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Perception :: The contents of perception

• Conceptual and nonconceptual content [3]
• The representation of color [3]
• The representation of space [3]
• The representation of objects [3]
• The representation of high-level properties [3]
• The contents of perception, misc [3]

Conceptual and nonconceptual content

See also: Concepts, The representation of color, The representation of high-level properties, The contents of perception, misc, Perception and thought, Perception and knowledge, The given, Epistemic and non-epistemic perception.

• Frederick Ablondi (2002). Kelly and McDowell on perceptual content.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/2002/Ablondi.html
  
• Jose Luis Bermudez & Fiona Macpherson (1998). Nonconceptual content and the nature of perceptual experience.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/archive/00000584/01/macpherson_ejap.pdf
  
• Bill Brewer (2005). Perceptual experience has conceptual content.   (Abstract & more)
  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
• Alex Byrne (2005). Perception and conceptual content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mit.edu/abyrne/www/percepandconcepcontent.pdf
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/percepandconcepcontent.pdf
  
• Philippe Chuard (2006). Demonstrative concepts without reidentification.   (Abstract & more)
  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 “through and through” "McDowell, 1994: 46; see also McDowell, 1998; Brewer, 1999:ch.5#
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/V312521RJ57448M3.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/v312521rj57448m3/fulltext.pdf
  
• Philippe Chuard (2007). The Riches of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Suppose you see a red ball. Unless you happen to be in a psychologist’s lab, you are unlikely to see_ just_ the red ball against, say, a white background. Rather, a myriad of objects is _simultaneously_ presented to you. For instance, you see the cricket bat beside the red ball, the table upon which they both lie, as well as what’s in the background of the table: the wall, the lamp, the bookshelf on the right, etc. Needless to say, you also see the shapes of these objects, together with the manifold of spatial relations connecting them. And for some of these objects at least, you see their particular shade$s" of colour; even the texture of their surface$s"
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com//content/imp/jcs/2007/00000014/F0020009/art00002
  
• Adrian Cussins (1993). Nonconceptual content and the elimination of misonceived composites.   (More)
• Adrian Cussins (1990). The connectionist construction of concepts.   (Abstract & more)
  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)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.haecceia.com/FILES/c3_kings_london.htm
  
• Jérôme Dokic & Elisabeth Pacherie (2001). Shades and concepts.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/36/35/PDF/ijn_00000594_00.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/01/37/ijn_00000137_00/ijn_00000137_00.PDF
  http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/05/36/35/PDF/ijn_00000594_00.pdf
  http://hal.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/93/PDF/ijn_00000137_00.PDF
  http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/05/32/93/PDF/ijn_00000137_00.PDF
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/05/94/ijn_00000594_00/ijn_00000594_00.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2001/00000061/00000271/art00294
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2001/00000061/00000271/art00004
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8284.00294/pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8284.00294
  
• Hannah Ginsborg (2006). Empirical concepts and the content of experience.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/ejop/2006/00000014/00000003/art00002
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2006.00230.x
  
• Stella Gonzalez Arnal (2006). Non-articulable content and the realm of reasons.   (More)
• York Gunther (2001). Content, illusion, partition.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=254434&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J7172022QP642685.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/j7172022qp642685/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=254434&PDF=1
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2001/00000102/00000002/00254434
  
• Robert Hanna (2005). Kant and nonconceptual content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/fac/hanna01.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/ejop/2005/00000013/00000002/art00004
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0966-8373.2005.00229.x
  
• Walter Hopp (forthcoming). Conceptualism and the myth of the given.   (More)
• Daniel Hutto (1998). Nonconceptual content and objectivity.   (Abstract & more)
  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"
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1998/hutto98.html
  
• Sean Kelly (2002). What makes perceptual content non-conceptual?   (Abstract & more)
  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
• Frode Kjosavik (2003). Perceptual intimacy and conceptual inadequacy: A Husserlian critique of McDowell's internalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nlh.no/ios/Publikasjoner/s2003/s2003-17.html
  
