that the content of perception is relatively thin (confined, in the visual case, to roughly the output of 'mid-level' vision). Finally, I argue (briefly) that the opponents of the content view are partially vindicated, because perceptual error is due to false belief
Lyons, Jack (2007). Clades, Capgras and Perceptual Kinds. Philosophical Topics 33:185-206.   (Google)
Church, Jennifer (2000). 'Seeing as' and the double bind of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (8-9):99-112.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Clark, Austen (2000). A Theory of Sentience. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 107 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Austen Clark offers a general account of the forms of mental representation that we call "sensory." Drawing on the findings of current neuroscience, Clark defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that he calls "feature-placing." Sensing proceeds by picking out place-times in or around the body of the sentient organism, and characterizing qualities (features) that appear at those place-times. The hypothesis casts light on many other troublesome phenomena, including the varieties of illusion, the problem of projection, the notion of a visual field, and the existence of sense-data
Cullison, Andrew (2010). Moral perception. European Journal of Philosophy 18 (2):159-175.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Abstract : In this paper, I defend the view that we can have perceptual moral knowledge. First, I motivate the moral perception view by drawing on some examples involving perceptual knowledge of complex non-moral properties. I argue that we have little reason to think that perception of moral properties couldn't operate in much the same way that our perception of these complex non-moral properties operates. I then defend the moral perception view from two challenging objections that have yet to be adequately addressed. The first objection is that the moral perception view has implausible commitments concerning the morally blind , people who would claim not to perceive wrongness. The second objection is that the moral perception view is not really compatible with a wide range of the main candidate moral theories. I argue that the moral empiricist has plausible responses to both of these objections. I then address three residual concerns that my defense raises
Dorsch, Fabian, Higher-level perception: Sibley's case for aesthetic perception (draft).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: One important issue in the philosophy of perception is the question of which features of objects are perceivable.1 Perhaps the only fairly uncontroversial claim in this debate is that we can perceive the traditional examples of what have been called ‘secondary qualities’ — such as colours, smells, or tastes.2 But even among those who accept that we are also able to perceive certain basic ‘primary qualities’ — notably shapes, distances, sizes, weights, and so on — there is disagreement about whether our access to more higher-level properties can likewise be perceptual. Thus, it is debated, for instance, whether we can see the sadness or intelligence of a friend, the kindness of an action, the elegance of a gait, the climbability of a wall, the fragility of a glass, the quality of a proof or of a move in chess, the content of a painting, or even simpler properties like being a bottle or being a cat. Some of our recognitions of such higher-level features have three things in common. First, they are immediate in the sense of being phenomenologically (or psychologically) immediate. We need not engage in a conscious inference or another form of reasoning in order to notice that someone is sad or that a certain chess move is bad. Second, our awareness of the higher-level features involves or is grounded in the — typically perceptual — recognition of relevant lower-level features which contribute to the realisation3 of the higher-level features in question. We notice that a friend is sad partly on the basis of perceiving the tone of his voice or the shape of his gestures. And we notice that a chess move is bad partly in response to perceiving the specific situation on the board. Third, we have an intelligible and reasonable practice of backing up our ascriptions of the higher-level features by highlighting the respective lower-level properties. When someone challenges our judgement that our friend is sad, or the move bad, we support our assessments by referring to the lower-level features just mentioned..
Döring, Sabine A. (forthcoming). Seeing what to do: Affective perception and rational motivation. Dialectica.   (Google | More links)
Ducasse, Curt J. (1965). Causation: Perceivable? Or only inferred? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26 (December):173-179.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Ducasse, Curt J. (1967). How literally causation is perceivable. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28 (December):271-273.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Ducasse, Curt J. (1926). On the nature and the observability of the causal relation. Journal of Philosophy 23 (3):57-68.   (Cited by 27 | Google | More links)
Fleming, Noel (1957). Recognizing and seeing as. Philosophical Review 66 (2):161-179.   (Google | More links)
From, Franz (1971). Perception of Other People. New York,Columbia University Press.   (Google)
Goldie, Peter (forthcoming). Seeing what is the kind thing to do: Perception and emotion in morality. Dialectica.   (Google | More links)
Gregory, Richard (1970). The Intelligent Eye. Mcgraw-Hill.   (Google)
Hofmann, Frank (ms). Perception: Perspectival content and perceptual achievement.   (Google)
Abstract: According to a classical causal account of perception, to perceive that object x is F is to fulfill the following conditions: (i) one has an experience as of x's being F, (ii) x is F, and (iii) one's experience of x's being F depends causally on x's being F. This is the core of Grice's causal theory of perception, and it is initially quite plausible (Grice 1961)
Hooker, Cliff A. (1973). Empiricism, perception and conceptual change. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (September):59-74.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Hunter, J. F. M. (1981). Wittgenstein on seeing and seeing as. Philosophical Investigations 4:33-49.   (Google)
Hyslop, Alec (1983). On 'seeing-as'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 43 (June):533-540.   (Google | More links)
Jonas, Hans (1950). Causality and perception. Journal of Philosophy 47 (May):319-323.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Locke, Don (1967). Perception And Our Knowledge Of The External World. Ny: Humanities Press.   (Cited by 11 | Google)
Abstract: Reissue from the classic Muirhead Library of Philosophy series (originally published between 1890s - 1970s).
Luccio, Riccardo & Milloni, Donata (2004). Perception of causality: A dynamical analysis. In Alberto Peruzzi (ed.), Mind and Causality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.   (Google)
Macpherson, Fiona (2006). Ambiguous figures and the content of experience. Noûs 40 (1):82-117.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counter-example to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judge- ments to account for Gestalt switching. I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position
Malone, Michael E. (1978). Is scientific observation seeing as? Philosophical Investigations 1:23-38.   (Google)
McBrayer, Justin P. (2010). A limited defense of moral perception. Philosophical Studies 149 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that X is F by perception is the ability to have a perceptual experience that represents something as being F . Call this the ‘Representation Objection’ to moral perception. In this paper I argue that the Representation Objection to moral perception fails. Thus I offer a limited defense of moral perception
McNeill, William E. S. (forthcoming). On Seeing That Someone is Angry. European Journal of Philosophy.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Some propose that the question of how you know that James is angry can be adequately answered with the claim that you see that James is angry. Call this the Perceptual Hypothesis. Here, I examine that hypothesis.

I argue that there are two different ways in which the Perceptual Hypothesis could be made true. You might see that James is angry by seeing his bodily features. Alternatively, you might see that James is angry by seeing his anger. If you see that James is angry in the first way, your knowledge is inferential. If you see that James is angry in the second way, your knowledge is not inferential. These are different ways of knowing that James is angry. So the Perceptual Hypothesis alone does not adequately answer the question of how you know that fact. To ascertain how you know it, we need to decide whether or not you saw his anger.

This is an epistemological argument. But it has consequences for a theory of perception. It implies that there is a determinate fact about which features of an object you see. This fact is made true independently of what you come to know by seeing.

In the final section of the paper, I seek to undermine various ways in which the claim that you see James’ anger may be thought implausible.
Millar, Alan (2008). Perceptual-recognitional abilities and perceptual knowledge. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Millar, Alan (2000). The scope of perceptual knowledge. Philosophy 75 (291):73-88.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Mulhall, Stephen (1993). Consciousness, cognition and the Phenomenal--II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (67):75-89.   (Google)
Phillips, Ian (online). Perception and context.   (Google)
Abstract: I develop a seeming antinomy in relation to the question, Do natural kind properties, strictly speaking, characterize the phenomenology of experience? Or, in Peacockean terms, Are natural kind concepts observational? On the one hand, na
Price, Richard (2009). Aspect-switching and visual phenomenal character. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):508-518.   (Google)
Abstract: John Searle and Susanna Siegel have argued that cases of aspect-switching show that visual experience represents a richer range of properties than colours, shapes, positions and sizes. I respond that cases of aspect-switching can be explained without holding that visual experience represents rich properties. I also argue that even if Searle and Siegel are right, and aspect-switching does require visual experience to represent rich properties, there is reason to think those properties do not include natural-kind properties, such as being a tomato
Prinz, Jesse J. (2006). Beyond appearances: The content of sensation and perception. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: There seems to be a large gulf between percepts and concepts. In particular, con- cepts seem to be capable of representing things that percepts cannot. We can conceive of things that would be impossible to perceive. (The converse may also seem true, but I will leave that to one side.) In one respect, this is trivially right. We can conceive of things that we cannot encounter, such as unicorns. We cannot literally perceive unicorns, even if we occasionally
Price, Richard (2005). Content ascriptions and the reversibility constraint. Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):353–374.   (Google | More links)
Ranken, Nani L. (1967). A note on Ducasse's perceivable causation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28 (December):269-270.   (Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (ms). Misperception.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In discussions of perception and its provision of knowledge, it is common to distinguish what one comes to believe on the basis of perception from the distinctively perceptual basis of one's belief. The distinction can be drawn in terms of propositional contents: there are the contents that a perceiver would normally come to believe on the basis of her perception, on the one hand; and there are the contents properly attributed to perception itself, on the other. Consider the content
Siegel, Susanna (2005). Subject and object in the contents of visual experience. Philosophical Review 115 (3):355--88.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: What is the difference between perception and mere sensation? Take a typical perceptual experience, such as an experience of seeing a fish or a table, and a merely sensory experience, such as the experience of ‘seeing stars’ or of enjoying a red phosphene (a phosphene is a kind of afterimage). One difference between these experiences is that in the first case, there is an external object that one sees. But this difference is not the only difference. On the face of it, typical perceptual experiences and mere sensations also differ in their phenomenal character. How can this difference be understood?
Siegel, Susanna (2009). The visual experience of causation. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):519-540.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: How is causation represented in the mind? We often believe that one event has caused another. But can we visually experience two things as causally related? If so, then experiences represent causation. A different question in the vicinity is whether we can ever see that something is causing (or has just caused) something else to happen. In the relevant sense of ‘seeing’ here, seeing is factive – you can see that p only if p. By contrast, experiential representation of properties or relations is not factive, so you can represent that p even if p is not true
Siegel, Susanna (2006). Which properties are represented in perception? In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Smith, Joel (forthcoming). Seeing Other People. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: I present a perceptual account of other minds that combines a Husserlian insight about perceptual experience with a functionalist account of mental properties.
Stadler, Ingrid H. (1958). On seeing as. Philosophical Review 67 (January):91-94.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Thompson, Brad (2003). The Nature of Phenomenal Content. Dissertation, University of Arizona   (Google)
Siegel, Susanna (2005). The Phenomenology of Efficacy. Philosophical Topics 33 (1):265-84.   (Google)
Copenhaver, Rebecca (forthcoming). Thomas Reid on Acquired Perception. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.   (Google)
Vesey, Godfrey N. A. (1956). Seeing and seeing as. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56:109-124.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Wilkerson, Terence (1978). Representation, illusion and aspects. British Journal of Aesthetics 18 (1).   (Google)
Wilkerson, T. E. (1973). Seeing-as. Mind 82 (328):481-496.   (Google | More links)
Wittgenstein, L. (1976). Cause and effect: Intuitive awareness. Philosophia 6 (3-4).   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Woodward, James, Causal perception and causal cognition.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper explores some issues having to do with the perception of causation. It discusses the role that phenomena that that are associated with causal perception, such as Michottean launching interactions, play within philosophical accounts of causation and also speculates on their possible role in development
Woodworth, R. S. (1907). Non-sensory components of sense perception. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 4 (7):169-176.   (Google | More links)
Wright, Edmond L. (2005). Perceiving socially and morally: A question of triangulation. Philosophy 80 (311):53-75.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: One evolutionary advantage is that, because of sensory and perceptual relativity (acknowledged as an empirical fact), the tracking of portions of the real relevant to the living creature can be enhanced if updating from species-member to species-member can take place. In human perception, the structure is therefore in the form of a triangulation (Davidson's metaphor) in which continual mutual correction can be performed. Language, that which distinguishes human beings from other animals, capitalizes on that structure. The means by which updating of adaptiveness takes place in the human species is shown to involve a covert hypothesis of singularity in co-reference, a structure that brings the idea of mutual faith and its character to the fore

3.11f The Contents of Perception, Misc

Aranyosi, István, The reappearing act.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In a recent article, Roy Sorensen proposed a very interesting puzzle involving shadows – The Disappearing Act puzzle (2006). It was left unsolved there. Nevertheless, in his latest book he has added a new thought in guise of a solution to it (2008: 73-75). In what follows I will argue that Sorensen’s solution has some shortcomings, and will offer an alternative to it
Bell, John L. (2000). Continuity and the logic of perception. Transcendent Philosophy 1 (2):1-7.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: If we imagine a chess-board with alternate blue and red squares, then this is something in which the individual red and blue areas allow themselves to be distinguished from each other in juxtaposition, and something similar holds also if we imagine each of the squares divided into four smaller squares also alternating between these two colours. If, however, we were to continue with such divisions until we had exceeded the boundary of noticeability for the individual small squares which result, then it would no longer be possible to apprehend the individual red and blue areas in their respective positions. But would we then see nothing at all? Not in the least; rather we would see the whole chessboard as violet, i.e. apprehend it as something that participates simultaneously in red and blue
Bilgrami, Akeel (1994). On McDowell on the content of perceptual experience. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (175):206-13.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Breckenridge, Wylie (2007). Against one reason for thinking that visual experiences have representational content. Philosophical Perspectives 21 (1):117–123.   (Google | More links)
Brewer, Bill (2006). Perception and content. European Journal of Philosophy 14 (2):165-181.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Abstract: It is close to current orthodoxy that perceptual experience is to be characterized, at least in part, by its representational content, roughly, by the way it represents things as being in the world around the perceiver. Call this basic idea the content view (CV)
Brogaard, Berit, Centered worlds and the content of perception: Short version.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: 0. Relativistic Content In standard semantics, propositional content, whether it be the content of utterances or mental states, has a truth-value relative only to a possible world. For example, the content of my utterance of ‘Jim is sitting now’ is true just in case Jim is sitting at the time of utterance in the actual world, and the content of my belief that Alice will give a talk tomorrow is true just in case Alice will give a talk on the day following the occurrence of my belief state in the actual world. Let us call propositional content which has a truth-value relative only to a possible world ‘non-relativistic content’. Non-relativistic content can be treated as either structured or unstructured. On the unstructured-content view, non-relativistic content is a set of possible worlds and bears the truth-value true just in case the actual world is a member of that set. For example, the content of my utterance of ‘Jim is working now’ at time t is the set of worlds in which Jim is working at t, and this content is true just in case the actual world is among those worlds. On the structured-content view, non-relativistic content is a set or conglomeration of properties and/or objects, where properties are features which objects possess regardless of who considers or observes them and regardless of when they are being considered or observed. Such properties are said to be (or represent) functions from possible worlds to extensions. Relative to a possible world they determine a set of objects instantiating the property. For example, relative to the actual world the property of being human determines the set of actual humans. Not all content is non-relativistic. Let us say that propositional content is relativistic just in case it possesses a truth-value only relative to a centered world. A centered world is a possible world in which an individual and a time are marked, where the marked individual..
Brogaard, Berit, Perceptual content and monadic truth: On Cappelen and Hawthorne's relativism and monadic truth.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: They call T1-T5 the ‘simple view’ or ‘Simplicity’ for short (I will use ‘Simplicity’ and ‘the monadic truth package’ synonymously). C & H say that Simplicity is neutral on what exactly propositions are. They may be Russellian or of some different variety. This, however, does not seem quite right. For example, it is not obvious that Simplicity and Fregeanism are compatible. The 1- intension of ‘That instantiates a property that normally gives rise to red sensations in me’ has a truth-value only relative to a centered world (or a triple of a world, an individual and a time) (Chalmers 2006b). So, Simplicity rules out a treatment of 1-intensions as propositions (and..
Brogaard, Berit (forthcoming). Strong representationalism and centered content. Philosophical Studies.   (Google)
Abstract: I argue that strong representationalism, the view that for a perceptual experience to have a certain phenomenal character just is for it to have a certain representational content (perhaps represented in the right sort of way), encounters two problems: the dual looks problem and the duplication problem. The dual looks problem is this: strong representationalism predicts that how things phenomenally look to the subject reflects the content of the experience. But some objects phenomenally look to both have and not have certain properties, for example, my bracelet may phenomenally look to be circular-shaped and oval-shaped (and hence non-circular-shaped). So, if strong representationalism is true, then the content of my experience ought to represent my bracelet as being both circular-shaped and non-circular-shaped. Yet, intuitively, the content of my experience does not represent my bracelet as being both circular-shaped and non-circular-shaped. The duplication problem is this. On a standard conception of content, spatio-temporally distinct experiences and experiences had by distinct subjects may differ in content despite the fact that they are phenomenally indistinguishable. But this undermines the thesis that phenomenal character determines content. I argue that the two problems can be solved by applying a version of an idea from David Chalmers, which is to recognize the existence of genuinely centered properties in the content of perceptual experience
Byrne, Alex (2009). Experience and content. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):429-451.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The 'content view', in slogan form, is 'Perceptual experiences have representational content'. I explain why the content view should be reformulated to remove any reference to 'experiences'. I then argue, against Bill Brewer, Charles Travis and others, that the content view is true. One corollary of the discussion is that the content of perception is relatively thin (confined, in the visual case, to roughly the output of 'mid-level' vision). Finally, I argue (briefly) that the opponents of the content view are partially vindicated, because perceptual error is due to false belief
Chalmers, David J. (2006). Perception and the fall from Eden. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 17 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory
Chakrabarti, Arindam (2004). Seeing without recognizing? More on denuding perceptual content. Philosophy East and West 54 (3):365-367.   (Google | More links)
Clark, Austen (2000). A Theory of Sentience. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 107 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Austen Clark offers a general account of the forms of mental representation that we call "sensory." Drawing on the findings of current neuroscience, Clark defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that he calls "feature-placing." Sensing proceeds by picking out place-times in or around the body of the sentient organism, and characterizing qualities (features) that appear at those place-times. The hypothesis casts light on many other troublesome phenomena, including the varieties of illusion, the problem of projection, the notion of a visual field, and the existence of sense-data
Clark, Austen (2004). Sensing, objects, and awareness: Reply to commentators. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):553-79.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Clark, Austen (1992). Sensory Qualities. Clarendon.   (Cited by 177 | Annotation | Google)
Abstract: Drawing on work in psychophysics, psychometrics, and sensory neurophysiology, Clark analyzes the character and defends the integrity of psychophysical explanations of qualitative facts, arguing that the structure of such explanations is sound and potentially successful
Clark, R. (1976). The sensuous content of perception. In Hector-Neri Castaneda (ed.), Action, Knowledge, and Reality. Bobbs-Merrill.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Crane, Tim (2009). Is perception a propositional attitude? Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):452-469.   (Google)
Abstract: It is widely agreed that perceptual experience is a form of intentionality, i.e., that it has representational content. Many philosophers take this to mean that like belief, experience has propositional content, that it can be true or false. I accept that perceptual experience has intentionality; but I dispute the claim that it has propositional content. This claim does not follow from the fact that experience is intentional, nor does it follow from the fact that experiences are accurate or inaccurate. I end by considering the relationship between this question and the question of whether experience has non-conceptual content
Crane, Tim (ed.) (1992). The Contents of Experience: Essays on Perception. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 49 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The nature of perception has long been a central question in philosophy. It is of central importance not just for the philosophy of mind, but also for epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science. This volume represents the best of the latest research on perception, with contributions from some of the leading philosophers in the area, including Christopher Peacocke, Brian O'Shaughnessy and Michael Tye. As well as discussing traditional problems, the essays also approach the topic in light of recent research on mental content and representation
Davies, W. M. (1996). Experience and Content: Consequences of a Continuum Theory. Avebury.   (Google)
Dilworth, John B. (2005). The double content of perception. Synthese 146 (3):225-243.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Clearly we can perceive both objects, and various aspects or appearances of those objects. But how should that complexity of perceptual content be explained or analyzed? I argue that perceptual representations normally have a double or two level nested structure of content, so as to adequately incorporate information both about contextual aspects Y(X) of an object X, and about the object X itself. On this double content (DC) view, perceptual processing starts with aspectual data Y?(X?) as a higher level of content, which data does not itself provide lower level X-related content, but only an aspectually encoded form of such data. Hence the relevant perceptual data Y?(X?) must be
Dilworth, John B. (2005). The twofold orientational structure of perception. Philosophical Psychology 18 (2):187-203.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that perceptual content involves representations both of aspects of objects, and of objects themselves, whether at the level of conscious perception, or of low-level perceptual processing - a double content structure. I present an 'orientational' theory of the relations of the two kinds of perceptual content, which can accommodate both the general semantic possibility of perceptual misrepresentation, and also species of it involving characteristic perceptual confusions of aspectual and intrinsic content. The resulting theoretical structure is argued to be a broadly methodological or logical one, rather than a substantive theory that is open to empirical refutation
Dokic, J (1998). The ontology of perception: Bipolarity and content. Erkenntnis 48 (2):153-69.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Ducasse, Curt J. (1941). Objectivity, objective reference, and perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2 (September):43-78.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Gregory, Richard (1970). The Intelligent Eye. Mcgraw-Hill.   (Google)
Gunther, York H. (1995). Perceptual content and the subpersonal. Conference 6 (1):31-45.   (Google)
Hofmann, Frank (ms). Perception: Perspectival content and perceptual achievement.   (Google)
Abstract: According to a classical causal account of perception, to perceive that object x is F is to fulfill the following conditions: (i) one has an experience as of x's being F, (ii) x is F, and (iii) one's experience of x's being F depends causally on x's being F. This is the core of Grice's causal theory of perception, and it is initially quite plausible (Grice 1961)
Jacovides, Michael (ms). Do experiences represent?   (Google)
Kulvicki, John (2007). What is what it's like? Introducing perceptual modes of presentation. Synthese 156 (2).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The central claim of this paper is that what it is like to see green or any other perceptible property is just the perceptual mode of presentation of that property. Perceptual modes of presentation are important because they help resolve a tension in current work on consciousness. Philosophers are pulled by three mutually inconsistent theses: representational externalism, representationalism, and phenomenal internalism. I throw my hat in with defenders of the first two: the externalist representationalists. We are faced with the problem of explaining away intuitions that favor phenomenal internalism. Perceptual modes of presentation account for what it is like to see properties in a way that accommodates those intuitions without vindicating phenomenal internalism itself. Perceptual MoPs therefore provide a new way of being an externalist representationalist
Kvanvig, Jonathan (2007). Propositionalism and the metaphysics of experience. Philosophical Issues 17 (1):165–178.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: ‘propositionalism’. It counsels beginning inquiry into the nature of justification by adopting a particular form of evidentialism, according to which the first task is to describe the abstract relation of evidencing that holds between propositional contents. Such an approach has a variety of implications for the theory of justification itself, and many of the motivations for the view are of a standard internalist variety. Some of these motivations will be described in due course, but there is also a further motivation to mention here as well. Such a theory, beyond enabling a theory to satisfy typical internalist strictures, also allows a strong relationship between the theory of justification and more standard confirmation theory where claims are confirmed and disconfirmed by information gleaned from experiments and other sources. It is a natural and pleasing result if confirmation theory can be embedded within the theory of justification developed in the context of more traditional epistemology
Leon, Mark . (1986). Interpreting experience. Philosophical Papers 15 (November):107-130.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Levine, Joseph (2004). Thoughts on sensory representation: A commentary on Austen Clark's a theory of sentience. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):541-551.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Ludwig, Kirk A. (2006). Is the aim of perception to provide accurate representations? In Robert J. Stainton (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.   (Google)
Macpherson, Fiona (1999). Perfect pitch and the content of experience. Philosophy and Anthropology 3 (2).   (Google | More links)
Matthen, Mohan P. (2004). Features, places, and things: Reflections on Austen Clark's theory of sentience. Philosophical Psychology 17 (4):497-518.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The paper argues that material objects are the primary referents of visual states -- not places, as Austen Clark would have it in his A Theory of Sentience.
Matthen, Mohan P. (1989). Intensionality and perception: A reply to Rosenberg. Journal of Philosophy 86 (December):727-733.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
McDowell, John (1994). The content of perceptual experience. Philosopical Quarterly 44 (175):190-205.   (Cited by 66 | Google | More links)
Millikan, Ruth G. (1991). Perceptual content and Fregean myth. Mind 100 (399):439-459.   (Cited by 21 | Google | More links)
Mohanty, Jitendra N. (1986). Perceptual meaning. Topoi 5 (September):131-136.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Mole, Christopher (2009). The Motor Theory of Speech Perception. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Muñoz-Suárez, Carlos Mario (2009). Sensations, Perceptions and Conceptions. Remarks on Assessability for Accuracy. In V. Munz, J. Wang & K. Puhl (eds.), Language and World. Niederösterreichkultur.   (Google)
Abstract: I shall specify about what we are thinking when we are talking about regulating something by specifying accuracy conditions. The main thesis is that we couldn’t describe representational relations as perceptual relationships if we lack a normative conception of relationships between representing and represented. Hence, searching for what it is assessable for accuracy depends on specifying the kind of intentional content which is normatively individuated and attributed.
O'Callaghan, Casey (2006). Cross-modal illusions and perceptual content: Lessons from cross-modal illusions. Electroneurobiolog 14 (2):211-224.   (Google)
Abstract: I argue that a class of recently-discovered cross-modal illusions gives reason to posit a dimension of content shared across perceptual modalities and to abandon the traditional view according to which perceptual content is exclusively constituted by discrete modality-specific contents
O'Callaghan, Casey (2008). Seeing what you hear: Cross-modal illusions and perception. Philosophical Issues 18 (1):316-338.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Cross-modal perceptual illusions occur when a stimulus to one modality impacts perceptual experience associated with another modality. Unlike synaesthesia, cross-modal illusions are intelligible as results of perceptual strategies for dealing with sensory stimulation to multiple modalities, rather than as mere quirks. I argue that understanding cross-modal illusions reveals an important flaw in a widespread conception of the senses, and of their role in perceptual experience, according to which understanding perception and perceptual experience is a matter of assembling independently viable stories about vision, audition, olfaction, and the rest.
Pautz, Adam (online). Why believe that experiences have contents?   (Google)
Abstract: I provide an argument from the best explanation for the claim that experiences have contents. In particular, I argue that a common factor account of experience in terms of content provides the best explanation of the fact that both veridical and non-veridical experience can ground the capacity for thought, of indeterminate and impossible experiences, and of other features of experience
Pautz, Adam (online). What does it mean to say that experiences have contents?   (Google)
Abstract: I offer a formulation of the claim that experiences have contents.I also suggest a new method for determining what the contents of our experiences are, which can be applied to the issue of whether high-level properties such as being a tomato enter into the content of experience
Peacocke, Christopher (1986). Analogue content. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 60:1-17.   (Cited by 25 | Google)
Peacocke, Christopher (1989). Perceptual content. In J. Almog, John Perry & Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 27 | Google)
Peacocke, Christopher (1983). Sense and Content: Experience, Thought, and Their Relations. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 230 | Google | More links)
Pendlebury, Michael J. (1987). Perceptual representation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 87:91-106.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Pendlebury, Michael J. (1990). Sense experiences and their contents: A defense of the propositional account. Inquiry 33 (2):215-30.   (Cited by 5 | Annotation | Google)
Prosser, Simon (forthcoming). The two-dimensional content of consciousness. Philosophical Studies 136:319--349.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I put forward a representationalist theory of conscious experience based on Robert Stalnaker
Richeimer, Joel (2000). How philosophy lost perceptual expertise. Synthese 124 (3).   (Google)
Abstract:   If we think of perceptual expertise, we might think ofa neurologist interpreting a CAT scan or an astronomerlooking at a star. But perceptual expertise is notlimited to experts. Perceptual expertise is atthe heart of our everyday competence in the world. Wenavigate around obstacles, we take turns inconversations, we make left-turns in face of on-comingtraffic. Each of us is a perceptual expert (thoughonly in certain domains). If we misunderstandperceptual expertise, we risk misunderstanding ourepistemic relationship to the world. I argue that thestandard arguments for the received view of perceptualexpertise are problematic at best. Of course, theissue of whether the received view is actually correctis an empirical issue. But the decision to adopt thereceived view, I argue, was not a scientific decision,but was made by inheriting a philosophical tradition– which many philosophers today would question
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Externalism and the Gappy Content of Hallucination. In D. Platchias & F. E. Macpherson (eds.), Hallucination. MIT Press.   (Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Perceptual content defended. Noûs.   (Google)
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 the objections of austere relationalists. The main thesis of the paper is that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with perceptual experience being representational. I argue that most austere relationalist objections to the thesis that experience has content are objections only against 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
Schellenberg, Susanna (2006). Perception in Perspective. Dissertation,   (Google | More links)
Abstract: How can perception yield knowledge of the world? One challenge in answering this question is that one necessarily perceives from a particular location. Thus, what is immediately perceptually available is subject to situational features, such as lighting conditions and one’s location. Nonetheless, one can perceive the shape and color of objects. My dissertation aims to provide an explanation for how this is possible. The main thesis is that giving such an explanation requires abandoning the traditional model of perception as a two-place relation between subjects and objects in favor of a model of perception as a three-place relation between subjects, objects, and situations
Schellenberg, Susanna (2010). The Particularity and Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience. Philosophical Studies 149 (1).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the second but not the first desideratum. I argue that to satisfy both desiderata perceptual experience is best conceived of as fundamentally both relational and representational. I develop a view of perceptual experience that synthesizes the virtues of relationalism and representationalism, by arguing that perceptual content is constituted by potentially gappy de re modes of presentation.
Schellenberg, Susanna (2008). The Situation-Dependency of Perception. The Journal of Philosophy 105 (2):55-84.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that perception is necessarily situation-dependent. The way an object is must not just be distinguished from the way it appears and the way it is represented, but also from the way it is presented given the situational features. First, I argue that the way an object is presented is best understood in terms of external, mind-independent, but situation-dependent properties of objects. Situation-dependent properties are exclusively sensitive to and ontologically dependent on the intrinsic properties of objects, such as their shape, size, and color, and the situational features, such as the lighting conditions and the perceiver’s location in relation to the perceived object. Second, I argue that perceiving intrinsic properties is epistemically dependent on representing situation-dependent properties. Recognizing situation-dependent properties yields four advantages. It makes it possible to embrace the motivations that lead to phenomenalism and indirect realism by recognizing that objects are presented a certain way, while holding on to the intuition that subjects directly perceive objects. Second, it acknowledges that perceptions are not just individuated by the objects they are of, but by the ways those objects are presented given the situational features. Third, it allows for a way to accommodate the fact that there is a wide range of viewing conditions or situational features that can count as normal. Finally, it makes it possible to distinguish perception and thought about the same object with regard to what is represented.
Shoemaker, Sydney (2002). Reply to Leeds. Noûs 36 (1):130-136.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna, Do visual experiences have contents.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: If you want to know whether there is any mustard in the refrigerator, it is a good idea to open the door and look. If you see the mustard, you can end up knowing its whereabouts: it’s in the fridge. If instead of looking for the mustard, you pictured the fridge interior in a daydream, and then relied on your daydream to confirm whether the fridge contained mustard or not, you wouldn’t end up knowing anything about the mustard or the fridge. At best you would end up with a true belief. As the mustard example illustrates, it is part of common practice to regard perception as a special kind of input to belief that allows us to compare hypotheses with the world, so that we may assess whether those hypotheses are true. Even philosophers who were cautious about assigning perception more than a causal role in relation to knowledge regard perception as involving a special sort of input, different in kind from belief and judgment. For instance, Locke distinguished ideas of sensation from ideas of reflection, and Hume distinguished impressions from ideas. Both in common practice and in philosophy, perception is regarded as a distinctive kind of mental state that serves as an input to belief, and is distinct from it. It is one thing to regard perceptual states as distinct from belief, but another to say what is distinctive about them. What distinguishes perceptual states from beliefs, daydreams, and all other kinds of mental states? In this paper I address this question for a specific class of perceptual states: conscious visual experiences, where these are the kind of experience one typically has in seeing one’s environment, or are [1] introspectively indistinguishable from them. Conscious visual experiences thus include visual hallucinations that are introspectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptions. I argue that visual perceptual experiences share an important feature with beliefs: they have contents, in a sense to be explained. Given this similarity between visual experiences and beliefs, their distinctness from belief must be found either in a further structure from which their contents have been derived, from a special mode of entertaining contents (distinct from the mode found in belief). My discussion will focus on interpreting, developing and defending the following thesis: The Content View: All visual perceptual experiences have contents. The kind of content at issue meets two constraints: contents are true or false, and contents of experience are conveyed to the subject by her experience..
Siegel, Susanna (2007). How can we discover the contents of experience? Southern Journal Of Philosophy:127-42.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I discuss several proposals for how to find out which contents visual experiences have, and I defend the method I
Siegel, Susanna (online). The contents of perception. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Cited by 18 | Google | More links)
Smith, David Woodruff (1984). Content and context of perception. Synthese 61 (October):61-88.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Smith, David Woodruff (1979). The case of the exploding perception. Synthese 41 (June):239-270.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Smith, David Woodruff (1986). The ins and outs of perception. Philosophical Studies 49 (March):187-211.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2008). Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.
Sosa, Ernest (1988). Contents and objects of experience. Grazer Philosophische Studien 32:209-212.   (Google)
Speaks, Jeff (ms). A quick argument against phenomenism, Fregeanism, appearance property-ism and (maybe) functionalism about perceptual content.   (Google)
Abstract: A short paper which is pretty much what its title says it is.
Still, Arthur (1979). Perception and representation. In Philosophical Problems In Psychology. London: Methuen.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Talmont-Kaminski, Konrad & Collier, John D. (2004). Saving the distinctions: Distinctions as the epistemologically significant content of experience. In Johann Christian Marek & Maria Elisabeth Reicher (eds.), Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society XII. Austrian L. Wittgenstein Society, Kirchberg.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: To account for a perceived distinction it is necessary to postulate a real distinction. Our process of experiencing the world is one of, mostly unconscious, interpretation of observed distinctions to provide us with a partial world-picture that is sufficient to guide action. The distinctions, themselves, are acorrigible (they do not have a truth value), directly perceived, structured, and capable of being interpreted. Interpreted experience is corrigible, representational and capable of guiding action. Since interpretation is carried out mostly unconsciously and in real time, the two aspects are present in experience together so that it is difficult to separate them out
Thompson, Brad J. (2009). Senses for senses. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (1):99 – 117.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: If two subjects have phenomenally identical experiences, there is an important sense in which the way the world appears to them is precisely the same. But how are we to understand this notion of 'ways of appearing'? Most philosophers who have acknowledged the existence of phenomenal content have held that the way something appears is simply a matter of the properties something appears to have. On this view, the way something appears is simply the way something appears to be . This identification supports a Russellian theory of phenomenal content, according to which phenomenal content is exhausted by facts about what specific properties are represented by an experience. The present paper motivates and develops an alternative Fregean theory of phenomenal colour content. According to Fregean theories, the phenomenal content that is shared by any two phenomenally identical experiences is a matter of how the world is represented, and need not involve sameness in what is represented. It is argued that ways of appearing are modes of presentations of external properties and objects, and a detailed theory is presented about the nature of the modes of presentation involved in colour experience
Travis, Charles S. (2004). The silence of the senses. Mind 113 (449):57-94.   (Cited by 26 | Google | More links)
Abstract: There is a view abroad on which (a) perceptual experience has (a) representational content in this sense: in it something is represented to the perceiver as so. On the view, a perceptual experience has a face value at which it may be taken, or which may be rejected. This paper argues that that view is mistaken: there is nothing in perceptual experience which makes it so that in it anything is represented as so (except insofar as the perceiver represents things to himself as so). In that sense, the senses are silent, or, in Austin's term, dumb. Perceptual experience is not as such either veridical or delusive. It may mislead, but it does not take representation to accomplish that
Tozser, Janos (2005). The content of perceptual experience. In Intentionality: Past and Future (Value Inquiry Book Series, Volume 173). New York: Rodopi NY.   (Google)
Tye, Michael (2007). Intentionalism and the argument from no common content. Philosophical Perspectives 21:589-613.   (Google)
Abstract: Disjunctivists (Hinton 1973, Snowdon 1990, Martin 2002, 2006) often motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception, the subject is directly in contact with the perceived object. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I related to the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. I do not experience the table by experiencing some- thing else over and above the table and its facing surface. I see the facing surface of the table directly
Van Cleve, James (2002). Thomas Reid's geometry of visibles. Philosophical Review 111 (3):373-416.   (Google | More links)
Viger, Christopher D. (2006). Is the aim of perception to provide accurate representations? A case for the 'no' side. In Robert J. Stainton (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.   (Google)
Vision, Gerald (1998). Perceptual content. Philosophy 73 (3):395-427.   (Google)
Vlach, Frank (1983). On situation semantics for perception. Synthese 54 (January):129-152.   (Cited by 19 | Google | More links)
Watt, H. J. (1920). The importance of the sensory attribute of order. Mind 29 (115):257-276.   (Google | More links)
Wojtach, William T. (2009). Reconsidering perceptual content. Philosophy of Science 76 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: An important class of teleological theories cannot explain the representational content of visual states because they fail to address the relationship between the world, projected retinal stimuli, and perception. A different approach for achieving a naturalized theory of visual content is offered that rejects the traditional internalism/externalism debate in favor of what is termed “empirical externalism.” This position maintains that, while teleological considerations can underwrite a broad understanding of representation, the content of visual representation can only be determined empirically according to accumulated past experience. A corollary is that a longstanding problem concerning the indeterminacy of visual content is dissolved. *Received September 2006; revised November 2008. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Box 90999 LSRC, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708; e‐mail: wtw3@duke.edu
Yaluin, Umit D. (1997). Skepticism and perceptual content. Philosophical Papers 26 (2):179-194.   (Google)
Yoon, B. (2000). Intentionality of perceptual experience. Erkenntnis 52 (3):339-355.   (Google | More links)
Zeimbekis, John (2010). Pictures and singular thought. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68 (1):11-21.   (Google | More links)

3.2 Sensory Modalities

3.2a Distinguishing the Senses

19 / 20 entries displayed

Bermudez, Jose Luis (1999). Categorizing qualitative states: Some problems. Anthropology and Philosophy 3 (2).   (Google)
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Cooper, D. E. (1970). Materialism and perception. Philosophical Quarterly 20 (October):334-346.   (Google | More links)
Cox, J. W. Roxbee (1970). Distinguishing the senses. Mind 79 (October):530-550.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Feenstra, Louw & Borgstein, Johannes (2003). The senses in perspective. Ludus Vitalis 11 (20):135-157.   (Google)
Gray, Richard (2005). On the concept of a sense. Synthese 147 (3):461-475.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Keeley has recently argued that the philosophical issue of how to analyse the concept of a sense can usefully be addressed by considering how scientists, and more specifically neuroethologists, classify the senses. After briefly outlining his proposal, which is based on the application of an ordered set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for modality differentiation, I argue, by way of two complementary counterexamples, that it fails to account fully for the way the senses are in fact individuated in neuroethology and other relevant sciences. I suggest substantial modifications to Keeley
Grice, H. P. (1962). Some remarks about the senses. In R. J. Butler (ed.), Analytical Philosophy, First Series. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 31 | Google)
Keeley, Brian L. (2002). Making sense of the senses: Individuating modalities in humans and other animals. Journal Of Philosophy 99 (1):5-28.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Leon, Mark . (1988). Characterising the senses. Mind and Language 3:243-70.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Nelkin, Norton (1990). Categorizing the senses. Mind and Language 5 (2):149-165.   (Google)
Nudds, Matthew (online). Is seeing just like feeling? Kinds of experiences and the five senses.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I am going to argue that two commonly held views about perceptual experience are incompatible and that one must be given up. The first is the view that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kind of experiences involved in perception; the second is the view
Nudds, Matthew (2000). Modes of perceiving and imagining. Acta Analytica 15 (24):139-150.   (Google)
Nudds, Matthew (online). The senses as psychological kinds.   (Google)
Abstract: The distinction we make between five different senses is a universal one.1 Rather than speaking of generically perceiving something, we talk of perceiving in one of five determinate ways: we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste things. In distinguishing determinate ways of perceiving things what are we distinguishing between? What, in other words, is a sense modality?2 An answer to this question must tell us what constitutes a sense modality and so needs to do more than simply describe differences in virtue of which we can distinguish the perceptions of different senses. There are many such differences
Nudds, Matthew (2004). The significance of the senses. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (1):31-51.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Standard accounts of the senses attempt to answer the question how and why we count ?ve senses (the counting question); none of the standard accounts is satisfactory. Any adequate account of the senses must explain the signi?cance of the senses, that is, why distinguishing different senses matters. I provide such an explanation, and then use it as the basis for providing an account of the senses and answering the counting question
O'Dea, John (forthcoming). A Proprioceptive Account of the Senses. In Fiona Macpherson (ed.), The Senses: Classical and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. OUP.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Representationalist theories of sensory experience are often thought to be vulnerable to the existence of apparently non-representational differences between experiences in different sensory modalities. Seeing and hearing seem to differ in their qualia, quite apart from what they represent. The origin of this idea is perhaps Grice’s argument, in “Some Remarks on the Senses,” that the senses are distinguished by “introspectible character.” In this chapter I take the Representationalist side by putting forward an account of sense modalities which is consistent with that view and yet pays due regard to the intuition behind Grice’s argument. Employing J.J. Gibson’s distinction between exploratory and performatory behaviour, I point to a proprioceptive element in perceptual experience, and identify this as crucial in any account of what makes a particular way of perceiving a sense modality.
Ross, Peter W. (2008). Common sense about qualities and senses. Philosophical Studies 138 (3).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: There has been some recent optimism that addressing the question of how we distinguish sensory modalities will help us consider whether there are limits on a scientific understanding of perceptual states. For example, Block has suggested that the way we distinguish sensory modalities indicates that perceptual states have qualia which at least resist scientific characterization. At another extreme, Keeley argues that our common-sense way of distinguishing the senses in terms of qualitative properties is misguided, and offers a scientific eliminativism about common-sense modalities which avoids appeal to qualitative properties altogether. I’ll argue contrary to Keeley that qualitative properties are necessary for distinguishing senses, and contrary to Block that our common-sense distinction doesn’t indicate that perceptual states have qualia. A non-qualitative characterization of perceptual states isn’t needed to avoid the potential limit on scientific understanding imposed by qualia
Ross, P. (2001). Qualia and the senses. Philosophical Quarterly 51 (205):495-511.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Scott, Michael (2007). Distinguishing the senses. Philosophical Explorations 10 (3):257 – 262.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Seeing, hearing and touching are phenomenally different, even if we are detecting the same spatial properties with each sense. This presents a prima facie problem for intentionalism, the theory that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. The paper reviews some attempts to resolve this problem, and then looks in detail at Peter Carruthers' recent proposal that the senses can be individuated by the way in which they represent spatial properties and incorporate time. This proposal is shown to be ineffective in distinguishing auditory from either visual or tactual perception, and substantial classes of visual and tactual perceptions are found that the posited spatial and temporal features fail to individuate
Serres, Michel (2009). The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. Continuum.   (Google)
Abstract: Veils -- Boxes -- Tables -- Visit -- Joy.

3.2b Vision

Anderson, Joseph & Anderson, Barbara (1993). The myth of persistence of vision revisited. Journal of Film and Video 45:3--12.   (Google)
Biernoff, Suzannah (2002). Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan.   (Google)
Abstract: Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages breaks new ground by bringing postmodern writings on vision and embodiment into dialogue with medieval texts and images: an interdisciplinary strategy that illuminates and complicates both cultures. This is an invaluable reference work for anyone interested in the history and theory of visuality, and it is essential reading or scholars of art, science, or spirituality in the medieval period
Blinder, David (1986). A new look at vision. Topoi 5 (September):137-148.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Bruce, Vicki & Green, Patrick (1985). Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology, and Ecology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.   (Google)
Burge, Tyler (1989). Marr's theory of vision. In Modularity in Knowledge Representation and Natural-Language Understanding. Cambridge: MIT Press.   (Cited by 4 | Google)
Churchland, Paul M. (1995). Machine stereopsis: A feedforward network for fast stereo vision with movable fusion plane. In Android Epistemology. Cambridge: MIT Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Clark, Austen (1996). Three varieties of visual field. Philosophical Psychology 9 (4):477-95.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to challenge the rather insouciant attitude that many investigators seem to adopt when they go about describing the items and events in their "visual fields". There are at least three distinct categories of interpretation of what these reports might mean, and only under one of those categories do those reports have anything resembling an observational character. The others demand substantive revisions in one's beliefs about what one sees. The ur-concept of a "visual field" is that of the "sum of things seen", but one can interpret the latter in very different ways. The first is the "field of view", or the sum of physical things seen. The second is an array of visual impressions, whose spatial relations are distinct from those of physical phenomena in front of the eyes. The third is an intentional object: the world as it is represented visually. These three categories are described, and various locutions of vision science--such as "optic array", "retinocentric space", "visual geometry", "virtual object" and others--are analyzed and variously located within them. Finally, a recent argument purporting to necessitate the existence of a version two visual field is examined and shown wanting
Cutting, James E. (2003). Reconceiving perceptual space. In Heiko Hecht, Robert Schwartz & Margaret Atherton (eds.), Looking Into Pictures. The Mit Press.   (Google)
Dilworth, John B. (2002). Varieties of visual representation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (2):183-206.   (Google)
Abstract: Pictorial representation is one species of visual representation--but not the only one, I argue. There are three additional varieties or species of visual representation--namely 'structural', 'aspect' and 'integrative' representation--which together comprise a category of 'delineative' rather than depictive visual representation. I arrive at this result via consideration of previously neglected orientational factors that serve to distinguish the two categories. I conclude by arguing that pictures (unlike 'delineations') are not physical objects, and that their multiplicity and modal narrowness motivates a view of them as instead being (one kind of) 'delineatively' represented content or subject matter, as represented by those objects that are (commonly but wrongly, in my view) assumed to be pictures
Farrell, B. A. (1977). On the psychological explanation of visual perception. Synthese 35 (3).   (Google | More links)
Glezer, Vadim D. (1989). Vision and mind. In Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, VIII. New York: Elsevier Science.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links)
Hamlyn, David W. (1957). The visual field and perception, part I. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107:107-124.   (Google)
Hatfield, Gary C. (2009). Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology.
Hill, Christopher S. (online). Visual awareness and visual qualia.   (Google)
Abstract: Department of Philosophy Brown University Providence, RI 02915
Hyman, John (1986). The cartesian theory of vision. Ratio 28 (December):149-167.   (Google)
Hyslop, James H. (1888). On wundt's theory of psychic synthesis in vision. Mind 13 (52):499-526.   (Google | More links)
Jütte, Robert (2005). A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace. Polity.   (Google)
Kapitan, Tomis (1998). Vision, vector, veracity. In Christian Strub (ed.), Blick Und Bild. Wilhelm Fink Verlag.   (Google)
Abstract: To experience is to undergo a process, to be in a state of receiving input which affords information about our environment. For highly developed beings like ourselves, the inputs determining states of conscious sensory perception are among the most important for our survival. At first glance, these states seem relational, each being a situation wherein a percipient X is passively conscious of something Y--its object, subject-matter, or content--without any apparent effort. Of course, the briefest reflection convinces us that despite a seemingly passive reception of data from without, a good deal of interpretation goes into the making of perceptual judgments, as evidenced by their wide variance in the face of like sensory stimulation. One person looking at the slope of a mountain notices a patch of whitish stones; another sees a flock of sheep grazing. They are distinguished by their different reactions to similar input, whether or not these are best construed as inferences, interpretations, or, simply, differing degrees of attentiveness
Knuuttila, Simo & Kärkkäinen, Pekka (eds.) (2008). Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Springer.   (Google)
Lloyd, A. C. (1957). The visual field and perception, part II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 125:125-144.   (Google)
Matthen, Mohan (2007). Defining vision: What homology thinking contributes. Biology and Philosophy 22 (5).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The specialization of visual function within biological function is reason for introducing “homology thinking” into explanations of the visual system. It is argued that such specialization arises when organisms evolve by differentiation from their predecessors. Thus, it is essentially historical, and visual function should be regarded as a lineage property. The colour vision of birds and mammals do not function the same way as one another, on this account, because each is an adaptation to special needs of the visual functions of predecessors—very different kinds of predecessors in each case. Thus, history underlies function. We also see how homology thinking figures in the hierarchical classification of visual systems, and how it supports the explanation of visual function by functional role analysis
Matthen, Mohan P. (2005). Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 50 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the biological domain; these systems coevolve with an organism's learning and action systems, providing the latter with classifications of external objects in terms of sensory categories purpose--built for their need. On the basis of this central idea, Matthen presents novel theories of perceptual similarity, content, and realism. His work will be a stimulating resource for a wide range of scholars and students across philosophy and psychology
Millar, Boyd (2006). The conflicted character of picture perception. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (4):471–477.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: It is often assumed that there is a perceptual conflict in looking at a picture since one sees both a two-dimensional surface and a three-dimensional scene simultaneously. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to think that looking at pictures requires the visual system to perform the special task of reconciling inconsistent impressions of space, or competing information from different depth cues. To the contrary, I suggest that there are good reasons to think that the perception of depth in pictures is achieved in much the same way as is the perception of depth in any ordinary case.
Montgomery, Richard (1989). Discrimination, reidentification and the indeterminacy of early vision. Noûs 23 (September):413-435.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1998). Field of view. Journal of Mind and Behavior 19 (4):415-436.   (Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1989). The distinction between visual perceiving and visual perceptual experience. Journal of Mind and Behavior 10:37-61.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
New, Christopher (1976). Look, no eyes. Analysis 36 (March):137-141.   (Google)
Pace, Michael (2007). Blurred vision and the transparency of experience. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (3):328–354.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper considers an objection to intentionalism (the view that the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on intentional content) based on the phenomenology of blurred vision. Several intentionalists, including Michael Tye, Fred Dretske, and Timothy Crane, have proposed intentionalist explanations of blurred vision phenomenology. I argue that their proposals fail and propose a solution of my own that, I contend, is the only promising explanation consistent with intentionalism. The solution, however, comes at a cost for intentionalists; it involves rejecting the "transparency of experience", a doctrine that has been the basis for the central argument in favor of intentionalism
Pastore, Nicholas (1971). Selective History Of Theories Of Visual Perception, 1650-1950. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 30 | Google)
Pickering, F. R. (1975). Is light the proper object of vision? Mind 84 (January):119-121.   (Google | More links)
Ryder, Dan (online). Explaining the "inhereness" of qualia representationally: Why we seem to have a visual field.   (Google)
Schwartz, Robert (1994). Vision: Variations on Some Berkeleian Themes. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 35 | Google)
Schwitzgebel, Eric (online). When our eyes are closed, what, if anything, do we visually experience?   (Google | More links)
Serres, Michel (2009). The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. Continuum.   (Google)
Abstract: Veils -- Boxes -- Tables -- Visit -- Joy.
Smith, Barry (1999). Truth and the visual field. In Jean Petitot (ed.), Naturalizing Phenomenology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.   (Cited by 13 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Abstract The paper uses the tools of mereotopology (the theory of parts, wholes and boundaries) to work out the implications of certain analogies between the 'ecological psychology' of J. J Gibson and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. It presents an ontological theory of spatial boundaries and of spatially extended entities. By reference to examples from the geographical sphere it is shown that both boundaries and extended entities fall into two broad categories: those which exist independently of our cognitive acts (for example, the planet Earth, its exterior surface); and those which exist only in virtue of such acts (for example: the equator, the North Sea). The visual field, too, can be conceived as an example of an extended entity that is dependent in the sense at issue. The paper suggests extending this analogy by postulating entities which would stand to true judgments as the visual field stands to acts of visual perception. The judgment field is defined more precisely as that complex extended entity which comprehends all entities which are relevant to the truth of a given (true) judgment. The work of cognitive linguists such as Talmy and Langacker, when properly interpreted, can be shown to yield a detailed account of the structures of the judgment fields corresponding to sentences of different sorts. A new sort of correspondence-theoretic definition of truth for sentences of natural language can then be formulated on this basis
Wilson, Catherine (1993). Constancy, emergence, and illusions: Obstacles to a naturalistic theory of vision. In Causation in Early Modern Philosophy. University Park: Penn St University Press.   (Google)
Wilson, Hugh R. (1991). Shadows on the cave wall: Philosophy and visual science. Philosophical Psychology 4:65-78.   (Google)

3.2c Other Sensory Modalities

Almagor, Uri (1990). Odors and private language: Observations on the phenomenology of scent. Human Studies 13 (3):253-274.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Appelbaum, David (1988). The Interpenetrating Reality: Bringing The Body To Touch. Lang.   (Google)
Armstrong, David M. (1963). Vesey on sensations of heat. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 41 (December):359-362.   (Google | More links)
Belardinelli, Marta Olivetti & Di Matteo, Rosalia (2002). Is mental imagery prominently visual? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):204-205.   (Google)
Abstract: Neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques have proved to be useful in comprehending the extent to which the visual modality is pervasive in mental imagery, and in comprehending the specificity of images generated through other sensory modalities. Although further research is needed to understand the nature of mental images, data attained by means of these techniques suggest that mental imagery requires at least two distinct processing components
Biernoff, Suzannah (2002). Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan.   (Google)
Abstract: Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages breaks new ground by bringing postmodern writings on vision and embodiment into dialogue with medieval texts and images: an interdisciplinary strategy that illuminates and complicates both cultures. This is an invaluable reference work for anyone interested in the history and theory of visuality, and it is essential reading or scholars of art, science, or spirituality in the medieval period
DeBellis, Mark (1991). The representational content of musical experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (June):303-24.   (Cited by 6 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Humphrey, Nicholas (2001). Doing it my way: Sensation, perception – and feeling red. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):987-987.   (Google)
Abstract: The theory presented here is a near neighbour of Humphrey's theory of sensations as actions. O'Regan & Noë have opened up remarkable new possibilities. But they have missed a trick by not making more of the distinction between sensation and perception; and some of their particular proposals for how we use our eyes to represent visual properties are not only implausible but would, if true, isolate vision from other sensory modalities and do little to explain the phenomenology of conscious experience in general
Ihde, Don (1976). Listening And Voice: A Phenomenology Of Sound. Ohio University Press.   (Cited by 32 | Google)
Ihde, Don (1982). On hearing shapes, surfaces and interiors. In Phenomenology Dialogues & Bridges. Suny.   (Google)
Ihde, Don (1966). Some auditory phenomena. Philosophy Today 10:227-235.   (Google)
Knuuttila, Simo & Kärkkäinen, Pekka (eds.) (2008). Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Springer.   (Google)
Macpherson, Fiona (1999). Perfect pitch and the content of experience. Philosophy and Anthropology 3 (2).   (Google | More links)
Matthen, Mohan (2010). On the diversity of auditory objects. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (1):63-89.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper defends two theses about sensory objects. The more general thesis is that directly sensed objects are those delivered by sub-personal processes. It is shown how this thesis runs counter to perceptual atomism, the view that wholes are always sensed indirectly, through their parts. The more specific thesis is that while the direct objects of audition are all composed of sounds, these direct objects are not all sounds—here, a composite auditory object is a temporal sequence of sounds (whereas a composite visual object is a spatial composite). Many composite objects are directly heard in the sense just mentioned. There is a great variety of such composite auditory objects—melodies, harmonies, sequences of phonemes, individual voices, meaning-carrying sounds, and so on. This diversity of auditory objects has an important application to aesthetics. Perceivers do not naturally or easily attend simultaneously to auditory objects that overlap in time. Yet, aesthetic appreciation depends on such an allocation of attention to overlapping objects
Mattens, Filip (2009). Perception, body, and the sense of touch: Phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Husserl Studies 25 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel
Mole, Christopher (2009). The Motor Theory of Speech Perception. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Montgomery, Edmund (1885). Space and touch, I. Mind 10 (38):227-244.   (Google | More links)
Montgomery, Edmund (1885). Space and touch, II. Mind 10 (39):377-398.   (Google | More links)
Morton, Thomas H. (2000). Archiving odors. In Of Minds and Molecules: New Philosophical Perspectives on Chemistry. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Nudds, Matthew & O'Callaghan, Casey (eds.) (2010). Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Audition. In John Symons & Paco Calvo (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology.   (Google)
Abstract: Provides the theoretical and psychological framework to the philosophy of sounds and audition. I address auditory scene analysis, spatial hearing, the audible qualities, and cross-modal interactions.
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Introduction: The Philosophy of Sounds and Auditory Perception. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). Pitch.   (Google)
Abstract: Some sounds have pitch, some do not. A tuba’s notes are lower pitched than a flute’s, but the fuzz from an untuned radio has no discernible pitch. Pitch is an attribute in virtue of which sounds that possess it can be ordered from “low” to “high”. Given how audition works, physics has taught us that frequency determines what pitch a sound auditorily appears to have
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Sounds. In Timothy J. Bayne, Axel Cleeremans & P. Wilken (eds.), Oxford Companion to Consciousness. Oup.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (2007). Sounds: A Philosophical Theory. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: ... ISBN0199215928 ... Abstract: Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science traditionally has focused on a visual model. This book presents a systematic treatment of sounds and auditory experience. It demonstrates how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships among multiple sense modalities enriches our understanding of perception. It articulates the central questions that comprise the philosophy of sound, and proposes a novel theory of sounds and their perception. Against the widely accepted philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, and against the scientific view that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium such as air or water, the book argues that sounds are events in which objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium. This does not imply that sounds propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near their sources. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time and situates sounds in the world. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities. It also provides a powerful account of echoes, interference, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories. Investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. This book concludes by arguing that a surprising class of cross-modal perceptual illusions demonstrates that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that a visuocentric model for theorizing about perception — according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry — ought to be abandoned.
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). The world of sound. The Philosophers' Magazine.   (Google)
O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1957). An impossible auditory experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57:53-82.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Price, H. H. (1944). Touch and organic sensation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 44:I.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Rolston, Howard L. (1965). Kinaesthetic sensations revisited. Journal of Philosophy 62 (February):96-100.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Scott, M. (2001). Tactual perception. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2):149-160.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Serres, Michel (2009). The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. Continuum.   (Google)
Abstract: Veils -- Boxes -- Tables -- Visit -- Joy.
Shiner, Roger A. (1979). Sense-experience, colours and tastes. Mind 88 (April):161-178.   (Google | More links)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2009). Hearing silence: The perception and introspection of absences. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: in Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, ed. by Matthew Nudds and Casey O’Callaghan (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2008)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2008). Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.
Strang, C. (1961). The perception of heat. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 61:239-252.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Vesey, Godfrey N. A. (1963). Armstrong on sensations of heat. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 41 (August):250-254.   (Google | More links)
Zamir, Tzachi (2004). The sense of smell: Morality and rhetoric in the bramhall-Hobbes controversy. Sophia 43 (2):49-61.   (Google)
Abstract: Olfactoric imagery is abundantly employed in the Bramhall-Hobbes controversy. I survey some examples and then turn to the possible significance of this. I argue that by forcing Hobbes into the figurative exchange Bramhall scores points in terms of moving the controversy into ground that is not covered by the limited view of rationality that Hobbes is committed to according to his rhetoric (at least as Bramhall perceives it). Bramhall clearly wants to move from cool argument to a more affluent rhetorical appeal. I argue that choosing such a richer epistemology coheres with Bramhall

3.2d Molyneux's Problem

Abbott, T. K. (1904). Fresh light on Molyneux' problem. Dr. Ramsay's case. Mind 13 (52):543-554.   (Google | More links)
Berchielli, Laura (2002). Color, space, and figure in Locke: An interpretation of the Molyneux problem. Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (1):47-65.   (Google | More links)
Block, Irving L. (1965). On the commonness of the common sensibles. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 43 (August):189-195.   (Google | More links)
Bolton, Martha B. (1994). The real Molyneux question and the basis of Locke's answer. In G. A. J. Rogers (ed.), Locke's Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Campbell, John (2005). Information-processing, phenomenal consciousness and Molyneux's question. In José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Ordinary common sense suggests that we have just one set of shape concepts that we apply indifferently on the bases of sight and touch. Yet we understand the shape concepts, we know what shape properties are, only because we have experience of shapes. And phenomenal experience of shape in vision and phenomenal experience of shape in touch seem to be quite different. So how can the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of vision be the same as the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of touch? I think this is the intuitive puzzle that underlies the question sent by the Dublin lawyer Molyneux to John Locke. This concerns a man born blind, who learns by the use of his touch to discriminate cubes from spheres. Suppose him now to gain the use of his sight. And suppose him to be presented with a cube and a sphere, of nighly the same bigness. Quaere, will he be able to tell, by the use of his vision alone, which is the sphere, and which the cube? (Locke 1975, II/ix/8.)
Campbell, John (1996). Molyneux's question. Philosophical Issues 7:301-318.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Abstract: in Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception (Philosophical Issues vol. 7) (Atascadero: Ridgeview 1996), 301-318, with replies by Brian Loar and Kirk Ludwig
Campbell, John (2005). Molyneux's question and cognitive impenetrability. In Athanassios Raftopoulos (ed.), Cognitive Penetrabiity of Perception: Attention, Strategies and Bottom-Up Constraints. New York: Nova Science.   (Google)
Degenaar, Marjolein (online). Molyneux's problem. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Google)
Eilan, Naomi M. (1993). Molyneux's question and the idea of an external world. In Spatial Representation. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Google)
Evans, Gareth (1985). Molyneux's question. In Gareth Evans (ed.), Collected Papers. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Gallagher, Shaun (forthcoming). The Molyneux problem. In How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Heil, John (1987). The Molyneux question. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 17 (3):227–241.   (Google | More links)
Hight, Marc A. (2002). Why we do not see what we feel. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2):148-162.   (Google | More links)
Hopkins, Robert (2005). Molyneux's question. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (3):441-464.   (Google)
Hopkins, Robert (2005). Thomas Reid on Molyneux's question. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (3):340-364.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Jacomuzzi, Alessandra C.; Kobau, Pietro & Bruno, Nicola (2003). Molyneux's question redux. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (4):255-280.   (Google | More links)
John Murphy, Joseph (1876). Space through sight and touch. Mind 1 (2):284-285.   (Google | More links)
Levin, Janet (2008). Molyneux's question and the individuation of perceptual concepts. Philosophical Studies 139 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: Molyneux's Question, that is, “Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere... and the blind man made to see: Quaere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the globe, which the cube”, was discussed by many theorists in the 17th and 18th centuries, and has recently been addressed by contemporary philosophers interested in the nature, and identity conditions, of perceptual concepts. My main concern in this paper is to argue – against Evans, Campbell, and a number of other contemporary philosophers – that a test of the sort Molyneux envisioned, at least if carefully designed and administered, can indeed be a crucial experiment for the claim that we deploy the same perceptual concepts when identifying shapes by sight and by touch. I will explore some implications of this argument for a theory of recognitional concepts. And I’ll try to trace out some unhappy consequences of various alternative views
Lievers, Menno (1992). The Molyneux problem. Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (3).   (Google)
Loar, Brian (1996). Comments on John Campbell, Molyneux's Question. Philosophical Issues 7:319-324.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Ludwig, Kirk A. (1996). Shape properties and perception. In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Philosophical Issues. Atascadero: Ridgeview.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Martin, Michael W. (1992). Sight and touch. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Meltzoff, Andrew N. (1993). Molyneux's babies: Cross-modal perception, imitation, and the mind of the preverbal infant. In Spatial Representation. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Morgan, Michael J. (1977). Molyneux's Question: Vision, Touch, and the Philosophy of Perception. Cambridge University Press.   (Google)
Sassen, Brigitte (2004). Kant on Molyneux's problem. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (3):471 – 485.   (Google | More links)
Schumacher, Ralph (2003). What are the direct objects of sight? Locke on the Molyneux question. Locke Studies 3:41-62.   (Google)
Shute, Sara (1981). Molyneux's question: Vision, touch, and the philosophy of perception. Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (2).   (Google)
Stratton, G. M. (1899). The spatial harmony of touch and sight. Mind 8 (32):492-505.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Thomson, Judith Jarvis (1974). Molyneux's problem. Journal of Philosophy 71 (October):637-650.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)

3.2e Sensory Modalities, Misc

7 / 8 entries displayed

Ackerman, Diana F. (1990). A Natural History of the Senses. Random House.   (Cited by 130 | Google)
Aldrich, Virgil C. (1974). Sight and light. American Philosophical Quarterly 11 (October):317-322.   (Google)
Broad, C. D. (1952). Some elementary reflexions on sense-perception. Philosophy 27 (January):3-17.   (Cited by 14 | Google)
Gold, Ian (2004). Phenomenal qualities and intermodal perception. In Hugh Clapin, Phillip Staines & Peter Slezak (eds.), Representation in Mind. Elsevier.   (Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (2008). Seeing what you hear: Cross-modal illusions and perception. Philosophical Issues 18 (1):316-338.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Cross-modal perceptual illusions occur when a stimulus to one modality impacts perceptual experience associated with another modality. Unlike synaesthesia, cross-modal illusions are intelligible as results of perceptual strategies for dealing with sensory stimulation to multiple modalities, rather than as mere quirks. I argue that understanding cross-modal illusions reveals an important flaw in a widespread conception of the senses, and of their role in perceptual experience, according to which understanding perception and perceptual experience is a matter of assembling independently viable stories about vision, audition, olfaction, and the rest.
Taliaferro, Charles (1991). The argument from transposed modalities. Metaphilosophy 93 (January-April):93-100.   (Google | More links)
Van Cleve, James (2006). Touch, sound, and things without the mind. Metaphilosophy 37 (2):162-182.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Two notable thought experiments are discussed in this article: Reid's thought experiment about whether a being supplied with tactile sensations alone could acquire the conception of extension and Strawson's thought experiment about whether a being supplied with auditory sensations alone could acquire the conception of mind-independent objects. The experiments are considered alongside Campbell's argument that only on the so-called relational view of experience is it possible for experiences to make available to their subjects the concept of mind-independent objects. I consider how the three issues ought to be construed as raising questions about woulds, coulds, or shoulds

3.3 Science of Perception

Millar, Boyd (2006). The conflicted character of picture perception. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (4):471–477.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: It is often assumed that there is a perceptual conflict in looking at a picture since one sees both a two-dimensional surface and a three-dimensional scene simultaneously. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to think that looking at pictures requires the visual system to perform the special task of reconciling inconsistent impressions of space, or competing information from different depth cues. To the contrary, I suggest that there are good reasons to think that the perception of depth in pictures is achieved in much the same way as is the perception of depth in any ordinary case.

3.3a Modularity and Cognitive Penetrability

Brewer, William F. & Lambert, Bruce L. (2001). The theory-ladenness of observation and the theory-ladenness of the rest of the scientific process. Philosophy of Science 3 (September):S176-S186.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Bruner, Jerome S. (1957). On perceptual readiness. Psychological Review 64:123-52.   (Cited by 766 | Google | More links)
Cam, Philip (1990). Insularity and the persistence of perceptual illusion. Analysis 50 (October):231-5.   (Google)
Churchland, Paul M. (1988). Perceptual plasticity and theoretical neutrality: A reply to Jerry Fodor. Philosophy of Science 55 (June):167-87.   (Cited by 86 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Churchland, Paul M. (1979). Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 312 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Abstract: The present essay is addressed simultaneously to two distinct audiences.
Cornwell, William (2004). Dr. In Marek, Johann Christian & Maria Elisabeth Reicher (eds.), Experience and Analysis: Papers of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium: August 8-14, 2004, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Vol. XII. niederosterreichkultur.   (Google)
DesAutels, P. (1995). Two types of theories: The impact of Churchland's perceptual plasticity. Philosophical Psychology 8 (1):25-33.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: In this paper I argue that because Churchland does not adequately address the distinction between high-level cognitive theories and low-level embodied theories, Churchland's claims for theory-laden perception lose their epistemological significance. I propose that Churchland and others debating the theory-ladenness of perception should distinguish carefully between two main ways in which perception is plastic: through modifying our high-level theories directly and through modifying our low-level theories using training experiences. This will require them to attend to two very different types of constraints on the modification of our perceptions
Estany, Anna (2001). The thesis of theory-Laden observation in the light of cognitive psychology. Philosophy of Science 68 (2):203-217.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Fodor, Jerry A. (1988). A reply to Churchland's `perceptual plasticity and theoretical neutrality'. Philosophy of Science 55 (June):188-98.   (Cited by 27 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Fodor, Jerry A. (1984). Observation reconsidered. Philosophy of Science 51 (March):23-43.   (Cited by 58 | Annotation | Google | More links)
Gilman, Daniel J. (1991). The neurobiology of observation. Philosophy of Science (September) 496 (September):496-502.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Good, I. J. (1968). Creativity and duality in perception and recall. In Proceedings of the IEE/NPL Conference on Pattern Recognition No. 42. Inst Elec Eng NPL.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Greenwood, John D. (1999). Simulation, theory-theory and cognitive penetration: No 'instance of the fingerpost'. Mind and Language 14 (1):32-56.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Grunewald, Alexander (1999). Neurophysiology indicates cognitive penetration of the visual system. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):379-380.   (Google)
Abstract: Short-term memory, nonattentional task effects and nonspatial extraretinal representations in the visual system are signs of cognitive penetration. All of these have been found physiologically, arguing against the cognitive impenetrability of vision as a whole. Instead, parallel subcircuits in the brain, each subserving a different competency including sensory and cognitive (and in some cases motor) aspects, may have cognitively impenetrable components
Heal, Jane (1996). Simulation and cognitive penetrability. Mind and Language 11 (1):44-67.   (Cited by 24 | Google | More links)
Lockhart, Robert S. (2000). Modularity, cognitive penetrability and the Turing test. Psycoloquy.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The Turing Test blurs the distinction between a model and irrelevant) instantiation details. Modeling only functional modules is problematic if these are interconnected and cognitively penetrable
Macpherson, Fiona (forthcoming). 'Cognitive penetration of colour experience: Rethinking the issue in light of an indirect mechanism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one’s cognitive system, for example, one’s thoughts or beliefs? Ifone thinks that this can happen [at least in certain ways that are identWed in the paper] then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitivelv impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case ofcognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typicallv use to explain away alleged cases. The case is one in which it seems subjects’ beliefs about the typical colour of objects ajfects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitivelv penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generallv sympathetic to the idea ofcognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation ofthis plausible mechanism
McCauley, Robert N. & Henrich, J. (2006). Susceptibility to the Muller-lyer illusion, theory-neutral observation, and the diachronic penetrability of the visual input system. Philosophical Psychology 19 (1):79-101.   (Google)
Abstract: Jerry Fodor has consistently cited the persistence of illusions--especially the M
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (1999). Is vision continuous with cognition? The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):341-365.   (Cited by 130 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Although the study of visual perception has made more progress in the past 40 years than any other area of cognitive science, there remain major disagreements as to how closely vision is tied to general cognition. This paper sets out some of the arguments for both sides (arguments from computer vision, neuroscience, Psychophysics, perceptual learning and other areas of vision science) and defends the position that an important part of visual perception, which may be called early vision or just vision, is prohibited from accessing relevant expectations, knowledge and utilities - in other words it is cognitively impenetrable. That part of vision is complex and articulated and provides a representation of the 3-D surfaces of objects sufficient to serve as an index into memory, with somewhat different outputs being made available to other systems such as those dealing with motor control. The paper also addresses certain conceptual and methodological issues, including the use of signal detection theory and event-related potentials to assess cognitive penetration of vision. A distinction is made among several stages in visual processing. These include, in addition to the inflexible early-vision stage, a pre-perceptual attention allocation stage and a post-perceptual evaluation, memory-accessing, and inference stage which provide several different highly constrained ways in which cognition can affect the outcome of visual perception. The paper discusses arguments that have been presented in both computer vision and psychology showing that vision is "intelligent" and involves elements of problem solving". It is suggested that these cases do not show cognitive penetration, but rather they show that certain natural constraints on interpretation, concerned primarily with optical and geometrical properties of the world, have been compiled into the visual system. The paper also examines a number of examples where instructions and "hints" are alleged to affect
Raftopoulos, Athanassios (2001). Reentrant neural pathways and the theory-ladenness of perception. Philosophy of Science 3 (September):S187-S199.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Rhodes, Gillian & Kalish, Michael L. (1999). Cognitive penetration: Would we know it if we saw it? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):390-391.   (Google)
Abstract: How can the impenetrability hypothesis be empirically tested? We comment on the role of signal detection measures, suggesting that context effects on discriminations for which post-perceptual cues are irrelevant, or on neural activity associated with early vision, would challenge impenetrability. We also note the great computational power of the proposed pre-perceptual attention processes and consider the implications for testability of the theory
Rock, Irvin (1983). The Logic Of Perception. Cambridge: Mit Press.   (Cited by 380 | Google | More links)
Rollins, Mark (1994). Deep plasticity: The encoding approach to perceptual change. Philosophy of Science 61 (1):39-54.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Schyns, Philippe G. (1999). The case for cognitive penetrability. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):394-395.   (Google)
Abstract: Pylyshyn acknowledges that cognition intervenes in determining the nature of perception when attention is allocated to locations or properties prior to the operation of early vision. I present evidence that scale perception (one function of early vision) is cognitively penetrable and argue that Pylyshyn's criterion covers not a few, but many situations of recognition. Cognitive penetrability could be their modus operandi
Siegel, Susanna, Cognitive penetrability and perceptual justification.   (Google)
Abstract: It is sometimes said that in depression, everything looks grey. If this is true, then mood can influence the character of perceptual experience: depending only on whether a viewer is depressed or not, how a scene looks to that viewer can differ even if all other conditions stay the same. This would be an example of cognitive penetrability of visual experience by other mental states. Here the influential cognitive state is a mood. Other putative examples of cognitive penetrability involve beliefs: to the reader of Russian, the sheet of Cyrillic script looks different than it looked to her before she could read it. When you know that bananas are yellow, this knowledge affects what color you see bananas to be (an achromatic banana will [2] appear yellowish). To the vain performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to pleased, but remarkably no one ever looks disapproving. To the underconfident performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to displeased, but remarkably no one ever looks approving. And in cases of suggestibility, the mere salience of a hypothesis seems to have an effect on how a given stimulus is experienced. Potential cognitive penetrators thus include moods, beliefs, hypotheses, knowledge, desires, and traits. In some cases, cognitively penetration can be epistemically beneficial. If an x ray looks different to a radiologist from the way it looks to someone lacking radiological expertise, then the radiologist gets more information about the world from her experience (such as whether there’s a tumor) than the non expert does from looking at the same x ray. If Iris Murdoch and John McDowell are right that having the right sort of character lets you see more moral facts than someone lacking that character sees when faced with the same situation, then there too your perceptual experience becomes epistemically better thanks to its being penetrated by your [3] character. In other cases, however, cognitive penetration seems to make experience epistemically worse..
Smith, Barry (1995). Common sense. In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. New York: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 13 | Google)
Stich, Stephen P. & Nichols, Shaun (1997). Cognitive penetrability, rationality, and restricted simulation. Mind and Language 12 (3-4):297-326.   (Cited by 23 | Google | More links)
Stillings, Neil (1987). Modularity and naturalism in theories of vision. In Modularity In Knowledge Representation. Cambridge: Mit Press.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Stokes, Dustin (ms). Perceiving and Desiring: A New Look at the Cognitive Penetrability of Experience.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper considers an orectic perception hypothesis which says that desires and desire-like states may influence perceptual experience in a non-externally mediated way. This hypothesis is clarified with a definition, which serves further to distinguish the interesting target phenomenon from trivial instances of desire-influenced perception. Orectic perception is an interesting possible case of the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. The orectic perception hypothesis is thus incompatible with the more common thesis that perception is cognitively impenetrable. It is of importance to issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, epistemology, and general philosophy of science. The plausibility of orectic perception can be motivated by some hypothetical cases, some classic experimental studies, and some new experimental research inspired by those same studies. The general suggestion is that orectic perception thus defined, and evidenced by the relevant studies, cannot be deflected by the standard strategies of the cognitive impenetrability theorist.
Vaina, L. M. (1990). What and where in the human visual system: Two hierarchies of visual modules. Synthese 83 (1):49-91.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Wright, Richard D. & Dawson, Michael R. W. (1994). To what extent do beliefs affect apparent motion? Philosophical Psychology 7 (4):471-491.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: A number of studies in the apparent motion literature were examined using the cognitive penetrability criterion to determine the extent to which beliefs affect the perception of apparent motion. It was found that the interaction between the perceptual processes mediating apparent motion and higher order processes appears to be limited. In addition, perceptual and inferential beliefs appear to have different effects on perceived motion optimality and direction. Our findings suggest that the system underlying apparent motion perception has more than one stage and is informationally encapsulated from cognitive factors

3.3b Ecological Approaches to Perception

Alm, Jan (2008). Affordances and the nature of perceptual content. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (2):161 – 177.   (Google)
Abstract: According to John McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. This paper criticizes this view by claiming that there is a certain kind of representational and non-conceptual perceptual content that is sensitive to bodily skills. After a brief introduction to McDowell's position, Merleau-Ponty's notion of body schema and Gibson's notion of affordance are presented. It is argued that affordances are constitutive of representational perceptual content, and that at least some affordances, the so-called 'conditional affordances', are essentially related to the body schema. This means that the perceptual content depends upon the nature of the body schema. Since the body schema does not pertain to the domain that our conceptual faculties operate upon, it is argued that this kind of perceptual content cannot be conceptual. At least some of that content is representational, yet it cannot feature as non-demonstrative conceptual content. It is argued that if it features as demonstrative conceptual content, it has to be captured by private concepts. Since McDowell's theory does not allow for the existence of a private language, it is concluded that at least some representational perceptual content is non-conceptual
Berm, (1998). Ecological perception and the notion of a nonconceptual point of view. In The Body and the Self. Cambridge: MIT Press.   (Cited by 21 | Google)
Bickhard, Mark H. & Richie, D. Michael (1983). On The Nature Of Representation: A Case Study Of James Gibson's Theory Of Perception. Ny: Praeger.   (Cited by 66 | Google)
Boynton, David M. (1993). Relativism in Gibson's theory of picture perception. Journal of Mind and Behavior 14 (1):51-69.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Bruce, Vicki & Green, Patrick (1985). Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology, and Ecology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.   (Google)
Chemero, Anthony (2003). An outline of a theory of affordances. Ecological Psychology 15 (2):181-195.   (Cited by 44 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The primary difference between direct and inferential theories of perception concerns the location of perceptual content, the meaning of our perceptions. In inferential theories of perception, these meanings arise inside animals, based upon their interactions with the physical environment. Light, for example, bumps into receptors causing a sensation. The animal (or its brain) performs inferences on the sensation, yielding a meaningful perception. In direct theories of perception, on the other hand, meaning is in the environment, and perception does not depend upon meaning- conferring inferences. Instead the animal simply gathers information from a meaning- laden environment. But if the environment contains meanings, then it cannot be merely physical. This places a heavy theoretical burden on direct theories of perception, a burden so severe that it may outweigh all the advantages to conceiving perception as
Chemero, Anthony & Turvey, Michael T., Gibsonian affordances for roboticists.   (Google)
Abstract: Using hypersets as an analytic tool, we compare traditionally Gibsonian (Chemero 2003; Turvey 1992) and representationalist (Sahin et al. this issue) understandings of the notion ‘affordance’. We show that representationalist understandings are incompatible with direct perception and erect barriers between animal and environment. They are, therefore, scarcely recognizable as understandings of ‘affordance’. In contrast, Gibsonian understandings are shown to treat animal-environment systems as unified complex systems and to be compatible with direct perception. We discuss the fruitful connections between Gibsonian affordances and dynamical systems explanation in the behavioral sciences and point to prior fruitful application of Gibsonian affordances in robotics. We conclude that it is unnecessary to re-imagine affordances as representations in order to make them useful for researchers in robotics
Chemero, Tony (forthcoming). Information and direct perception: A new approach. In Priscila Farias & Jo (eds.), Advanced Issues in Cognitive Science and Semiotics.   (Google)
Abstract: Since the 1970s, Michael Turvey, Robert Shaw, and William Mace have worked on the formulation of a philosophically-sound and empirically-tractable version of James Gibson
Chemero, Tony (2003). Review of ecological psychology in context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the legacy of William James' radical empiricism. Contemporary Psychology.   (Google | More links)
Chemero, Tony (2001). What we perceive when we perceive affordances: Commentary on Michaels (2000), Information, Perception and Action. Ecological Psychology 13 (2):111-116.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In her essay --?Information, Perception and Action--, Claire Michaels reaches two conclusions that run very much against the grain of ecological psychology. First, she claims that affordances are not perceived, but simply acted upon; second, because of this, perception and action ought to be conceived separately. These conclusions are based upon a misinterpretation of empirical evidence which is, in turn, based upon a conflation of two proper objects of perception: objectively with properties and affordances
Fodor, Jerry A. & Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (1981). How direct is visual perception? Some reflections on Gibson's 'ecological approach'. Cognition 9:139-96.   (Cited by 197 | Google)
Gibson, James J. (1976). The myth of passive perception: A reply to Richards. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (December):234-238.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Gibson, James J. (1950). The Perception Of The Visual World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.   (Cited by 10 | Google)
Gibson, James J. (1968). The Senses Considered As Perceptual Systems. Allen & Unwin.   (Cited by 7 | Google)
Givner, David A. (1982). Concepts, percepts and perceptal systems: The relevance of psychology to epistemology. Metaphilosophy 13 (July-October):209-216.   (Google)
Givner, David A. (1982). Direct perception, misperception and perceptual systems: J. J. Gibson and the problem of illusion. Nature and System 4 (September):131-142.   (Google)
Glotzbach, Philip A. (1992). Determining the primary problem of visual perception: A Gibsonian response to the correlation' objection. Philosophical Psychology 5 (1):69-94.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: Fodor & Pylyshyn (1981) criticize J. J. Gibson's ecological account of perception for failing to address what I call the 'correlation problem' in visual perception. That is, they charge that Gibson cannot explain how perceivers learn to correlate detectable properties of the light with perceptible properties of the environment. Furthermore, they identify the correlation problem as a crucial issue for any theory of visual perception, what I call a 'primary problem'—i.e. a problem which plays a definitive role in establishing the concerns of a particular scientific research program. If they are correct, Gibson's failure to resolve this problem would cast considerable doubt upon his ecological approach to perception. In response, I argue that both Fodor & Pylyshyn's problem itself and their proposed inferential solution embody a significant mistake which needs to be eliminated from our thinking about visual perception. As part of my response, I also suggest a Gibsonian alternative to Fodor & Pylyshyn's primary problem formulation
Glotzbach, Philip A. & Heff, Harry (1982). Ecological and phenomenological contributions to the psychology of perception. Noûs 16 (March):108-121.   (Google | More links)
Hatfield, Gary (1990). Gibsonian representations and connectionist symbol-processing: Prospects for unification. Psychological Research 52:243-52.   (Cited by 5 | Annotation | Google)
Heil, John (1981). Gibsonian sins of omission. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 11 (3):307–311.   (Google | More links)
Heil, John (1979). What Gibson's missing. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 9 (3):265–269.   (Google | More links)
Klaassen, Pim; Rietveld, Erik & Topal, Julien (2010). Inviting complementary perspectives on situated normativity in everyday life. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (1):53-73.   (Google)
Abstract: In everyday life, situations in which we act adequately yet entirely without deliberation are ubiquitous. We use the term “situated normativity” for the normative aspect of embodied cognition in skillful action. Wittgenstein’s notion of “directed discontent” refers to a context-sensitive reaction of appreciation in skillful action. Extending this notion from the domain of expertise to that of adequate everyday action, we examine phenomenologically the question of what happens when skilled individuals act correctly with instinctive ease. This question invites exploratory contributions from a variety of perspectives complementary to the philosophical/ phenomenological one, including cognitive neuroscience, neurodynamics and psychology. Along such lines we try to make the normative aspect of adequate immediate action better accessible to empirical research. After introducing the idea that “valence” is a forerunner of directed discontent, we propose to make progress on this by first pursuing a more restricted exploratory question, namely, ‘what happens in the first few hundred milliseconds of the development of directed discontent?’
Manfredi, Pat A. (1986). Processing or pickup: Conflicting approaches to perception. Mind and Language 1:181-200.   (Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (2004). To see things is to perceive what they afford: James J. Gibson's concept of affordance. Journal of Mind and Behavior 25 (4):323-347.   (Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1984). Towards the improvement of Gibsonian perception theory. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 14 (2):231–258.   (Google | More links)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1999). Virtual objects. Journal of Mind and Behavior 20 (4):357-377.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1991). Why do things look as they do? Some Gibsonian answers to koffka's question. Philosophical Psychology 4 (2):183-202.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: This article contributes to understanding the relation within Gibson's perception theory between two questions that Gibson raised in the introductory paragraph of his final book, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception: (a) how we see how to do things and (b) why things look to us as they do (Koffka's question). Although Gibson considered Koffka's question to be a crucial test for any psychological theory of visual perceiving, Gibson did not explicitly defend his ecological approach with reference to Koffka's question. Gibson's entire final book is not, as some Gibsonians would suggest, Gibson's answer to Koffka's question. However, certain subsidiary parts of the book implicitly and almost explicitly suggest a place in Gibsonian perception theory for the phenomenal looks of things that we visually perceive. The present article considers some Gibsonian answers and reactions to Koffka's question, and argues that the phenomenal looks of things play a crucial role in Gibson's account of the visual control of locomotion
Noble, Wiliam G. (1981). Gibsonian theory and the pragmatist perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 11 (1):65–85.   (Google | More links)
Pind, Jörgen (1998). Merits of a Gibsonian approach to speech perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (2):279-280.   (Google)
Abstract: Neurobiologically inspired theories of speech perception such as that proposed by Sussman et al. are useful to the extent that they are able to constrain such theories. If they are simply intended as suggestive analogies, their usefulness is questionable. In such cases it is better to stick with the Gibsonian approach of attempting to isolate invariants in speech and to demonstrate their role for the perceiver in perceptual experiments
Reed, Edward S. (1988). James J. Gibson And The Psychology Of Perception. New Haven: Yale University Press.   (Cited by 78 | Google)
Richards, Robert J. (1976). James Gibson's passive theory of perception: A rejection of the doctrine of specific nerve energies. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (December):218-233.   (Google | More links)
Rietveld, Erik (2010). McDowell and Dreyfus on Unreflective Action. Inquiry 53 (2):183-207.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Within philosophy there is not yet an integrative account of unreflective skillful action. As a starting point, contributions would be required from philosophers from both the analytic and continental traditions. Starting from the McDowell-Dreyfus debate, shared Aristotelian-Wittgensteinian common ground is identified. McDowell and Dreyfus agree about the importance of embodied skills, situation-specific discernment and responsiveness to relevant affordances. This sheds light on the embodied and situated nature of adequate unreflective action and provides a starting point for the development of an account that does justice to insights from both philosophical traditions.
Rietveld, Erik (2008). Situated normativity: The normative aspect of embodied cognition in unreflective action. Mind 117 (468):973-1001.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In everyday life we often act adequately, yet without deliberation. For instance, we immediately obtain and maintain an appropriate distance from others in an elevator. The notion of normativity implied here is a very basic one, namely distinguishing adequate from inadequate, correct from incorrect, or better from worse in the context of a particular situation. In the first part of this paper I investigate such ‘situated normativity’ by focusing on unreflective expert action. More particularly, I use Wittgenstein’s examples of craftsmen (tailors and architects) absorbed in action to introduce situated normativity. Situated normativity can be understood as the normative aspect of embodied cognition in unreflective skillful action. I develop Wittgenstein’s insight that a peculiar type of affective behaviour, ‘directed discontent’, is essential for getting things right without reflection. Directed discontent is a reaction of appreciation in action and is introduced as a paradigmatic expression of situated normativity. In the second part I discuss Wittgenstein’s ideas on the normativity of what he calls ‘blind’ rule-following and the ‘bedrock’ of immediate action. What matters for understanding the normativity of (even ‘blind’) rule-following, is not that one has the capacity for linguistic articulation or reflection but that one is reliably participating in a communal custom. In the third part I further investigate the complex relationships between unreflective skillful action, perception, emotion, and normativity. Part of this entails an account of the link between normativity at the level of the expert’s socio-cultural practice and the individual’s situated and lived normativity.
Rietveld, Erik (2008). The Skillful Body as a Concernful System of Possible Actions: Phenomena and Neurodynamics. Theory & Psychology 18 (3):341-361.   (Google)
Abstract: For Merleau-Ponty,consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism’s capacities. From Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given that Merleau-Ponty suggested that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual’s prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances.
Scarantino, Andrea (2003). Affordances explained. Philosophy of Science 70 (5):949-961.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I examine the central theoretical construct of ecological psychology, the concept of an affordance. In the first part of the paper, I illustrate the role affordances play in Gibson's theory of perception. In the second part, I argue that affordances are to be understood as dispositional properties, and explain what I take to be their characteristic background circumstances, triggering circumstances and manifestations. The main purpose of my analysis is to give affordances a theoretical identity enriched by Gibson's visionary insight, but independent of the most controversial claims of the Gibsonian movement
Stroll, Avrum (1986). The role of surfaces in an ecological theory of perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (March):437-453.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Thomas, Nigel (1999). Are theories of imagery theories of imagination? Cognitive Science 23:207--45.   (Google)
Abstract: Can theories of mental imagery, conscious mental contents, developed within cognitive science throw light on the obscure (but culturally very significant) concept of imagination? Three extant views of mental imagery are considered: quasi-pictorial, description, and perceptual activity theories. The first two face serious theoretical and empirical difficulties. The third is (for historically contingent reasons) little known, theoretically underdeveloped, and empirically untried, but has real explanatory potential. It rejects the "traditional" symbolic computational view of mental contents, but is compatible with recent situated cognition and active vision approaches in robotics. This theory is developed and elucidated. Three related key aspects of imagination (non-discursiveness, creativity, and seeing as) raise difficulties for the other theories. Perceptual activity theory presents imagery as non-discursive and relates it closely to seeing as. It is thus well placed to be the basis for a general theory of imagination and its role in creative thought.
Thomas, Nigel J. T. (2001). Perceptual systems: Five+, one, or many? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):241-242.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Commentary on "On Specification and the Senses," by Thomas A. Stoffregen and Benoît G. Bardy: Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 195-261 (2001).
The target article's value lies not in its defence of specification, or the "global array" concept, but in its challenge to the paradigm of 5+ senses, and its examples of multiple receptor types cooperatively participating in specific information pick-up tasks. Rather than analysing our perceptual endowment into 5+ senses, it is more revealing to type perceptual systems according to task.
Turvey, Michael T.; Shaw, R. E.; Reed, Edward S. & Mace, William M. (1981). Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn. Cognition 9:237-304.   (Cited by 62 | Google)
Ullman, S. (1980). Against direct perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3:333-81.   (Cited by 114 | Google)
van Leeuwen, Cees & Stins, John (1994). Perceivable information or: The happy marriage between ecological psychology and gestalt. Philosophical Psychology 7 (2):267-285.   (Google)
Abstract: The ecological realist concept of information as environmental specification is discussed. It is argued that affordances in ecological realism could, in principle, rest on a notion of partial specification of environmental circumstances. For this aim, a notion of Gestalt quality as a hierarchical structure of affordances would have to be adopted. It is claimed that such an account could provide a promising way to deal with problems of intentionality in perception and action, awareness and problem solving
Young, Garry (2005). Ecological perception affords an explanation of object permanence. Philosophical Explorations 8 (2):189-208.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I aim to present an explanation of object permanence that is derived from an ecological account of perceptually based action. In understanding why children below a certain age do not search for occluded objects, one must first understand the process by which these children perform certain intentional actions on non-occluded items; and to do this one must understand the role affordances play in eliciting retrieval behaviour. My affordance-based explanation is contrasted with Shinskey and Munakata's graded representation account; and although I do not reject totally the role representations play in initiating intentional action I nevertheless maintain that only by incorporating direct perception into an account of object permanence can a fuller understanding of this phenomenon be achieved