• Uriah Kriegel (2004). Perceptual experience, conscious content, and nonconceptual content.   (More)
• Elisabeth Pacherie (2000). Levels of perceptual content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000245
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/R878814402M16L50.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/r878814402m16l50/fulltext.pdf
  
• George Pappas (2003). On some philosophical accounts of perception.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://pdcnet.org/pdf/6Pappas.pdf
  
• Ted Poston (online). Cognitive abilities and the conceptualist/nonconceptualist debate (long version).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a recent paper “Are there different kinds of content?” Richard Heck argues for nonconceptualism, the thesis that perceptual content is different in kind than cognitive content. Heck’s argument is interesting and helps to regiment and clarify the central issue between conceptualists and nonconceptualists. I defend conceptualism against Heck’s central argument. Conceptualists can utilize a number of Heck’s points to clarify and argue for their own view. Additionally, I explain how the debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists has been misled by conceiving of cognitive abilities as involving language-like representation. Once this picture is set aside Heck’s central argument for nonconceptualism collapses and the conceptualist claim has a much more natural and unobjectionable formulation
• Zenon Pylyshyn (ms). Visual indexes and nonconceptual reference.   (More)
• Robert Stalnaker (2003). What might nonconceptual content be?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1998)9<339:WMNCB>2.0.CO;2-X
  
• Josefa Toribio (2002). Perceptual experience and its contents.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1389
  https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1389?mode=simple
  
• Michael Tye (2006). Nonconceptual content, richness, and fineness of grain.   (More)
• Michael Tye (2005). On the nonconceptual content of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  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 fl 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 — motivations that are broader than those that are typically adduced
• Mark Wrathall (2005). Non-rational grounds and non-conceptual content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=9054
  
• Wayne Wright (2003). McDowell, demonstrative concepts, and nonconceptual representational content.   (Abstract & more)
  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] Assuming that one already accepts that perceptual experience has a representational content, the most straightforward argument for embracing nonconceptual representational content is based on the fine-grained nature of experience. The rich detail of features presented in our experience outstrips the conceptual capacities of even the most sophisticated creatures, and thus one could not possess all the concepts which are used in giving a report of the representational content of her experience. This would seem to rule out the possibility of the representational content of experience being entirely conceptual in nature, leaving nonconceptual content, whatever it might turn out to be, as an option the representationalist must seriously consider
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://disputatio.com/articles/014-3.pdf
  http://www.mindstuff.net/McDDemonConcWTW.PDF
  http://www.mindstuff.net/McDDemonConcWTW.doc
  http://www.disputatio.com/articles/014-3.pdf
  http://www.mindstuff.net/mcddemonconc.html
  http://disputatio.com/articles/014-3.pdf
  http://www.mindstuff.net/McDDemonConcWTW.PDF
  

The representation of color

See also: The inverted spectrum, Conceptual and nonconceptual content, The representation of space, The representation of objects, The representation of high-level properties, The contents of perception, misc, Color, Perceptual qualities, misc.

• Alex Byrne & David Hilbert (web). How do things look to the color blind?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: forthcoming in Color Ontology and Color Science, ed. J. Cohen and M. Matthen (MIT)
• John Campbell (2005). Transparency vs. revelation in color perception.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What knowledge of the colors does perception of the colors provide? My first aim in this essay is to characterize the way in which color experience seems to provide knowledge of colors. This in turn tells us something about what it takes for there to be colors. Color experience provides knowledge of the aspect of the world that is being acted on when we, or some external force, act on the color of an object and thus make a difference to the experiences of people looking at it. It is in this sense that the nature of the colors is transparent to us. For there to be colors is for there to be the qualitative categorical properties that we encounter in perception, action on which affects the color experiences of observers. This line of thought contrasts with the idea that color experience reveals the colors to us, in the sense that it provides knowledge of a number of necessary truths about the colors. In a recent paper, Alex Byrne and David Hilbert provide a careful exposition and critique of this way of developing the idea of color experience as revelatory of the colors. In this paper my main aim is simply to contrast the idea that experience makes the colors transparent to us, with the idea that color experience provides us with knowledge of truths relating to the essences of the colors
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/Color-PhilTopics.pdf
  http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/Color-PhilTopics.pdf
  
• David Chalmers (2006). Perception and the fall from Eden.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://consc.net/papers/eden.pdf
  http://consc.net/papers/eden.html
  
• David Hilbert & Alex Byrne (online). How do things look to the color-blind?   (More)
• David Hilbert (web). Color constancy and the complexity of color.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We can start with a definition. “[C]olour constancy is the constancy of the perceived colours of surfaces under changes in the intensity and spectral composition of the illumination.” (Foster et al. 1997) Given the definition we can now ask a question: Does human color vision exhibit color constancy?1 The answer to the question depends in part on how we interpret it. If the question is understood as asking whether human color vision displays constancy for every possible scene across every possible illumination then the answer is no.2 If the question is understood as asking whether human color vision displays some degree of constancy for some scenes across some range of illuminants then the answer is yes. The more interesting questions involve characterizing the degree of constancy human vision displays, the types of scenes and ranges of illuminants for which approximate constancy can be achieved and the
• Zoltan Jakab (2003). Phenomenal projection.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v9/psyche-9-04-jakab.html
  
• Zoltán Jakab (2006). Revelation and normativity in visual experience.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/canadian_journal_of_philosophy/v036/36.1jakab.pdf
  http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_philosophy/v036/36.1jakab.pdf
  https://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_philosophy/v036/36.1jakab.html
  
• Mark Eli Kalderon (online). Metamerism, constancy, and knowing which.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://markelikalderon.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/metamerism.pdf
  
• Mark Eli Kalderon (online). The multiply qualitative.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A response to Sydney Shoemaker’s “Content, Character, and Color”. Whereas “Metamerism, Constancy, and Knowing Which” argues that different qualitative aspects of a color are perceptually available to a perceiver in different circumstances of perception, the present paper argues that different qualitative aspects of a color are perceptually available to different perceivers in the same circumstance of perception. Understanding how this could be so undermines Shoemaker’s criticisms
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://markelikalderon.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/selectionproblem.pdf
  
• Matthew Kennedy (2007). Visual awareness of properties.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00077.x
  
• Fiona Macpherson (2003). Novel colours and the content of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/archive/00000581/
  http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/archive/00000581/01/macpherson_ppq84.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/2003/00000084/00000001/art00004
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/2003/00000084/00000001/art00162
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0114.00162
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0114.00162/enhancedabs/
  
• Susanna Siegel (ms). Comments on David Chalmers' "perception and the fall from Eden".   (More)
• Brad Thompson (2006). Color constancy and Russellian representationalism.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/colorconstancy.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a743879523~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/K4L115G818041722.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/743879523.pdf
  
• Evan Thompson (1995). Colour vision, evolution, and perceptual content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   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 criticised the computational objectivist position on the basis of comparative colour vision: There are fundamental 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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J022545851375504.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/j022545851375504/fulltext.pdf
  
• Wayne Wright (2003). Projectivist representationalism and color.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.mindstuff.net/ProjReprColorDraft.PDF
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2003/00000016/00000004/art00003
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/MVFFBRX8KDQ28W8E.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713629985~fulltext=713240930
  

The representation of space

See also: The representation of color, The representation of objects, The representation of high-level properties, The contents of perception, misc.

• Bill Brewer (1992). Unilateral neglect and the objectivity of spatial representation.   (More)
• Robert Briscoe (ms). Egocentric spatial representation in action and perception.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phonline.org/paper.php?keynum=903
  
• Austen Clark (online). Location, location, location.   (Abstract & more)
  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
• Rick Grush (1998). Skill and spatial content.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1998/grusharticle98.html
  
• Rick Grush (2000). Self, world and space: The meaning and mechanisms of ego- and allocentric spatial representation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/bram/2000/00000001/00000001/00256895
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=256895&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/U498K42KM1U3230L.pdf
  