3.3c Construction and Inference in Perception

Allik, Jüri & Konstabel, Kenn (2005). G. F. Parrot and the theory of unconscious inferences. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41 (4):317-330.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Anderson, Joseph & Anderson, Barbara (1993). The myth of persistence of vision revisited. Journal of Film and Video 45:3--12.   (Google)
Ben-Zeev, Aaron (1988). Can non-pure perception be direct? Philosophical Quarterly 38 (July):315-325.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Bruce, Vicki & Green, Patrick (1985). Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology, and Ecology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.   (Google)
Clark, Romane L. (1993). Seeing and inferring. Philosophical Papers 22 (2).   (Google)
Crawford, Dan D. (1982). Are there mental inferences in direct perceptions? American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (January):83-92.   (Google)
Cutting, James E. (2003). Reconceiving perceptual space. In Heiko Hecht, Robert Schwartz & Margaret Atherton (eds.), Looking Into Pictures. The Mit Press.   (Google)
Gregory, Richard L. (1974). Perceptions as hypotheses. In Philosophy Of Psychology. London,: Macmillan.   (Cited by 67 | Google | More links)
Hatfield, Gary C. (2009). Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology.
Hatfield, Gary (2002). Perception As Unconscious Inference. In D. Heyer (ed.), Perception and the Physical World: Psychological and Philosophical Issues in Perception. John Wiley and Sons Ltd.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Consider for a moment the spatial and chromatic dimensions of your visual expe- rience. Suppose that as you gaze about the room you see a table, some books, and papers. Ignore for now the fact that you immediately recognize these objects to be a table with books and papers on it. Concentrate on how the table looks to you: its top spreads out in front of you, stopping at edges beyond which lies un?lled space, leading to more or less distant chairs, shelves, or expanses of ?oor. The books and paper on the table top create shaped visual boundaries between areas of different color, within which there may be further variation of color or visual texture. Propelled by a slight breeze, a sheet of paper slides across the table, and you experience its smooth motion before it ?oats out of sight
Joske, W. D. (1963). Inferring and perceiving. Philosophical Review 72 (October):433-445.   (Google | More links)
Kline, A. David (1979). Constructivism and the objects of perception. Nature and System 1 (March):37-45.   (Google)
Ludwig, Kirk A. (1996). Explaining why things look the way they do. In Kathleen Akins (ed.), Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Abstract: How are we able to perceive the world veridically? If we ask this question as a part of the scientific investigation of perception, then we are not asking for a transcendental guarantee that our perceptions are by and large veridical; we presuppose that they are. Unless we assumed that we perceived the world for the most part veridically, we would not be in a position to investigate our perceptual abilities empirically. We are interested, then, not in how it is possible in general for us to perceive the world veridically, but instead in what the relation is between our environment and its properties, of which we have knowledge, on the one hand, and our perceptual mechanisms, on the other, that results in very many, even most of our perceptions being veridical in everyday life
Raftopoulos, Athanassios (2006). Defending realism on the proper ground. Philosophical Psychology 19 (1):47-77.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: 'Epistemological constructivism' holds that vision is mediated by background preconceptions and is theory-laden. Hence, two persons with differing theoretical commitments see the world differently and they could agree on what they see only if they both espoused the same conceptual framework. This, in its turn, undermines the possibility of theory testing and choice on a common theory-neutral empirical basis. In this paper, I claim that the cognitive sciences suggest that a part of vision may be only indirectly penetrated by cognition in a way that does not threaten retrieval of information from a visual scene in a bottom-up way. That blocks the constructivist epistemological thesis. However, since spatial attention, which can be cognitively driven, seems to permeate all stages of visual processes, one is led to conclude that there is no part of vision immune to direct cognitive interference. Against this, I elaborate on the role of spatial attention and argue that it does influence vision in a top-down manner, but it does so only in an indirect way. I then argue that the existence of visual processes that are only indirectly penetrated by cognition undermines the epistemological conclusions of constructivism
Spruit, Leen (1994). Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. Brill.   (Google)
Abstract: v. 1. Classical roots and medieval discussions -- v. 2. Renaissance controversis, later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy.
ten Hoor, Marten (1936). Awareness and inference: An approach to realism. Journal of Philosophy 33 (22):589-596.   (Google | More links)
Veer, Vander & Garrett, L. (1964). Austin on perception. Review of Metaphysics 17 (June):557-567.   (Google)
Vishwanath, Dhanraj (2005). The epistemological status of vision and its implications for design. Axiomathes 15 (3).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Computational theories of vision typically rely on the analysis of two aspects of human visual function: (1) object and shape recognition (2) co-calibration of sensory measurements. Both these approaches are usually based on an inverse-optics model, where visual perception is viewed as a process of inference from a 2D retinal projection to a 3D percept within a Euclidean space schema. This paradigm has had great success in certain areas of vision science, but has been relatively less successful in understanding perceptual representation, namely, the nature of the perceptual encoding. One of the drawbacks of inverse-optics approaches has been the difficulty in defining the constraints needed to make the inference computationally tractable (e.g. regularity assumptions, Bayesian priors, etc.). These constraints, thought to be learned assumptions about the nature of the physical and optical structures of the external world, have to be incorporated into any workable computational model in the inverse-optics paradigm. But inference models that employ an inverse optics plus structural assumptions approach inevitably result in a na
Walton, Kendall (1963). The dispensability of perceptual inferences. Mind 72 (July):357-368.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Williamson, John (1966). Realization and unconscious inference. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 27 (September):11-26.   (Google | More links)

3.3d Perception and Neuroscience

Alroy, Daniel (1995). Inner light. Synthese 104 (1):147-160.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Bach-y-Rita, Paul & Hasse, Steven J. (2001). The role of the brain in perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):975-975.   (Google)
Abstract: The recent interest of cognitive- and neuro-scientists in the topic of consciousness (and the dissatisfaction with the present state of knowledge) has revealed deep conceptual differences with Humanists, who have dealt with issues of consciousness for centuries. O'Regan & Noë have attempted (unsuccessfully) to bridge those differences
Brain, W. Russell (1946). The neurological approach to the problem of perception. Philosophy 21 (July):133-146.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Bridgeman, Bruce (2000). Neuroanatomy and function in two visual systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (4):535-536.   (Google)
Abstract: Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology are insufficient to specify function. Modeling is essential to elucidate function, but psychophysics is also required. An example is the cognitive and sensorimotor branches of the visual system: anatomy shows direct cross talk between the branches. Psychophysics in normal humans shows links from cognitive to sensorimotor, but the reverse link is excluded by visual illusions affecting the cognitive system but not the sensorimotor system
Chaminade, Thierry & Decety, Jean (2001). A common framework for perception and action: Neuroimaging evidence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):879-882.   (Google)
Abstract: In recent years, neurophysiological evidence has accumulated in favor of a common coding between perception and execution of action. We review findings from recent neuroimaging experiments in the action domain with three complementary perspectives: perception of action, covert action triggered by perception, and reproduction of perceived action (imitation). All studies point to the parietal cortex as a key region for body movement representation, both observed and performed
Chirimuuta, Mazviita (2008). Reflectance realism and colour constancy: What would count as scientific evidence for Hilbert's ontology of colour? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4):563 – 582.   (Google)
Abstract: Reflectance realism is an important position in the philosophy of colour. This paper is an examination of David R. Hilbert’s case for there being scientific support for the theory. The specific point in question is whether colour science has shown that reflectance is recovered by the human visual system. Following a discussion of possible counter-evidence in the recent scientific literature, I make the argument that conflicting interpretations of the data on reflectance recovery are informed by different theoretical assumptions about the nature of
colour, and of perception. If this is so, there cannot be neutral empirical
evidence on this point, and this does seem to undermine Hilbert’s claim for
empirical support. In the end, I suggest alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between colour ontology and empirical work on colour.
Chirimuuta, M. & Gold, I. (2009). The Embedded Neuron, the Enactive Field? In John Bickle (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data.
Churchland, Paul M. (2005). Chimerical colors: Some phenomenological predictions from cognitive neuroscience. Philosophical Psychology 18 (5):527-560.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The Hurvich-Jameson (H-J) opponent-process network offers a familiar account of the empirical structure of the phenomenological color space for humans, an account with a number of predictive and explanatory virtues. Its successes form the bulk of the existing reasons for suggesting a strict identity between our various color sensations on the one hand, and our various coding vectors across the color-opponent neurons in our primary visual pathways on the other. But anti-reductionists standardly complain that the systematic parallels discovered by the H-J network are just empirical correspondences, constructed post facto, with no predictive or explanatory purchase on the intrinsic characters of qualia proper. The present paper disputes that complaint, by illustrating that the H-J model yields some novel and unappreciated predictions, and some novel and unappreciated explanations, concerning the qualitative characters of a considerable variety of color sensations possible for human experience, color sensations that normal people have almost certainly never had before, color sensations whose accurate descriptions in ordinary language appear semantically ill-formed or even self-contradictory. Specifically, these "impossible" color sensations are activation-vectors (across our opponent-process neurons) that lie inside the space of neuronally possible activation-vectors, but outside the central 'color spindle' that confines the familiar range of sensations for possible objective colors. These extra-spindle chimerical-color sensations correspond to no reflective color that you will ever see objectively displayed on a physical object. But the H-J model both predicts their existence and explains their highly anomalous qualitative characters in some detail. It also suggests how to produce these rogue sensations by a simple procedure made available in the latter half of this paper. The relevant color plates will allow you to savor these sensations for yourself
Ehrenstein, Walter H.; Spillmann, Lothar & Sarris, Viktor (2003). Gestalt issues in modern neuroscience. Axiomathes 13 (3-4).   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: We present select examples of how visual phenomena can serve as tools to uncoverbrain mechanisms. Specifically, receptive field organization is proposed as a Gestalt-like neural mechanism of perceptual organization. Appropriate phenomena, such as brightness and orientation contrast, subjective contours, filling-in, and aperture-viewed motion, allow for a quantitative comparison between receptive fields and their psychophysical counterparts, perceptive fields. Phenomenology might thus be extended from the study of perceptual qualities to their transphenomenal substrates, including memory functions. In conclusion, classic issues of Gestalt psychology can now be related to modern
Foss, Jeffrey E. (1988). The percept and vector function theories of the brain. Philosophy of Science 55 (December):511-537.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Gillett, Grant R. (1989). Perception and neuroscience. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (March) 83 (March):83-103.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Perception is often analysed as a process in which causal events from the environment act on a subject to produce states in the mind or brain. The role of the subject is an increasing feature of neuroscientific and cognitive literature. This feature is linked to the need for an account of the normative aspects of perceptual competence. A holographic model is offered in which objects are presented to the subject classified according to rules governing concepts and encoded in brain function in that form. This implies that the analysis of perception must consider not only the fact that there is an interaction between the perceiving subject and the perceived object but also that the interaction is shaped by a system of concepts which the subject uses in thought and action
Gilman, Daniel J. (1991). The neurobiology of observation. Philosophy of Science (September) 496 (September):496-502.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Gold, Ian (2002). Interpreting the neuroscience of imagery. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):190-191.   (Google)
Abstract: Pylyshyn rightly argues that the neuroscientific data supporting the involvement of the visual system in mental imagery is largely irrelevant to the question of the format of imagistic representation. The purpose of this commentary is to support this claim with a further argument
Hahn, L. W. (1998). Revising locus of the bridge between neuroscience and perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (6):759-760.   (Google)
Abstract: This commentary proposes keeping the bridge locus construct with a revised definition which requires the bridge locus to be dynamic, representation-independent and influenced by top-down processes. The denial of the uniformity of content thesis is equivalent to dualism. The active perception perspective is a valuable one
Hall, Everett W. (1959). The adequacy of a neurological theory of perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20 (September):75-84.   (Google | More links)
Hatfield, Gary (1999). Mental functions as constraints on neurophysiology: Biology and psychology of vision. In V. Harcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Psychology.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Hintikka, Jaakko & Symons, John (2003). Systems of visual identification in neuroscience: Lessons from epistemic logic. Philosophy of Science 70 (1):89-104.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The following analysis shows how developments in epistemic logic can play a nontrivial role in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that the striking correspondence between two modes of identification, as distinguished in the epistemic context, and two cognitive systems distinguished by neuroscientific investigation of the visual system (the "where" and "what" systems) is not coincidental, and that it can play a clarificatory role at the most fundamental levels of neuroscientific theory
McKee, P. L. (1971). Perception and physiology. Mind 80 (October):594-596.   (Google | More links)
Mogi, Ken (1997). Response selectivity, neuron doctrine, and Mach's principle in perception. Austrian Soc. For Cognitive Science Tech Report.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: manner. The construction of the space-time structure that describes the dynamics of the neural network in a causal manner is a non-trivial problem. I critically review the idea of response selectivity as is applied to
Reiser, Oliver L. (1928). Light, wave-mechanics, and consciousness. Journal of Philosophy 25 (12):309-317.   (Google | More links)
Smythies, J. R. (1993). The impact of contemporary neuroscience and introspection psychology on the philosophy of perception. In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Google)
Trehub, Arnold (1991). The Cognitive Brain. MIT Press.   (Google)

3.3e Psychophysics

Albertazzi, Liliana (2002). Phenomenologists and analytics: A question of psychophysics? Southern Journal of Philosophy (Suppl.) 40:27-48.   (Google)
Blomberg, Jaakko (1971). Psychophysics, sensation and information. Ajatus 33:106-137.   (Google)
Boring, Edwin G. (1935). The relation of the attributes of sensation to the dimensions of the stimulus. Philosophy of Science 2 (2):236-245.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Bradley, Francis H. (1895). What do we mean by the intensity of psychical states. Mind 4 (13):1-27.   (Google | More links)
Butterfield, Jeremy (1998). Quantum curiosities of psychophysics. In J. Cornwell (ed.), Consciousness and Human Identity. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I survey some of the connections between the metaphysics of the relation between mind and matter, and quantum theory’s measurement problem. After discussing the metaphysics, especially the correct formulation of physicalism, I argue that two state-reduction approaches to quantum theory’s measurement problem hold some surprises for philosophers’ discussions of physicalism. Though both approaches are compatible with physicalism, they involve a very different conception of the physical, and of how the physical underpins the mental, from what most philosophers expect. And one approach exemplifies a a problem in the definition of physicalism which the metaphysical literature has discussed only in the abstract. A version of the paper has appeared in Consciousness and Human Identity, ed. John Cornwell, OUP 1998
Cattell, James McKeen & Fullerton, George Stuart (1892). The psychophysics of movement. Mind 1 (3):447-452.   (Google | More links)
di Lollo, V.; Enns, James T. & Rensink, R. (2000). Competition for consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant visual processes. Journal Of Experimental Psychology-General 129 (4):481-507.   (Google)
Eisler, H. (1975). Subjective duration and psychophysics. Psychological Review 82:429-50.   (Cited by 16 | Google | More links)
Enns, J. T.; Rensink, R. A. & Di Lollo, V. (2000). Competition for consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant visual processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology 129 (4):481-507.   (Google)
Abstract: Advances in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology have called attention to reentrant signalling as the predominant form of communication between brain areas. We propose that explicit use be made of reentrant processing in theories of perception. To show that this can be done effectively in one domain, we report on a series of psychophysical experiments involving a new form of masking, which defies explanation by current feed-forward theories. This masking occurs when a brief display of target plus mask is continued with the mask alone. We report evidence of two masking processes: an early process affected by physical factors such as adapting luminance and contour proximity, and a later process affected by attentional factors such as set size, target pop-out, and spatial pre-cuing. We call this later process masking by
Findlay, J. N. (1950). Linguistic approach to psychophysics. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 50:43-64.   (Google)
Francis, Gregory & Hermens, Frouke (2002). Comment on Competition for Consciousness Among Visual Events: The Psychophysics of Reentrant Visual Processes (di lollo, Enns & Rensink, 2000). Journal of Experimental Psychology 131 (4):590-593.   (Google)
Horst, Steven (2005). Phenomenology and psychophysics. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (1):1-21.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Recent philosophy of mind has tended to treat
Kietzmann, Tim Christian, Philosophical accounts of causal explanation and the scientific practice of psychophysics.   (Google)
Abstract: Philosophical accounts of causality and causal explanation can provide important guidelines for the experimental sciences and valid experimental setups. In addition to the obvious requirement of logic validity, however, the approaches must account for the generally accepted experimental practice to be truly useful. To investigate this important interconnection, the current paper evaluates different philosophical accounts of causation and causal explanation in the light of typical psychophysical experiments. In particular, eye-tracking setups will be used to evaluate Granger Causality, Probabilistic Accounts and Woodwardʼs manipulationist approach. Upon coarse reading, the manipulationist perspective seems most suitable for a practical application, but there are manifold problems hidden in the details of the definitions. However, with some adjustments via standard tools of experimental design, these problems can be overcome and leave Woodwardʼs account as the method of choice
Klein, S. A. (1998). Double-judgment psychophysics for research on cosnciousness: Application to blindsight. In Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak & A. C. Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness II. MIT Press.   (Google)
Nijhawan, Romi (2008). Visual prediction: Psychophysics and neurophysiology of compensation for time delays. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (2):179-198.   (Google)
Petrusic, William M. & Baranski, Joseph V. (2002). Mental imagery in memory psychophysics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):206-207.   (Google)
Abstract: Imagery has played an important, albeit controversial, role in the study of memory psychophysics. In this commentary we critically examine the available data bearing on whether pictorial based depictions of remembered perceptual events are activated and scanned in each of a number of different psychophysical tasks
Rosen, Steven M. (1976). Toward Relativization of Psychophysical "Relativity". Perceptual and Motor Skills 42:843-850.   (Google)
Abstract: A paradoxical feature of Weber's law is considered. The law presumably states a principle of psychophysical relativity, yet a pre-relativistic physical measurement model has been traditionally employed. Classical physics, Einsteinian relativity, and a newer interpretation of the relativity concept are discussed. Their relation to psychophysics is examined. The domain wherein Weber's law breaks down is noted as suggestively similar to that in which physicists report relativistic effects. A tentative hypothesis is offered to stimulate further thought about a more meaningful integration of psychophysics with modern physical science.
Sarris, Viktor (2010). Relational psychophysics: Messages from Ebbinghaus' and Wertheimer's work. Philosophical Psychology 23 (2):207 – 216.   (Google)
Abstract: In past and modern psychophysics there are several unresolved methodological and philosophical problems of human and animal perception, including the outstanding question of the relational basis of whole psychophysics. Here the main issue is discussed: if, and to what extent, there are viable bridges between the traditional “gestalt” oriented approaches and the modern perceptual-cognitive perspectives in psychophysics. Thereby the key concept of psychological “frame of reference” is presented by pointing to Hermann Ebbinghaus' geometric-optical illusions, on the one hand, and Max Wertheimer's treatment of the traditional transposition phenomenon, on the other hand. A much-needed theoretical reorientation of future research may help to overcome the philosophical narrowness of present-day human and comparative psychophysics
Strother, Lars; Van Valkenburg, David & Kubovy, Michael (2003). Toward a psychophysics of perceptual organization using multistable stimuli and phenomenal reports. Axiomathes 13 (3-4).   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: We explore experimental methods used to study the phenomena of perceptual organization, first studied by the Gestalt psychologists. We describe an application of traditional psychophysics to perceptual organization and offer alternative methods. Among these, we distinguish two approaches that use multistable stimuli: (1) phenomenological psychophysics, in which the observer's response is assumed to accurately and directly reflect perceptual experience; and (2) the interference paradigm, in which an observer's response is evaluated as correct or incorrect because it pertains to a corrigible task, but does not directly reflect the observer's experience. We show that phenomenological psychophysics can yield valuable information about perceptual organization and lends itself to the development of quantitative theory. We discuss some criticisms of the method and argue that the two approaches that use multistable stimuli are complementary. We also compare each of the approaches with traditional psychophysics. We conclude that the several methods are convergent
Titchener, E. B. (1920). Prize in psychophysics. Mind 29 (114):256.   (Google | More links)
Wackermann, J. (2008). Measure of time: A meeting point of psychophysics and fundamental physics. Mind and Matter 6 (1):9-50.   (Google)
Abstract: In the present paper the relation between objective and subjective time is studied from a neutral non-dualist perspective Adoption of the relational concept of time leads to fundamental problems of time measurement of the uniformity of time measures, and of a native measure of duration in subjective experience. Experimental data on discrimination and reproduction of time intervals are reviewed and relevant models of internal time representations are discussed. Special attention is given to the 'dual klepsydra model' (DKM)and to the outstanding properties of the reproduction func- tion yielded by the DKM Time scales generated by a DKM-based reproduction mechanisms are studied It is shown that such 'klepsydraic clocks' generate time measures which are non-uniform with respect to objective time yet internally consistent within an ensemble of such clocks and in this sense 'quasi-uniform' . Competing concepts of subjective time and modeling principles of internal time representation are briefly discussed Some interesting parallels be- tween our psychophysical approach and E.A. Milne's treatment of the problem of uniform time are drawn in the Appendix
Wackermann, Jiří (2010). Psychophysics as a science of primary experience. Philosophical Psychology 23 (2):189 – 206.   (Google)
Abstract: In Fechner's psychophysics, the 'mental' and the 'physical' were conceived as two phenomenal domains, connected by functional relations, not as two ontologically different realms. We follow the path from Fechner's foundational ideas and Mach's radical programme of a unitary science to later approaches to primary, psychophysically neutral experience (phenomenology, protophysics). We propose an 'integral psychophysics' as a mathematical study of law-like, invariant structures of primary experience. This approach is illustrated by a reinterpretation of psychophysical experiments in terms of perceptual situations involving a constructed apparatus and an instructed subject. The problematic notion of 'measurement of sensation' is thus eliminated: 'sensations' are merely indices for classes of perceptually equivalent configurations (states of the apparatus) specified by the instruction. The locus of the measured is in the inter-subjectively shared, communicable world—not inside the subject's mind. Finally we discuss the role of integral psychophysics as a scientia prima , logically and methodically preceding physics and psychology
Ward, James (1876). An attempt to interpret fechner's law. Mind 1 (4):452-466.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Wertheimer, Max (1923). Laws of organization in perceptual forms. Psycologische Forschung 4:301-350.   (Cited by 355 | Google)

3.3f Gestalt Theory

Ayob, Gloria (2009). The aspect-perception passages: A critical investigation of Köhler's isomorphism principle. Philosophical Investigations 32 (3):264-280.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I argue that Wittgenstein's aim in the aspect-perception passages is to critically evaluate a specific hypothesis. The target hypothesis in these passages is the Gestalt psychologist Köhler's "isomorphism principle." According to this principle, there are neural correlates of conscious perceptual experience, and these neural correlates determine the content of our perceptual experiences. Wittgenstein's argument against the isomorphism principle comprises two steps. First, he diffuses the substantiveness of the principle by undermining an important assumption that underpins this principle, namely, that there is a unitary concept of seeing. Next, Wittgenstein argues that some forms of aspect-perception involve recognitional capacities, the exercise of which is normatively constrained. The normative nature of aspect-perceiving plays a pivotal role in Wittgenstein's rejection of the isomorphism principle. Aside from the clear exegetical benefits gained from identifying the target hypothesis in the aspect-perception passages as the isomorphism principle, construing the remarks in the way suggested here is also philosophically interesting in its own right: it shows Wittgenstein engaging directly in the mind–body problem, construed as the problem of intentionality
Dillon, M. C. (1971). Gestalt theory and Merleau-ponty's concept of intentionality. Man and World 4:436-459.   (Google)
Abstract: The intent of the article is to define merleau-ponty's place in the phenomenological tradition and, at the same time, to defend his standpoint, especially on those issues where his thought represents a departure from the tradition. although merleau-ponty espouses a form of the husserlian doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness, his understanding of intentionality differs in several fundamental respects from husserl's. the article attempts to show specifically where merleau-ponty's gestalt- theoretical orientation leads him to modify such basic aspects of husserl's concept of intentionality as the noesis-noema distinction and the claim for atemporality of meaning. a critical comparison is drawn between merleau- ponty's concept of intentionality and that of aron gurwitsch. in a more positive vein, the article provides an extended exegesis of merleau-ponty's position on this central concept in phenomenology, and it also tries to relate the exposition of intentionality to merleau-ponty's thesis of the primacy of perception. finally, an attempt is made to reveal the ontological ramifications implicit in merleau-ponty's revisions to the doctrine of intentionality. (edited)
Ehrenstein, Walter H.; Spillmann, Lothar & Sarris, Viktor (2003). Gestalt issues in modern neuroscience. Axiomathes 13 (3-4).   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: We present select examples of how visual phenomena can serve as tools to uncoverbrain mechanisms. Specifically, receptive field organization is proposed as a Gestalt-like neural mechanism of perceptual organization. Appropriate phenomena, such as brightness and orientation contrast, subjective contours, filling-in, and aperture-viewed motion, allow for a quantitative comparison between receptive fields and their psychophysical counterparts, perceptive fields. Phenomenology might thus be extended from the study of perceptual qualities to their transphenomenal substrates, including memory functions. In conclusion, classic issues of Gestalt psychology can now be related to modern
Epstein, William M. & Hatfield, Gary (1994). Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of mind. Philosophical Psychology 7 (2):163-181.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Abstract: The Gestalt psychologists adopted a set of positions on mind-body issues that seem like an odd mix. They sought to combine a version of naturalism and physiological reductionism with an insistence on the reality of the phenomenal and the attribution of meanings to objects as natural characteristics. After reviewing basic positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, we examine the Gestalt position, characterizing it m terms of phenomenal realism and programmatic reductionism. We then distinguish Gestalt philosophy of mind from instrumentalism and computational functionalism, and examine Gestalt attributions of meaning and value to perceived objects. Finally, we consider a metatheoretical moral from Gestalt theory, which commends the search for commensurate description of mental phenomena and their physiological counterparts
Gobar, Ash (1968). Philosophic Foundations Of Genetic Psychology And Gestalt Psychology. Martinus Nilboff.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Grossman, Reinhardt S. (1977). Structures versus sets: The philosophical background of gestalt psychology. Critica 9 (December):3-21.   (Google)
Gurwitsch, Aron (1964). Field Of Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.   (Cited by 208 | Google)
Hamlyn, D. W. (1951). Psychological explanation and the gestalt hypothesis. Mind 60 (240):506-520.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Hamlyn, David W. (1957). The Psychology Of Perception: A Philosophical Examination Of Gestalt Theory And Derivative Theories Of Perception. The Humanities Press.   (Cited by 49 | Google | More links)
Hunt, Eugene H. & Bullis, Ronald K. (1991). Applying the principles of gestalt theory to teaching ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 10 (5).   (Google)
Abstract: Teaching ethics poses a dilemma for professors of business. First, they have little or no formal training in ethics. Second, they have established ethical values that they may not want to impose upon their students. What is needed is a well-recognized, yet non-sectarian model to facilitate the clarification of ethical questions. Gestalt theory offers such a framework. Four Gestalt principles facilitate ethical clarification and another four Gestalt principles anesthetize ethical clarification. This article examines each principle, illustrates that principle through current business examples, and offers exercises for developing each principle
Kanizsa, Gaetano (1994). Gestalt theory has been misinterpreted, but has had some real conceptual difficulties. Philosophical Psychology 7 (2):149-162.   (Cited by 4 | Google)
Abstract: In the present article, the role of Gestalt concepts in clarifying the issues of perception is evaluated. Grounded in anti-atomism, Gestalt assumed organizing forces intrinsic to perception. Insofar these were identified with singularity preference, Gestalt is criticized for having failed to distinguish between perception and thought
Kantor, Jacob Robert (1925). The significance of the gestalt conception in psychology. Journal of Philosophy 22 (9):234-241.   (Google | More links)
Kockelmans, Joseph J. (1972). Gestalt psychology and phenomenology in Gurwitsch's conception of thematics. In Life-World And Consciousness. Evanston Il: Northwestern University Press.   (Google)
Koffka, Kurt (1922). Perception: An introduction to the gestalt theory. Psychological Bulletin 19:531-585.   (Cited by 27 | Google)
Lajos, Szekely (1959). The problem of experience in the gestalt psychology. Theoria 25:179-186.   (Google)
Leahey, Thomas H. (2003). Gestalt psychology. In Thomas Baldwin (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Google)
Lehar, Steven (online). Computational implications of gestalt theory: The role of feedback in visual processing.   (Google)
Abstract: Neurophysiological investigations of the visual system by way of single-cell recordings have revealed a hierarchical architecture in which lower level areas, such as the primary visual cortex, contain cells that respond to simple features, while higher level areas contain cells that respond to higher order features apparently composed of combinations of lower level features. This architecture seems to suggest a feed-forward processing strategy in which visual information progresses from lower to higher visual areas. However there is other evidence, both neurophysiological and phenomenal, that suggests a more parallel processing strategy in biological vision, in which top-down feedback plays a significant role. In fact Gestalt theory suggests that visual perception involves a process of emergence, i.e. a dynamic relaxation of multiple constraints throughout the system simultaneously, so that the final percept represents a stable state, or energy minimum of the dynamic system as a whole. A Multi-Level Reciprocal Feedback (MLRF) model is proposed to resolve the apparently contradictory concepts, by proposing a hierarchical visual architecture whose different levels are connected by bi-directional feed-forward and feedback pathways, where the computational transformation performed by the feedback pathway between levels in the hiararchy is a kind of inverse of the transformation performed by the corresponding feed-forward processing stream. This alternative paradigm of perceptual computation accounts in general terms for a number of visual illusory effects, and offers a computational specification for the generative, or constructive aspect of perceptual processing revealed by Gestalt theory
Lehar, Steven (2003). Gestalt isomorphism and the primacy of subjective conscious experience: A gestalt bubble model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (4):357-408.   (Cited by 26 | Google | More links)
Abstract: A serious crisis is identified in theories of neurocomputation, marked by a persistent disparity between the phenomenological or experiential account of visual perception and the neurophysiological level of description of the visual system. In particular, conventional concepts of neural processing offer no explanation for the holistic global aspects of perception identified by Gestalt theory. The problem is paradigmatic and can be traced to contemporary concepts of the functional role of the neural cell, known as the Neuron Doctrine. In the absence of an alternative neurophysiologically plausible model, I propose a perceptual modeling approach, to model the percept as experienced subjectively, rather than modeling the objective neurophysiological state of the visual system that supposedly subserves that experience. A Gestalt Bubble model is presented to demonstrate how the elusive Gestalt principles of emergence, reification, and invariance can be expressed in a quantitative model of the subjective experience of visual consciousness. That model in turn reveals a unique computational strategy underlying visual processing, which is unlike any algorithm devised by man, and certainly unlike the atomistic feed-forward model of neurocomputation offered by the Neuron Doctrine paradigm. The perceptual modeling approach reveals the primary function of perception as that of generating a fully spatial virtual-reality replica of the external world in an internal representation. The common objections to this picture-in-the-head concept of perceptual representation are shown to be ill founded. Key Words: brain-anchored; Cartesian theatre; consciousness; emergence; extrinsic constraints; filling-in; Gestalt; homunculus; indirect realism; intrinsic constraints; invariance; isomorphism; multistability; objective phenomenology; perceptual modeling; perspective; phenomenology; psychophysical parallelism; psychophysical postulate; qualia; reification; representationalism; structural coherence
Madden, Edward H. (1953). Science, philosophy, and gestalt theory. Philosophy of Science 20 (4):329-331.   (Google | More links)
Madden, Edward H. (1952). The philosophy of science in gestalt theory. Philosophy of Science 19 (3):228-238.   (Google | More links)
Parovel, Giulia (1999). Gestalt qualities and artistic experience. Axiomathes 10 (1-3).   (Google | More links)
Perkins, Moreland (1953). Intersubjectivity and gestalt psychology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 13 (June):437-451.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Reiser, Oliver L. (1930). Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of nature. Philosophical Review 39 (6):556-572.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Rescher, Nicholas & Oppenheim, Paul (1955). Logical analysis of gestalt concepts. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6 (August):89-106.   (Cited by 20 | Google | More links)
Rescher, Nicholas (1953). Mr Madden on gestalt theory. Philosophy of Science 20 (October):327-328.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Rosen, Steven M. (1999). Evolution of Attentional Processes in the Human Organism. Group Analysis 32 (2):243-253.   (Google)
Abstract: This article explores the evolution of human attention, focusing particularly on the phylogenetic and ontogenetic implications of the work of the American social psychiatrist Trigant Burrow. Attentional development is linked to the emergence of visual perspective, and this, in turn, is related to Burrow's notion of `ditention' (divided or partitive attention). Burrow's distinction between `ditention' and `cotention' (total organismic awareness) is examined, and, expanding on this, a threefold pattern of perceptual change is identified: prototention-->ditention-->cotention. Next, ditentive visual perspective is related to binocular convergence, and the author makes use of the perspectivally ambiguous, `non-convergent' Gestalt figure known as the Necker Cube to illustrate cotention. The paper concludes by proposing that the shift from the currently pervasive ditentive pattern of awareness to a cotentive mode could have a salutary effect on human society.
Smith, Frederick V. (1941). An interpretation of the theory of gestalt. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 19 (December):193-215.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In seeking an interpretation of the theory of Gestalt, the analysis revealed that the concept of Gestalt applies to processes and particularly to the way in which events or processes take place. The essential condition for the emergence of Gestalten or configurational properties was found to be—the ability of the parts or factors in the process to influence each other. In considering first, the more dynamic or formative phase of processes, the significant factors which influence the reciprocity of influence between the parts or factors of the process were found to be (i) the properties of the individual parts or factors, (ii) the properties of the intervening medium, (iii) the 'distance' between the parts or factors, (vi) 'factors of rigidity or constraint'. It was emphasised that these factors operate relatively to one another. The concept of 'wholeness' was found to apply to both the dynamic and the more static phase of the process. The resultant or equilibrium position of the process derives some contribution from the whole matrix of interacting factors or influences which are responsible for the resultant being precisely what it is. The recognition of the causal significance of even small contributions to an event or process is consistent with the concept of 'wholeness' and with the 'matrix' view of causal explanation. This view of causal explanation is the consistent implication of the theory of Gestalt and the many experimental results associated with this school
Stadler, Michael A. & Kruse, Peter (1994). Gestalt theory and synergetics: From psychophysical isomorphism to holistic emergentism. Philosophical Psychology 7 (2):211-226.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Abstract: Gestalt theory is discussed as one main precursor of synergetics, one of the most elaborated theories of self-organization. It is a precursor for two reasons: the Gestalt theoretical view of cognitive order-formation comes dose to the central ideas of self-organization. Furthermore both approaches have stressed the significance of non-linear perceptual processes (such as multistability) for the solution of the mind-brain problem. The question of whether Gestalt theory preferred a dualistic or a monistic view of the mind-body relation is answered in that there was a preference for dualism in epistemological questions and for monism in the mind-brain relation. The latter was attained by the concept of psychophysical isomorphism. This concept, although widely misunderstood in many respects, was criticized on the basis of neurobiological findings. One main objection was the neglect of the importance of the elementary neurophysiological processes. A distinction between macroscopic and microscopic brain processes seemed to be required. This idea was taken up in synergetics which postulates a bottom-up and top-down interaction between these two levels. Macroscopic order emerges from elementary brain processes and, at the same time, has a backward slaving effect to the microscopic level In the light of such holistic emergentism, the question whether macroscopic order states might be attractors for psychological meanings is discussed
Sundqvist, Fredrik (2003). Perceptual Dynamics: Theoretical Foundations and Philosophical Implications of Gestalt Psychology (Acta Philosophica Gothoburgensia 16). Göteborg: Acta Philosophica Gothoburgensia.   (Google)
Warner, D. H. J. (1964). Resemblance and gestalt psychology. Analysis 24 (June):196-200.   (Google)
Wertheimer, Max (1944). Gestalt theory. In Willis D. Ellis (ed.), Source Book of Gestalt Psychology. Harcourt, Brace and Co.   (Cited by 77 | Google)
Woody, William D. (1999). William James and gestalt psychology. Journal of Mind and Behavior 20 (1):79-92.   (Google)
Wright, Edmond L. (1992). Gestalt-switching: Hanson, Aronson and Harre. Philosophy of Science 59 (3):480-86.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Zimmer, Alf C. & Korndle, Hermann (1994). A gestalt theoretic account for the coordination of perception and action in motor learning. Philosophical Psychology 7 (2):249-265.   (Google)
Abstract: A review of the scanty Gestaltist literature on motor behaviour indicates that a genuine Gestalt theoretic approach to motor behaviour can be characterized by three research questions: (1) What are the natural units of motor behaviour? (2) What characterizes the self-organization in motor behaviour? (3) What are the conditions for invariance in motor behaviour? Tentative answers to these questions can be found by analysing the parallels between Gestalt theory and Bernstein's theory of motor actions and by showing that Gestalt theory can be regarded as a specific approach to non-linear dynamics as exemplified by synergetics (Haken, 1991). The congruence between the Gestalt theoretic approach and synergetics becomes apparent in the analysis of how a complex motor task is learned [1]

3.3g Science of Perception, Misc

Hatfield, Gary C. (2009). Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology.
Hummel, John E. & Kellman, Philip J. (1998). Finding the Pope in the pizza: Abstract invariants and cognitive constraints on perceptual learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1):30-30.   (Google)
Abstract: Schyns, Goldstone & Thibaut argue that categorization experience results in the learning of new perceptual features that are not derivable from the learner's existing feature set. We explore the meaning and implications of this “nonderivability” claim and relate it to the question of whether perceptual invariants are learnable, and if so, what might be entailed in learning them
Raffman, Diana (ms). Nontransitivity, Indiscriminability, and Looking the Same.   (Google)
Rosen, Steven M. (1999). Evolution of Attentional Processes in the Human Organism. Group Analysis 32 (2):243-253.   (Google)
Abstract: This article explores the evolution of human attention, focusing particularly on the phylogenetic and ontogenetic implications of the work of the American social psychiatrist Trigant Burrow. Attentional development is linked to the emergence of visual perspective, and this, in turn, is related to Burrow's notion of `ditention' (divided or partitive attention). Burrow's distinction between `ditention' and `cotention' (total organismic awareness) is examined, and, expanding on this, a threefold pattern of perceptual change is identified: prototention-->ditention-->cotention. Next, ditentive visual perspective is related to binocular convergence, and the author makes use of the perspectivally ambiguous, `non-convergent' Gestalt figure known as the Necker Cube to illustrate cotention. The paper concludes by proposing that the shift from the currently pervasive ditentive pattern of awareness to a cotentive mode could have a salutary effect on human society.

3.4 Perception and the Mind

Jensen, Rasmus Thybo (2009). Motor intentionality and the case of Schneider. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s use of the case of Schneider in his arguments for the existence of non-conconceptual and non-representational motor intentionality contains a problematic methodological ambiguity. Motor intentionality is both to be revealed by its perspicuous preservation and by its contrastive impairment in one and the same case. To resolve the resulting contradiction I suggest we emphasize the second of Merleau-Ponty’s two lines of argument. I argue that this interpretation is the one in best accordance both with Merleau-Ponty’s general methodology and with the empirical case of Schneider as it was described by Gelb and Goldstein

3.4a Perception and Thought

Boas, George (1952). The perceptual element in cognition. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (June):486-494.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Casta, (1977). Perception, belief, and the structure of physical objects and consciousness. Synthese 35 (3).   (Cited by 24 | Google | More links)
Creighton, J. E. (1906). Experience and thought. Philosophical Review 15 (5):482-493.   (Google | More links)
Crumley II, Jack S. (1991). Appearances can be deceiving. Philosophical Studies 64 (3):233-251.   (Google)
Daniels, Charles B. (1988). Perception, thought, and reality. Noûs 22 (September):455-464.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
de Haas, Frans A. J. & Mansfeld, Jaap (eds.) (2004). Aristotle on Generation and Corruption, Book 1: Symposium Aristotelicum. Clarendon.   (Google)
Abstract: Jaap Mansfeld and Frans de Haas bring together in this volume a distinguished international team of ancient philosophers, presenting a systematic, chapter-by-chapter study of one of the key texts in Aristotle's science and metaphysics: the first book of On Generation and Corruption. In GC I Aristotle provides a general outline of physical processes such as generation and corruption, alteration, and growth, and inquires into their differences. He also discusses physical notions such as contact, action and passion, and mixture. These notions are fundamental to Aristotle's physics and cosmology, and more specifically to his theory of the four elements and their transformations. Moreover, references to GC elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus show that in GC I Aristotle is doing heavy conceptual groundwork for more refined applications of these notions in, for example, the psychology of perception and thought, and the study of animal generation and corruption. Ultimately, biology is the goal of the series of enquiries in which GC I demands a position of its own immediately after the Physics. The contributors deal with questions of structure and text constitution and provide thought-provoking discussions of each chapter of GC I. New approaches to the issues of how to understand first matter, and how to evaluate Aristotle's notion of mixture are given ample space. Throughout, Aristotle's views of the theories of the Presocratics and Plato are shown to be crucial in understanding his argument
Dummett, Michael (1990). Thought and perception: The views of two philosophical innovators. In The Analytic Tradition: Philosophical Quarterly Monographs, Volume 1. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Gl, (2004). On perceiving that. Theoria 70 (2-3):197-212.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Leighton, Joseph A. (1906). Cognitive thought and 'immediate' experience. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 3 (7):174-180.   (Google | More links)
Locke, Don (1968). Perceiving and thinking, part I. Aristotelian Society 173:173-190.   (Google)
Lyons, Jack C. (2005). Perceptual belief and nonexperiential looks. Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):237-256.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: How things look (or sound, taste, smell, etc.) plays two important roles in the epistemology of perception.1 First, our perceptual beliefs are episte- mically justified, at least in part, in virtue of how things look. Second, whether a given belief is a perceptual belief, as opposed to, say, an infer- ential belief, is also at least partly a matter of how things look. Together, these yield an epistemically significant sense of looks. A standard view is that how things look, in this epistemically significant sense, is a matter of ones present perceptual phenomenology, of what nondoxastic experiential state one is in. On this standard view, these experiential states (a) determine which of my beliefs are perceptual beliefs and (b) are centrally involved in justifying these beliefs
Macpherson, Fiona (forthcoming). 'Cognitive penetration of colour experience: Rethinking the issue in light of an indirect mechanism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one’s cognitive system, for example, one’s thoughts or beliefs? Ifone thinks that this can happen [at least in certain ways that are identWed in the paper] then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitivelv impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case ofcognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typicallv use to explain away alleged cases. The case is one in which it seems subjects’ beliefs about the typical colour of objects ajfects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitivelv penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generallv sympathetic to the idea ofcognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation ofthis plausible mechanism
McClure, M. T. (1916). Perception and thinking. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13 (13):345-354.   (Google | More links)
Nes, S. Anders (2006). Content in Thought and Perception. Dissertation, Oxford University. Dissertation, Oxford University   (Google)
Nicholas, John M. (1979). Leibniz: Apperception, perception, and thought. Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (1).   (Google)
Noe, Alva (1999). Thought and experience. American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (3):257-65.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Pendlebury, Michael J. (1999). Sensibility and understanding in perceptual judgments. South African Journal of Philosophy 18 (4):356-369.   (Google)
Pryor, James (online). An epistemic theory of acquaintance.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: For example, suppose you believe squirrels can live an extremely long time, like parrots and tortoises. You think to yourself, The oldest mammal in this town is probably a squirrel. Contrast that case to:
(2b) believing some animal you seean animal that happens to be the oldest mammal in
townto be a squirrel
I said theres a philosophically important di?erence between the (a) examples and the (b) examples. In fact these examples illustrate more than one di?erence. Lets try to disentangle the di?erent di?erences
Quinton, Anthony M. (1968). Perceiving and thinking, part II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 191:191-208.   (Google)
Quillen, Keith (1989). Perceptual belief and psychological explanation. Philosophical Quarterly 39 (July):276-293.   (Google | More links)
Sabine, George H. (1907). The concreteness of thought. Philosophical Review 16 (2):154-169.   (Google | More links)
Schilder, Paul (1942). Mind: Perception And Thought In Their Constructive Aspects. Columbia University Press.   (Cited by 16 | Google)
Stokes, Dustin (ms). Perceiving and Desiring: A New Look at the Cognitive Penetrability of Experience.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper considers an orectic perception hypothesis which says that desires and desire-like states may influence perceptual experience in a non-externally mediated way. This hypothesis is clarified with a definition, which serves further to distinguish the interesting target phenomenon from trivial instances of desire-influenced perception. Orectic perception is an interesting possible case of the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. The orectic perception hypothesis is thus incompatible with the more common thesis that perception is cognitively impenetrable. It is of importance to issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, epistemology, and general philosophy of science. The plausibility of orectic perception can be motivated by some hypothetical cases, some classic experimental studies, and some new experimental research inspired by those same studies. The general suggestion is that orectic perception thus defined, and evidenced by the relevant studies, cannot be deflected by the standard strategies of the cognitive impenetrability theorist.
Stroud, Barry G. (2002). Sense-experience and the grounding of thought. In Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. New York: Routledge.   (Cited by 15 | Google)
Teschner, George (1981). The undifferentiated conjunction of sensation and judgment in perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42 (September):119-122.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Tolhurst, William E. (1998). Seemings. American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (3):293-302.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Wieman, Henry N. (1943). Perception and cognition. Journal of Philosophy 40 (February):73-77.   (Google | More links)