• Gary Hatfield (2003). Representation and constraints: The inverse problem and the structure of visual space.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Visual space can be distinguished from physical space. The first is found in visual experi- ence, while the second is defined 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 different 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. Ó 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~hatfield/constraints.pdf
  http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0001691803000957
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=14670704&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00016918/2003/00000114/00000003/art00095
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14670704&dopt=Citation
  
• Pete Mandik (2005). Phenomenal consciousness and the allocentric-egocentric interface.   (Abstract & more)
  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¯cally, conscious states are hybrid states that involve the reciprocal interaction between relatively allocentric and relatively egocentric representations. Thus a conscious state is composed of a pair of representations interacting at the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface. What a person is conscious of is determined by what the contributing allocentric and egocentric represen- tations are representations of. The phenomenal character of conscious states is identical to the representational content of the reciprocally interacting egocentric and allocentric representations
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/zif.pdf
  
• Pete Mandik (1999). Qualia, space, and control.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/qsc.pdf
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/529521.html
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/JGB66KUYJTG37HVF.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/JGB66KUYJTG37HVF.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713690369~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/1999/00000012/00000001/art00003
  
• Brad Thompson (online). The spatial content of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: To what extent is the external world the way that it appears to us in perceptual experience? This perennial question in philosophy is no doubt ambiguous in many ways. For example, it might be taken as equivalent to the question of whether or not the external world is the way that it appears to be? This is a question about the epistemology of perception: Are our perceptual experiences by and large veridical representations of the external world?
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/senses.pdf
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/spatialcontent.pdf
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/spatialcontent.html
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/senses.html
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/iswi.html
  http://faculty.smu.edu/bthompso/spatialcontent.html
  

The representation of objects

See also: Neural synchrony and binding, Intentional objects, The objects of perception, The representation of color, The representation of space, The representation of high-level properties, The contents of perception, misc, Perception and reference.

• Kent Bach (online). Searle against the world: How can experiences find their objects?   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/Searle.html
  
• Austen Clark (2004). Feature-placing and proto-objects.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/representation/papers/Clark.pdf
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/VRYD00AUKDL45Y03.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/VRYD00AUKDL45Y03.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2004/00000017/00000004/art00001
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713997456~fulltext=713240930
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2004). Objects, places, and perception.   (Abstract & more)
  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 (§1). However, I shall argue against his view of sensory individuals as places (§2). Instead, I'll propose and defend an alternative account of sensory individuals that construes the latter as (visual) objects (§§3-5)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/646
  http://aardvark.ucsd.edu/perception/clark.pdf
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2229&context=postprints
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/L9TY67YMP01DNUXL.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2004/00000017/00000004/art00002
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/L9TY67YMP01DNUXL.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713997454~fulltext=713240930
  
• Michael Martin (2002). Particular thoughts and singular thought.   (More)
• Zenon Pylyshyn (2001). Connecting vision with the world: Tracking the missing link.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://olddavidhume.rutgers.edu/ftp/pub/papers/lisbon.pdf
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ftp/pub/papers/lisbon.pdf
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/pub/papers/lisbon.pdf
  http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=v030786
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ftp/pub/papers/lisbon.pdf
  
• Zenon Pylyshyn (2001). Visual indexes, preconceptual objects, and situated vision.   (Abstract & more)
  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¯y discussed and it is argued that viewing it as performing a demonstrative or preconceptual reference function has far-reaching impli- cations not only for a theory of situated vision, but also for suggesting a new way to look at why the primitive individuation of visual objects, or proto-objects, is so central in computing visual representations. Indexing visual objects is also, according to this view, the primary means for grounding visual concepts and is a potentially fruitful way to look at the problem of visual integration across time and across saccades, as well as to explain
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ftp/pub/papers/cognition2001-reprint.pdf
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/pub/papers/cognition2001-reprint.pdf
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=11245842&dopt=citation
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00100277/2001/00000080/00000001/art00156
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11245842&dopt=Citation
  
• Athanassios Raftopoulos & Vincent Müller (2006). The phenomenal content of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  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
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0268-1064.2006.00311.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2006/00000021/00000002/art00003
  
• Susanna Siegel (online). Particularity and presence in visual perception.   (Abstract & more)