3.4b Perception and Action

Aizawa, Kenneth (2006). Understanding the embodiment of perception. APA Proceedings and Addresses 79 (3).   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: Obviously perception is embodied. After all, if creatures were entirely disembodied, how could physical processes in the environment, such as the propagation of light or sound, be transduced into a neurobiological currency capable of generating experience? Is there, however, any deeper, more subtle sense in which perception is embodied? Perhaps. Alva Nos (2004) theory of enactive perception provides one proposal. Where it is commonly thought that
Allott, Robin (2001). Language, perception and action: Philosophical issues. In [Book Chapter].   (Google)
Abstract: The earlier part of this book has been concerned with very specific questions arising in the field of linguistics (phonetics, semantics and syntax), with the results of research into visual perception (physiological and neurological) and with rather wider speculation about the organisation of bodily action and the relation between the bodily processes underlying action, vision and speech. The hypotheses, arguments, evidence and conclusions reached have not depended to any significant extent on philosophical doctrine or concepts and the question may be asked why should a book essentially concerned with linguistics conclude with a chapter devoted to philosophy. To this question there is a broad answer and a more specific one; the broad answer is that there has been prolonged and difficult discussion between philosophers over many centuries of the subjects dealt with earlier in this book, the origin and nature of language, the relation of language to reality, perception as based on sense-experience and providing the main basis for veridical knowledge, and voluntary human action (the notions of free will and determinism, of reasons and causes of action). The narrower answer, as an occasion and justification for having a philosophical chapter, is that in some respects totally new broad and specific hypotheses are presented about the functioning of language, perception and action, and particularly about their interrelation in human behaviour, and it is worth considering what implications these hypotheses, if true, may have for traditional or current philosophical views. It may be that they ought to involve some radical review of current theory but, in any case, it would be unsatisfactory simply to present a whole range of ideas bearing on language, perception and action without having regard to what relevant to these subjects has been said by philosophers (as in the same way it would be unsatisfactory not to have regard to work that has been done on these subjects by experts in the field of Artificial Intelligence)
Almer, Elizabeth Dreike; Gramling, Audrey A. & Kaplan, Steven E. (2008). Impact of post-restatement actions taken by a firm on non-professional investors' credibility perceptions. Journal of Business Ethics 80 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: The frequency of earnings restatements has been increasing over the last decade. Restating previous earnings erodes perceived trustworthiness and competence of management, giving firms strong incentives to take actions to enhance perceived credibility of future financial reports [Farber, D. B.: 2005, The Accounting Review 80(2), 539–561.]. Using an experimental case, we examine the ability of post-restatement actions taken by a firm to positively influence non-professional investors’ perceptions of management’s financial reporting credibility. Our examination considers credibility judgments following two types of restatements – those resulting from fraud in which the character, ethics, and values of an organization may be called into question [cf. Copeland, Jr., J. E.: 2005, Accounting Horizons 19(1), 35–43.], and those resulting from non-fraud (i.e., aggressive accounting). Based on the information in the experimental case, non-professional investors take the role of potential equity investors and make a judgment about management’s financial reporting credibility after reviewing a set of post-restatement actions taken by a firm. The possible actions include changes in four corporate governance mechanisms (i.e., internal audit function, external audit firm, board of directors, CFO) and a buyback of company stock. Our results provide an important contribution to the literature by demonstrating that among non-professional investors, perceptions of management’s financial reporting credibility are affected both by the post-restatement action taken and the nature of the restatement. These results offer insight into the formation of a key credibility judgment made by non-professional investors following a trust-destroying event, an earnings restatement
Arnold, Donald F.; Bernardi, Richard A.; Neidermeyer, Presha E. & Schmee, Josef (2007). The effect of country and culture on perceptions of appropriate ethical actions prescribed by codes of conduct: A western european perspective among accountants. Journal of Business Ethics 70 (4).   (Google)
Abstract:   Recognizing the growing interdependence of the European Union and the importance of codes of conduct in companies’ operations, this research examines the effect of a country’s culture on the implementation of a code of conduct in a European context. We examine whether the perceptions of an activity’s ethicality relates to elements found in company codes of conduct vary by country or according to Hofstede’s (1980, Culture’s Consequences (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA)) cultural constructs of: Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/Femininity, Individualism, and Power Distance. The 294 individuals, who participated in our study, were from 8 Western European countries. Their responses to our 13 scenarios indicate that differences in the perceptions of ethicality associate primarily with the participants’ country as opposed to their employer (i.e., accounting firm), employment level, or gender. The evidence also indicates that these country differences associate with Hofstede constructs of Individualism and Masculinity
Ballard, Dana (1996). On the function of visual representation. In Kathleen Akins (ed.), Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 19 | Google)
Baldwin, Thomas (2003). Perception and agency. In Agency and Self-Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Bartsch, Renate (2002). Consciousness Emerging: The Dynamics of Perception, Imagination, Action, Memory, Thought, and Language. John Benjamins.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Bayne, Tim (forthcoming). The phenomenology of agency. Philosophy Compass.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The phenomenology of agency has, until recently, been rather neglected, overlooked by both philosophers of action and philosophers of consciousness alike. Thankfully, all that has changed, and of late there has been an explosion of interest in what it is like to be an agent. 1 This burgeoning field crosses the traditional boundaries between disciplines: philosophers of psychopathology are speculating about the role that unusual experiences of agency might play in accounting for disorders of thought and action; cognitive scientists are developing models of how the phenomenology of agency is generated; and philosophers of mind are drawing connections between the phenomenology of agency and the nature of introspection, phenomenal character, and agency itself. My aim in this paper is not to provide an exhaustive survey of this recent literature, but to provide a..
Bayne, Tim, The sense of agency.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Where in cognitive architecture do experiences of agency lie? This chapter defends the claim that such states qualify as a species of perception. Reference to ‘the sense of agency’ should not be taken as a mere façon de parler but picks out a genuinely perceptual system. The chapter begins by outlining the perceptual model of agentive experience before turning to its two main rivals: the doxastic model, according to which agentive experience is really a species of belief, and the telic model, according to which agentive experience is really a species of agency. I conclude by defending the perceptual model against a number of objections to it, and by briefly exploring its implications for the question of how to approach the study of perception
Beauvais, Laura L.; Desplaces, David E.; Melchar, David E. & Bosco, Susan M. (2007). Business faculty perceptions and actions regarding ethics education. Journal of Academic Ethics 5 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: This paper examines faculty perceptions regarding ethical behavior among colleagues and students, and faculty practices with regard to teaching ethics in three institutions over a 4-year period. Faculty reported an uneven pattern of unethical behavior among colleagues over the period. A majority of business courses included ethics, however as both a specific topic on the syllabus and within course discussions. The percentage of courses with ethics discussions increased in 2006, however, the time allocated to these discussions decreased. These results suggest that faculty are approaching ethics instruction less formally, raising concerns over the success of curriculum integration
Beauvillain, Cécile & Pouget, Pierre (2003). How can selection-for-perception be decoupled from selection-for-action? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (4):478-479.   (Google)
Abstract: Evidence is presented for the notion that selection-for-perception and selection-for-action progress in parallel to become tightly coupled at the saccade target before the execution of the movement. Such a conception might be incorporated in the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading
Bhalla, Madan M. & Proffitt, D. (2000). Geographical slant perception: Dissociation and coordination between explicit awareness and visually guided actions. In Yves Rossetti & Antti Revonsuo (eds.), Beyond Dissociation: Interaction Between Dissociated Implicit and Explicit Processing. John Benjamins.   (Cited by 4 | Google)
Biernoff, Suzannah (2002). Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan.   (Google)
Abstract: Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages breaks new ground by bringing postmodern writings on vision and embodiment into dialogue with medieval texts and images: an interdisciplinary strategy that illuminates and complicates both cultures. This is an invaluable reference work for anyone interested in the history and theory of visuality, and it is essential reading or scholars of art, science, or spirituality in the medieval period
Binkofski, Ferdinand; Reetz, Kathrin & Blangero, Annabelle (2007). Tactile agnosia and tactile apraxia: Cross talk between the action and perception streams in the anterior intraparietal area. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2):201-202.   (Google)
Block, Ned (2005). Review of Alva Noe, Action in Perception. Journal of Philosophy 102:259-272.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: This is a charming and engaging book that combines careful attention to the phenomenology of experience with an appreciation of the psychology and neuroscience of perception. In some of its aimsfor example, to show problems with a rigid version of a view of visual perception as an inverse optics process of constructing a static 3-D representation from static 2-D information on the retina--it succeeds admirably. As No points out, vision is a process that depends on interactions between the perceiver and the environment and involves contributions from sensory systems other than the eye. He is at pains to note that vision is not passive. His analogy with touch is to the point: touch involves skillful probing and movement, and so does vision, although less obviously and in my view less centrally so. This much is certainly widely accepted among vision scientistsalthough mainstream vision scientists (represented, for example, by Stephen Palmers excellent textbook<sup>2</sup>) view these points as best seen within a version of the inverse optics view that takes inputs as non-static and as including motor instructions (for example, involving eye movements and head movements).<sup>3</sup> The kind of point that No raises is viewed as important at the margins, but as not disturbing the main lines of the picture of vision that descendswith many changesfrom the pioneering work of David Marr in the 1980s (and before him, from Helmholtz). But No shows little interest in mainstream vision science, focusing on non-mainstream ideas in the science of perception, specifically ideas from the anti-representational psychologist J.J. Gibson, and also drawing on Wittgenstein and the phenomenology tradition. There is a sense throughout the book of revolution, of upsetting the applecart. This is a review from the point of view of the applecart
Briscoe, Robert (2009). Egocentric spatial representation in action and perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (2):423-460.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the “two visual systems” hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver’s bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency
Briscoe, Robert (2008). Vision, action, and make-perceive. Mind and Language 23 (4):457-497.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I critically assess the enactive account of visual perception recently defended by Alva Noë (2004). I argue inter alia that the enactive account falsely identifies an object’s apparent shape with its 2D perspectival shape; that it mistakenly assimilates visual shape perception and volumetric object recognition; and that it seriously misrepresents the constitutive role of bodily action in visual awareness. I argue further that noticing an object’s perspectival shape involves a hybrid experience combining both perceptual and imaginative elements – an act of what I call ‘make-perceive.’
Brozzoli, Claudio; Farnè, Alessandro & Rossetti, Yves (2007). Divide et impera? Towards integrated multisensory perception and action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2):202-203.   (Google)
Cacioppe, Ron; Forster, Nick & Fox, Michael (2008). A survey of managers' perceptions of corporate ethics and social responsibility and actions that may affect companies' success. Journal of Business Ethics 82 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: This exploratory study examines how managers and professionals regard the ethical and social responsibility reputations of 60 well-known Australian and International companies, and how this in turn influences their attitudes and behaviour towards these organisations. More than 350 MBA, other postgraduate business students, and participants in Australian Institute of Management (Western Australia) management education programmes were surveyed to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible they believed the 60 organisations to be. The survey sought to determine what these participants considered ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ behaviour in organisations to be. The survey also examined how the participants’ beliefs influenced their attitudes and intended behaviours towards these organisations. The results of this survey indicate that many managers and professionals have clear views about the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies. This affects their attitudes towards these organisations which in turn has an impact on their intended behaviour towards them. These findings support the view in other research studies that well-educated managers and professionals are, to some extent, taking into account the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies when deciding whether to work for them, use their services or buy shares in their companies
Campbell, John (2008). Sensorimotor knowledge and naïve realism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):666-673.   (Google | More links)
Carey, D. P.; Dijkerman, H. Chris & Milner, A. David (1998). Perception and action in depth. Consciousness and Cognition 7 (3):438-453.   (Cited by 46 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Little is known about distance processing in patients with posterior brain damage. Although many investigators have claimed that distance estimates are normal or abnormal in some of these patients, many of these observations were made informally and the examiners often asked for relative, and not absolute, distance estimates. The present investigation served two purposes. First, we wanted to contrast the use of distance information in peripersonal space for perceptual report as opposed to visuomotor control in our visual form agnosic patient, DF. Second, we wanted to see to what extent her abilities to process distance cues were dependent on binocular vision, in light of Milner et al.'s (1991) observations of preserved stereopsis in DF, and Dijkerman et al.'s (1996) and Marotta et al.'s (1997) observations that her visual guidance of grasping may be particularly dependent on binocular vision of the target. We hypothesized that DF's visuomotor responses would show normal sensitivity to target distance, while her perceptual estimates would not. In the first experiment, we required DF and two age- and sex-matched control subjects to reach out and grasp black cubes placed at varying distances, or to estimate the distance of the cubes from the hand starting position without making a reaching movement. In the second experiment, we required DF and two age-matched control subjects to point as rapidly and accurately as possible to small LED targets which differed in spatial location, under binocular and monocular conditions. The results showed that, relative to the control subjects, DF's grasping movements produced normal peak velocity-distance scaling-when she reached for blocks which varied in depth or pointed to LED targets which were presented at different distances in depth. In contrast, in the cube experiment, her verbal estimates of object distance were poorly scaled, although they improved slightly under the binocular conditions. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of processing streams in extrastriate visual cortex and the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial processing
Chaminade, Thierry & Decety, Jean (2001). A common framework for perception and action: Neuroimaging evidence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):879-882.   (Google)
Abstract: In recent years, neurophysiological evidence has accumulated in favor of a common coding between perception and execution of action. We review findings from recent neuroimaging experiments in the action domain with three complementary perspectives: perception of action, covert action triggered by perception, and reproduction of perceived action (imitation). All studies point to the parietal cortex as a key region for body movement representation, both observed and performed
Chemero, Tony & Turvey, Michael (online). Hypersets, complexity, and the ecological approach to perception-action.   (Google)
Chemero, Tony (2001). What we perceive when we perceive affordances: Commentary on Michaels (2000), Information, Perception and Action. Ecological Psychology 13 (2):111-116.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In her essay --?Information, Perception and Action--, Claire Michaels reaches two conclusions that run very much against the grain of ecological psychology. First, she claims that affordances are not perceived, but simply acted upon; second, because of this, perception and action ought to be conceived separately. These conclusions are based upon a misinterpretation of empirical evidence which is, in turn, based upon a conflation of two proper objects of perception: objectively with properties and affordances
Chown, Eric; Booker, Lashon B. & Kaplan, Stephen (2001). Perception, action planning, and cognitive maps. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):882-882.   (Google)
Abstract: Perceptual learning mechanisms derived from Hebb's theory of cell assemblies can generate prototypic representations capable of extending the representational power of TEC (Theory of Event Coding) event codes. The extended capability includes categorization that accommodates “family resemblances” and problem solving that uses cognitive maps
Clark, Andy & Toribio, Josefa (2001). Sensorimotor chauvinism? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):979-980.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Abstract: O'Regan and Noe present a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive defense of a position whose broad outline we absolutely and unreservedly endorse. They are right, it seems to us, to stress the intimacy of conscious content and embodied action, and to counter the idea of a Grand Illusion with the image of an agent genuinely in touch, via active exploration, with the rich and varied visual scene. This is an enormously impressive achievement, and we hope that the comments that follow will be taken in a spirit of constructive questioning. Overall, we have two main reservations
Clark, Andy (2006). Sensorimotor skills and perception: Cognitive complexity and the sensorimotor frontier. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 80 (80):43-65.   (Google)
Clark, Andy (2006). That lonesome whistle: A puzzle for the sensorimotor model of perceptual experience. Analysis 66 (289):22-25.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Clark, Andy (1999). Visual awareness and visuomotor action. Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (11-12):1-18.   (Cited by 22 | Google | More links)
Clark, Andy (2006). Vision as dance? Three challenges for sensorimotor contingency theory. Psyche 12 (1).   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In _Action in Perception _Alva No develops and presents a sensorimotor account of vision and of visual consciousness. According to such an account seeing (and indeed perceiving more generally) is analysed as a kind of skilful bodily activity. Such a view is consistent with the emerging emphasis, in both philosophy and cognitive science, on the critical role of embodiment in the construction of intelligent agency. I shall argue, however, that the full sensorimotor model faces three important challenges. The first is to negotiate a path between two prima facie unsatisfactory readings of the central claim that conscious perceptual experience is constituted by knowledge of patterns of sensorimotor dependence. The second is to convince us that the sensorimotor contribution, in such cases, is actually constitutive of perceptual experience rather than merely causally implicated in the origination of such experience.2 And the third is to respond to the important challenge raised by what I will dub 'sensorimotor summarizing' models of the relation between conscious experience and richly detailed sensorimotor routines. According to such models3 conscious perceptual experience only rather indirectly reflects the rich detail of our actual sensorimotor engagements, which are instead lightly sampled as a coarse guide, optimized for planning and reasoning, and geared and filtered according to current needs and purposes
Clark, Andy (2001). Visual experience and motor action: Are the bonds too tight? Philosophical Review 110 (4):495-519.   (Cited by 78 | Google | More links)
Abstract: How should we characterize the functional role of conscious visual experience? In particular, how do the conscious contents of visual experience guide, bear upon, or otherwise inform our ongoing motor activities? According to an intuitive and (I shall argue) philosophically influential conception, the links are often quite direct. The contents of conscious visual experience, according to this conception, are typically active in the control and guidance of our fine-tuned, real-time engagements with the surrounding three-dimensional world. But this idea (which I shall call the Assumption of Experience-Based Control) is hostage to empirical fortune. It is a hostage, moreover, whose safety is in serious doubt. Thus Milner and Goodale (1995) argue for a deep and abiding dissociation between the contents of conscious seeing, on the one hand, and the resources used for the on-line guidance of visuo-motor action, on the other. This ‘dual visual systems’ hypothesis, which finds many echoes in various other bodies of cognitive scientific research, poses a prima facie challenge to the Assumption of Experience-Based Control. More importantly, it provides (I shall argue) fuel for an alternative and philosophically suggestive account of the functional role of conscious visual experience
Coates, Paul (2007). Experience, action and representations: Critical realism and the enactive theory of vision. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper defends a dynamic model of the way in which perception is integrated with action, a model I refer to as ‘the navigational account’. According to this account, employing vision and other forms of distance perception, a creature acquires information about its surroundings via the senses, information that enables it to select and navigate routes through its environment, so as to attain objects that satisfy its needs. This form of perceptually guided activity should be distinguished from other kinds of semi-automatic responses to visual stimuli that do not necessarily involve conscious experiences. It essentially involves inner states, which involve both the awareness of phenomenal qualities, and also a representational component. The navigational account is compared here with the enactive approach to perception, which opposes the view that perceptual experiences are inner states. This paper argues that a full account of perception raises a number of different questions. One central explanatory project concerns questions about the kinds of processes that currently enable a creature to identify and respond appropriately to distant objects: the answer, it is argued, lies in acknowledging the role of conscious inner representations in guiding navigational behaviour through complex environments. The fact that perception and action are interdependent does not conflict with the claim that inner representational states comprise an essential stage in visual processing
Coulter, Jeff (1990). The praxiology of perception: Visual orientations and practical action. Inquiry 251 (September):251-272.   (Cited by 22 | Google)
Crowther, Thomas (2009). Perceptual activity and the will. In Lucy O'Brien & Matthew Soteriou (eds.), Mental Actions. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Crowther, Thomas (2009). Watching, sight, and the temporal shape of perceptual activity. Philosophical Review 118 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: There has been relatively little discussion, in contemporary philosophy of mind, of the active aspects of perceptual processes. This essay presents and offers some preliminary development of a view about what it is for an agent to watch a particular material object throughout a period of time. On this view, watching is a kind of perceptual activity distinguished by a distinctive epistemic role. The essay presents a puzzle about watching an object that arises through elementary reflection on the consequences of two apparent truths about watching an object throughout a period of time. It proposes that the puzzle can be resolved by a view according to which for an agent to watch an object throughout a period of time is for that agent to maintain visual awareness of that object with the aim of perceptually knowing what that object is doing. The essay goes on to make some further suggestions about how the apparatus developed in connection with the notion of watching may enable us to offer related explanations of other kinds of perceptual activity. It proposes that a useful distinction can be drawn between perceptual activities like watching which have as their aim knowledge of what an object is doing and activities like looking or visually scrutinizing which have as their aims knowledge of the states or conditions of the objects of perceptual awareness
Davis, Steven (ed.) (1983). Causal Theories Of Mind: Action, Knowledge, Memory, Perception, And Reference. Ny: De Gruyter.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
David, A. Rosenbaum; Jonathan Vaughan, Ruud; G. J. Meulenbroek Steven Jax, Rajal & G. Cohen, (2009). The activation, selection, and expression. Smart moves: The psychology of everyday perceptual-motor acts. In Ezequiel Morsella, John A. Bargh & Peter M. Gollwitzer (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Human Action. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
de Gaynesford, Maximilian (2002). Corporeal objects and the interdependence of perception and action. Ratio 15 (4):335-353.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Dewey, John (1912). Perception and organic action. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 9 (24):645-668.   (Google | More links)
Dijkerman, H. Chris & de Haan, Edward H. F. (2007). Somatosensory processes subserving perception and action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2):189-201.   (Google | More links)
Edelman, Shimon (2006). Mostly harmless: Review of action in perception by Alva noë. Artificial Life 12:183-186.   (Google)
Frankish, Keith (2006). Review of Consciousness in Action, by Susan Hurley. Mind 115:156-9.   (Google)
Abstract: Questions about the relation between mind and world have long occupied philosophers of mind. In _Consciousness in Action_ Susan Hurley invites us to adopt a ninety-degree shift and consider the relation between perception and action. The central theme of the book is an attack on what Hurley dubs the _Input-Output Picture_ of perception and actionthe picture of perceptions as sensory inputs to the cognitive system and intentions as motor outputs from it, with the mind occupying the buffer zone in between. Hurley argues that this picture confuses the personal level of normatively constrained mental contents and the subpersonal level of causal processes sustaining the mind. The notions of perception and action belong to the former, those of input and output to the latter. In place of the Input-Output picture, Hurley proposes a _Two-level _ _Interdependence View_. At the subpersonal level, she points out, there are not only one-way processes from input to output but also a host of feedback loops from output to inputsome internal to the central nervous system, some of wider orbit, involving proprioception, for example, or visual feedback on movement. The system as a whole can be seen as a _dynamical singularity_a tangle of sensorimotor feedback loops centred on the organism but extending out into the world beyond. The processes at this level are the vehicles of perceptions and actions, but, Hurley insists, the two levels cannot be mapped onto each other in a simple way. Changes on the output side may affect the content of perceptions, and changes on the input side may affect that of intentions. Perception and intention are in this way _interdependent_. The point here is not the uncontroversial one that perceptions and intentions can _cause_ changes in each other. That would be compatible with the Input-Output Picture. The dependency, in Hurleys view, is not instrumental, but _constitutive_: the contents of perceptions and intentions are each constituted by processes involving both inputs and outputs..
Gallagher, Shaun (online). Perceiving others in action / la perception d'autrui en action.   (Google)
Abstract: In a New York Times article last month, entitled Cells that read minds, the neuroscience reporter, Sandra Blakeslee (January 10, 2006) provided a list of all the things that mirror neurons can explain. As we know, mirror neurons, discovered by Rizzolattis group in Parma, are neurons that are activated when we engage in action, and when we perceive intentional movement in another person. According to Blakeslee and the scientists she interviewed, mirror neurons explain not only how we are capable of understanding another persons actions, but also language, empathy, how children learn, why people respond to certain types of sports, dance, music and art, why watching media violence may be harmful and why many men like pornography. Let me set aside the controversial questions about whether mirror neurons can explain all of these things, and accept that mirror neurons are clearly smart little cells. But let me ask whether Blakeslee and her scientists are expressing things in the right way
Gallese, Vittorio (2000). The inner sense of action: Agency and motor representations. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (10):23-40.   (Cited by 79 | Google | More links)
Gangopadhyay, Nivedita & Kiverstein, Julian (2009). Enactivism and the unity of perception and action. Topoi 28 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: This paper contrasts two enactive theories of visual experience: the sensorimotor theory (O’Regan and Noë, Behav Brain Sci 24(5):939–1031, 2001; Noë and O’Regan, Vision and mind, 2002; Noë, Action in perception, 2004) and Susan Hurley’s (Consciousness in action, 1998, Synthese 129:3–40, 2001) theory of active perception. We criticise the sensorimotor theory for its commitment to a distinction between mere sensorimotor behaviour and cognition. This is a distinction that is firmly rejected by Hurley. Hurley argues that personal level cognitive abilities emerge out of a complex dynamic feedback system at the subpersonal level. Moreover reflection on the role of eye movements in visual perception establishes a further sense in which a distinction between sensorimotor behaviour and cognition cannot be sustained. The sensorimotor theory has recently come under critical fire (see e.g. Block, J Philos CII(5):259–272, 2005; Prinz, Psyche, 12(1):1–19, 2006; Aizawa, J Philos CIV(1), 2007) for mistaking a merely causal contribution of action to perception for a constitutive contribution. We further argue that the sensorimotor theory is particularly vulnerable to this objection in a way that Hurley’s active perception theory is not. This presents an additional reason for preferring Hurley’s theory as providing a conceptual framework for the enactive programme
Noë, Alva (2006). Experience without the head. In John Hawthorne & Tamar Szab'o Gendler (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Some cognitive states — e.g. states of thinking, calculating, navigating — may be partially external because, at least sometimes, these states depend on the use of symbols and artifacts that are outside the body. Maps, signs, writing implements may sometimes be as inextricably bound up with the workings of cognition as neural structures or internally realized symbols (if there are any). According to what Clark and Chalmers [1998] call active externalism, the environment can drive and so partially constitute cognitive processes. Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? If active externalism is right, then the boundary cannot be drawn at the skull. The mind reaches – or at least can reach --- beyond the limits of the body out into the world
Giacalone, Robert A. & Jurkiewicz, Carole L. (2003). Right from wrong: The influence of spirituality on perceptions of unethical business activities. Journal of Business Ethics 46 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: A network sample of 162 employees from across the U.S. was studied to assess the relationship between individual spirituality and perceptions of unethical business activities. Analyses indicate that degree of individual spirituality influences whether an individual perceives a questionable business practice as ethical or unethical. Ramifications of these findings regarding the role of spirituality in enhancing workplace ethicality, as well as directions for future research, are discussed
Goodale, Melvyn A. (2007). Duplex vision: Separate cortical pathways for conscious perception and the control of action. In Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Blackwell.   (Google)
Goodale, Mel (1997). Pointing the way to a unified theory of action and perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (4):749-750.   (Google)
Abstract: Deictic coding offers a useful model for understanding the interactions between the dorsal and ventral streams of visual processing in the cerebral cortex. By extending Ballard et al.'s ideas on teleassistance, I show how dedicated low-level visuomotor processes in the dorsal stream might be engaged for the services of high-level cognitive operations in the ventral stream
Goodale, Melvyn A. & Milner, A. David (1992). Separate visual pathways for perception and action. Trends in Neurosciences 15:20-25.   (Cited by 1299 | Google | More links)
Greenwald, Anthony G.; Klinger, M. R. & Schuh, E. S. (1995). Activation by marginally perceptible ("subliminal") stimuli: Dissociation of unconscious from conscious cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology 124:22-42.   (Cited by 96 | Google)
Grush, Rick (forthcoming). Skill theory v2.0: Dispositions, emulation, and spatial perception. Synthese.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: An attempt is made to defend a general approach to the spatial content of perception, an approach according to which perception is imbued with spatial content in virtue of certain kinds of connections between perceiving organism’s sensory input and its behavioral output. The most important aspect of the defense involves clearly distinguishing two kinds of perceptuo-behavioral skills—the formation of dispositions, and a capacity for emulation. The former, the formation of dispositions, is argued to by the central pivot of spatial content. I provide a neural information processing interpretation of what these dispositions amount to, and describe how dispositions, so understood, are an obvious implementation of Gareth Evans’ proposal on the topic. Furthermore, I describe what sorts of contribution are made by emulation mechanisms, and I also describe exactly how the emulation framework differs from similar but distinct notions with which it is often unhelpfully confused, such as sensorimotor contingencies and forward models
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Hardcastle, Valerie Gray (2001). Visual perception is not visual awareness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):985-985.   (Google)
Abstract: O'Regan & Noë mistakenly identify visual processing with visual experience. I outline some reasons why this is a mistake, taking my data and arguments mainly from the literature on subliminal processing
Hickerson, Ryan, Knowing how to possibly act: Alva noë's action in perception.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Alva Noë is a modern-day empiricist. His book Action in Perception is chockablock with contemporary cognitive science; its preface and notes (not to mention general erudition) point to on-going collaboration with Evan Thompson, Kevin O’Regan, and Susan Hurley. Their research investigates the sensorimotor bases of consciousness, and Action in Perception is offered as its philosophical backdrop. As such, the book presents a series of ideas and interpretations that constitute what Noë calls the “enactive approach” to perception, many of which are explicitly phenomenological in orientation. So those on the lookout for imaginative philosophy of mind will find Noë's work particularly compelling. (Noë would prefer "already feeling about for imaginative philosophy of mind," because on his account paradigmatic perceptual activity is tactile rather than visual.) In this review I will not address the empirical details concerning Noë and his compatriots, but will instead focus on the way Noë’s enactive approach should be situated vis-à-vis traditional phenomenology. Action in Perception is part of the grand project of a robustly scientific knowledge of human perceptual experience, but it is clearly also a philosophical theory, so I will address it philosophically. I address it as I take it to be: one of the best works in the philosophy of perception to appear in a very long time
Hickerson, Ryan (2007). Perception as knowing how to act: Alva noë's action in perception. Philosophical Psychology 20 (4):505 – 517.   (Google | More links)
Hochberg, Julian (2003). Backdrop, flat, and prop: The stage for active perceptual inquiry. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (4):414-415.   (Google)
Abstract: Lehar's revival of phenomenology and his all-encompassing Gestalt Bubble model are ambitious and stimulating. I offer an illustrated caution about phenomenology, a more fractured alternative to his Bubble model, and two lines of phenomena that may disqualify his isomorphism. I think a perceptual-inquiry model can contend
Hochberg, Julian (2001). In the mind's eye: Perceptual coupling and sensorimotor contingencies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):986-986.   (Google)
Abstract: The theoretical proposal that perceptual experience be thought of as expectancies about sensorimotor contingencies, rather than as expressions of mental representations, is endorsed; examples that effectively enforce that view are discussed; and one example (of perceptual coupling) that seems to demand a mental representation, with all of the diagnostic value such a tool would have, is raised for consideration
Hodges, Bert H. & Baron, Reuben M. (1992). Values as constraints on affordances: Perceiving and acting properly. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22 (3):263–294.   (Google | More links)
Hommel, Bernhard; Müsseler, Jochen; Aschersleben, Gisa & Prinz, Wolfgang (2001). The theory of event coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):849-878.   (Google)
Abstract: Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface
Hope, Vincent (2009). Object perception, perceptual recognition, and that-perception introduction. Philosophy 84 (4):515-528.   (Google)
Humphreys, Glyn W. & Riddoch, M. Jane (2007). How to define an object: Evidence from the effects of action on perception and attention. Mind and Language 22 (5):534–547.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: We present work demonstrating that the nature of an object for our visual system depends on the actions we are programming and on the presence of action relations between stimuli. For example, patients who show visual extinction are more likely to become aware of two objects if the objects fall in appropriate visual locations for a common action. This effect of the action relations between objects is modulated both by the familiarity of the positioning of the objects for action, and by the mere possibility of action (the ‘affordance’) between the objects. In addition, the programming of an action to a part of an object alters the representation of that object, making the ‘part’ into the object selected by the visual system. These results point to object coding being a rather flexible process, affected not only by the perceptual properties of stimuli but also by the relations between these properties and action. We discuss the implications for theories of perception as well as considering why action information, in particular, may be important for perception
Hurley, Susan L. (1998). Active perception and vehicle externalism. In Susan L. Hurley (ed.), Consciousness in Action. Harvard University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Certain empirical results suggest a way of challenging two natural and widespread assumptions about the mind. One assumption is about the relations between perception and action. This shows up in the widespread conception of perception and action in terms of input and output, respectively. Perception is conceived as input from world to mind and action is conceived as output from mind to world. The other assumption is about the relations between mind and world. It influences various opposed views about whether the contents of the mind are in principle independent of the outside world
Hurley, Susan L. (2006). Active perception and perceiving action: The shared circuits model. In Tamar Szab Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 46 | Google)
Abstract: Recently research on imitation and its role in social cognition has been flourishing across various disciplines. After briefly reviewing these developments under the headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation, I advance the _shared circuits_
Hurley, Susan L. (online). Consciousness in action: Clarifications.   (Cited by -78777 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Philosophy of neuroscience may seem an odd thing to do. What can a philosopher add to what neuroscience itself has to say, other than at some very abstract level, far removed from empirical details and the interests of scientists? At some point you take a deep breath, acknowledge the methodological questions, and just go ahead, spurred on by the sheer philosophical interest and excitement abroad in the neurosciences today. So it is very gratifying to a philosopher of neuroscience for such a distinguished neuropsychologist as Marcel Kinsbourne to find added value in the result
Hurley, Susan L. (2001). Perception and action: Alternative views. Synthese 129 (1):3-40.   (Cited by 22 | Google | More links)
Abstract:   A traditional view of perception and action makestwo assumptions: that the causal flow betweenperception and action is primarily linear or one-way,and that they are merely instrumentally related toeach other, so that each is a means to the other.Either or both of these assumptions can be rejected.Behaviorism rejects the instrumental but not theone-way aspect of the traditional view, thus leavingitself open to charges of verificationism. Ecologicalviews reject the one-way aspect but not theinstrumental aspect of the traditional view, so thatperception and action are seen as instrumentallyinterdependent. It is argued here that a betteralternative is to reject both assumptions, resultingin a two-level interdependence view in whichperception and action co-depend on dynamicallycircular subpersonal relations and as a result may bemore than merely instrumentally interdependent. Thisis illustrated by reference to motor theories ofperception and control theories of action
Hutto, Daniel D. (2005). Knowing what? Radical versus conservative enactivism. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (4):389-405.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The binary divide between traditional cognitivist and enactivist paradigms is tied to their respective commitments to understanding cognition as based on knowing that as opposed to knowing how. Using O’Regan’s and No¨e’s landmark sensorimotor contingency theory of perceptual experience as a foil, I demonstrate how easy it is to fall into conservative thinking. Although their account is advertised as decidedly ‘skill-based’, on close inspection it shows itself to be riddled with suppositions threatening to reduce it to a rules-and-representations approach. To remain properly enactivist it must be purged of such commitments and indeed all commitment to mediating knowledge: it must embrace a more radical enactivism
Ikegami, Takashi (2007). Simulating active perception and mental imagery with embodied chaotic itinerancy. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7):111-125.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: We explore the understanding of conscious states in terms of spatio-temporal dynamics through modelling a mobile agent. Conscious states are associated with an agent's spontaneous and deterministic fluctuation between attachment to and detachment from the surroundings. It is because of this fluctuating nature, we argue, that an agent can perceive structure in the world. Perception requires a conscious state in physical devices. This is a central concern of this paper, and we examine it by simulating a mobile agent equipped with an interconnected Fitz-Hugh-Nagumo (FHN) neuron network with delayed signal transmissions. The agent can move around a space by sensing the environment pattern through the input neurons and computing the motor outputs via the FHN network. The agent shows a variety of motion styles and a spontaneous selection of motion styles responding to the surroundings. Such a phenomenon is named embodied chaotic itinerancy (ECI), as an extension of chaotic itinerant dynamics, which is known to be a typical dynamic with a high degree of freedom. We take this selective mode of response to be significant, particularly those interacting with spatial pattern, as an inevitable property of conscious states
Jacob, Pierre (2005). Grasping and perceiving objects. In Andrew Brook (ed.), Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Google | More links)
Jackson, Stephen (2000). Perception, awareness and action: Insights from blindsight. In Yves Rossetti & Antti Revonsuo (eds.), Beyond Dissociation: Interaction Between Dissociated Implicit and Explicit Processing. John Benjamins.   (Cited by 7 | Google)
Jacob, Pierre (2003). Perceiving objects and grasping them. In Perspectives on Consciousness. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.   (Google)
Jacob, Pierre (2006). Why visual experience is likely to resist being enacted. Psyche 12 (1).   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: Alva Noë’s version of the enactive conception in _Action in Perception_ is an important contribution to the study of visual perception. First, I argue, however, that it is unclear (at best) whether, as the enactivists claim, work on change blindness supports the denial of the existence of detailed visual representations. Second, I elaborate on what Noë calls the ‘puzzle of perceptual presence’. Thirdly, I question the enactivist account of perceptual constancy. Finally, I draw attention to the tensions between enactivism and two trends in cognitive neuroscience: the two-visual systems model of human vision and the theory of internal forward models of action
J., S. (2003). Emergence of self and other in perception and action: An event-control approach. Consciousness and Cognition 12 (4):633-646.   (Google)
Abstract: The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order
Johanson, Thomas (online). Imprinted on the mind: Passive and active in Aristotle's theory of perception.   (Google)
Abstract: B.Saunders and J. van Brakel (eds.), Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Colour, University Press of America 2002, 169-188
Jordan, J. Scott (2003). Emergence of self and other in perception and action: An event-control approach. Consciousness and Cognition 12 (4):633-646.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order
Kagan, Aaron (2007). Face to face with an enactive approach: A sensorimotor account of face detection and recognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The enactive approach to perception describes experience as a temporally extended activity of skillful engagement with the environment. This paper pursues this view and focuses on prosopagnosia both for the light that the theory can throw on the phenomenon, and for the critical light the phenomenon can throw on the theory. I argue that the enactive theory is insufficient to characterize the unique nature of experience specific to prosopagnosic subjects. There is a distinct difference in the overall process of detection (with respect to eye movement sequence) of familiar and unfamiliar faces in prosopagnosia; in contrast, normal subjects use the same scanning strategy when exploring both kinds of faces despite an obvious difference in qualitative character. In light of this limitation I outline a supplemental view basing sensorimotor contingencies upon the establishment and reaffirmation of regularities within the organism as it engages with the environment
Keijzer, Fred (2007). Evolution in action in perception. Philosophical Psychology 20 (4):519 – 529.   (Google | More links)
Kelly, Sean D. (2002). Merleau-ponty on the body: The logic of motor intentional activity. Ratio-New Series 15 (4):376-391.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Klein, Colin & Love, Gabriel (2007). Kicking the Kohler habit. Philosophical Psychology 20 (5):609 – 619.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Kohler's experiments with inverting goggles are often thought to support enactivism by showing that visual re-inversion occurs simultaneous with the return of sensorimotor skill. Closer examination reveals that Kohler's work does not show this. Recent work by Linden et al. shows that re-inversion, if it occurs at all, does not occur when the enactivist predicts. As such, the empirical evidence weighs against enactivism
Kleinschmidt, Harald (2005). Perception and Action in Medieval Europe. Boydell Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Perception and action : the genesis of their separation as concepts -- The transformation of perception in the early eleventh century : dance historical records from the village of Kölbigk in East Saxony -- Impacts from the environment : the perception of odour, touch and taste -- Impacts on the environment : the rationality of action -- Aesthetics and ethics : their separation as concepts.
Lacquaniti, Francesco & Zago, Mirka (2001). Internalization of physical laws as revealed by the study of action instead of perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (4):684-685.   (Google)
Abstract: We review studies on catching that reveal internalization of physics for action control. In catching free-falling balls, an internal model of gravity is used by the brain to time anticipatory muscle activation, modulation of reflex responses, and tuning of limb impedance. An internal model of the expected momentum of the ball at impact is used to scale the amplitude of anticipatory muscle activity. [Barlow; Hecht; Shepard]
Lane, Peter C. R.; Cheng, Peter C-H. & Gobet, Fernand (2001). The CHREST model of active perception and its role in problem solving. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):892-893.   (Google)
Abstract: We discuss the relation of the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) to a computational model of expert perception, CHREST, based on the chunking theory. TEC's status as a verbal theory leaves several questions unanswerable, such as the precise nature of internal representations used, or the degree of learning required to obtain a particular level of competence: CHREST may help answer such questions
Laureys, Steven (online). Baseline brain activity fluctuations predict somatosensory perception in humans.   (Google)
Leddington, Jason (2009). Perceptual presence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (4):482-502.   (Google)
Abstract: Plausibly, any adequate theory of perception must (a) solve what Alva Noë calls 'the problem of perceptual presence,' and (b) do justice to the direct realist idea that what is given in perception are garden-variety spatiotemporal particulars. This paper shows that, while Noë's sensorimotor view arguably satisfies the first of these conditions, it does not satisfy the second. Moreover, Noë is wrong to think that a naïve realist approach to perception cannot handle the problem of perceptual presence. Section three of this paper develops a version of naïve realism that meets both of the adequacy conditions above. This paper thus provides strong considerations in favor of naïve realism
Leisman, Gerry & Melillo, Robert (2007). A call to arms: Somatosensory perception and action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2):214-215.   (Google)
Leopold, David A. & Logothetis, Nikos K. (1996). Activity changes in early visual cortex reflect monkeys' percepts during binocular rivalry. Nature 379 (6565):549-553.   (Cited by 396 | Google | More links)
Logothetis, Nikos K. & Leopold, David A. (1998). Single-neuron activity and visual perception. In Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak & A. C. Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness II. MIT Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Lumer, Erik & Rees, Geraint (1999). Covariation of activity in visual and prefrontal cortex associated with subjective visual perception. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America 96 (4):1669-1673.   (Cited by 116 | Google | More links)
Lycan, William G. (2006). Enactive intentionality. Psyche 12 (3).   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Though Noë is concerned to emphasize that perceptual experiences are not per se internal representations, he does not really say why, and he is fairly quiet about what he takes intentionality and representation themselves to be. Drawing on a subsequent paper (Noë (forthcoming)), I bring out and criticize his in fact radically negative view of those fundamental mental capacities
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Mandik, Pete (2005). Action-oriented representation. In Andrew Brook & Kathleen Akins (eds.), Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Cambridge University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Often, sensory input underdetermines perception. One such example is the perception of illusory contours. In illusory contour perception, the content of the percept includes the presence of a contour that is absent from the informational content of the sensation. (By “sensation” I mean merely information-bearing events at the transducer level. I intend no further commitment such as the identification of sensations with qualia.) I call instances of perception underdetermined by sensation “underdetermined perception.” The perception of illusory contours is just one kind of underdetermined perception. The focus of this chapter is another kind of underdetermined perception: what I shall call "active perception". Active perception occurs in cases in which the percept, while underdetermined by sensation, is determined by a combination of sensation and action. The phenomenon of active perception has been used by several to argue against the positing of representations in explanations of sensory experience, either by arguing that no representations need be posited or that far fewer than previously thought need be posited. Such views include, but are not limited to those of Gibson (1966, 1986), Churchland
Mandik, Pete (forthcoming). Control consciousness. Topics in Cognitive Science.   (Google)
Abstract: Control consciousness is the awareness or experience of seeming to be in control of one’s actions. One view, which I will be arguing against in the present paper, is that control consciousness is a form of sensory consciousness. On such a view, control consciousness is exhausted by sensory elements such as tactile and proprioceptive information. An opposing view, which I will be arguing for, is that sensory elements cannot be the whole story and must be supplemented by direct contributions of nonsensory, motor elements. More specifically, I will be arguing for the view that the neural basis of control consciousness is constituted by states of recurrent activation in relatively intermediate levels of the motor hierarchy.
Martin, M. G. F. (2008). Commentary on action in perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):674–681.   (Google | More links)
Marin, Ludovic & Lagarde, Julien (2007). The perception-action interaction comes first. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2):215-216.   (Google)
McFarland, Dennis J. (2001). Where does perception end and when does action start? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):113-113.   (Google)
Abstract: Currently there is considerable interest in the notion that dorsal and ventral visual systems might differ in their specializations for thought and action. Behavior invariably involves multiple processes such as perception, judgment, and response execution. It is not clear that characteristics of the dorsal and ventral processing streams, as described by Norman, are entirely of a perceptual nature
McMichael, Kipp & Bingham, Geoffrey (2001). Functional separation of the senses is a requirement of perception/action research. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):227-228.   (Google)
Mealey, Linda & Kinner, Stuart (2001). The perception-action model of empathy and psychopathic “cold-heartedness”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):42-43.   (Google)
Abstract: The Perception-Action Model of empathy (PAM) is both sufficiently broad and sufficiently detailed to be able to describe and accommodate a wide range of phenomena – including the apparent “cold-heartedness” or lack of empathy of psychopaths. We show how the physiological, cognitive, and emotional elements of the PAM map onto known and hypothesized attributes of the psychopathic personality
Mole, Christopher (2009). The Motor Theory of Speech Perception. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Myin, Erik (2001). Fragmentation, coherence, and the perception/action divide. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):231-231.   (Google)
Myin, Erik & O'Regan, J. Kevin (2002). Perceptual consciousness, access to modality and skill theories: A way to naturalize phenomenology? Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (1):27-45.   (Google)
Nanay, Bence (forthcoming). Action-oriented perception. European Journal of Philosophy.   (Google)
Abstract: Abstract: When I throw a ball at you, do you see it as catch-able? Do we perceive objects as edible, climbable or Q-able in general? One could argue that it is just a manner of speaking to say so: we do not really see an object as edible, we only infer on the basis of its other properties that it is. I argue that whether or not an object is edible or climbable is indeed represented perceptually: we see objects as edible, and do not just believe that they are. My argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that in order to perform an action Q with respect to an object, we need to represent this object as Q-able and, second, I argue that we represent objects as having these properties perceptually
Newton, Natika (1985). Acting and perceiving in body and mind. Philosophy Research Archives 11:407-429.   (Google)
Nijhawan, Romi (2008). Predictive perceptions, predictive actions, and beyond. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (2):222-239.   (Google)
Noë, Alva (2000). Experience and experiment in art. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (8-9):123-135.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Noe, Alva (2006). Action in Experience. The MIT Press.   (Google)
Noë, Alva (2004). Action in perception. The Mit Press.   (Cited by 216 | Google | More links)
Noë, Alva (2001). Experience and the active mind. Synthese 129 (1):41-60.   (Cited by 22 | Google | More links)
Abstract:   This paper investigates a new species ofskeptical reasoning about visual experience that takesits start from developments in perceptual science(especially recent work on change blindness andinattentional blindness). According to thisskepticism, the impression of visual awareness of theenvironment in full detail and high resolution isillusory. I argue that the new skepticism depends onmisguided assumptions about the character ofperceptual experience, about whether perceptualexperiences are ''internal'' states, and about how bestto understand the relationship between a person''s oranimal''s perceptual capacities and the brain-level orneural processes on which they depend. I propose aconception of perceptual experience as a form ofskillful engagement with the environment on the partof the whole person or animal
Clark, Andy (2002). Is seeing all it seems? Action, reason and the grand illusion. Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (5-6):181-202.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: We seem, or so it seems to some theorists, to experience a rich stream of highly detailed information concerning an extensive part of our current visual surroundings. But this appearance, it has been suggested, is in some way illusory. Our brains do not command richly detailed internal models of the current scene. Our seeings, it seems, are not all that they seem. This, then, is the Grand Illusion. We think we see much more than we actually do. In this paper I shall (briefly) rehearse the empirical evidence for this rather startling claim, and then critically examine a variety of responses. One especially interesting response is a development of the so-called ‘skill theory’, according to which there is no illusion after all. Instead, so the theory goes, we establish the required visual contact with our world by an ongoing process of active exploration, in which the world acts as a kind of reliable, interrogable, external memory (Noe, Pessoa and
Noe, Alva (ms). Perception, action, and nonconceptual content.   (Google)
Abstract: profile deforms as we move about it. As perceivers we are masters of the patterns of sensorimotor contingency that shape our perceptual interaction with the world. We expect changes in such things as apparent size, shape and color to occur as we actively explore the environment. In encountering perspective-dependent changes of this sort, we learn how things are quite apart form our particular perspective. Our possession of these skills is constitutive of our ability to see (and generally to perceive). This is confirmed by the fact that we can disrupt a person
Noë, Alva & Hurley, Susan L. (2003). The deferential brain in action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (5):195-196.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: binding of colour and alphanumeric form in synaesthesia. Nature 410
Noë, Alva (2008). Précis of action in perception: Philosophy and phenomenological research. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):660–665.   (Google | More links)
Noë, Alva (2006). Précis of Action in Perception. Psyche 12 (1).   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: To be a perceiver is to understand, implicitly, the effects of movement on sensory stimulation. Examples are ready to hand. An object looms larger in the visual field as we approach it, and its profile deforms as we move about it. A sound grows louder as we move nearer to its source. Movements of the hand over the surface of an object give rise to shifting sensations. As perceivers we are masters of this sort of pattern of sensorimotor dependence. This mastery shows itself in the thoughtless automaticity with which we move our eyes, head and body in taking in what is around us. We spontaneously crane
PSYCHE: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/
our necks, peer, squint, reach for our glasses, or draw near to get a better look (or better to handle, sniff, lick or listen to what interests us). The central claim of what I call _the _ _enactive approach _is that our ability to perceive not only depends on, but is constituted by, our possession of this sort of sensorimotor knowledge.2
Noë, Alva (2007). Understanding action in perception: Replies to Hickerson and Keijzer. Philosophical Psychology 20 (4):531 – 538.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this short essay I respond to the criticism of Action in Perception (2004) advanced by Ryan Hickerson and Fred Keijzer. In particular, I provide a brief precis of the main argument of Action in Perception. I seek to clarify the claims made in the book about the relation between perception and action, the importance of sensorimotor knowledge. I discuss the problem of "sensorimotor chauvinism," that of the "ping-pong playing robot," and the problem of perceptual presence
O'Regan, J. Kevin & Noë, Alva (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):883-917.   (Cited by 652 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The out- side world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the gov- erning laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Sev- eral lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual “filling in,” visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception
O'Regan, J. Kevin; Myin, Erik & Noë, Alva (2006). Skill, corporality and alerting capacity in an account of sensory consciousness. In Steven Laureys (ed.), Boundaries of Consciousness. Elsevier.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
O'Regan, J. Kevin (2001). What it is like to see: A sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience. Synthese 129 (1):79-103.   (Cited by 30 | Google | More links)
Abstract:   The paper proposes a way of bridging the gapbetween physical processes in the brain and the ''''felt''''aspect of sensory experience. The approach is based onthe idea that experience is not generated by brainprocesses themselves, but rather is constituted by theway these brain processes enable a particular form of''''give-and-take'''' between the perceiver and theenvironment. From this starting-point we are able tocharacterize the phenomenological differences betweenthe different sensory modalities in a more principledway than has been done in the past. We are also ableto approach the issues of visual awareness andconsciousness in a satisfactory way. Finally weconsider a number of testable empirical consequences,one of which is the striking prediction of thephenomenon of ''''change blindness''''
Ortells, Juan J.; Daza, María Teresa & Fox, Elaine (2003). Semantic activation in the absence of perceptual awareness. Perception and Psychophysics 65 (8):1307-1317.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1992). The diversity and unity of action and perception. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Google)
Panksepp, Jaak; Gordon, Nakia & Burgdorf, Jeff (2001). Empathy and the action-perception resonances of basic socio-emotional systems of the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):43-44.   (Google)
Abstract: Mammalian brains contain a variety of self-centered socio-emotional systems. An understanding of how they interact with more recent cognitive structures may be essential for understanding empathy. Preston & de Waal have neglected this vast territory of proximal brain issues in their analysis
Pani, John R. (2001). Perceptual theories that emphasize action are necessary but not sufficient. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):998-998.   (Google)
Abstract: Theories that make action central to perception are plausible, though largely untried, for space perception. However, explaining object recognition, and high-level perception generally, will require reference to representations of the world in some form. Nonetheless, action is central to cognition, and explaining high-level perception will be aided by integrating an understanding of action with other aspects of perception
Petit, Jean-Luc (2003). On the relation between recent neurobiological data on perception (and action) and the Husserlian theory of constitution. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (4).   (Google)
Abstract:   The phenomenological theory of constitution promises a solution for the problem of consciousness insofar as it changes the traditional terms of this problem by systematically correlating subject and object in the unifying context of intentional acts. I argue that embodied constitution must depend upon the role of kinesthesia as a constitutive operator. In pursuing the path of intentionality in its descent from an idealistic level of pure constitution to this fully embodied kinesthetic constitution, we are able to gain access to different ontological regions such as physical thing, owned body and shared world. Neuroscience brings to light the somatological correlates of noemata. Bridging the gap between incarnation and naturalisation represents the best way of realizing the foundational program of transcendental phenomenology
Pisella, L.; Kritikos, A. & Rossetti, Y. (2001). Perception, action, and motor control: Interaction does not necessarily imply common structures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):898-899.   (Google)
Abstract: The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) provides a preliminary account of the interaction between perception and action, which is consistent with several recent findings in the area of motor control. Significant issues require integration and elaboration, however; particularly, distractor interference, automatic motor corrections, internal models of action, and neuroanatomical bases for the link between perception and action
Praetorius, Nini (2007). The problems of consciousness and content in theories of perception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6 (3).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The paper aims to show, first, that O’Regan’s and Noë’s Sensorimotor Theory of Vision and Visual Experiences suffers from circularity, and that evidence from empirical research within perception psychology unequivocally invalidates their theory. Secondly, to show that the circularity in O’Regan’s and Noë’s theory of vision and in other general causal and functional theories of perception (i.e. Gibson’s and Marr’s theories of perception) is the inevitable consequence of mutually conflicting assumption of Cartesian dualism underlying these theories. The paper concludes by outlining the consequences of this conflict of assumptions for psychological theories of perception
Preston, Stephanie D. (2008). Putting the subjective back into intersubjective: The importance of person-specific, distributed, neural representations in perception-action mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (1):36-37.   (Google)
Prinz, Jesse J. (2006). Putting the brakes on enactive perception. Psyche 12 (1).   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Abstract: Alva Noë’s _Action in Perception _offers a provocative and vigorous defense of the thesis that vision is enactive: visual experience depends on dispositional motor responses. On this view, vision and action are inextricably bound. In this review, I argue against enactive perception. I raise objections to seven lines of evidence that appear in Noë’s book, and I indicate some reasons for thinking that vision can operate independently of motor responses. I conclude that the relationship between vision and action is causal, not constitutive. I then address three other contentious hypotheses in the book. Noë argues that visual states are not pictorial; he argues that all perception is conceptual; and he argues that the external world makes a constitutive contribution to experience. I am unpersuaded by these arguments, and I offer reasons to resist Noë’s conclusions
Proctor, Robert W. & Vu, Kim-Phuong L. (2001). TEC: Integrated view of perception and action or framework for response selection? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):899-900.   (Google)
Abstract: The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) presented in Hommel et al.'s target article provides a useful heuristic framework for stimulating research. Although the authors present TEC as providing a more integrated view of perception and action than classical information processing, TEC is restricted to the stage often called response selection and shares many features with existing theories
Rossetti, Yves (2001). Implicit perception in action: Short-lived motor representation of space. In Peter G. Grossenbacher (ed.), Finding Consciousness in the Brain: A Neurocognitive Approach. Advances in Consciousness Research. John Benjamins.   (Cited by 16 | Google)
Rossetti, Yves & Procyk, Emmanuel (1997). What memory is for action: The gap between percepts and concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1):34-36.   (Google)
Abstract: The originality of Glenberg's theoretical account lies in the claim that memory works in the service of physical interaction with the three-dimensional world. Little consideration is given, however, to the role of memory in action. We present and discuss data on spatial memory for action. These empirical data constitute the first step of reasoning about the link between memory and action, and allow several aspects of Glenberg's theory to be tested
Rowlands, Mark (2006). Sensorimotor activity. Psyche 12 (1).   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: This paper explores the concept of _sensorimotor activity_ that is central to the enactive model of visual perception developed in Alva Noë’s book, _Action in Perception_. The appeal to sensorimotor activity is, I shall argue, subject to a dilemma. On one interpretation, such activity presupposes representational states, and therefore is unable to aid us in the project of understanding how an organism is able to represent the world. On the other interpretation, sensorimotor activity fails to accommodate the essential normativity of representational states, and is therefore also unable to aid us in the project of understanding representation. The solution, I argue, lies in a new conception of sensorimotor activity, according to which such activity is normative, but where this normativity is not inherited from prior representational states
Rowlands, Mark (2007). Understanding the "active" in "enactive". Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Much recent work on cognition is characterized by an augmentation of the role of action coupled with an attenuation of the role of representation. This coupling is no accident. The appeal to action is seen either as a way of explaining representation or explaining it away. This paper argues that the appeal to action as a way of explaining, supplementing, or even supplanting, representation can lead to a serious dilemma. On the one hand, the concept of action to which we appeal cannot, on pain of circularity, be a representational concept. Such an appeal would presuppose representation and therefore can neither explain it nor explain it away. On the other hand, I shall argue, if the concept of action to which we appeal is not a representational one, there is every reason for supposing that it will not be the sort of thing that can explain, or supplement, let alone supplant, representation. The resulting dilemma, I shall argue, is not fatal. But avoiding it requires us to embrace a certain thesis about the nature of action, a thesis whose broad outline this paper delineates. Anyone who wishes to employ action as a way of explaining or explaining away representation should, I shall argue, take this conception of action very seriously indeed. I am going to discuss these issues with respect to a influential recent contribution to this debate: the sensorimotor or enactive model of perception developed by Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noë
Ruben, David-Hillel (2008). Disjunctive theories of perception and action. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Sarter, Martin & Berntson, Gary G. (2004). Underconstrained thalamic activation + underconstrained top-down modulation of cortical input processing = underconstrained perceptions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (6):803-804.   (Google)
Abstract: Behrendt & Young's (B&Y's) theory offers a potentially important perspective on the neurobiology of schizophrenia, but it remains incomplete. In addition to bottom-up contributions, such as those associated with disturbances in sensory constraints on cognitive processes, a comprehensive model requires the integration of the consequences of abnormal top-down modulation of input processing for the evolution of “underconstrained” perceptions. Dysfunctional cholinergic modulation of input functions represents a necessary mechanism for the generation of false perceptions
Schellenberg, Susanna (2007). Action and self-location in perception. Mind 115 (463):603-632.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I offer an explanation of how subjects are able to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects, given that subjects always perceive from a particular location. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that a conception of space is necessary to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects. This conception of space is spelled out by showing that perceiving intrinsic properties requires perceiving objects as the kind of things that are perceivable from other locations. Second, I show that having such a conception of space presupposes that a subject represent her location in relation to perceived objects. More precisely the thesis is that a subject represents her location as the location from which she both perceives objects and would act in relation to objects were she to act. So I argue that perception depends on the capacity to know what it would be to act in relation to objects
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Perceptual Experience and the Capacity to Act. In N. Gangopadhay, M. Madary & F. Spicer (eds.), Perception, Action, and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Setiya, Kieran (2009). Review of 'Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge'. Mind 118:834-840.   (Google)
Sewards, Terence V. & Sewards, Mark A. (2002). On the neural correlates of object recognition awareness: Relationship to computational activities and activities mediating perceptual awareness. Consciousness and Cognition 11 (1):51-77.   (Google)
Abstract: Based on theoretical considerations of Aurell (1979) and Block (1995), we argue that object recognition awareness is distinct from purely sensory awareness and that the former is mediated by neuronal activities in areas that are separate and distinct from cortical sensory areas. We propose that two of the principal functions of neuronal activities in sensory cortex, which are to provide sensory awareness and to effect the computations that are necessary for object recognition, are dissociated. We provide examples of how this dissociation might be achieved and argue that the components of the neuronal activities which carry the computations do not directly enter the awareness of the subject. The results of these computations are sparse representations (i.e., vector or distributed codes) which are activated by the presentation of particular sensory objects and are essentially engrams for the recognition of objects. These final representations occur in the highest order areas of sensory cortex; in the visual analyzer, the areas include the anterior part of the inferior temporal cortex and the perirhinal cortex. We propose, based on lesion and connectional data, that the two areas in which activities provide recognition awareness are the temporopolar cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Activities in the temporopolar cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the remote past (consolidated object recognition), and those in the medial orbitofrontal cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the recent past. The activation of the sparse representation for a particular sensory object in turn activates neurons in one or both of these regions of cortex, and it is the activities of these neurons that provide the awareness of recognition of the object in question. The neural circuitry involved in the activation of these representations is discussed
Shaw, Robert E. & Wagman, Jeffrey B. (2001). Explanatory burdens and natural law: Invoking a field description of perception-action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):905-906.   (Google)
Abstract: Although we agree with Hommel et al. that perception and action refer to one another, we disagree that they do so via a code. Gibson (1966; 1979) attempted to frame perception-action as a field phenomenon rather than as a particle phenomenon. From such a perspective, perception and action are adjoint, mutually interacting through an information field, and codes are unnecessary
Siewert, Charles (2005). Attention and sensorimotor intentionality. In David Woodruff Smith & Amie L. Thomasson (eds.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Siewert, Charles (2006). Is the appearance of shape protean? Psyche 12 (3):1-16.   (Google)
Abstract: This commentary focuses on shape constancy in vision and its relation to sensorimotor knowledge. I contrast “Protean” and “Constancian” views about how to describe perspectival changes in the appearance of an object’s shape. For the Protean, these amount to changes in apparent shape; for Constance, things are not merely judged, but literally appear constant in shape. I give reasons in favor of the latter view, and argue that Noë’s attempt to combine aspects of both views in a “dual aspect” account does not manage to avoid an unacceptable attribution of contradictory content to visual appearance. I argue also that my position here actually fits better with Noë’s critique of a “snapshot” conception of visual appearance than his own interpretation of visual constancy, and better supports his claim that experiential content is constituted by the exercise of sensorimotor understanding
Spencer, Cara (2007). Unconscious vision and the platitudes of folk psychology. Philosophical Psychology 20 (3):309 – 327.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Since we explain behavior by ascribing intentional states to the agent, many philosophers have assumed that some guiding principle of folk psychology like the following, which I call intentional states and actions (ISA), must be true: "If A and B are different actions, then the agents performing them must differ in their intentional states at the time they are performed." Recent results in the physiology of vision present a prima facie problem for this principle. These results show that some visual information that guides spatial manipulation and fine motor control is unavailable for verbal report. Plausibly, this information is not consciously available to the agent, and as such, not available to inform the content of intentional states. Thus, it is hard to see how every difference in action is subject to intentional explanation, as (ISA) requires. I articulate the prima facie problem and argue that the most plausible solution requires us to reject (ISA)
Stewart, John & Gapenne, Olivier (2004). Reciprocal modelling of active perception of 2-d forms in a simple tactile-vision substitution system. Minds and Machines 14 (3).   (Google)
Abstract:   The strategies of action employed by a human subject in order to perceive simple 2-D forms on the basis of tactile sensory feedback have been modelled by an explicit computer algorithm. The modelling process has been constrained and informed by the capacity of human subjects both to consciously describe their own strategies, and to apply explicit strategies; thus, the strategies effectively employed by the human subject have been influenced by the modelling process itself. On this basis, good qualitative and semi-quantitative agreement has been achieved between the trajectories produced by a human subject, and the traces produced by a computer algorithm. The advantage of this reciprocal modelling option, besides facilitating agreement between the algorithm and the empirically observed trajectories, is that the theoretical model provides an explanation, and not just a description, of the active perception of the human subject
Storozhuk, Anna (2007). Perception: Mirror-image or action? Journal for General Philosophy of Science 38 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: In the article two viewpoints on the mind’s influence on perception are considered. One of them was developed on the assumption that perception is a nonproblematic source of knowledge about the world, which is free from mind’s influence—perception as a mirror-image. Another viewpoint is perception as action, i.e. active search and gathering the relevant information, its processing and evaluation. First viewpoint has dominated in philosophy for a long time, the second one has been developing in psychology from the 80th of the 20th century. The aim of the paper is to examine some philosophically significant corollaries from both positions concerning objectiveness, epistemological status of an observation, truth, meaning of name. Analysis showed that perception as action is non-compatible with many traditional concepts, and it goes both against empiricism and against realism as it involves some critical arguments, e.g. theory ladenness of observations, underdetermination of theory by facts, the historical development of a scientific fact
Strong, Charles A. (1939). The sensori-motor theory of awareness. Journal of Philosophy 36 (15):393-405.   (Google | More links)
Thalberg, Irving (1977). Perception, Emotion, and Action: A Component Approach. Blackwell.   (Google)
Theodorou, Panos (2006). Perception and action: On the praxial structure of intentional consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5 (3-4).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Progressively Husserl started referring to the whole sphere of the life of intentional acts in terms of praxis. Perception, imagination, judgement, scientific consciousness, etc., are all seen as practices. What is the meaning of this move? A seemingly self-evident possibility is that intentionality is praxial, because even perception is not completely free from empty intending moments that demand fulfilment; and all fulfilment is attained by means of bodily activities that enable our senses to acquire the relevant contents. I reject this approach as insufficient and misguided. I argue that perception and intentionality in general is praxial because consciousness, in all of its constituting syntheses, is or becomes organized as a practice-structure. Intentional consciousness organizes its contents according to rules so as to accomplish the evident or true givenness of its intended correlates
Thomas, Nigel J. T. (1999). Are theories of imagery theories of imagination? An active perception approach to conscious mental content. Cognitive Science 23 (2):207-245.   (Cited by 117 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Can theories of mental imagery, conscious mental contents, developed within cognitive science throw light on the obscure (but culturally very significant) concept of imagination? Three extant views of mental imagery are considered: quasi-pictorial, description, and perceptual activity theories. The first two face serious theoretical and empirical difficulties. The third is (for historically contingent reasons) little known, theoretically underdeveloped, and empirically untried, but has real explanatory potential. It rejects the "traditional" symbolic computational view of mental contents, but is compatible with recent *situated cognition* and *active vision* approaches in robotics. This theory is developed and elucidated. Three related key aspects of imagination (non-discursiveness, creativity, and *seeing as*) raise difficulties for the other theories. Perceptual activity theory presents imagery as non-discursive and relates it closely to *seeing as*. It is thus well placed to be the basis for a general theory of imagination and its role in creative thought
Thomas, Nigel J. T. (online). New support for the perceptual activity theory of mental imagery.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: Since the publication of my "Are Theories of Imagery Theories of Imagination? An _Active Perception_ Approach to Conscious Mental Content," (Thomas, 1999 - henceforth abbreviated as ATOITOI on this page), a good deal of published material has appeared or has come to my attention that either provides additional support for the Perceptual Activity Theory PA theory) of mental imagery presented in ATOITOI, or that throws further doubt on the rival (picture and description) theories that are criticized there. Other relevant evidence was not mentioned in ATOITOI because I lacked the space for a proper explanation of its relevance. I hope eventually to write and publish a new account of
PA
theory, that will make use of much of this material. In the meantime this page provides citations (and, where possible, links) to the "new" support, and discussion sections that briefly explain the relevance of the cited material. Quite apart from presenting new lines of supporting evidence and argument, I hope this page will help to clarify many aspects of
Thompson, Evan (2005). Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (4):407-427.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The enactive approach offers a distinctive view of how mental life relates to bodily activity at three levels: bodily self-regulation, sensorimotor coupling, and intersubjective in- teraction. This paper concentrates on the second level of sensorimotor coupling. An account is given of how the subjectively lived body and the living body of the organism are related (the body-body problem) via dynamic sensorimotor activity, and it is shown how this account helps to bridge the explanatory gap between consciousness and the brain. Arguments by O'Regan, No¨e, and Myin that seek to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual consciousness in terms of 'bodiliness' and 'grabbiness' are considered. It is suggested that their account does not pay sufficient attention to two other key aspects of perceptual phenomenality: the autonomous nature of the experiencing self or agent, and the pre-reflective nature of bodily self-consciousness
Tibbetts, Paul E. (1974). Mead's theory of the act and perception: Some empirical confirmations. Personalist 55:115-138.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Tibbetts, Paul (1975). Peirce and Mead on perceptual immediacy and human action. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 36 (2):222-232.   (Google | More links)
Torrance, Steve (2005). In search of the enactive: Introduction to special issue on enactive experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (4):357-368.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (2005). The Phenomenology of Efficacy. Philosophical Topics 33 (1):265-84.   (Google)
Turvey, Michael T.; Shaw, R. E.; Reed, Edward S. & Mace, William M. (1981). Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn. Cognition 9:237-304.   (Cited by 62 | Google)
Vaina, Lucia (1983). From shapes and movements to objects and actions. Synthese 54 (January):3-36.   (Cited by 17 | Google | More links)
Vallor, Shannon (2006). An enactive-phenomenological approach to veridical perception. Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (4):39-60.   (Google)
Abstract: Most accounts of veridical perception draw upon conventional causal theories of perception for an explanatory framework. Recently developed enactive or sensorimotor theories of perception pose a challenge to such accounts, necessitating a redefinition of veridical perception. I propose and defend one such definition, drawing upon empirical studies of perception, the resources of the enactive approach and phenomenology. I argue that perceptual experience engages an organism in a network of sensorimotor dependencies with the perceived object, and that veridical perceptions involve experiential mastery of these dependencies. A thought example involving the phoneme restoration effect is used to compare this definition favourably with traditional accounts of veridical perception that involve the generation of matching content with appropriate causal history or patterns of counterfactual dependence. I also defend my account of veridical perception against several objections
Wagman, Jeffrey B. (2008). Perception-action as reciprocal, continuous, and prospective. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (2):219-220.   (Google)
Westwood, David A. & Goodale, Melvyn A. (2001). Perception and action planning: Getting it together. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):907-908.   (Google)
Abstract: Hommel et al. propose that high-level perception and action planning share a common representational domain, which facilitates the control of intentional actions. On the surface, this point of view appears quite different from an alternative account that suggests that “action” and “perception” are functionally and neurologically dissociable processes. But it is difficult to reconcile these apparently different perspectives, because Hommel et al. do not clearly specify what they mean by “perception” and “action planning.” With respect to the visual control of action, a distinction must be made between conscious visual perception and unconscious visuomotor processing. Hommel et al. must also distinguish between the what and how aspects of action planning, that is, planning what to do versus planning how to do it
Wilkerson, William S. (1999). From bodily motions to bodily intentions: The perception of bodily activity. Philosophical Psychology 12 (1):61-77.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper argues that one's perception of another person's bodily activity is not the perception of the mere flexing and bending of that person's limbs, but rather of that person's intentions. It makes its case in three parts. First, it examines what conditions are necessary for children to begin to imitate and assimilate the behavior of other adults and argues that these conditions include the perception of intention. These conditions generalize to adult perception as well. Second, changing methodologies, the paper presents a first person phenomenology of watching another person act which demonstrates that one's own perception is of intentions. The phenomenological analysis of time consciousness is the keystone of this argument. Finally, the paper looks at some recently established facts about infant and child development, and shows that these facts are best explained by thinking that the child is already perceiving intention
Wilson, Thomas P. & Wilson, Margaret (2001). Perception-action links and the evolution of human speech exchange. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):47-48.   (Google)
Abstract: A perception-action system may underlie the mechanisms by which human speech exchange in social interaction is managed, as well as the evolutionary precursors of these mechanisms in closely related species. Some phenomena of interaction well-studied by sociologists are suggested as a point of departure for further research
Wright, Wayne (2006). Visual stuff and active vision. Philosophical Psychology 19 (2):129-149.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: This paper examines the status of unattended visual stimuli in the light of recent work on the role of attention in visual perception. Although the question of whether attention is required for visual experience seems very interesting, this paper argues that there currently is no good reason to take a stand on the issue. Moreover, it is argued that much of the allure of that question stems from a continued attachment to the defective ‘inner picture view’ of experience and a mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of vision is to produce visual experience. The paper considers a promising general account of the content and structure of vision and presents reasons for not taking that account to be committed to any substantive claims about the experiential status of unattended visual stimuli. Also addressed are the active nature of vision and the role of vision in enabling our ecological success. These considerations highlight that visual experience is not the whole of vision and that a much more important question about unattended visual stimuli than whether they are consciously experienced is what contribution they make to how we interact with the world
Wu, Wayne (2008). Visual attention, conceptual content, and doing it right. Mind 117 (468).   (Google)
Abstract: Reflection on the fine-grained information required for visual guidance of action has suggested that visual content is non-conceptual. I argue that in a common type of visually guided action, namely the use of manipulable artefacts, vision has conceptual content. Specifically, I show that these actions require visual attention and that concepts are involved in directing attention. In acting with artefacts, there is a way of doing it right as determined by the artefact’s conventional use. Attention must reflect our understanding of the function and appropriate ways to use these artefacts, understanding that requires possession of the relevant concept. As a result, we attend to the artefact’s relevant functional properties. In these cases, attention is structured by concepts. This discussion has a bearing on the dual visual stream hypothesis. While it is often held that the two visual streams are functionally independent, the argument of this essay is that the constraints on attention suggest a functional interaction between them.
Zimmer, Alf C. & Korndle, Hermann (1994). A gestalt theoretic account for the coordination of perception and action in motor learning. Philosophical Psychology 7 (2):249-265.   (Google)
Abstract: A review of the scanty Gestaltist literature on motor behaviour indicates that a genuine Gestalt theoretic approach to motor behaviour can be characterized by three research questions: (1) What are the natural units of motor behaviour? (2) What characterizes the self-organization in motor behaviour? (3) What are the conditions for invariance in motor behaviour? Tentative answers to these questions can be found by analysing the parallels between Gestalt theory and Bernstein's theory of motor actions and by showing that Gestalt theory can be regarded as a specific approach to non-linear dynamics as exemplified by synergetics (Haken, 1991). The congruence between the Gestalt theoretic approach and synergetics becomes apparent in the analysis of how a complex motor task is learned [1]

3.4c Perception and Reference

Campbell, John (web). Consciousness and reference. In Brian McLaughlin & Ansgar Beckermann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Suppose your conscious life were surgically excised, but everything else left intact, what would you miss? In this situation you would not have the slightest idea what was going on. You would have no idea what there is in the world around you; what the grounds are of the potentialities and threats are that you are negotiating. Experience of your surroundings provides you with knowledge of what is there: with your initial base of knowledge of what the things are that you are thinking and talking about. But this connection between consciousness of the objects and properties around you, and knowledge of the references of the basic terms you use, has proven difficult to articulate. The connection cannot be recognized so long as you think of consciousness as a kind of glow with which representations are accompanied or enlivened. It is, though, also possible to think of perceptual experience as fundamentally a relation between the subject and the things experienced; and given such a conception, we can make visible the link between consciousness and reference
Campbell, J. (1999). Immunity to error through misidentification and the meaning of a referring term. Philosophical Topics 26:89-104.   (Cited by 10 | Google)
Campbell, John (2005). Precis of reference and consciousness. Philosophical Studies 126 (1):103-114.   (Google | More links)
Campbell, J. (2004). Reference as attention. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):265-76.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Campbell, John (1998). Sense and consciousness. In New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Dummett. Atlanta: Rodopi.   (Google)
Campbell, John (1997). Sense, reference and selective attention. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71 (71):55-98.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1997), 55-74, with a reply by Michael Martin
Clark, Austen (2006). Attention & inscrutability: A commentary on John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness for the Pacific APA meeting, pasadena, california, 2004. Philosophical Studies 127 (2):167-193.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: We assemble here in this time and place to discuss the thesis that conscious attention can provide knowledge of reference of perceptual demonstratives. I shall focus my commentary on what this claim means, and on the main argument for it found in the first five chapters of Reference and Consciousness. The middle term of that argument is an account of what attention does: what its job or function is. There is much that is admirable in this account, and I am confident that it will be the foundation, the launching-pad, for much future work on the subject. But in the end I will argue that Campbell’s picture makes the mechanisms of attention too smart: smarter than they are, smarter than they could be. If we come to a more realistic appraisal of the skills and capacities of our sub-personal minions, the “knowledge of reference” which they yield will have to be taken down a notch or two
Clark, Austen (online). Sensing and reference.   (Google)
Abstract: When I was revising _Sensory Qualities_ there was a period of about a year when I set the manuscript aside and did other things. When I returned to it I found that certain portions of the argument had collapsed of their own weight, like an old New England barn, and could be carted off the premises without compunction. Other parts were wobbling on their foundation, while some had weathered well and seemed nice and solid. My revision strategy was simple: I kept just the nice solid bits, thinking that I could go back and work on the wobbly portions later
Cussins, Adrian (1999). Subjectivity, objectivity, and theories of reference in Evans' theory of thought. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: This paper explores some problems with Gareth Evans’s theory of the fundamental and non-fundamental levels of thought [1]. I suggest a way to reconceive the levels of thought that overcomes these problems. But, first, why might anyone who was not already struck by Evans’s remarkable theory care about these issues? What’s at stake here?
Davis, Steven (ed.) (1983). Causal Theories Of Mind: Action, Knowledge, Memory, Perception, And Reference. Ny: De Gruyter.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Hanna, Robert (1993). Direct reference, direct perception, and the cognitive theory of demonstratives. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2):96-117.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Hawthorne, John & Scala, Mark (2000). Seeing and demonstration. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1):199-206.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Kelly, Sean D. (2004). Reference and attention: A difficult connection. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):277-86.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I am very much in sympathy with the overall approach of John Campbell’s paper, “Reference as Attention”. My sympathy extends to a variety of its features. I think he is right to suppose, for instance, that neuropsychological cases provide important clues about how we should treat some traditional philosophical problems concerning perception and reference. I also think he is right to suppose that there are subtle but important relations between the phenomena of perception, action, consciousness, attention, and reference. I even think that there is probably something importantly right about the main claim of the paper. I take this to be the claim that there is a tight connection – of some sort at any rate – between our capacity to refer demonstratively to perceptually presented objects and our capacity to attend to those objects in our conscious awareness of them. What precisely this connection consists in, however, remains a mystery to me. My goal in these comments is to clarify this result. I will begin, in section 2, with a fairly general statement of the problem I take Campbell to have set himself. Following this, in section 3, I will focus more particularly on what kind of relation Campbell takes to exist, or does exist, or perhaps could exist between attention and demonstrative reference. I examine four options, the first three of which seem to admit of clear counterexamples, and the fourth of which is too weak to be of any real interest
Kim, Jaegwon (1977). Perception and reference without causality. Journal of Philosophy 74 (October):606-620.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Matthen, Mohan P. (2006). On visual experience of objects: Comments on John Campbell's reference and consciousness. Philosophical Studies 127 (2):195-220.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: John Campbell argues that visual attention to objects is the means by which we can refer to objects, and that this is so because conscious visual attention enables us to retrieve information about a location. It is argued here that while Campbell is right to think that we visually attend to objects, he does not give us sufficient ground for thinking that consciousness is involved, and is wrong to assign an intermediary role to location. Campbell’s view on sortals is also queried, as is his espousal of the so-called Referential View of Experience
McLaughlin, Brian P. (1989). Why perception is not singular reference. In John Heil (ed.), Cause, Mind, and Reality: Essays Honoring C. B. Martin. Norwell: Kluwer.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Miller, Izchak (1984). Perceptual reference. Synthese 61 (October):35-60.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Mulligan, Kevin (1997). How perception fixes reference. In Language and Thought. Hawthorne: De Gruyter.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The answer I shall sketch is not mine. Nor, as far as I can tell, is it an answer to be found in the voluminous literature inspired by Kripke’s work. Many of the elements of the answer are to be found in the writings of Wittgenstein and his Austro-German predecessors, Martinak, Husserl, Marty, Landgrebe and Bühler. Within this Austro-German tradition we may distinguish between a strand which is Platonist and anti-naturalist and a strand which is nominalist and naturalist. Thus Husserl’s account of what he calls “directly referring” uses of singular terms invokes senses or individual concepts, albeit simple, not descriptive senses. But the account of reference fixing and reference given by Landgrebe, Bühler and Wittgenstein rejects senses.1 I confine further reference to these writers to footnotes since my aim here is to develop and unify some of their suggestions, in particular by comparing them with more recent work (cf. Mulligan 1997)
Prat Fernández, Olga (1999). Perceptual consciousness and the reflexive character of attention. In La Filosofia Analitica En El Cambio de Milenio. Santiago de Compostela: S.I.E.U.   (Google)
Smith, David Woodruff (1982). What's the meaning of 'this'? Noûs 16 (May):181-208.   (Google | More links)

3.4d Perception and Phenomenology

Baldwin, Thomas (ed.) (2007). Reading Merleau-Ponty: On Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge.   (Google)
Barbaras, Renaud (2006). Desire and Distance: Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception. Stanford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Desire and Distance constitutes an important new departure in contemporary phenomenological thought, a rethinking and critique of basic philosophical positions concerning the concept of perception presented by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, though it departs in significant and original ways from their work. Barbaras’s overall goal is to develop a philosophy of what “life” is—one that would do justice to the question of embodiment and its role in perception and the formation of the human subject. Barbaras posits that desire and distance inform the concept of “life.” Levinas identified a similar structure in Descartes’s notion of the infinite. For Barbaras, desire and distance are anchored not in meaning, but in a rethinking of the philosophy of biology and, in consequence, cosmology. Barbaras elaborates and extends the formal structure of desire and distance by drawing on motifs as yet unexplored in the French phenomenological tradition, especially the notions of “life” and the “life-world,” which are prominent in the later Husserl but also appear in non-phenomenological thinkers such as Bergson. Barbaras then filters these notions (especially “life”) through Merleau-Ponty
Beckermann, Ansgar (1995). Visual information processing and phenomenal consciousness. In Thomas Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience. Ferdinand Schoningh.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: As far as an adequate understanding of phenomenal consciousness is concerned, representationalist theories of mind which are modelled on the information processing paradigm, are, as much as corresponding neurobiological or functionalist theories, confronted with a series of arguments based on inverted or absent qualia considerations. These considerations display the following pattern: assuming we had complete knowledge about the neural and functional states which subserve the occurrence of phenomenal consciousness, would it not still be conceivable that these neural states (or states with the same causal r
Boi, Luciano (2004). Questions regarding Husserlian geometry and phenomenology. A study of the concept of manifold and spatial perception. Husserl Studies 20 (3).   (Google)
Carlson, Elof A. (2002). Color perception: An ongoing convergence of reductionism and phenomenology. In Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Vol LXXVII. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.   (Google)
Carman, Taylor (2008). Review of Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty: On Phenomenology of Perception. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (6).   (Google)
Chudnoff, Elijah (forthcoming). What Intuitions Are Like. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: What are intuitions? According to doxastic views, they are doxastic attitudes or dispositions, such as judgments or inclinations to make judgments. According to perceptualist views, they are—like perceptual experiences—pre-doxastic experiences that—unlike perceptual experiences—represent abstract matters as being a certain way. In this paper I argue against doxasticism and in favor of perceptualism. I describe two features that militate against doxasticist views of perception itself: perception is belief-independent and perception is presentational. Then I argue that intuitions also have both features. The upshot is that intuitions are importantly similar to perceptual experiences, and so should not be identified with doxastic attitudes or dispositions. I consider a popular argument from the introspective absence of sui generis intuition experiences in favor of doxasticism. I develop a conception of intuition experiences that helps to defuse this argument.
Coseru, Christian (forthcoming). “Buddhist ‘Foundationalism’ and the Phenomenology of Perception,” Philosophy East and West 59:4 (October 2009): 409-439. Philosophy East and West.   (Google)
Abstract: In this essay, which draws on a set of interrelated issues in the phenomenology of perception, I call into question the assumption that Buddhist philosophers of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition pursue a kind of epistemic foundationalism. I argue that the embodied cognition paradigm, which informs recent efforts within the Western philosophical tradition to overcome the Cartesian legacy, can be also found– albeit in a modified form–in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. In seeking to ground epistemology in the phenomenology of cognition, the Buddhist epistemologist, I claim, is operating on principles similar to those found in Husserl’s phenomenological tradition.
Coseru, Christian (2009). Buddhist 'Foundationalism' and the Phenomenology of Perception. Philosophy East and West 59 (4):409-439.   (Google)
Abstract: In this essay, which draws on a set of interrelated issues in the phenomenology of perception, I call into question the assumption that Buddhist philosophers of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition pursue a kind of epistemic foundationalism. I argue that the embodied cognition paradigm, which informs recent efforts within the Western philosophical tradition to overcome the Cartesian legacy, can be also found– albeit in a modified form–in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. In seeking to ground epistemology in the phenomenology of cognition, the Buddhist epistemologist, I claim, is operating on principles similar to those found in Husserl’s phenomenological tradition.
Crooks, Mark (2008). The Churchlands' war on qualia. In Edmond Wright (ed.), The Case For Qualia. The MIT Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The systematic phenomenology-denial within the works of Paul and Patricia Churchland is critiqued as to its coherence with the known elelmentary physics and physiology of perception. Paul Churchland misidentifies "qualia" with psychology's sensorimotor schemas, while Patricia Churchland illicitly propounds the intertheoretic identities of logical empiricism while rejecting the premises upon which those identities are based. Their analogies from such arguments to an identity of mind and brain thus have no inductive probability.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. (2002). Samuel Todes's account of non-conceptual perceptual knowledge and its relation to thought. Ratio 15 (4):392-409.   (Google | More links)
Froese, Mr Tom & Spiers, Mr Adam, Toward a phenomenological pragmatics of enactive perception.   (Google)
Abstract: The enactive approach to perception is generating an extensive amount of interest and debate in the cognitive sciences. One particularly contentious issue has been how best to characterize the perceptual experiences reported by subjects who have mastered the skillful use of a perceptual supplementation (PS) device. This paper argues that this issue cannot be resolved with the use of third-person methodologies alone, but that it requires the development of a phenomenological pragmatics. In particular, it is necessary that the experimenters become skillful in the use of PS devices themselves. The "Enactive Torch" is proposed as an experimental platform which is cheap, non-intrusive and easy to replicate, so as to enable researchers to corroborate reported experiences with their own phenomenology more easily
Gallagher, Shaun (forthcoming). Merleau-ponty's phenomenology of perception. Topoi.   (Google)
Geraets, Theodore F. (1971). Vers Un Nouvelle Philosophie Transcendentale: La Genèse De La Philosophie De M. Merleau-Ponty Jusqu'à La Phénoménologie De La Perception. Martinus Nijhoff.   (Google)
Glotzbach, Philip A. & Heff, Harry (1982). Ecological and phenomenological contributions to the psychology of perception. Noûs 16 (March):108-121.   (Google | More links)
Gordon, Ḥayim (2004). Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: A Basis for Sharing the Earth. Praeger.   (Google)
Hohwy, Jakob, The sense of self in the phenomenology of agency and perception.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The phenomenology of agency and perception is probably underpinned by a common cognitive system based on generative models and predictive coding. I defend the hypothesis that this cognitive system explains core aspects of the sense of having a self in agency and perception. In particular, this cognitive model explains the phenomenological notion of a minimal self as well as a notion of the narrative self. The proposal is related to some influential studies of overall brain function, and to psychopathology. These elusive notions of the self are shown to be the natural upshots of general cognitive mechanisms whose fundamental purpose is to enable agents to represent the world and act in it
Hudson, Richard & Pallard, Henri (1991). La question ontologique et la ``phénoménologie de la perception''. Man and World 24:373-393.   (Google)
Kates, Carol A. (1970). Perception and temporality in Husserl's phenomenology. Philosophy Today 14:89-100.   (Google)
Kelly, Sean Dorrance (2008). Content and constancy: Phenomenology, psychology, and the content of perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):682–690.   (Google | More links)
Kelly, Sean D. (2005). Seeing things in Merleau-ponty. In C. Tarman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty. Cambridge.   (Cited by 17 | Google)
Abstract: The passage above comes from the opening pages of Merleau-Ponty’s essay on Edmund Husserl. It proposes a risky interpretive principle. The main feature of this principle is that the seminal aspects of a thinker’s work are so close to him that he is incapable of articulating them himself. Nevertheless, these aspects pervade the work, give it its style, its sense and its direction, and therefore belong to it essentially. As Martin Heidegger writes, in a passage quoted by Merleau-Ponty:
The greater the work of a thinker – which in no way coincides with the breadth
and number of writings – the richer is what is un-thought in this work, which
means, that which emerges in and through this work as having not yet been
thought.2
The goal of Merleau-Ponty’s essay, he says, is “to evoke this un-thought-of element in Husserl’s thought”.3
Kelly, Sean D. (2001). The Relevance of Phenomenology to the Philosophy of Language and Mind. New York: Garland Publishing.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: Through discussion of phenomenological and analytic traditions such as the philosophical problems of perceptual content, the content of demonstrative thoughts and the unity of proposition, Kelly explains that these concepts are not as alien to one another as most people believe
Lancaster, Brian (1997). On the stages of perception: Towards a synthesis of cognitive neuroscience and the buddhist abhidhamma tradition. Journal of Consciousness Studies 4 (2):122-142.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Levering, Bas (2006). Epistemological issues in phenomenological research: How authoritative are people's accounts of their own perceptions? Journal of Philosophy of Education 40 (4):451–462.   (Google | More links)
Lohmar, Dieter (2005). On the function of weak phantasmata in perception: Phenomenological, psychological and neurological clues for the transcendental function of imagination in perception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2).   (Google)
Abstract:   Weak phantasmata have a decisive and specifically transcendental function in our everyday perception. This paper provides several different arguments for this claim based on evidence from both empirical psychology and phenomenology
Lormand, Eric (2005). Phenomenal impressions. In T.S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oup.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Mattens, Filip (2009). Perception, body, and the sense of touch: Phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Husserl Studies 25 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge.   (Google)
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1964). The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Northwestern University Press.   (Google)
Morris, David; Robinson, Andrew & Duchastel, Catherine (ms). Concordance of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.   (Google)
Abstract: This is a concordance of page numbers in the following editions of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: English editions prior to the Routledge Classics 2002; Routledge Classics edition, with the new pagination; the French edition from Gallimard, prior to 2005; the 2e edition from Gallimard, 2005, with new pagination.
Myers, Charles M. (1958). Phenomenological idiom and perceptual mode. Philosophy of Science 25 (January):71-82.   (Google | More links)
Myin, Erik & O'Regan, J. Kevin (2002). Perceptual consciousness, access to modality and skill theories: A way to naturalize phenomenology? Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (1):27-45.   (Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1994). An introduction to reflective seeing: Part II. Journal of Mind and Behavior 15 (4):351-374.   (Google)
Natsoulas, Thomas (1997). The presence of environmental objects to perceptual consciousness: An integrative, ecological and phenomenological approach. Journal of Mind and Behavior 18 (4):371-390.   (Google)
Noë, Alva (2008). Précis of action in perception: Philosophy and phenomenological research. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):660–665.   (Google | More links)
Pike, Alfred (1974). Foundational aspects of musical perception: A phenomenological analysis. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 34 (3):429-434.   (Google | More links)
Pike, Alfred (1966). The phenomenological approach to musical perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 27 (2):247-254.   (Google | More links)
Pike, Alfred (1967). The theory of unconscious perception in music: A phenomenological criticism. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 25 (4):395-400.   (Google | More links)
Prakash, Ravi & Caponigro, Michele (online). Inner Light Perception as a Quantum Phenomenon-Addressing the Questions of Physical and Critical Realisms, Information and Reduction.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Subjectivity or the problem of ‘qualia’ tends to make the accessibility and comprehension of psychological events intangible especially for scientific exploration. The issue becomes even more complicated but interesting when one turns towards mystical experiences. Such experiences are different from other psychological phenomena in the sense that they don’t occur to every one, so are difficult to comprehend even for their qualifications of existence. We conducted a qualitative study on one such experience of inner-light perception. This is a common experience reported by meditators of all kinds. However, we chose to study this phenomenon in Vihangam Yoga practitioners because of frequent occurrence of this experience in them as well as their reports of having it for hours at a stretch. During this study, it was noted that it arose many questions there we need to answer not only to explain such phenomena but also for having a better understanding of philosophy of science. In the search for these answers, we proceeded towards another complicated branch of science, quantum mechanics. Our present work is about creating an interface between a unique subjective phenomenon and principles of philosophy as well as of quantum mechanics. We explore the constructs of physical and critical realisms and their coincidence, quantum information theory and the measurement problem of Copenhagen interpretation and their possible applications in such an experience. In this endeavour, we also address the possibility that inner-light perception as experienced by Vihangam Yogis is a quantum event in brain. For this purpose, we specifically analyse the Zeilingers information concept and try to apply it to this phenomena.
Rojcewicz, Richard (1984). Depth perception in Merleau-ponty: A motivated phenomenon. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 15 (1):33-44.   (Google)
Rosen, Steven M. (1974). A Case of Non-Euclidean Visualization. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 5:33-39.   (Google)
Rouse, Joseph T. (2005). Mind, body, and world: Todes and McDowell on bodies and language. Inquiry 48 (1):38-61.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Dreyfus presents Todes's (2001) republished Body and World as an anticipatory response to McDowell (1994) which shows how preconceptual perception can ground conceptual thought. I argue that Dreyfus is mistaken on this point: Todes's claim that perceptual experience is preconceptual presupposes an untenable account of conceptual thought. I then show that Todes nevertheless makes two important contributions to McDowell's project. First, he develops an account of perception as bodily second nature, and as a practical-perceptual openness to the world, which constructively develops McDowell's view. Second, and more important, this account highlights the practical and perceptual dimension of linguistic competence. The result is that perception is conceptual "all the way down" only because discursive conceptualization is perceptual and practical "all the way up". This conjunction of McDowell and Todes on the bodily dimensions of discursive practice also vindicates Davidson's and Brandom's criticisms of McDowell's version of empiricism
Sallis, John C. (1971). Time, subjectivity, and the phenomenology of perception. Modern Schoolman 48 (May):343-358.   (Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Ontological Minimalism about Phenomenology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.   (Google)
Abstract: I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense-data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perceptual experience are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind-independent objects or property-instances. Since a hallucinating subject is not related to any such objects or property-instances, the concepts she employs remain unsaturated. I argue that the phenomenology of hallucinations and perceptions can be identified with employing concepts and analogous nonconceptual structures. By doing so, I defend a minimalist view of the phenomenology of experience that (1) satisfies the Aristotelian principle according to which the existence of any type depends on its tokens and (2) amounts to a naturalized view of the phenomenology of experience.
Schipper, Gerrit (1966). Perception phenomenologically considered. Southern Journal of Philosophy 4:237-241.   (Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (2010). The Particularity and Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience. Philosophical Studies 149 (1).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the second but not the first desideratum. I argue that to satisfy both desiderata perceptual experience is best conceived of as fundamentally both relational and representational. I develop a view of perceptual experience that synthesizes the virtues of relationalism and representationalism, by arguing that perceptual content is constituted by potentially gappy de re modes of presentation.
Schroer, Robert (2008). The woman in the painting and the image in the penny: An investigation of phenomenological doubleness, seeing-in, and “reversed seeing-in”. Philosophical Studies 139 (3).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The experience of looking at a tilted penny involves a “phenomenological doubleness” in that it simultaneously seems to be of something circular and of something elliptical. In this paper, I investigate the phenomenological doubleness of this experience by comparing it to another case of phenomenological doubleness––the phenomenological doubleness of seeing an object in a painting. I begin by pointing out some striking similarities between the phenomenological characters of these two experiences. I then argue that these phenomenological characters have a common explanation. More specifically, I argue that the psychological mechanism that explains the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing an object in a painting can be extended to also explain the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing a tilted penny
Seebohm, Thomas M. (2002). The phenomenological movement: A tradition without method? Merleau-ponty and Husserl. In Merleau-Ponty's Reading of Husserl. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.   (Google)
Serres, Michel (2009). The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. Continuum.   (Google)
Abstract: Veils -- Boxes -- Tables -- Visit -- Joy.
Shim, Michael K. (2005). The duality of non-conceptual content in Husserl's phenomenology of perception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2):209-229.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Recently, a number of epistemologists have argued that there are no non-conceptual elements in representational content. On their view, the only sort of non-conceptual elements are components of sub-personal organic hardware that, because they enjoy no veridical role, must be construed epistemologically irrelevant. By reviewing a 35-year-old debate initiated by Dagfinn F
Smith, A. D. (2002). The Problem of Perception. Harvard University Press.   (Google)
Soldati, Gianfranco & Dorsch, Fabian, The rational dimension of perceptual phenomenology.   (Google)
Abstract: One influential focus of the recent debates about non-sensory aspects of the phenomenal character of our mental episodes has been on their intellectual elements. More specifically, it has been on what it is like to think or judge something in opposition to seeing or imagining it, as well as on the extent to which how we subjectively experience our thoughts and judgements depends on how they present the world as being.1 Other non-sensory aspects of character, by contrast, have been largely neglected, despite two significant facts about them. The first is that they pertain, not only to judgements and similar thoughts, but also to perceptions and other sensory episodes — thus not raising the general issue of whether the episodes concerned possess a phenomenal character in the first place. And second, they are, in several respects, more interesting and perhaps also more basic than the sensory and the intellectual aspects usually discussed. In particular, they reflect or manifest the general nature of the type of episode concerned, rather than the specific differences among its instances. And, as part of this, they render especially the rational dimension of our mental episodes first-personally salient. Our aim in this essay is to describe the non-sensory and non-intellectual phenomenal aspects of perceptions and to highlight their link to the rational role of the latter. This will also involve an attempt at characterising the three kinds of phenomenal aspects at issue. More specifically, it is part of our proposal that the difference between the sensory and the intellectual aspects can be spelled out in terms of the non-neutrality and the reason-insensitivity of the presentational elements concerned. The phenomenal aspects of the third type — which may be called the rational aspects — may then be distinguished from the other two by reference to the fact that only the former concern the type of non-neutrality involved in the respective episodes, rather than what these episodes are non-neutral about..
Talero, Maria Lucia (2002). The Temporal Context of Freedom in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Dissertation,   (Google)
Thompson, Evan; Noë, Alva & Pessoa, Luiz (1999). Perceptual completion: A case study in phenomenology and cognitive science. In Jean Petitot, Franscisco J. Varela, Barnard Pacoud & Jean-Michel Roy (eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology. Stanford University Press.   (Cited by 66 | Google)
Tibbetts, Paul E. (1972). Phenomenological and empirical inadequacies of Russell's theory of perception. Philosophical Studies 20:98-108.   (Google)
Tibbetts, Paul (1969). Perception; Selected Readings in Science and Phenomenology. Chicago, Quadrangle Books.   (Google)
Abstract: Introduction to sensory psychology, by C. Mueller.--Some reflections on brain and mind, by R. Brain.--In search of the engram, by K. Lashly.--Cerebral organization and behavior, by R. W. Sperry.--Relations between the central nervous system and the peripheral organs, by E. von Holst.--Effects of the Gestalt revolution, by J. E. Hochberg.--Seeing in depth, by R. L. Gregory.--The stimulus variables for visual depth perception, by J. J. Gibson.--The elaboration of the universe, by J. Piaget.--Visual perception approached by the method of stabilized images, by R. M. Pritchard, W. Heron, and D. O. Hebb.--Philosophy as rigorous science, by E. Husserl.--The "sensation" as a unit of experience, by M. Merleau-Ponty.--The phenomenology of perception: perceptual implications, by A. Gurwitsch.--The expression of thinking, by E. W. Straus.--The concept of group and the theory of perception, by E. Cassirer.--Norm and pathology of I-world relations, by E. W. Straus.--The metaphysical in man, by M. Merleau-Ponty.--Cultural differences in the perception of geometric illusions, by M. H. Segall, D. T. Campbell, and M. J. Herskovits.--The interpretive cortex, by W. Penfield.--Recovery from early blindness: a case study, by R. L. Gregory and J. G. Wallace.--Visual disturbances after perceptual isolation, by W. Heron, B. K. Doane, and T. H. Scott.
Vallor, Shannon (2006). An enactive-phenomenological approach to veridical perception. Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (4):39-60.   (Google)
Abstract: Most accounts of veridical perception draw upon conventional causal theories of perception for an explanatory framework. Recently developed enactive or sensorimotor theories of perception pose a challenge to such accounts, necessitating a redefinition of veridical perception. I propose and defend one such definition, drawing upon empirical studies of perception, the resources of the enactive approach and phenomenology. I argue that perceptual experience engages an organism in a network of sensorimotor dependencies with the perceived object, and that veridical perceptions involve experiential mastery of these dependencies. A thought example involving the phoneme restoration effect is used to compare this definition favourably with traditional accounts of veridical perception that involve the generation of matching content with appropriate causal history or patterns of counterfactual dependence. I also defend my account of veridical perception against several objections
Weber, Michel (2006). Whitehead's onto-epistemology of perception and its significance for consciousness studies. New Ideas in Psychology 24 (2):117-132.   (Google)
Welton, Donn (1982). Husserl's genetic phenomenology of perception. Research in Phenomenology 12 (1):59-83.   (Google)

3.4e Perception and the Mind, Misc

Smith, A. D. (2006). In defence of direct realism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2):411-424.   (Google | More links)

3.5 Perceptual Knowledge

Alston, William P. (1997). Chisholm on the epistemology of perception. In The Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm. Chicago: Open Court.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Bailey, Andrew R. (1998). Phenomenal Properties: The Epistemology and Metaphysics of Qualia. Dissertation, University of Calgary   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Barnett, David (2008). The simplicity intuition and its hidden influence on philosophy of mind. Noûs 42 (2):308–335.   (Google | More links)
Boardman, William S. (1993). The relativity of perceptual knowledge. Synthese 94 (2):145-169.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Since the most promising path to a solution to the problem of skepticism regarding perceptual knowledge seems to rest on a sharp distinction between perceiving and inferring, I begin by clarifying and defending that distinction. Next, I discuss the chief obstacle to success by this path, the difficulty in making the required distinction between merely logical possibilities that one is mistaken and the real (Austin) or relevant (Dretske) possibilities which would exclude knowledge. I argue that this distinction cannot be drawn in the ways Austin and Dretske suggest without begging the questions at issue. Finally, I sketch and defend a more radical way of identifying relevant possibilities that is inspired by Austin's controversial suggestion of a parallel between saying I know and saying I promise: a claim of knowledge of some particular matter is relative to a context in which questions about the matter have been raised
Brewer, Bill (1998). Experience and reason in perception. In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Abstract: The question I am interested in is this. What exactly is the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of knowledge on the basis of perception? The problem here, as I see it, is to solve simultaneously for the nature of this experience, and its role in acquiring and sustaining the relevant beliefs, in such a away as to vindicate what I regard as an undeniable datum, that perception is a basic source of knowledge about the mind- independent world, in a sense of basic which is also to be elucidated. I shall sketch the way in which I think that this should be done. In section I, I argue that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs. In section II, I explain how they do so. My thesis is that a correct account of the sense in which perceptual experiences are experiences of mind-independent things is itself an account of the way in which they provide peculiarly basic reasons for beliefs about the world around the perceiver
Brewer, Bill (1997). Foundations of perceptual knowledge. American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1):41-55.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Brewer, Bill (1996). Internalism and perceptual knowledge. European Journal of Philosophy 4 (3):259-275.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Brewer, Bill (1995). Learning from experience: A commentary on baddeley and Weiskrantz (eds.), Attention: Selection, Awareness, and Control. Mind and Language 10 (1-2):181-193.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Brewer, Bill (1999). Perception and Reason. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 96 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area
Brewer, Bill (2001). Precis of Perception and Reason. Philosophy And Phenomenological Research 63 (2):405-416.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: What is the role of conscious perceptual experience in making thought about the mind- independent empirical world possible? What is the role of such experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge, about the way things are in that world? What is the relation between these two roles? My central argument is intended to establish that a proper account of the way in which perceptual experience is essential to our grasp of determinate thoughts about particular things in the world around us will at the same time yield a full explanation of the fundamental role which such experience plays in the acquisition of empirical knowledge, by providing us with reasons, which we recognize as such, to endorse the most basic thoughts about mind-independent things in belief
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Abstract: One of the most important and perennially debated philosophical questions is whether we can have knowledge of the external world. Butchvarov here considers whether and how skepticism with regard to such knowledge can be refuted or at least answered. He argues that only a direct realist view of perception has any hope of providing a compelling response to the skeptic and introduces the radical innovation that the direct object of perceptual, and even dreaming and hallucinatory, experience is always a material object, but not necessarily one that actually exists. This leads him to a metaphysics in which reality is ultimately constructed by human decisions out of objects that are ontologically more basic but which cannot be said in themselves to be either real or unreal
Byrne, Alex (1996). Spin control: Comment on McDowell's Mind and World. Philosophical Issues 7:261-73.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links)
Abstract: We have justified beliefs about the external world, and some of these are formed directly on the basis of perception. I may justifiably believe that a certain dog is in certain manger, and I may have this belief because I can see that the dog is in the manger. So far, so good
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Abstract: It is often thought that epistemic relations between experience and belief make it possible for our beliefs to be about or "directed towards" the empirical world. I focus on an influential attempt by John McDowell to defend a view along these lines. According to McDowell, unless experiences are the sorts of things that can be our reasons for holding beliefs, our beliefs would not be "answerable" to the facts they purportedly represent, and so would lack all empirical content. I argue that there is no intelligible conception of what it is for beliefs to be answerable to the facts that supports McDowell's claim that our empirical beliefs must be justified by experience
Chuard, Philippe (ms). Perceptual reasons.   (Google)
Abstract: According to Conceptualists like John McDowell and Bill Brewer, the representational content of perceptual experiences is wholly conceptual. One of the main!and only!arguments they advance for this claim has to do with the epistemological role of perceptual experiences. I focus on Bill Brewers "1999# version of the argument. I show why Brewer fails to satisfactorily motivate the premises of his argument, and suggest that opponents of Conceptualism could accept these premises without thereby endorsing the conclusion. Finally, I consider whether the conclusion really supports Conceptualism
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Dancy, Jonathan (ed.) (1988). Perceptual Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: This volume presents articles on epistemology and the theory of perception and introduces readers to the various problems that face a successful theory of perceptual knowledge. The contributors include Robert Nozick, Alvin Goldman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Frank Jackson, David Armstrong, Fred Dretske, Roderick Firth, Wilfred Sellars, Paul Snowdon, and John McDowell
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Doppelt, Gerald (1973). Dretske's conception of perception and knowledge. Philosophy of Science 40 (September):433-446.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Dretske, Fred (1979). Chisholm on perceptual knowledge. Grazer Philosophische Studien 8:253-269.   (Google)
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Abstract: This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form (experience) for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theory of meaning (or belief content) by viewing meaning as a certain kind of information-carrying role
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Gluer-Pagin, Kathrin (online). Perception and justification.   (Google)
Abstract: Any adequate account of perceptual experience has to provide answers to the following questions: What kind, and form of, content do experiences have? What kind of mental states are they? Many, if not most philosophers of perception today agree that experiences have representational contents of the form x is F, where x ranges over material objects and F over sensible properties. I argue that such a "naive semantics" for experiences has to give the wrong answer to the second question. Because of their justificatory role for, and inferential integration into, a subject's belief system, experiences themselves have to be construed as a kind of belief. I also sketch a semantics that allows experiences to be beliefs.
Goldman, Alvin (1976). Discrimination and perceptual knowledge. Journal of Philosophy 73 (November):771-791.   (Cited by 155 | Google | More links)
Goldman, Alan H. (1981). Epistemology and the psychology of perception. American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (January):43-51.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Goldman, Alan H. (2004). Epistemological foundations: Can experiences justify beliefs? American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (4):273-285.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Green, Mitchell S. (2005). "You perceive with your mind": Knowledge and perception. In D. Darby and T. Shelby (ed.), Hip Hop and Philosophy. Open Court.   (Google)
Abstract: A major theme in rap lyrics is that the only way to survive is to use your head, be aware, know whats going on around you. That simple idea packs a lot of background. The most obvious ideas about knowledge turn out if you look at them close up to be pretty questionable. For example: How do we get knowledge about the world? A natural and ancient answer to this question is that much if not all of our knowledge comes from our senses. So for example the nose gives us knowledge of what things smell like, and if all goes well, also indicates whether the thing were smelling is healthy, tasty, or noxious. Likewise, the eyes tell us the color and shape of things, and thereby give us information about whether those things are useful, dangerous, and so on. Like everybody else, rappers know all this. Or do they? Maybe some rappers know that this isnt really so
Gupta, A. (2006). Empiricism and Experience. Harvard University Press.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: This book offers a novel account of the relationship of experience to knowledge. The account builds on the intuitive idea that our ordinary perceptual judgments are not autonomous, that an interdependence obtains between our view of the world and our perceptual judgments. Anil Gupta shows in this important study that this interdependence is the key to a satisfactory account of experience. He uses tools from logic and the philosophy of language to argue that his account of experience makes available an attractive and feasible empiricism
Gupta, A. (2006). Experience and knowledge. In Tamar S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Hall, Richard J. (1978). Criticism and revision of Chisholm's epistemic principle for perception. Philosophia 7 (July):477-488.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Hall, Everett W. (1943). Perception as fact and as knowledge. Philosophical Review 52 (September):468-489.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Haller, Rudolf (1974). Perception and inferences. Ajatus 36:166-177.   (Google)
Hocutt, Max O. (1968). The difference between the psychology and the epistemology of perception. Tulane Studies in Philosophy 17:61-81.   (Google)
Holman, Emmett L. (1975). Sensory experience, epistemic evaluation and perceptual knowledge. Philosophical Studies 28 (September):173-187.   (Google | More links)
Hurley, Susan L. (2001). Overintellectualizing the mind. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2):423-431.   (Google | More links)
Hutten, Ernest H. (1947). Perception and knowledge. Journal of Philosophy 44 (February):85-96.   (Google | More links)
Hyman, John (2003). The evidence of our senses. In Strawson and Kant. Oxford: Clarendon Press.   (Google)
Abstract: The modern causal theory of perception—the theory defended by Grice and Strawson—differs from the classical theory advanced by Descartes and Locke in two ways. First, the modern theory is an exercise in conceptual analysis. Secondly, it is a version of what is sometimes called direct realism. I shall comment on these points in turn
Jacob, Pierre (online). Seeing, perceiving, and knowing.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
James McDermid, Douglas (2001). What is direct perceptual knowledge? A fivefold confusion. Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):1-16.   (Google)
Abstract: When philosophers speak of direct perceptual knowledge, they obviously mean to suggest that such knowledge is unmediated ? but unmediated by what? This is where we find evidence of violent disagreement. To clarify matters, I want to identify and briefly describe several important senses of "direct" that have helped shape our understanding of perceptual knowledge. They are (1) "Direct" as Non-Inferential Perception; (2) "Direct" as Unmediating by Objects of Perception; (3) "Direct" as Conceptually Unmediated Perception; (4) "Direct" as Independent Verification of Perceptual Beliefs; and (5) "Direct" as Perception of What is Epistemically Prior
Johnson, David Martel (1971). A formulation model of perceptual knowledge. American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (January):54-62.   (Google)
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Laurier, Daniel (2004). Reasons, contents, and experiences. Disputatio 1 (17).   (Google)
Lee, Harold N. (1964). Perception and epistemology. Tulane Studies in Philosophy 13:27-43.   (Google)
Lee, Harold Newton (1973). Percepts, Concepts, and Theoretic Knowledge. [Memphis]Memphis State University Press.   (Google)
Locke, Don (1967). Perception And Our Knowledge Of The External World. Ny: Humanities Press.   (Cited by 11 | Google)
Abstract: Reissue from the classic Muirhead Library of Philosophy series (originally published between 1890s - 1970s).
Maloney, Christopher (1981). A new way up from empirical foundations. Synthese 49 (December):317-336.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Markie, Peter J. (2006). Epistemically appropriate perceptual belief. Noûs 40 (1):118-142.   (Google | More links)
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Martin, Michael W. (1993). The rational role of experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 93:71-88.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
McDermid, Douglas J. (2001). What is direct perceptual knowledge? A fivefold confusion. Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):1-16.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: When philosophers speak of direct perceptual knowledge, they obviously mean to suggest that such knowledge is unmediated ? but unmediated by what? This is where we find evidence of violent disagreement. To clarify matters, I want to identify and briefly describe several important senses of "direct" that have helped shape our understanding of perceptual knowledge. They are (1) "Direct" as Non-Inferential Perception; (2) "Direct" as Unmediating by Objects of Perception; (3) "Direct" as Conceptually Unmediated Perception; (4) "Direct" as Independent Verification of Perceptual Beliefs; and (5) "Direct" as Perception of What is Epistemically Prior
Millar, Alan (1989). Experience and the justification of belief. Ratio 2 (2):138-152.   (Google)
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Millar, Alan (2008). Perceptual-recognitional abilities and perceptual knowledge. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
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Moore, George Edward (1918). Some judgements of perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 19:1--29.   (Google)
OBrien, Daniel (online). The epistemology of perception. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Google)
Pace, Michael (2008). Perceptual knowledge and the metaphysics of experience. Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233):642-664.   (Google | More links)
Pappas, George S. (1979). Epistemic theories of perception. Philosophical Inquiry 1:220-228.   (Google)
Pappas, George S. (1982). Non-inferential knowledge. Philosophia 12 (December):81-98.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Peacocke, Christopher (ms). Explaining perceptual entitlement.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Abstract: material that was later incorporated into The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and into a paper of the same title in The Challenge of Externalism, ed. R. Schantz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004)
Pendlebury, Michael J. (2000). Perception and objective knowledge. In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 5: Epistemology. Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center.   (Google)
Phillips, Stephen H. (2004). Epistemology of Perception: Ganṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi: Jewel of Reflection on the Truth (About Epistemology), the Perception Chapter (Pratyakṣa-Khaṇḍa). American Institute of Buddhist Studies.   (Google)
Pollock, John L. (1970). Perceptual knowledge. Philosophical Review 80 (3):287-319.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Pollock, John L. & Oved, Iris (2005). Vision, knowledge, and the mystery link. Nos 39 (1):309-351.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Imagine yourself sitting on your front porch, sipping your morning coffee and admiring the scene before you. You see trees, houses, people, automobiles; you see a cat running across the road, and a bee buzzing among the flowers. You see that the flowers are yellow, and blowing in the wind. You see that the people are moving about, many of them on bicycles. You see that the houses are painted different colors, mostly earth tones, and most are one-story but a few are two-story. It is a beautiful morning. Thus the world interfaces with your mind through your senses. There is a strong intuition that we are not disconnected from the world. We and the other things we see around us are part of a continuous whole, and we have direct access to them through vision, touch, etc. However, the philosophical tradition tries to drive a wedge between us and the world by insisting that the information we get from perception is the result of inference from indirect evidence that is about how things look and feel to us. The philosophical problem of perception is then to explain what justifies these inferences. We will focus on visual perception. Figure one presents a crude diagram of the cognitive system of an agent capable of forming beliefs on the basis of visual perception. Cognition begins with the stimulation of the rods and cones on the retina. From that physical input, some kind of visual processing produces an introspectible visual image. In response to the production of the visual image, the cognizer forms beliefs about his or her surroundings. Some beliefs the perceptual beliefs are formed as direct responses to the visual input, and other beliefs are inferred from the perceptual beliefs. The perceptual beliefs are, at the very least, caused or causally influenced by having the image. This is signified by the dashed arrow marked with a large question mark. We will refer to this as the mystery link. Figure one makes it apparent that in order to fully understand how knowledge is based on perception, we need three different theories..
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Pritchard, Duncan (2010). Relevant alternatives, perceptual knowledge and discrimination. Noûs 44 (2):245-268.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between perceptual knowledge and discrimination in the light of the so-called 'relevant alternatives' intuition. It begins by outlining an intuitive relevant alternatives account of perceptual knowledge which incorporates the insight that there is a close connection between perceptual knowledge and the possession of relevant discriminatory abilities. It is argued, however, that in order to resolve certain problems that face this view, it is essential to recognise an important distinction between favouring and discriminating epistemic support that is often overlooked in the literature. This distinction complicates the story regarding how an alternative becomes relevant, and in doing so weakens the connection between perceptual knowledge and discrimination. The theory that results, however—what I term a 'two-tiered' relevant alternatives theory of perceptual knowledge—accommodates many of our intuitions about perceptual knowledge and so avoids the revisionism of some recent proposals in the epistemological literature
Prijic-Samarzija, Snjezana (2004). Some epistemological consequences of the dual-aspect theory of visual perception. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (11):273-290.   (Google)
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Roessler, Johannes (2009). Perceptual experience and perceptual knowledge. Mind 118 (472).   (Google)
Abstract: Commonsense epistemology regards perceptual experience as a distinctive source of knowledge of the world around us, unavailable in ‘blindsight’. This is often interpreted in terms of the idea that perceptual experience, through its representational content, provides us with justifying reasons for beliefs about the world around us. I argue that this analysis distorts the explanatory link between perceptual experience and knowledge, as we ordinarily conceive it. I propose an alternative analysis, on which representational content plays no explanatory role: we make perceptual knowledge intelligible by appeal to experienced objects and features. I also present an account of how the commonsense scheme, thus interpreted, is to be defended: not by tracing the role of experience to its contribution in meeting some general condition on propositional knowledge (such as justification), but by subverting the assumption that it has to be possible to make the role of experience intelligible in terms of some such contribution. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?
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Thomas, Alan (online). Perceptual knowledge, representation and imagination.   (Google)
Abstract: The focus of this paper will be on the problem of perceptual presence and on a solution to this problem pioneered by Kant [1781; 1783] and refined by Sellars [Sellars, 1978] and Strawson [Strawson, 1971]. The problem of perceptual presence is that of explaining how our perceptual experience of the world gives us a robust sense of the presence of objects in perception over and above those sensory aspects of the object given in perception. Objects possess other properties which are, one might say, phenomenologically present even though they are admittedly sensorily absent. The general form of the solution to this problem that Kant developed seems to me to be a neglected resource in contemporary work on perceptual consciousness. Kant solves the problem of perceptual presence by appealing to that which he called the productive use of the imagination. This faculty of mind supplies schematic representations of the object of perception that explains a phenomenological sense of perceptual presence even of those features that are not, in a sense to be further clarified,
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Ward, Andrew (1993). Perception and scepticism. In Edmond Leo Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception. Brookfield: Avebury.   (Google)
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Wright, Edmond Leo (ms). Perception as epistemic.   (Google)
Abstract: If a sensory field exists as a pure natural sign open to all kinds of interpretation as _evidence_ (see 'Sensing as non-epistemic'), what is it that does the interpreting? Borrowing from the old Gestalt psychologists, I have proposed a gestalt module that picks out wholes from the turmoil, it being the process of _noticing_ or _attending to_ , but the important difference from Koffka and Khler (Koffka, 1935; Khler, 1940), the originators of the term 'gestalt' in the psychology of perception ( is that the emphasis is upon the gestalt projection as motivated . Gestalt-attention of this kind is usually enforced in the first instance by pain or pleasure, and the resulting projections are placed in memory tabbed with fear or desire, such that if such a pattern recurs in the sensory field, fear or desire are triggered. In advanced animals the ability to play with the gestalt module has been evolved, because experimenting in curiosity has proved adaptive, as the exploratory behaviour in the Rat, the Raven, the Apes and _Homo sapiens_ bears out
Yaluin, Umit D. (1997). Skepticism and perceptual content. Philosophical Papers 26 (2):179-194.   (Google)

3.5a Dogmatism about Perception

Chudnoff, Elijah (2010). The Nature of Intuitive Justification. Philosophical Studies.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions.
Neta, Ram (2004). Perceptual evidence and the new dogmatism. Philosophical Studies 119 (1-2).   (Google)
Abstract: What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements
Pryor, James (2000). The skeptic and the dogmatist. Noûs 34 (4):517–549.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Consider the skeptic about the external world. Let’s straightaway concede to such a skeptic that perception gives us no conclusive or certain knowledge about our surroundings. Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible—there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs. Let’s also concede to the skeptic that it’s metaphysically possible for us to have all the experiences we’re now having while all those experiences are false. Some philosophers dispute this, but I do not. The skeptic I want to consider goes beyond these familiar points to the much more radical conclusion that our perceptual experiences can’t give us any knowledge or even justification for believing that our surroundings are one way rather than another
Siegel, Susanna, Cognitive penetrability and perceptual justification.   (Google)
Abstract: It is sometimes said that in depression, everything looks grey. If this is true, then mood can influence the character of perceptual experience: depending only on whether a viewer is depressed or not, how a scene looks to that viewer can differ even if all other conditions stay the same. This would be an example of cognitive penetrability of visual experience by other mental states. Here the influential cognitive state is a mood. Other putative examples of cognitive penetrability involve beliefs: to the reader of Russian, the sheet of Cyrillic script looks different than it looked to her before she could read it. When you know that bananas are yellow, this knowledge affects what color you see bananas to be (an achromatic banana will [2] appear yellowish). To the vain performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to pleased, but remarkably no one ever looks disapproving. To the underconfident performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to displeased, but remarkably no one ever looks approving. And in cases of suggestibility, the mere salience of a hypothesis seems to have an effect on how a given stimulus is experienced. Potential cognitive penetrators thus include moods, beliefs, hypotheses, knowledge, desires, and traits. In some cases, cognitively penetration can be epistemically beneficial. If an x ray looks different to a radiologist from the way it looks to someone lacking radiological expertise, then the radiologist gets more information about the world from her experience (such as whether there’s a tumor) than the non expert does from looking at the same x ray. If Iris Murdoch and John McDowell are right that having the right sort of character lets you see more moral facts than someone lacking that character sees when faced with the same situation, then there too your perceptual experience becomes epistemically better thanks to its being penetrated by your [3] character. In other cases, however, cognitive penetration seems to make experience epistemically worse..
Silins, Nicholas (2008). Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic. In Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 2. OUP.   (Google | More links)

3.5b Epistemic and Non-epistemic Perception

Close, Daryl (1980). More on non-epistemic seeing. Mind 89 (January):99-105.   (Google | More links)
Close, Daryl (1976). What is non-epistemic seeing? Mind 85 (April):161-170.   (Google | More links)
Goodman, Russell B. (1976). Two concepts of perceptual relativity. Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 7:45-52.   (Google)
Maund, J. Barry (1976). The non-sensuous epistemic account of perception. American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (January):57-62.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
McNeill, William E. S. (forthcoming). On Seeing That Someone is Angry. European Journal of Philosophy.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Some propose that the question of how you know that James is angry can be adequately answered with the claim that you see that James is angry. Call this the Perceptual Hypothesis. Here, I examine that hypothesis.

I argue that there are two different ways in which the Perceptual Hypothesis could be made true. You might see that James is angry by seeing his bodily features. Alternatively, you might see that James is angry by seeing his anger. If you see that James is angry in the first way, your knowledge is inferential. If you see that James is angry in the second way, your knowledge is not inferential. These are different ways of knowing that James is angry. So the Perceptual Hypothesis alone does not adequately answer the question of how you know that fact. To ascertain how you know it, we need to decide whether or not you saw his anger.

This is an epistemological argument. But it has consequences for a theory of perception. It implies that there is a determinate fact about which features of an object you see. This fact is made true independently of what you come to know by seeing.

In the final section of the paper, I seek to undermine various ways in which the claim that you see James’ anger may be thought implausible.
Turri, John (2008). Practical and Epistemic Justification in Alston's Perceiving God. Faith and Philosophy 25 (3):290 - 299.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage in a doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how this premise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise in question. Without this premise, Alston’s main argument fails.
Wilde, Tine (2008). Remodel[l]ing Reality. Wittgenstein's uebersichtliche Darstellung & the phenomenon of Installation in visual art. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam   (Google)
Abstract: Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of uebersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the uebersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and the ambiguity of reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of uebersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage.
The book is distributed by Ideabooks, Amsterdam. Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6
Wright, Edmond L. (1986). Ben-Zeev on the non-epistemic. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (September):351-359.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Wright, Edmond L. (1977). Perception: A new theory. American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (October):273-286.   (Cited by 45 | Google)
Wright, Edmond Leo (ms). Sensing as non-epistemic.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: A sensory receptor, in any organism anywhere, is sensitive through time to some distribution - energy, motion, molecular shape - indeed, anything that can produce an effect. The sensitivity is rarely direct: for example, it may track changes in relative variation rather than the absolute change of state (as when the skin responds to colder and hotter instead of to cold and hot as such); it may track differing variations under different conditions (the eyes' dark-adaptation; adaptation to sound frequencies can lower the difference threshold; the kinesthetic sense will shut down if a limb is held in a stationary position too long - the limb 'going to sleep'); it may be subject to distortion of the input from overloading (dazzle producing strong-after-images); it may not be confined to one channel of sensitivity (the retina is sensitive to pressure; the hands can feel some strong sound-vibrations, the tympanum of the ear records touch). Strictly speaking there is no limit as to what intensities and what ranges receptors could be sensitive. Sharks are sensitive to electrostatic fields, homing pigeons to magnetic fields; snakes to infra-red rays; bacteria to acid concentrations; perhaps there has even been a mutant organism sensitive to the passage of cosmic rays, even though that would hardly have bestowed any conceivable survival value. What is irrefutable is that individual receptors differ markedly from organism to organism, between different members of the species (one dog being better at tracing smells than another; one person being able to sense light-waves of 375 nanometres, another not; children able to hear 20,000 Hz, older persons not), and between receptors of the same kind within one organism (one eye being sensitive to 765 nm and the other not; one ear deaf to 15,000 Hz and over, the other not). There are also just-noticeable-differences (JND's), in that one person can see two shades of a colour where another sees only one; similarly with sounds
Wright, Edmond L. (1981). Yet more on non-epistemic seeing. Mind 90 (October):586-591.   (Google | More links)

3.5c Perceptual Justification

Alston, William P. (1993). The Reliability of Sense Perception. Cornell University Press.   (Google)
Baergen, Ralph (1992). Perceptual consciousness and perceptual evidence. Philosophical Papers 21 (2):107-119.   (Google)
Brueckner, Anthony (2009). Internalism and evidence of reliability. Philosophia 37 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: This paper concerns various competing views on the nature of perceptual justification. Various thought experiments that motivate various views are discussed. Once reliabilism is rejected and some form of internalism is instead embraced, the following issue arises: must an internalist nevertheless require that perceptual justification involve the possession of evidence for the reliability of our perceptual processes? Matthias Steup answers in the affirmative, espousing what he calls internalist reliabilism. Some problems are raised for this form of internalism
Burge, Tyler (2003). Perceptual entitlement. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3):503-48.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called "entitlement", that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti-individualism, a thesis about the nature of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states–hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined.
Byrne, Alex (1996). Spin control. In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview.   (Google)
Chen, Jiaming (2008). The empirical foundation and justification of knowledge. Frontiers of Philosophy in China 3 (1).   (Google)
Abstract:   Whether empirical givenness has the reliability that foundationalists expect is a point about which some philosophers are highly skeptical. Sellars took the doctrine of givenness as a “myth,” denying the existence of immediate perceptual experience. The arguments in contemporary Western epistemology are concentrated on whether sensory experience has conceptual contents, and whether there is any logical relationship between perceptions and beliefs. In fact, once the elements of words and conceptions in empirical perception are affirmed, the logical relationship between perceptual experience and empirical belief is also affirmed. This relationship takes place through perceptual experience acting as evidence for beliefs. The real problem lies in how one should distinguish between the different relationships with perception of singular beliefs and of universal beliefs, and in how singular beliefs can provide justification for universal beliefs
Comesana, Juan (2005). Justified vs. warranted perceptual belief: Resisting disjunctivism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2):367-383.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that one reason for being a disjunctivist advanced by McDowell (having to do with the indefeasibility of perceptual knowledge) fails because it ignores the distinction between justification and warrant.
Gluer, Kathrin (ms). Perception and justification.   (Google)
Abstract: 1. Introduction When it comes to perception, representationalism is all the rage. Representationalism is a claim about the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences: According to representationalism, phenomenal character is fully determined by the representational content of perceptual experiences (cf. Tye 2002, 45). In other words, phenomenal character, what it is like, for instance, to have an experience as of something red, is either supervenient upon or identical with that experience
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Hobson, Kenneth (2008). Foundational beliefs and the structure of justification. Synthese 164 (1).   (Google)
Abstract:  I argue that our justification for beliefs about the external physical world need not be constituted by any justified beliefs about perceptual experiences. In this way our justification for beliefs about the physical world may be nondoxastic and this differentiates my proposal from traditional foundationalist theories such as those defended by Laurence BonJour, Richard Fumerton, and Timothy McGrew. On the other hand, it differs from certain non-traditional foundationalist theories such as that defended by James Pryor according to which perceptual experience is sufficient to justify beliefs about the external world. I propose that justification for propositions describing our perceptual experiences partially constitutes any justification we may possess for beliefs concerning the external world. In this way, our justification for beliefs about the physical world may only be inferential since it is grounded in any justification we have for at least one other proposition. This theory occupies an intermediate position between the two aforementioned foundationalist accounts, which allows it to sidestep problems that confront each of them
Holman, Emmett L. (1977). Sensory experience, perceptual evidence and conceptual frameworks. American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (April):99-108.   (Google)
Lyons, Jack C. (2008). Experience, evidence, and externalism. australasian journal of philosophy.   (Google)
Abstract: Can anything other than a belief confer epistemic justification on a belief? In particular, can nondoxastic experiential states do so? According to the standard taxonomy, _doxasticism _is the view that only beliefs can justify beliefs; _nondoxasticism _is simply the denial of this. The distinction between doxastic and nondoxastic theories is central to epistemology, but much of the debate surrounding it has been marred by an unnoticed ambiguity concerning the key concept of justification. Sorting out the ambiguity reveals an important division between externalist and internalist varieties of nondoxasticism and points the way toward a new argument for nondoxasticism of the externalist sort
Lyons, Jack (2008). Evidence, experience, and externalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3):461 – 479.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The Sellarsian dilemma is a famous argument that attempts to show that nondoxastic experiential states cannot confer justification on basic beliefs. The usual conclusion of the Sellarsian dilemma is a coherentist epistemology, and the usual response to the dilemma is to find it quite unconvincing. By distinguishing between two importantly different justification relations (evidential and nonevidential), I hope to show that the Sellarsian dilemma, or something like it, does offer a powerful argument against standard nondoxastic foundationalist theories. But this reconceived version of the argument does not support coherentism. Instead, I use it to argue for a strongly externalist epistemology
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Markie, Peter J. (2004). Nondoxastic perceptual evidence. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):530-553.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Markie, Peter J. (2005). The mystery of direct perceptual justification. Philosophical Studies 126 (3):347-373.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In at least some cases of justified perceptual belief, our perceptual experience itself, as opposed to beliefs about it, evidences and thereby justifies our belief. While the phenomenon is common, it is also mysterious. There are good reasons to think that perceptions cannot justify beliefs directly, and there is a significant challenge in explaining how they do. After explaining just how direct perceptual justification is mysterious, I considerMichael Huemers (Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, 2001) and Bill Brewers (Perception and Reason, 1999) recent, but radically different, attempts to eliminate it. I argue that both are unsuccessful, though a consideration of their mistakes deepens our appreciation of the mystery
Neta, Ram (2004). Perceptual evidence and the new dogmatism. Philosophical Studies 119 (1-2).   (Google)
Abstract: What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements
Peacocke, Christopher (2009). Perception, content and rationality. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (2):475-481.   (Google)
Abstract: Anil Gupta's Empiricism and Experience is a stylish and stimulating contribution to our subject. My expectation is that those who disagree with some of its central theses will, like me, learn greatly from thinking through where and why they part company with Gupta's lucidly presented position. For the purposes of a Symposium, I select three points of disagreement. Each point in one way or another concerns the epistemic role of the content of experience
Pryor, James (2005). There is immediate justification. In Matthias Steup & Ernest Sosa (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Blackwell.   (Google)
Reynolds, Steven L. (1991). Knowing how to believe with justification. Philosophical Studies 64 (3):273-292.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Schantz, Richard (1999). The role of sensory experience in epistemic justification: A problem for coherentism. Erkenntnis 50 (2-3).   (Google)
Abstract:   The author argues that coherence views of justification, in spite of their crucial insight into the interpenetration of our beliefs, neglect a key constraint on justification: they are unable to accommodate the epistemic significance of experience. Epistemic justification is not just a function of our beliefs and their interrelations. Both, beliefs and experiences, are relevant to the justification of an empirical belief. Experience is not itself a form of belief or disposition to believe; it cannot be analyzed in doxastic terms. And, yet, nondoxastic experiences play a justificatory role, not merely a causal role. The positive epistemic status of a perceptual belief depends upon being appeared to in appropriate ways. It is important that, for an ordinary perceptual belief to be justified, one does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, the ways of being appeared to, not our beliefs about them, that are required for justification
Shaffer, Michael J. (2004). A Defeater of the Claim that Belief in God’s Existence is Properly Basic. Philo 7 (1):57-70.   (Google)
Abstract: Some contemporary theologically inclined epistemologists, the reformed epistemologists, have attempted to show that belief in God is rational by appealing directly to a special kind of experience. To strengthen the appeal to this particular, and admittedly peculiar, type of experience these venture to draw a parallel between such experiences and normal perceptual experiences in order to show that, by parity of reasoning, if beliefs formed on the basis of the later are taken to be justified and rational to hold, then beliefs formed on the basis of the former should also be regarded as justified and rational to hold. Such appeals to religious experience have been discussed and/or made by Robert Pargetter, Alvin Plantinga and William Alston and they claim that they provide sufficient warrant for religious beliefs, specifically for the belief that God exists. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of this notion of religious experience itself and whether such appeals to religious experience really provide justification for belief in the existence of God.

Shaffer, Michael J. (2006). Some Recent Appeals to Mathematical Experience. Principia 10 (2):143-170.   (Google)
Abstract: ome recent work by philosophers of mathematics has been aimed at showing that our knowledge of the existence of at least some mathematical objects and/or sets can be epistemically grounded by appealing to perceptual experience. The sensory capacity that they refer to in doing so is the ability to perceive numbers, mathematical properties and/or sets. The chief defense of this view as it applies to the perception of sets is found in Penelope Maddy’s Realism in Mathematics, but a number of other philosophers have made similar, if more simple, appeals of this sort. For example, Jaegwon Kim (1981, 1982), John Bigelow (1988, 1990), and John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter (1990) have all defended such views. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of the notions of set perception and mathematical perception, and whether appeals to such perceptual faculties can really provide any justification for or explanation of belief in the existence of sets, mathematical properties and/or numbers.
Siegel, Susanna, Cognitive penetrability and perceptual justification.   (Google)
Abstract: It is sometimes said that in depression, everything looks grey. If this is true, then mood can influence the character of perceptual experience: depending only on whether a viewer is depressed or not, how a scene looks to that viewer can differ even if all other conditions stay the same. This would be an example of cognitive penetrability of visual experience by other mental states. Here the influential cognitive state is a mood. Other putative examples of cognitive penetrability involve beliefs: to the reader of Russian, the sheet of Cyrillic script looks different than it looked to her before she could read it. When you know that bananas are yellow, this knowledge affects what color you see bananas to be (an achromatic banana will [2] appear yellowish). To the vain performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to pleased, but remarkably no one ever looks disapproving. To the underconfident performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to displeased, but remarkably no one ever looks approving. And in cases of suggestibility, the mere salience of a hypothesis seems to have an effect on how a given stimulus is experienced. Potential cognitive penetrators thus include moods, beliefs, hypotheses, knowledge, desires, and traits. In some cases, cognitively penetration can be epistemically beneficial. If an x ray looks different to a radiologist from the way it looks to someone lacking radiological expertise, then the radiologist gets more information about the world from her experience (such as whether there’s a tumor) than the non expert does from looking at the same x ray. If Iris Murdoch and John McDowell are right that having the right sort of character lets you see more moral facts than someone lacking that character sees when faced with the same situation, then there too your perceptual experience becomes epistemically better thanks to its being penetrated by your [3] character. In other cases, however, cognitive penetration seems to make experience epistemically worse..
Silins, Nicholas (2008). Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic. In Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 2. OUP.   (Google | More links)
Sosa, David (2007). Perceptual friction. Philosophical Issues 17 (1):245–261.   (Google | More links)
Tucker, Chris (2009). Perceptual Justification and Warrant by Default. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87: 445-63 87 (3):445-63.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: As I use the term, ‘entitlement’ is any warrant one has by default—i.e. without acquiring it. Some philosophers not only affirm the existence of entitlement, but also give it a crucial role in the justification of our perceptual beliefs. These philosophers affirm the Entitlement Thesis: An essential part of what makes our perceptual beliefs justified is our entitlement to the proposition that I am not a brain-in-a-vat. Crispin Wright, Stewart Cohen, and Roger White are among those who endorse this controversial claim. In this paper, I argue that the Entitlement Thesis is false.
Turri, John (2008). Practical and Epistemic Justification in Alston's Perceiving God. Faith and Philosophy 25 (3):290 - 299.   (Google)
Abstract: This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage in a doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how this premise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise in question. Without this premise, Alston’s main argument fails.
Vahid, Hamid (2008). Experience and the space of reasons: The problem of non-doxastic justification. Erkenntnis 69 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: It is not difficult to make sense of the idea that beliefs may derive their justification from other beliefs. Difficulties surface when, as in certain epistemological theories, one appeals to sensory experiences to give an account of the structure of justification. This gives rise to the so-called problem of ‘nondoxastic justification’, namely, the problem of seeing how sensory experiences can confer justification on the beliefs they give rise to. In this paper, I begin by criticizing a number of theories that are currently on offer. Finding them all wanting, I shall then offer a diagnosis of why they fail while gesturing towards a promising way of resolving the dispute. It will be argued that what makes the problem of nondoxastic justification a hard one is the difficulty of striking the right balance between a notion of normative justification that is content-sensitive and truth conducive and the possibility of error while acknowledging the fact that our experiences can justify our beliefs in cases we are hallucinating
Vision, Gerald (2009). Fixing perceptual belief. Philosophical Quarterly 59 (235):292-314.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In specifying the sensory evidence for perceptual belief, thinkers have either chosen a common perceptual idiom or have invented one of their own as a starting-point for their enquiries. It is becoming clearer that the choice harbours crucial, often disputable, assumptions. I compare two sorts of constructions, a variety of propositional ones and an objectual one, and I argue that the objectual idiom is indispensable in order to explain how a perceptual belief can arise out of what is not already a belief. This has implications not only for the question of how belief is generated from perceptual evidence, but also for various other controversies. I discuss two of these implications: the character of inferences from evidence, and basic belief
Wedgwood, Ralph, Primitively rational belief-forming practices.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Intuitively, it seems that some belief-forming practices have the following three properties: 1. They are rational practices, and the beliefs that we form by means of these practices are themselves rational or justified beliefs. 2. Even if in most cases these practices reliably lead to correct beliefs (i.e., beliefs in true propositions), they are not infallible: it is possible for beliefs that are formed by means of these practices to be incorrect (i.e., to be beliefs in false propositions). 3. The rationality of these practices is basic or primitive. That is, the rationality of these practices is not due simply to the availability, by means of some process of reasoning that relies purely on other practices, of a rational or justified belief in the reliability of these practices. How can there be such practices? This paper offers an answer to that question.

3.5d Perception and Knowledge, Misc

Brigandt, Ingo (2003). Gestalt experiments and inductive observations: Konrad Lorenz's early epistemological writings and the methods of classical ethology. Evolution and Cognition 9:157–170.   (Google)
Abstract: Ethology brought some crucial insights and perspectives to the study of behavior, in particular the idea that behavior can be studied within a comparative-evolutionary framework by means of homologizing components of behavioral patterns and by causal analysis of behavior components and their integration. Early ethology is well-known for its extensive use of qualitative observations of animals under their natural conditions. These observations are combined with experiments that try to analyze behavioral patterns and establish specific claims about animal behavior. Nowadays, there is still disagreement about the significance of observation and experiments and their relation
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Langton, Rae (2004). Elusive knowledge of things in themselves. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1):129 – 136.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Kant argued that we have no knowledge of things in themselves, no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of things, a thesis that is not idealism but epistemic humility. David Lewis agrees (in 'Ramseyan Humility'), but for Ramseyan reasons rather than Kantian. I compare the doctrines of Ramseyan and Kantian humility, and argue that Lewis's contextualist strategy for rescuing knowledge from the sceptic (proposed elsewhere) should also rescue knowledge of things in themselves. The rescue would not be complete: for knowledge of things in themselves would remain elusive
Kaplan, Stephen (1987). Hermeneutics, Holography, and Indian Idealism: A Study of Projection and Gauḍapāda's Māṇḍūkya Kārikā. Motilal Banarsidass.   (Google)
Knuuttila, Simo & Kärkkäinen, Pekka (eds.) (2008). Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Springer.   (Google)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Ricœur, Paul (2005). The Course of Recognition. Harvard University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Introduction -- Recognition as identification -- recognizing oneself -- Mutal recognition -- Conclusion: A review.
Schellenberg, Susanna (2006). Perception in Perspective. Dissertation,   (Google | More links)
Abstract: How can perception yield knowledge of the world? One challenge in answering this question is that one necessarily perceives from a particular location. Thus, what is immediately perceptually available is subject to situational features, such as lighting conditions and one’s location. Nonetheless, one can perceive the shape and color of objects. My dissertation aims to provide an explanation for how this is possible. The main thesis is that giving such an explanation requires abandoning the traditional model of perception as a two-place relation between subjects and objects in favor of a model of perception as a three-place relation between subjects, objects, and situations
Schellenberg, Susanna (forthcoming). Perceptual Experience and the Capacity to Act. In N. Gangopadhay, M. Madary & F. Spicer (eds.), Perception, Action, and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Schellenberg, Susanna (2006). Sellarsian perspectives on perception and non-conceptual content. In Mark Lance & Michael P. Wolf (eds.), The Self-Correcting Enterprise: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars. Rodopi.   (Google | More links)
Shieber, Joseph (forthcoming). On the Possibility of Conceptually Structured Experience: Demonstrative Concepts and Fineness of Grain. Inquiry.   (Google)
Abstract: In this paper I consider one of the influential challenges to the notion that perceptual experience might be completely conceptually structured, a challenge that rests on the idea that conceptual structure cannot do justice to the fineness of grain of perceptual experience. In so doing, I canvass John McDowell’s attempt to meet this challenge by appeal to the notion of demonstrative concepts and review some criticisms recently leveled at McDowell’s deployment of demonstrative concepts for this purpose by Sean D. Kelly. Finally, I suggest that, though Kelly’s criticisms might challenge McDowell’s original presentation of demonstrative concepts, a modified notion of demonstrative concept is available to the conceptualist that is proof against Kelly’s criticisms.

3.5e Perception and Skepticism

Alston, William P. (1993). The Reliability of Sense Perception. Cornell University Press.   (Google)
Burock, Marc (ms). Falsehood: An Analysis of Illusion's Singularity.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: It is a common tactic, going back to the beginnings of religion and philosophy, to presume that we are enveloped in a world of untruth and illusion, thereby fueling our movement toward truth. In more modern times, Descartes demonstrates this process clearly with his Meditations. This work extends the Cartesian skeptical position by challenging the concept of illusion itself, asking those who have ever called something ‘an illusion’ to question the meaning of these assertions. This broader skepticism partially annihilates itself without completely collapsing under the weight of self-contradiction.
Franklin, James (online). Healthy scepticism.   (Google)
Kriegel, Uriah (2011). The Veil of Abstracta. Philosophical Issues 21.   (Google)
Abstract: Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory’s: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world.
Millar, Alan (1991). Reasons and Experience. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Millar argues against the tendency in current philosophical thought to treat sensory experiences as a peculiar species of propositional attitude. While allowing that experiences may in some sense bear propositional content, he presents a view of sensory experiences as a species of psychological state. A key theme in his general approach is that justified belief results from the competent exercise of conceptual capacities, some of which involve an ability to respond appropriately to current experience. In working out this approach the author develops a view of concepts and their mastery, explores the role of groundless beliefs drawing on suggestions of Wittgenstein, illuminates aspects of the thought of Locke, Hume, Quine, and Goldman, and finally offers a response to a sophisticated variety of scepticism
Schaffer, Jonathan (2003). Perceptual knowledge derailed. Philosophical Studies 112 (1):31-45.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: The tracking theory treats knowledge as counterfactual covariation of belief and truth through a sphere of possibilities. I argue that the tracking theory cannot respect perceptual knowledge, because perceptual belief covaries with truth through a discontinuous scatter of possibilities. Perceptual knowledge is subject to inner derailing: there is an inner hollow of perceptual incompetence through which the differences are too small to track. Perceptual knowledge is subject to outer derailing: there are outlying islands of perceptual competence that extend well past skeptical sinkholes
Shaffer, Michael J. (2007). Taste, Gastronomic Expertise and Objectivity. In Fritz Allhoff & David Monroe (eds.), Food & Philosophy. Blackwell.   (Google)

3.5f The Given

Ayer, A. J. & Macdonald, Graham (eds.) (1979). Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer, with His Replies. Cornell University Press.   (Google)
Bailey, Andrew R. (2004). The myth of the myth of the given. Manuscrito 27:321-60.   (Google)
Bonjour, Laurence (2004). C. I. Lewis on the given and its interpretation. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 28 (1):195–208.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Brandom, Robert B. (ms). The centrality of Sellars' two-ply account of observation to the arguments of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Byrne, Alex (1996). Spin control. In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview.   (Google)
deVries, Willem & Triplett, Timm (2000). Knowledge, Mind, and the Given: A Reading of Sellars’ “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”. Hackett.   (Google)
deVries, Willem A. & Triplett, Timm (2000). Knowledge, Mind, and the Given: A Reading of Sellars’ “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”. Hackett.   (Google)
Echelbarger, C. G. (1981). An alleged legend. Philosophical Studies 39 (April):227-46.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Echelbarger, Charles (1974). Sellars on thinking and the myth of the given. Philosophical Studies 25 (May):231-246.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Fales, Evan (1996). A Defense of the Given. Lanham: Rowman &Amp; Littlefield.   (Cited by 16 | Google)
Fodor, Jerry A. (ms). Revenge of the given.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Fodor, Jerry A. (2007). The revenge of the given. In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell.   (Google)
Foltz, Bruce V. (2004). Nature's other side: The demise of nature and the phenomenology of givenness. In Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.   (Google)
Garfield, Jay L. (1989). The myth of Jones and the mirror of nature: Reflections on introspection. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (September):1-26.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Grimm, Robert H. (1959). A note on empiricism and the philosophy of mind. Philosophical Studies 10 (3):45-48.   (Google | More links)
Hartshorne, Charles (1958). The logical structure of givenness. Philosophical Quarterly 8 (October):307-316.   (Google | More links)
Hartshorne, Charles (2002). The structure of givenness. In Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics. New York: Rodopi NY.   (Google)
Hoy, Ronald C. (1985). The given of the self-presenting. Noûs 19 (September):347-364.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Koons, Jeremy R. (2002). How to avoid the twin perils of anti-empiricism and the given. In Perspectives on Coherentism. Aylmer, Québec: Éditions Du Scribe.   (Google)
Koons, Jeremy Randel (2006). Sellars, givenness, and epistemic priority. In Michael P Wolf (ed.), The Self-Correcting Enterprise: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars.   (Google)
Kvanvig, Jonathan L. (2005). On denying a presupposition of Sellars' problem: A defense of propositionalism. Veritas 50 (4).   (Google)
Abstract: There is a great divide between two approaches to epistemology over the past thirty to forty years. Some label the divide that between internalists and externalists, and that characterization may be accurate on some account of the distinction. I will pursue the divide from a different direction, in part because the literature on the distinction between internalism and externalism has become a mess, and I don’t want to clean up the mess here
Lemos, Ramon M. (1964). Sensation, perception, and the given. Ratio 6 (June):63-80.   (Google)
Liang, Caleb (2006). Phenomenal character and the myth of the given. Journal of Philosophical Research 31:21-36.   (Google)
Martin, Oliver (1938). The given and the interpretative elements in perception. Journal of Philosophy 35 (13):337-345.   (Google | More links)
Milkov, Nikolay (2004). G. E. Moore and the greifswald objectivists on the given and the beginning of analytic philosophy. Axiomathes 14 (4):361-379.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Shortly before G. E. Moore wrote down the formative for the early analytic philosophy lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910–1911), he had become acquainted with two books which influenced his thought: (1) a book by Husserl's pupil August Messer and (2) a book by the Greifswald objectivist Dimitri Michaltschew. Central to Michaltschew's book was the concept of the given. In Part I, I argue that Moore elaborated his concept of sense-data in the wake of the Greifswald concept. Carnap did the same when he wrote his Aufbau, the only difference being that he spoke not of sense-data but of Erlebnisse. This means, I argue, that both Moore's sense-data and Carnap'sErlebnisse have little to do with either British empiricists or the neo-Kantians. In Part II, I try to ascertain what made early analytic philosophy different from all those philosophical groups and movements that either exercised influence on it, or were closely related to it: phenomenologists, Greifswald objectivists, Brentanists. For this purpose, I identify the sine qua non practices of the early analytic philosophers: exactness; acceptance of the propositional turn; descriptivism; objectivism. If one of these practices was not explored by a given philosophical school or group, in all probability, it was not truly analytic
Robinson, William S. (1975). The legend of the given. In Hector-Neri Castaneda (ed.), Action, Knowledge, and Reality. Bobbs-Merrill.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Rosenberg, Jay F. (2006). Still mythic after all those years: On Alston's latest defense of the given. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (1):157-173.   (Google | More links)
Ross, Jacob J. (1970). The Appeal To The Given: A Study In Epistemology. London,: Allen &Amp; Unwin.   (Google)
Rottschaefer, William A. (1989). The ghost of the given: A case for epistemological ghostbusters or ghostlovers. Bridges 1:59-81.   (Google)
Roy, J. -m. (2003). Phenomenological claims and the myth of the given. Canadian Journal of Philosophy.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Schantz, Richard (2001). The given regained: Reflections on the sensuous content of experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (1):167-180.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1956). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1973). Givenness and explanatory coherence. Journal of Philosophy 70 (October):612-624.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links)
Sellars, Wilfrid S. (1979). More on givenness and explanatory coherence. In Jonathan Dancy (ed.), Justification And Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel.   (Cited by 8 | Google)
Smullyan, Arthur (1973). Sense content and perceptual assurance. Journal of Philosophy 70 (18):625-628.   (Google | More links)
Soffer, Gail (2003). Revisiting the myth: Husserl and Sellars on the given. Review of Metaphysics 57 (2):301-337.   (Google)
Sosa, David (2007). Perceptual friction. Philosophical Issues 17 (1):245–261.   (Google | More links)
Wild, John D. (1940). The concept of the given in contemporary philosophy. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1 (September):70-82.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Wright, Edmond L. (1985). A defence of Sellars. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (September):73-90.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Zeis, John (1990). A critique of Plantinga's theological foundationalism. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 28 (3).   (Google)

3.6 Perceptual Qualities

122 / 361 entries displayed

Byrne, Alex & Hilbert, David R. (eds.) (1997). Readings on Color: The Philosophy of Color Vol. I. The Mit Press.   (Google)

3.6a Sound

Nudds, Matthew (online). Auditory perception and sounds.   (Google)
Abstract: It is a commonly held view that auditory perception functions to tell us about sounds and their properties. In this paper I argue that this common view is mistaken and that auditory perception functions to tell us about the objects that are the sources of sounds. In doing so, I provide a general theory of auditory perception and use it to give an account of the content of auditory experience and of the nature of sounds
Cohen, Jonathan, Sounds and temporality.   (Google)
Abstract: What is the relationship between sounds and time? More specifically, is there something essentially or distinctively temporal about sounds that distinguishes them from, say, colors, shapes, odors, tastes, or other sensible qualities? And just what might this distinctive relation to time consist in? Apart from their independent interest, these issues have a number of important philosophical repercussions. First, if sounds are temporal in a way that other sensible qualities are not, then this would mean that standard lists of paradigm secondary qualities offered by Locke, Galileo, and other modern philosophers — lists which include colors, odors and sounds without any significant distinctions — overlook significant metaphysical differences. This, in turn, would threaten to undermine the coherence of the modern understanding of secondary qualities itself. Moreover, a number of authors have recently urged that the essential temporality of sounds makes it impossible to understand sounds as properties (except on a trope theory of properties; see note 3). If true, and given the more or less universal view that colors are properties, this last conclusion would make potentially inapplicable to sounds much of the comparatively well-developed philosophical taxonomy and apparatus that has arisen in philosophical disputes over the status of colors (for presentations of this taxonomy and apparatus see, for example, Byrne and Hilbert (2003); Cohen (2008b)).1 Therefore, the conclusion that sounds are distinctively temporal would be a serious blow to hopes for a theoretically unified treatment of the sensory qualities.2 For all these reasons, quite a lot seems to hang on the question of the temporality of sounds
Coval, Sam C. (1963). Persons and sounds. Philosophical Quarterly 13 (January):26-32.   (Google | More links)
Kulvicki, John (2008). The nature of noise. Philosophers' Imprint 8 (11):1-16.   (Google)
Abstract: There is a growing consensus in the philosophical literature that sounds differ rather profoundly from colors. Colors are qualities, while sounds are particulars of some sort or other, such as events or pressure waves. A key motivation for this is that sounds seem to be transient, to evolve over time, to begin and end, while colors seem like stable qualities of objects' surfaces. I argue that sounds are indeed, like colors, stable qualities of objects. Sounds are not transient, and they do not seem to be, even though they are typically perceived transiently. In particular, sounds are dispositions of objects to vibrate in response to being stimulated. This stable property view of sounds aligns nicely with, and owes an inspirational debt to, reflectance physicalist accounts of color. The upshot is a unified picture of colors, sounds, and the perception thereof
Locke, Don (1961). Strawson's auditory universe. Philosophical Review 70 (October):518-532.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Macpherson, Fiona (1999). Perfect pitch and the content of experience. Philosophy and Anthropology 3 (2).   (Google | More links)
Muldoon, Mark S. (1996). Silence revisited: Taking the sight out of auditory qualities. Review of Metaphysics 50 (2):275-298.   (Google)
Nudds, Matthew (2001). Experiencing the production of sounds. European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2):210-229.   (Cited by 11 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Whether or not we would be happy to do without sounds, the idea that our expe- rience of sounds is of things which are distinct from the world of material objects can seem compelling. All you have to do to confirm it is close your eyes and reflect on the character of your auditory experience
Nudds, Matthew & O'Callaghan, Casey (eds.) (2010). Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Audition. In John Symons & Paco Calvo (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology.   (Google)
Abstract: Provides the theoretical and psychological framework to the philosophy of sounds and audition. I address auditory scene analysis, spatial hearing, the audible qualities, and cross-modal interactions.
O'Callaghan, Casey (2007). Echoes. The Monist 90 (3):403-414.   (Google)
Abstract: Echo experiences are illusory experiences of ordinary primary sounds. Just as there is no new object that we see at the surface of a mirror, there is no new sound that we hear at a reflecting surface. The sound that we hear as an echo just is the original primary sound, though its perception involves illusions of place, time, and qualities. The case of echoes need not force us to adopt a conception according to which sounds are persisting object-like particulars that travel through space.
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Introduction: The Philosophy of Sounds and Auditory Perception. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). Pitch.   (Google)
Abstract: Some sounds have pitch, some do not. A tuba’s notes are lower pitched than a flute’s, but the fuzz from an untuned radio has no discernible pitch. Pitch is an attribute in virtue of which sounds that possess it can be ordered from “low” to “high”. Given how audition works, physics has taught us that frequency determines what pitch a sound auditorily appears to have
O'Callaghan, Casey (2010). Perceiving the locations of sounds. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: Frequently, we learn of the locations of things and events in our environment by means of hearing. Hearing, I argue, is a locational mode of perceiving with a robustly spatial nature. I defend three proposals. First, audition furnishes information about the locations of things and events in one's environment because auditory experience itself is spatial. Audition represents space. Second, we hear the locations of things and events by or in hearing locational information about their sounds. Third, we auditorily experience sounds themselves as having relatively stable distal locations. I reject skepticism about spatial audition tracing to Strawson's Individuals, and suggest that spatial audition supports the view that audition and vision share a dimension of perceptual content
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Sounds. In Timothy J. Bayne, Axel Cleeremans & P. Wilken (eds.), Oxford Companion to Consciousness. Oup.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). Sounds and events. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays.   (Google)
Abstract: I argue that sounds are best conceived not as pressure waves that travel through a medium, nor as physical properties of the objects ordinarily thought to be the sources of sounds, but rather as events of a certain kind. Sounds are particular events in which a surrounding medium is disturbed or set into wavelike motion by the activities of a body or interacting bodies. This Event View of sounds provides for a uni- ?ed perceptual account of several pervasive sound phenomena, including transmission through barriers, constructive and destructive interference, and echoes
O'Callaghan, Casey (2007). Sounds: A Philosophical Theory. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: ... ISBN0199215928 ... Abstract: Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science traditionally has focused on a visual model. This book presents a systematic treatment of sounds and auditory experience. It demonstrates how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships among multiple sense modalities enriches our understanding of perception. It articulates the central questions that comprise the philosophy of sound, and proposes a novel theory of sounds and their perception. Against the widely accepted philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, and against the scientific view that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium such as air or water, the book argues that sounds are events in which objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium. This does not imply that sounds propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near their sources. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time and situates sounds in the world. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities. It also provides a powerful account of echoes, interference, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories. Investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. This book concludes by arguing that a surprising class of cross-modal perceptual illusions demonstrates that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that a visuocentric model for theorizing about perception — according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry — ought to be abandoned.
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). The argument from vacuums.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: A commonly shared assumption is that there are no sounds in vacuums. If the standard science-based view that sounds are waves that exist in and travel through a medium such as air or water is correct, then vacuums hold no sounds and the shared assumption is true. Recently, however, several philosophers (Pasnau 1999, 2000; Casati and Dokic 1994) have argued against the received view. These authors have claimed, primarily on perceptual grounds, that sounds are properties of their sources (Pasnau 1999) or events located at their sources. According to Pasnau (1999), sounds are either identical with or supervene upon the the vibrations of objects ordinarily thought to make or produce sounds. For Casati and Dokic (1994), sounds are events constituted by such vibrations. These views share the consequence that sounds can exist in vacuums; sounds occur when an object vibrates alone in the absence of a surrounding medium. I do not wish here to directly engage the debate over whether sounds are properties or events in the medium or in the sources. Instead, I wish to indirectly address it by urging that the question of whether there could be sounds in vacuums should be decided neither by simply consulting common sense nor by reading off the consequences of one’s favorite metaphysical theory of sounds. I argue that even independent of explicit theoretical commitments concerning the nature of
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). The locations of sounds.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: When you hear the sound of a car drive by on the street outside your window, you learn not only whether the car has a hole in its muffler or has squealing brakes. You also learn something about the location of the car because hearing furnishes information about the locations of its objects. By listening, you learn not only about the character of the things and happenings around you, but also about where they are in the surrounding environment. The question I wish to address is this: Do we hear the locations of sounds themselves, or do we merely hear the locations of sound sources—the objects and events that produce sounds? I shall argue that frequently we do hear the locations of sounds themselves, and that this is required in order to hear and learn the locations of sound-producing sources. This feature of auditory experience has consequences for the metaphysics of sounds. If we veridically hear the locations of sounds, then the most prominent conception of sounds is mistaken and we must revise our ontology
O'Callaghan, Casey (2009). The world of sound. The Philosophers' Magazine.   (Google)
O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1957). The location of sound. Mind 66 (October):471-490.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Pasnau, Robert (2000). Sensible qualities: The case of sound. Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (1):27-40.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Pasnau, Robert (1999). What is sound? Philosophical Quarterly 50 (196):309-24.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Phillips, Ian (forthcoming). Hallucinating silence. In Dimitri Platchias & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Hallucination. MIT Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Audrey … lives in a noisy environment and so has never experienced silence. Audrey … wants to experience silence and so constructs a soundproof chamber. When she enters the chamber, Audrey learns something: what it is like to hear silence. … Audrey is introspecting an absence of auditory sensations while perceiving an absence of sound … an auditory gap that originates through healthy hearing of an external state of silence. (271)
Rosenberg, Jay F. (1978). On Strawson: Sounds, skepticism, and necessity. Philosophia 8 (November):405-419.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Sorensen, Roy A. (2009). Hearing silence: The perception and introspection of absences. In Matthew Nudds & Casey O'Callaghan (eds.), Sounds and Perception. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: in Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, ed. by Matthew Nudds and Casey O’Callaghan (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2008)
Strawson, P. F. (1959). Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. Routledge.   (Google)

3.6b Primary and Secondary Qualities

Allen, Keith (2008). Mechanism, resemblance and secondary qualities: From Descartes to Locke. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2):273 – 291.   (Google)
Armstrong, David M. (1987). Smart and the secondary qualities. In Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan & J. Norman (eds.), Metaphysics And Morality. Blackwell.   (Cited by 26 | Google)
Averill, Edward W. (1982). The primary-secondary quality distinction. Philosophical Review 91 (July):343-362.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Beck, Lewis White (1946). Secondary quality. Journal of Philosophy 43 (October):599-609.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Bennett, Jonathan (1965). Substance, reality, and primary qualities. American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (January):1-17.   (Cited by 19 | Google)
Blackburn, Simon W. (1993). Circles, finks, smells and biconditionals. Philosophical Perspectives 7:259-279.   (Cited by 18 | Google | More links)
Brittan Jr, Gordon G. (1969). Measurability, commonsensibility, and primary qualities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 47 (1):15 – 24.   (Google | More links)
Brooks, D. H. M. (1992). Secondary qualities and representation. Analysis 52 (3):174-179.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Charlesworth, Maurice (1987). Hacker on secondary qualities. Mind 76 (July):386-391.   (Google | More links)
Cummins, Phillip D. (1963). Perceptual relativity and ideas in the mind. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24 (December):202-214.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Dicker, Georges (1977). Primary and secondary qualities: A proposed modification of the Lockean account. Southern Journal of Philosophy 15:457-471.   (Google)
Egan, Andy (2006). Secondary qualities and self-location. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (1):97-119.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Colors aren't as real as shapes. Shapes are full?fledged qualities of things in themselves, independent of how they're perceived and by whom. Colors aren't. Colors are merely qualities of things as they are for us, and the colors of things depend on who is perceiving them. When we take the fully objective view of the world, things keep their shapes, but the colors fall away, revealed as the mere artifacts of our own subjective, parochial perspective on the world that they are
Fischer, Eugen (2009). Philosophical pictures and secondary qualities. Synthese 171 (1).   (Google)
Abstract: The paper presents a novel account of nature and genesis of some philosophical problems, which vindicates a new approach to an arguably central and extensive class of such problems: The paper develops the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘philosophical pictures’ with the help of some notions adapted from metaphor research in cognitive linguistics and from work on unintentional analogical reasoning in cognitive psychology. The paper shows that adherence to such pictures systematically leads to the formulation of unwarranted claims, ill-motivated problems, and pointless theories. To do so, the paper proceeds from a case-study on a lastingly influential development in early modern philosophy: the adoption of the doctrine of secondary qualities, and its principal consequences. The findings motivate a new approach to an arguably extensive and important class of philosophical problems: to the problems we raise in the grip of philosophical pictures
Frohlich, Fanchon (1959). Primary qualities in physical explanation. Mind 68 (April):209-217.   (Google | More links)
Gibson, James J. (1969). Are there sensory qualities of objects? Synthese 19 (April):408-409.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Holman, Emmett (2006). Dualism and secondary quality eliminativism. Philosophical Studies 128:229--56.   (Google)
Abstract: Frank Jackson formulated his knowledge argument as an argument for dualism. In this paper I show how the argument can be modified to also establish the irreducibility of the secondary qualities to the properties of physical theory, and ultimately "secondary quality eliminativism"- the view that the secondary qualities are physically uninstantiated.
Kneale, William C. (1951). Sensation and the physical world. Philosophical Quarterly 1 (January):109-126.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Kulvicki, John (2005). Perceptual content, information, and the primary/secondary quality distinction. Philosophical Studies 122 (2):103-131.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Our perceptual systems make information about the world available to our cognitive faculties. We come to think about the colors and shapes of objects because we are built somehow to register the instantiation of these properties around us. Just how we register the presence of properties and come to think about them is one of the central problems with understanding perceptual cognition. Another problem in the philosophy of perception concerns the nature of the properties whose presence we register. Among the perceptible properties are colors and shapes, for example, and there is a long philosophical tradition of drawing and refusing to draw metaphysical distinctions between them. This paper makes a claim about the information-theoretic approach to perceptual cognition in order to argue for a fundamentally epistemological distinction between colors and shapes. What makes shapes and colors seem so different to us is how we carry information about their presence around us. In particular, we can come to know more about the shapes on the basis of perceiving them than we can come to know about the colors. One interesting feature of how this distinction is drawn is that it partially vindicates Locke’s claim that our ideas of primary qualities like shapes resemble them in ways our ideas of colors do not
Levin, Janet (1987). Physicalism and the subjectivity of secondary qualities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (December):400-411.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Lewis, Douglas (1970). Some problems of perceptions. Philosophy of Science 37 (March):100-113.   (Google | More links)
Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1913). Secondary qualities and subjectivity. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (8):214-218.   (Google | More links)
Matthen, Mohan (2010). Color Experience: A Semantic Theory. In Jonathan Cohen & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science. MIT Press.   (Google)
Abstract: What is the relationship between color experience and color? Here, I defend the view that it is semantic: color experience denotes color in a code innately known by the perceiver. This semantic theory contrasts with a variety of theories according to which color is defined as the cause of color experience (in a special set of circumstances). It also contrasts with primary quality theories of color, which treat color as a physical quantity. I argue that the semantic theory better accounts for the kinds of knowledge we have regarding both the color of objects that we see and of the colors themselves.
McGinn, Colin (1983). The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities And Indexical Thoughts. Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 100 | Google)
Abstract: This book investigates the subjective and objective representations of the world, developing analogies between secondary qualities and indexical thoughts and arguing that subjective representations are ineliminable. Throughout, McGinn brings together historical and contemporary discussions to illuminate old problems in a novel way
McKitrick, Jennifer (2002). Reid's foundation for the primary/secondary quality distinction. Philosophical Quarterly 52 (209):478-494.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
McNaughton, David (1984). McGinn on experience of primary and secondary qualities. Analysis 44 (2):78-80.   (Google)
Millar, Roderick (1983). Valberg's secondary qualities. Philosophy 58 (January):107-109.   (Google)
Miscevic, Nenad (2001). Painting the manifest picture. Acta Analytica 16 (26):75-96.   (Google)
Miscevic, Nenad (1997). Secondary and tertiary qualities: Semantics and response--dependence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4):363-379.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Secondary and tertiary qualities are plausibly explained along dispositionalist lines. Concepts of such qualities are response-dependent, denoting properties that are partly mind/brain-dependent. Unfortunately, dispositionalism is hard to square with extant versions of naturalistic theories of representation. In particular the standard naturalistic (indicational) semantics of representational content cannot handle the question from either the subjectivist or the dispositional viewpoint. The paper proposes a remedy: the problem can be solved in a smooth and natural way, provided that we revise and supplement the standard semantics in a rather obvious fashion, by allowing the mind/brain-involving properties to figure within it
Moked, Gabriel (1988). Particles And Ideas: Bishop Berkeley's Corpuscularian Philosophy. Clarendon Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Abstract: Demonstrating that in George Berkeley's last major work, Siris, Berkeley had converted to a belief in the usefulness of the concept and existence of minute particles, Moked here posits that Berkeley developed a highly original brand of corpuscularian physics
Nadler, Steven M. (1990). Berkeley's ideas and the primary/secondary distinction. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1):47-61.   (Google)
Narski, Igor (1974). The question of the objective content of sensations. Ajatus 36:44-74.   (Google)
Novitz, David (1975). Primary and secondary qualities: A return to fundamentals. Philosophical Papers 4 (October):89-104.   (Google)
Olding, A. (1968). Armstrong, Smart and the ontological status of secondary qualities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 46 (1):52 – 64.   (Google)
O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1986). Secondary qualities. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (July):153-171.   (Google)
Pettit, P. (1991). Realism and response-dependence. Mind 100 (4):587-626.   (Cited by 56 | Google | More links)
Railton, Peter A. (1998). Red, bitter, good. In European Review of Philosophy, Volume 3: Response-Dependence. Stanford: CSLI Publications.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Rickless, Samuel C. (1997). Locke on primary and secondary qualities. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (3):297-319.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that Book II, Chapter viii of Locke' Essay is a unified, self-consistent whole, and that the appearance of inconsistency is due largely to anachronistic misreadings and misunderstandings. The key to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is that the former are, while the latter are not, real properties, i.e., properties that exist in bodies independently of being perceived. Once the distinction is properly understood, it becomes clear that Locke's arguments for it are simple, valid and (in one case) persuasive as well
Sandoe, Peter (1988). Secondary qualities--subjective and intrinsic. Theoria 54:200-219.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Smith, A. D. (1990). Of primary and secondary qualities. Philosophical Review 99 (2):221-254.   (Cited by 13 | Google | More links)
Tully, R. E. (1976). Reduction and secondary qualities. Mind 85 (July):351-370.   (Google | More links)
Valberg, E. (1980). A theory of secondary qualities. Philosophy 55 (October):437-453.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Vision, Gerald (1982). Primary and secondary qualities: An essay in epistemology. Erkenntnis 17 (March):135-170.   (Google | More links)
Abstract:   It seems almost a truism to say that colour is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of colour. So far as I know, Thomas Young was the first who, starting from the well-known fact that there are three primary colours, sought for the explanation of this fact, not in the nature of light, but in the constitution of man. (James Clerk Maxwell, p. 267.)It is doubtless scientific to disregard certain aspects when we work; but to urge that therefore such aspects are not fact, and that what we use without them is an independent real thing-this is barbarous metaphysics. (F. H. Bradley, p. 15.)
Williams, C. J. F. (1969). Are primary qualities qualities? Philosophical Quarterly 19 (October):310-323.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Wright, C. (1988). Moral values, projection, and secondary qualities. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 63:1-26.   (Cited by 44 | Google)

3.6c Perceptual Qualities, Misc

Blatti, Stephan (2006). No Impediment to Solidity as Impediment. Metaphysica 7 (1):35-41.   (Google)
Abstract: ABSTRACT: Quassim Cassam (1997) accepts the standard account of solidity, according to which, if S feels x as solid, then S feels x as an imediment to his movement. Recently, Martin Fricke and Paul Snowdon (2003) have presented a battery of counter-examples designed to show that S may feel x as solid and as exerting a pressure that supports or facilitates his movement. In this note, I defend the standard account against Fricke and Snowdon’s attack. Integral to this defense is a distinction between two (sometimes overlapping) ways in which S may feel x as an impediment to his movement: as an influence on a movement state of S, or as an obstacle to the achievement of a goal that requires movement. After demonstrating the primacy of the former sense, I argue that Fricke and Snowdon’s counter-examples only undermine a version of the standard account that glosses ‘impediment’ as an obstacle to the achievement of a goal that requires movement.
Bradley McGilvary, Evander (1933). Perceptual and memory perspectives. Journal of Philosophy 30 (12):309-330.   (Google | More links)
Broughton, Lynne M. (1981). Quine's 'quality space'. Dialectica 35:291-302.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Churchland, Patricia S. (1976). How Quine perceives perceptual similarity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (June):251-255.   (Google)
Clement, W. C. (1956). Quality orders. Mind 65 (April):184-199.   (Google | More links)
Egan, Andy (2006). Appearance properties? Noûs 40 (3):495-521.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Intentionalism is the view that the phenomenal character of an experience is wholly determined by its representational content is very attractive. Unfortunately, it is in conflict with some quite robust intuitions about the possibility of phenomenal spectrum inversion without misrepresentation. Faced with such a problem, there are the usual three options: reject intentionalism, discount the intuitions and deny that spectrum inversion without misrepresentation is possible, or find a way to reconcile the two by dissolving the apparent conflict. Sydney Shoemaker's (1994) introduction of appearance properties is a particularly ingenious way of pursuing the third strategy, by maintaining that there is a representational difference between the phenomenally spectrum-inverted subjects.2 In introducing appearance properties, Shoemaker does two things: he identifies a theoretical role for some family of properties to play, and he suggests a family of properties as candidates to play that role. I'll argue that his proposed candidates do not play the role as well as we would like, suggest some new candidates, and argue that they do a better job
Goldman, Alan H. (1975). Criteriological arguments in perception. Mind 84 (January):102-105.   (Google | More links)
Hacker, P. M. S. (1991). Appearance and Reality: A Philosophical Investigation Into Perception and Perceptual Qualities. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 34 | Google)
Jackson, Frank (1973). Do material things have non-physical properties? Personalist 54:105-110.   (Google)
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). Pitch.   (Google)
Abstract: Some sounds have pitch, some do not. A tuba’s notes are lower pitched than a flute’s, but the fuzz from an untuned radio has no discernible pitch. Pitch is an attribute in virtue of which sounds that possess it can be ordered from “low” to “high”. Given how audition works, physics has taught us that frequency determines what pitch a sound auditorily appears to have
O'Callaghan, Casey (ms). The argument from vacuums.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: A commonly shared assumption is that there are no sounds in vacuums. If the standard science-based view that sounds are waves that exist in and travel through a medium such as air or water is correct, then vacuums hold no sounds and the shared assumption is true. Recently, however, several philosophers (Pasnau 1999, 2000; Casati and Dokic 1994) have argued against the received view. These authors have claimed, primarily on perceptual grounds, that sounds are properties of their sources (Pasnau 1999) or events located at their sources. According to Pasnau (1999), sounds are either identical with or supervene upon the the vibrations of objects ordinarily thought to make or produce sounds. For Casati and Dokic (1994), sounds are events constituted by such vibrations. These views share the consequence that sounds can exist in vacuums; sounds occur when an object vibrates alone in the absence of a surrounding medium. I do not wish here to directly engage the debate over whether sounds are properties or events in the medium or in the sources. Instead, I wish to indirectly address it by urging that the question of whether there could be sounds in vacuums should be decided neither by simply consulting common sense nor by reading off the consequences of one’s favorite metaphysical theory of sounds. I argue that even independent of explicit theoretical commitments concerning the nature of
Pluhar, Evelyn Begley (1987). The perceptual and physical worlds. Philosophical Studies 31:228-240.   (Google)

3.6d Discriminability

Burgess, John A. (1990). Phenomenal qualities and the nontransitivity of matching. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (2):206-220.   (Google | More links)
Chuard, Philippe (2007). Indiscriminable shades and demonstrative concepts. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):277 – 306.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Conceptualists have it that the representational content of perceptual experience is determined by the concepts a subject applies in having such an experience. Conceptualists like Bill Brewer [1999] and John McDowell [1994] have laid particular emphasis on demonstrative concepts in trying to account for the fact that subjects can perceive and discriminate very many specific shades of colour in experience. Against this, it has been objected that such demonstrative concepts have incoherent conditions of extension and/or of individuation, due to the fact that chromatic indiscriminability is non-transitive. In this paper, I consider three different versions of this objection and show why each fails
Chuard, Philippe & Corry, Richard (ms). Looks non-transitive!   (Google)
Abstract: Suppose you are presented with three red objects. You are then asked to take a careful look at each possible pair of objects, and to decide whether or not their members look chromatically the same. You carry out the instructions thoroughly, and the following propositions sum up the results of your empirical investigation:
i. red object #1 looks the same in colour as red object #2.
ii. red object #2 looks the same in colour as red object #3
Chuard, Philippe (2010). Non-transitive looks & fallibilism. Philosophical Studies 149 (2).   (Google)
Abstract: Fallibilists about looks deny that the relation of looking the same as is non-transitive. Regarding familiar examples of coloured patches suggesting that such a relation is non-transitive, they argue that, in fact, indiscriminable adjacent patches may well look different, despite their perceptual indiscriminability: it’s just that we cannot notice the relevant differences in the chromatic appearances of such patches. In this paper, I present an argument that fallibilism about looks requires commitment to an empirically false consequence. To succeed in deflecting putative cases of non-transitivity, fallibilists would have to claim that there can’t be any perceptual limitations of any kind on human chromatic discrimination. But there are good reasons to think such limitations exist
Clark, Austen (1992). Sensory Qualities. Clarendon.   (Cited by 177 | Annotation | Google)
Abstract: Drawing on work in psychophysics, psychometrics, and sensory neurophysiology, Clark analyzes the character and defends the integrity of psychophysical explanations of qualitative facts, arguing that the structure of such explanations is sound and potentially successful
Cohen, Ariel (2008). Indiscriminability as indiscernibility by default. Studia Logica 90 (3).   (Google)
Abstract: Most solutions to the sorites reject its major premise, i.e. the quantified conditional . This rejection appears to imply a discrimination between two elements that are supposed to be indiscriminable. Thus, the puzzle of the sorites involves in a fundamental way the notion of indiscriminability. This paper analyzes this relation and formalizes it, in a way that makes the rejection of the major premise more palatable. The intuitive idea is that we consider two elements indiscriminable by default, i.e. unless we know some information that discriminates between them. Specifically, following Rough Set Theory, two elements are defined to be indiscernible if they agree on the vague property in question. Then, a is defined to be indiscriminable from b if a is indiscernible by default from b . That is to say, a is indiscriminable from b if it is consistent to assume that a and b agree on the relevant vague property
Danto, Arthur C. (1999). Indiscernibility and perception: A reply to Joseph Margolis. British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (4):321-329.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
De Clercq, Rafael & Horsten, Leon (2004). Perceptual indiscriminability: In defence of Wright's proof. Philosophical Quarterly 54 (216):439-444.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Deutsch, Max (2005). Intentionalism and intransitivity. Synthese 144 (1):1-22.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue in this paper that the existence of sorites series of color patches – series of color patches arranged so that the patches on each end look different in color though no two adjacent patches do – shows that the relation of same phenomenal charac­ter as is not a transitive relation. I then argue that the intransitivity of same phenomenal character as conflicts with certain versions of intentionalism, the view that an experiences phenomenal character is exhausted, or fully determined by its intentional content. Lastly, I consider various objections to the arguments and reply to them
Drai, Dalia (2007). The phenomenal sorites and response dependence. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4):619 – 631.   (Google)
Abstract: Since Nelson Goodman 1951, the assumption that phenomenal indiscriminability is non-transitive is taken generally for granted. Moreover, this assumption was used (by Goodman 1951, Travis 1985, Dummett 1975 and others) to argue against the existence or coherence of subjective and/or observational properties. Recently, however, the assumption has been questioned [Fara 2001] and I agree with Fara that the assumption is much more problematic than was thought, partly because it is not clear what is meant by the relation of phenomenal indiscriminability, and partly because it is not clear how to interpret ideas such as continuous change, and the limitations of our power of perceptual discrimination. In this paper I will bypass the question of the transitivity of phenomenal indiscriminability. I will use only the assumption about the existence (or even the possibility of existence) of a phenomenal sorites. This assumption is less controversial, and accepted (at least the version I will use) by opponents and defenders of transitivity alike. I will argue that the incoherence of 'red' (as response-dependent or purely observational) can be derived without committing ourselves to a view on the question of transitivity, and I will use this incoherence, to argue against the account of 'red' as a response-dependent concept
Farkas, Katalin (2006). Indiscriminability and the sameness of appearance. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2):39-59.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Abstract: How exactly should the relation between a veridical perception and a corresponding hallucination be understood? I argue that the epistemic notion of ‘indiscriminability’, understood as lacking evidence for the distinctness of things, is not suitable for defining this relation. Instead, we should say that a hallucination and a veridical perception involve the same phenomenal properties. This has further consequences for attempts to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of phenomenal properties in terms of indiscriminability, and for considerations about the phenomenal sorites.
Goldberg, Sanford C. (2006). Brown on self-knowledge and discriminability. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3):301�314.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In her recent book Anti-Individualism and Knowledge, Jessica Brown has presented a novel answer to the self-knowledge achievement problem facing the proponent of anti-individualism. She argues that her answer is to be preferred to the traditional answer (based on Burge, 1988a). Here I present three objections to the claim that her proposed answer is to be preferred. The significance of these objections lies in what they tell us about the nature of the sort of knowledge that is in dispute. Perhaps the most important lesson I draw from this discussion is that, given the nature of knowledge of one's own thoughts, discriminability (from relevant alternatives) is not a condition on knowledge as such
Graff, Delia (2001). Phenomenal continua and the sorites. Mind 110 (440):905-935.   (Cited by 24 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I argue that, contrary to widespread philosophical opinion, phenomenal indiscriminability is transitive. For if it were not transitive, we would be precluded from accepting the truisms that if two things look the same then the way they look is the same and that if two things look the same then if one looks red, so does the other. Nevertheless, it has seemed obvious to many philosophers (e.g. Goodman, Armstrong and Dummett) that phenomenal indiscriminability is not transitive; and, moreover, that this non-transitivity is straightforwardly revealed to us in experience. I show this thought to be wrong. All inferences from the character of our experience to the non-transitivity of indiscriminability involve either a misunderstanding of continuity, a mistaken interpretation of the idea that we have limited powers of discrimination, or tendentious claims about what our experience is really like; or such inferences are based on inadequately supported premisses, which though individually plausible are jointly implausible
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (eds.) (2008). Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Hanson, Norwood Russell (1960). On having the same visual experiences. Mind 69 (July):340-350.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Hellie, Benj (2010). An externalist's guide to inner experience. In Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes /seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors/. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be "phenomenally" the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!

Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) /reflective indiscriminability/. I build a "displaced perception" account of reflection on which indiscriminability stems from shared "qualia". Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does /seeing/; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its "transparency"; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment.

The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up.
Hellie, Benj (2005). Noise and perceptual indiscriminability. Mind 114 (455):481-508.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Perception represents colors inexactly. This inexactness results from phenomenally manifest noise, and results in apparent violations of the transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. Whether these violations are genuine depends on what is meant by 'transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability'.
Jackson, Frank & Pinkerton, R. J. (1973). On an argument against sensory items. Mind 82 (326):269-72.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Lewis, Carroll (1973). On undetectable differences in sensations. Analysis 33 (June):193-194.   (Google)
Linsky, Bernard (1984). Phenomenal qualities and the identity of indistinguishables. Synthese 59 (June):363-380.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Haddock, Adrian & Macpherson, Fiona (2008). Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivism. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
Martin, Michael G. F. (2004). The limits of self-awareness. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):37-89.   (Cited by 25 | Google | More links)
Mills, Eugene O. (2002). Fallibility and the phenomenal sorites. Noûs 36 (3):384-407.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links)
Pelling, Charlie (2007). Conceptualism and the (supposed) non-transitivity of colour indiscriminability. Philosophical Studies 134 (2).   (Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that those who accept the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception should reject the traditional view that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive. I start by outlining the general strategy that conceptualists have adopted in response to the familiar ‘fineness of grain’ objection, and I show why a commitment to what I call the indiscriminability claim seems to form a natural part of this strategy. I then show how together, the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim –the claim that colour indiscriminability is non-transitive –entail a further, suspicious-looking claim that I call the problematic claim. My argument then splits into two parts. In the first part, I show why the conceptualist does indeed need to reject the problematic claim. Given that this claim is jointly entailed by the indiscriminability claim and the non-transitivity claim, the conceptualist is then left with a straight choice: reject the indiscriminability claim, or reject the non-transitivity claim. In the second part, I then explain why the conceptualist should choose the latter option
Pelling, Charlie (forthcoming). Characterizing hallucination epistemically. Synthese.   (Google)
Abstract: According to the epistemic theory of hallucination, the fundamental psychological nature of a hallucinatory experience is constituted by its being ‘introspectively indiscriminable’, in some sense, from a veridical experience of a corresponding type. How is the notion of introspective indiscriminability to which the epistemic theory appeals best construed? Following M. G. F. Martin, the standard assumption is that the notion should be construed in terms of negative epistemics: in particular, it is assumed that the notion should be explained in terms of the impossibility that a hallucinator might possess a certain type of knowledge on a certain basis. I argue that the standard assumption is mistaken. I argue that the relevant notion of introspective indiscriminability is better construed in terms of positive epistemics: in particular, I argue that the notion is better explained by reference to the fact that it would be rational for a hallucinator positively to make a certain type of judgement, were that judgement made on a certain basis
Pelling, Charles (2008). Exactness, inexactness, and the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. Synthese 164 (2).   (Google)
Abstract:  I defend, to a certain extent, the traditional view that perceptual indiscriminability is non-transitive. The argument proceeds by considering important recent work by Benj Hellie: Hellie argues that colour perception represents ‘inexactly’, and that this results in violations of the transitivity of colour indiscriminability. I show that Hellie’s argument remains inconclusive, since he does not demonstrate conclusively that colour perception really does represent inexactly. My own argument for the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability uses inexactness instead as one horn of a dilemma: the key idea is that there is a class of perceptual experiences which might plausibly be supposed either to represent inexactly or to represent exactly—but which demonstrate the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability either way
Perin, Casey (2005). Academic arguments for the indiscernibility thesis. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (4):493-517.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: The Academics offered an argument from twins or perceptually indiscernible objects and an argument from dreams or madness in support of the indiscernibility thesis: that every true perceptual impression is such that some false impression just like it is possible. I claim that these arguments, unlike modern sceptical arguments, are supposed to establish mere counterfactual rather than epistemic possibilities. They purport to show that for any true perceptual impression j, there are a number of alternative causal histories j might have had which would not have resulted in any change in the way in which j represents its object
Phillips, Ian (ms). Indiscriminability and experience of change.   (Google)
Quine, W. V. (1976). Grades of discriminability. Journal of Philosophy 73 (5):113-116.   (Google | More links)
Raffman, Diana (2000). Is perceptual indiscriminability nontransitive? Philosophical Topics 28 (1):153-75.   (Google)
Abstract: It is widely supposed that one family of sorites paradoxes, perhaps the most perplexing versions of the puzzle, owe at least in part to the nontransitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. To a first approximation, perceptual indiscriminability is the relationship obtaining among objects (stimuli) that appear identical in some perceptual respect—for example hue, or pitch, or texture. Indiscriminable objects look the same, or sound the same, or feel the same. Received wisdom has it that there are or could be series of objects _o_1…_o_n in which _o_1 and _o_2 are indiscriminable, _o_2 and _o_3 are indiscriminable, etc., and _o_n-1 and_ o_n are indiscriminable, but _o_1 and _o_n are discriminably different. For example, there could be a series of colored patches so ordered that each patch looks the same in hue as its immediate neighbors but the whole progresses from a clear case of red to a clear case of orange. On the assumption that an observational word like ‘red’ applies to both if to either of a pair of perceptually indiscriminable items, the absurd conclusion of the sorites comes into view. Crispin Wright explains
Raffman, Diana (ms). Nontransitivity, Indiscriminability, and Looking the Same.   (Google)
Raffman, Diana (forthcoming). Vagueness and observationality. In Giuseppina Ronzitti (ed.), Vagueness: A Guide. Springer.   (Google)
Abstract: Of the many families of words that are thought to be vague, so-called observational predicates may be both the most fascinating and the most confounding. Roughly, observational predicates are terms that apply to objects on the basis of how those objects appear to us perceptually speaking. ‘Red’, ‘loud’, ‘sweet’, ‘acrid’, and ‘smooth’ are good examples. Delia Graff explains that a “predicate is observational just in case its applicability to an object (given a fixed context of evaluation) depends only on the way that object appears” (2001, 3). By the same token observational predicates are, as Crispin Wright observes, terms “whose senses are taught entirely by ostension” (1976). Like other vague predicates, observational words appear to generate sorites paradoxes. Consider for example a series of 20 colored patches progressing from a clearly red one to a clearly orange one, so ordered that each patch is just noticeably different in hue from the one before. The following argument then seems forced upon us: (1) Patch #1 is red. (2) Any patch that differs only slightly in hue from a red patch is itself red. (3) Therefore patch #20 is red. Premise (2) expresses what Wright has called the tolerance of ‘red’: the application of the predicate tolerates small changes in a decisive parameter (here, hue). Of course, most vague predicates, hence most versions of the sorites, are not observational. For instance, given a series of..
Shoemaker, Sydney (1975). Phenomenal similarity. Critica 7 (October):3-37.   (Cited by 5 | Annotation | Google)
Siegel, Susanna (2004). Indiscriminability and the phenomenal. Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3):91-112.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links)
Siegel, Susanna (2008). The Epistemic Conception of Hallucination. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action and Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Early formulations of disjunctivism about perception refused to give any positive account of the nature of hallucination, beyond the uncontroversial fact that they can in some sense seem to the same to the subject as veridical perceptions. Recently, some disjunctivists have attempt to account for hallucination in purely epistemic terms, by developing detailed account of what it is for a hallucinaton to be indiscriminable from a veridical perception. In this paper I argue that the prospects for purely epistemic treatments of hallucinations are dim, and that this undermines the case for disjunctivism
Smith, A. D. (2008). Disjunctivism and discriminability. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Van Quine, Wilard (1976). Grades of discriminability. Journal of Philosophy 73:113--6.   (Google)
Williamson, Timothy (1990). Identity and Discrimination. Blackwell.   (Cited by 44 | Google)

3.7 Color

Akins, Kathleen & Hahn, Martin (2000). The peculiarity of color. In Color Perception: Philosophical, Psychological, Artistic, and Computational Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 8 | Google)
Albahari, Miri (1999). Objective colours and evolutionary value: A reply to Dedrick. Dialogue 38:99-108.   (Google)
Armstrong, David M. (1993). Reply to Campbell. In John Bacon, Keith Campbell & Lloyd Reinhardt (eds.), Ontology, Causality and Mind: Essays in Honour of D M Armstrong. New York: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Averill, Edward W. (1985). Color and the anthropocentric problem. Journal of Philosophy 82 (June):281-303.   (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)
Averill, Edward W. (2005). Toward a projectivist account of color. Journal of Philosophy 102 (5):217-34.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Bigelow, John & Pargetter, Robert (1990). Colouring in the world. Mind 99 (394):279-88.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Broackes, Justin (1997). The Nature of Colour. Routledge.   (Google)
Campbell, K. (1969). Colours. In R. Brown & C. D. Rollins (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy in Australia. Humanities Press.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Campbell, John (2006). Manipulating colour: Pounding an Almond. In T. S. Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oup.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: It seems a compelling idea that experience of colour plays some role in our having concepts of the various colours, but in trying to explain the role experience plays the first thing we have to describe is what sort of colour experience matters here. I will argue that the kind of experience that matters is conscious attention to the colours of objects as an aspect of them on which direct intervention is selectively possible. As I will explain this idea, it is a matter of being able to use experience to inform linguistic or conceptual thought about what would happen were there to be various interventions on an object. Against this background, I will review Locke’s fundamental argument that since we can change the colour of an almond by pounding it, there must be an error embodied in our ordinary concepts of colour: there is no such thing as intervening directly on the colour of an object. The analysis I present brings out the force of Locke’s argument. But I will propose a vindication of our commonsense conception of colour as an aspect of objects on which direct intervention is selectively possible
Campbell, K. (1982). The implications of land's theory of colour vision. In L. Jonathan Cohen (ed.), Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Elsevier.   (Cited by 6 | Google)
Carlson, Elof A. (2002). Color perception: An ongoing convergence of reductionism and phenomenology. In Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Vol LXXVII. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.   (Google)
McFarland, Duncan & Miller, Alexander (2000). Disjunctions, programming, and the australian view of colour. Analysis 60 (2):209–212.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Dwyer, Philip (2002). Stroud, colour, and metaphysical satisfaction. Dialogue 41 (3):569-587.   (Google)
Foti, Veronique M. (1990). The dimension of color. International Studies in Philosophy 22:13-28.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Franklin, C. L. (1894). Professor Ebbinghaus' theory of colour vision. Mind 3 (9):98-104.   (Google | More links)
Gellatly, Angus (2002). Color perception: Processing of wavelength information and conscious experience of color. In Barbara Saunders & Jaap Van Brakel (eds.), Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color: Anthropological and Historiographic Perspectives. University Press of America.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Hardin, C. L. (1984). A new look at color. American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (April):125-33.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Harvey, J. (1992). Challenging the obvious: The logic of color concepts. Philosophia 21 (3-4):277-94.   (Google | More links)
Hardin, C. L. (1989). Idle colors and busy spectra. Analysis 49 (January):47-8.   (Google)
Hardin, C. L. (1988). Phenomenal colors and sorites. Noûs 22 (June):213-34.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Hardin, C. L. (1991). Reply to Teller's Simpler Arguments Might Work Better. Philosophical Psychology 4:61-64.   (Google)
Hardin, C. L. (1993). Van Brakel and the not-so-naked emperor. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1):137-50.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Hatfield, Gary C. (2009). Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford University Press.   (Google)
Abstract: Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology.
Hellie, Benj (ms). Justin Fisher's 'color representations as hash values'.   (Google)
Hochel, M.; Milan, E. G.; Gonzalez, A.; Tornay, F.; McKenney, K.; Diaz Caviedes, R.; Mata Martin, J. L.; Rodriguez Artacho, M. A.; Dominguez Garcia, E. & Vila, J. (2007). Experimental study of phantom colours in a colour blind synaesthete. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (4):75-95.   (Google)
Abstract: Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect (delayed response due to interference) elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods
Hoffman, Donald D. (2001). The data problem for color objectivism. Consciousness and Cognition 10 (1):74-77.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Holman, Emmett L. (1979). Is the physical world colourless? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 57 (December):295-304.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Hurley, Susan L. & Noë, Alva (forthcoming). Can hunter-gatherers hear color? In Geoffrey Brennan, Robert E. Goodin & Michael A. Smith (eds.), Common Minds: Essays in Honor of Philip Pettit. Oup.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Philip Pettit (2003) argues that color looks should be explained in terms of manifest powers. He indicates that his view is broadly allied with our own dynamic sensorimotor approach to conscious experience (O’Regan and Noë 2001a, b, c; Hurley 1998, Hurley and Noë 2003a
Jackson, Frank & Pargetter, Robert (1987). An objectivist's guide to subjectivism about color. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 41:127-141.   (Google)
Jacovides, Michael (2000). Cambridge changes of color. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2):142-164.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Locke’s porphyry argument at 2.8.19 of the Essay has not been properly appreciated. On my reconstruction, Locke argues from the premise that porphyry undergoes a mere Cambridge change of color in different lighting conditions to the conclusion that porphyry’s colors do not belong to it as it is in itself. I argue that his argument is not quite sound, but it would be if Locke chose a different stone, alexandrite. Examining his argument teaches us something about the relation between explanatory qualities and real alterations and something about the ways that colors inhere in bodies
Jackson, Frank (1998). Colour, disjunctions, programming. Analysis 58 (2):86-88.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Jackson, Frank (2007). Colour for representationalists. Erkenntnis 66 (1-2):169--85.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: Redness is the property that makes things look red in normal circumstances. That seems obvious enough. But then colour is whatever property does that job: a certain reflectance profile as it might be. Redness is the property something is represented to have when it looks red. That seems obvious enough. But looking red does not represent that which looks red as having a certain reflectance profile. What should we say about this antinomy and how does our answer impact on the contest between realism and subjectivism about colour? I address the issues through the lens of a representationalist position on colour experience
Jackson, Frank (2000). Philosophizing about color. In Color Perception: Philosophical, Psychological, Artistic, and Computational Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 9 | Google)
Jakab, Zoltán (2001). Commentary on P. W. Ross: The location problem for color subjectivism. Consciousness and Cognition 10 (1):133-139.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Jakab, Zoltán (2006). Metameric surfaces: The ultimate case against color physicalism and representational theories of phenomenal consciousness. Dialectica 60 (3):283-306.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Jakab, Zoltán (2005). Opponent processing, linear models, and the veridicality of color perception. In Andrew Brook (ed.), Cognition and the Brain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Johnston, Mark (1996). A mind-body problem at the surface of objects. Philosophical Issues 7:219-229.   (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)
Johnson, Kent & Wright, Wayne (2006). Colors as properties of the special sciences. Erkenntnis 64 (2):139-168.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: We briefly examine the pros and cons of color realism, exposing some desiderata on a theory of color: the theory should render colors as scientifically legitimate and correctly individuated, and it should explain how we have veridical color experiences. We then show that these desiderata can by met by treating colors as properties of the special sciences. According to our view, some of the major disputes in the literature about color—anti-realism vs. dispositionalism vs. reductionism—are not well-founded at this stage of scientific inquiry
Johnston, Mark (1992). How to speak of the colors. Philosophical Studies 68 (3):221-263.   (Cited by 136 | Google | More links)
Johnston, Mark (2004). Subjectivism and unmasking. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (1):187-201.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links)
Kalderon, Mark Eli (forthcoming). Color Illusion. Nous.   (Google)
Abstract: As standardly conceived,an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.
Kalderon, Mark Eli (ms). Color pluralism and the location problem.   (Cited by 3 | Google)
Kenner, Lionel (1965). The triviality of the red-green problem. Analysis 25 (March):147-153.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Kliewer, G. (1998). Neutral color concepts. Philosophical Studies 91 (1):21-41.   (Google | More links)
Kraut, R. (1992). The objectivity of color and the color of objectivity. Philosophical Studies 3 (3):265-87.   (Google | More links)
Landesman, Charles (1989). Color and Consciousness: An Essay in Metaphysics. Temple University Press.   (Cited by 13 | Google)
Langsam, Harold (2000). Why colours do look like dispositions. Philosophical Quarterly 50 (198):68-75.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Leon, Mark . (2002). Colour wars: Dividing the spoils. Philosophy 77 (300):175-192.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: It is argued that there is much to be said for a fairly standard interpretation of the thesis that colour, unlike shape, is a subjective or phenomenal property of objects. But if this fairly standard thesis fails to do justice to the ‘objective’ aspect of colour, and justice in this regard is called for, then it is argued we can settle for less; we can settle for the strategy of ‘dividing the spoils’ between subjective and objective accounts. But it is also argued that if we do settle for this, we need to realise that the same ‘egalitarian’ division cannot be made in application to the primary properties. And that it is argued is the insight at the heart of the traditional account
Levine, Joseph (2006). Color and color experience: Colors as ways of appearing. Dialectica 60 (3):269-282.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Abstract: In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: (i) physicalism about the non-mental world, (ii) consistency with what is known from color science, and (iii) transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral re?ectance, subjectivism, dispositional- ism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all three constraints. By treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences (particularly hallucinations) and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems
Levin, Janet (2000). Dispositional theories of color and the claims of common sense. Philosophical Studies 100 (2):151-174.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)
Lillie, William (1926). The nature of colour associations. Mind 35 (140):533-536.   (Google | More links)
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1992). Colors, cultures, and practices. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 17:1-23.   (Google)
Macpherson, Fiona (2003). Novel colours and the content of experience. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (1):43-66.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links)
Abstract: I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore that one cannot fully explain the nature of the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences using a naturalistic conception of representation
Matthen, Mohan P. (online). Our knowledge of color.   (Google)
Abstract: Scientists are often bemused by the efforts of philosophers essaying a theory of colour: colour science sports a huge array of facts and theories, and it is unclear to its practitioners what philosophy can or is trying to contribute. Equally, philosophers tend to be puzzled about how they can fit colour science into their investigations without compromising their own disciplinary identity: philosophy is supposed to be an _a priori_ investigation; philosophers do not work in psychophysics labs – not in their professional capacity, anyway
Matthen, Mohan P. (2001). What colors? Whose colors? Consciousness and Cognition 10 (1):117-124.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Maund, J. Barry (1981). Colour: A case for conceptual fission. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (September):308-22.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)
Mausfeld, Rainer (2004). Color Perception: Mind and the Physical World. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 2 | Google)
Mcculloch, Gregory (1987). Subjectivity and colour vision. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 265:265-281.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
McFarland, Duncan & Miller, Alexander (2000). Disjunctions, programming and the australian view of colour. Analysis 60 (2):209-212.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
McGinn, M. (1991). On two recent accounts of color. Philosophical Quarterly 41 (July):316-24.   (Google | More links)
McGilvray, James A. (2001). The location problem reconsidered: A reply to Ross. Consciousness and Cognition 10 (1):63-73.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
McLaughlin, Brian P. (2000). Colors and color spaces. In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 5: Epistemology. Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center.   (Cited by 5 | Google)
Miller, Harlan B. (1967). Is red and looks red. Mind 76 (July):439-440.   (Google | More links)
Miller, Alexander (2001). The missing-explanation argument revisited. Analysis 61 (1):76-86.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links)
Miscevic, Nenad (2004). Response-intentionalism about color: A sketch. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (11):179-191.   (Google)
Montgomery, Richard (1996). The indeterminacy of color vision. Synthese 106 (2):167-203.   (Google | More links)
Abstract:   A critical survey of recent work on the ontological status of colors supports the conclusion that, while some accounts of color can plausibly be dismissed, no single account can yet be endorsed. Among the remaining options are certain forms of color realism according which familiar colors are instantiated by objects in our extra-cranial visual environment. Also still an option is color anti-realism, the view that familiar colors are, at best, biologically adaptive fictions, instantiated nowhere.I argue that there is simply no fact of the matter as to which of these remaining options is correct. I blame this indeterminacy on the fact that color vision exhibits several of the hallmarks of a modular input system, as described by Jerry Fodor in The Modularity of Mind
Morton, Adam (1987). Colour appearances and the colour solid. In Philosophy And The Visual Arts. Dordrecht: Kluwer.   (Cited by 1 | Google)
Neale, Stephen (1999). Coloring and composition. In Philosophy and Linguistics. Boulder: Westview Press.   (Cited by 20 | Google)
Abstract: The idea that an utterance of a basic (nondeviant) declarative sentence expresses a single true-or-false proposition has dominated philosophical discussions of meaning in this century. Refinements aside, this idea is less of a substantive theses than it is a background assumption against which particular theories of meaning are evaluated. But there are phenomena (noted by Frege, Strawson, and Grice) that threaten at least the completeness of classical theories of meaning, which associate with an utterance of a simple sentence a truth-condition, a Russellian proposition, or a Fregean thought. And it may well be the case that a framework within which utterances express sequences of propositions provides much of what is needed to account for the relevant phenomena, a better overall picture of the way language works, and an enticingly uniform perspective on a variety of semantic problems. I do not myself take to theories that multiply propositions by appealing to propositions “presupposed” or to pairs of Fregean and Russellian propositions, or theories that show no respect for a distinction between semantics and pragmatics— where the former is the study of propositions whose general form and character is determined by word meaning and syntax—or for theories that blithely abandon general principles of composition and semantic innocence. I would like to sketch a package based on four interconnected ideas: (i) the meaning of an individual word is a sequence of instructions for generating a sequence of propositions (in conjunction with compositional instructions (syntax) and elements of context); (ii) utterances themselves are not bearers of truth or falsity; (iii) judgements of truth, falsity, commitment, and conflict are shaped, in part, by the weights attached to individual 1 propositions that occur in sequences expressed by utterances, weights that may be set (and reset) by contextual considerations; (iv) Fregean senses are superfluous; propositions might as well be Russellian (Mont Blanc and all its snow fields will do as well as any mode of presentation)..
Nida-Ruemelin, Martine (2006). A puzzle about colors. Dialectica 60 (3):321-336.   (Google)
Nida-Rumelin, Martine & Schnetzer, Achill (online). Unique hues, binary hues, and phenomenal composition.   (Google)
Noren, Stephen J. (1975). Cornman on the colour of micro-entities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 53 (1):65-67.   (Google | More links)
Pasnau, Robert (2006). A theory of secondary qualities. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3):568–591.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)
Abstract: No philosophical intuition has a longer history than that which divides sensible qualities into two kinds, primary and secondary. Something like it appears in Democritus, nearly 2500 years ago, and has been continuously maintained in some form or another ever since then. Philosophers today largely continue to think that there is something right about the distinction, even while it remains notoriously difficult to find agreement on just where its ultimate basis lies. As Mark Johnston (1992) puts it, the primary–secondary distinction has “the dubious distinction of being better understood in extension rather than intension. Most of us can generate two lists under the two headings, but the principles by which the lists are generated are controversial, even obscure” (229). I hope to shed some light on this obscure question. My thesis, in brief, is that the secondary qualities are those qualities of objects that bear a certain relation to our sensory powers: roughly, they are those qualities that we can readily detect only through a certain distinctive phenomenal experience. Contrary to what is sometimes supposed, there is nothing about the world itself (independent of our minds) that determines the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Instead, a theory of the secondary qualities must be grounded in facts about how we conceive of these qualities, and ultimately in facts about human perception
Pautz, Adam (web). Can color structure be explained in terms of color experience? Australasian Journal of Philosophy.   (Google)
Abstract: Hardin argues that Reflectance Physicalism about color fails because it cannot accommodate color structure. David Lewis and others have replied that the Reflectance Physicalist may explain color structure in terms of color experience. I argue that this reply fails
Pautz, Adam (2006). Can the physicalist explain colour structure in terms of colour experience? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (4):535 – 564.   (Google | More links)
Abstract: Physicalism about colour is the thesis that colours are identical with response-independent, physical properties of objects. I endorse the Argument from Structure against Physicalism about colour. The argument states that Physicalism cannot accommodate certain obvious facts about colour structure: for instance, that red is a unitary colour while purple is a binary colour, and that blue resembles purple more than green. I provide a detailed formulation of the argument. According to the most popular response to the argument, the Physicalist can accommodate colour structure by explaining it in terms of colour experience. I argue that this response fails. Along the way, I examine other interesting issues in the philosophy