Perceptual Experience

David Chalmers

Class meetings: Tuesday 3:30-6pm, Social Sciences 311.

Overview

This seminar is devoted to the nature of perceptual experience. We will spend the first half of the seminar discussing views of the metaphysics of perceptual experience: sense-datum theories, direct realist theories, representationalist theories, and so on. The second half of the semester will be devoted to issues about the content of perceptual experience: nonconceptual vs conceptual content, Fregean vs Russellian content, the properties represented in experience, the richness of perceptual experience, and so on.

Readings

There is no textbook. Many readings will be available on the web, and other will be made available for photocopying in a folder in the department office.

Mailing list

I will set up a mailing list, [email protected], for class discussion.  Everyone enrolled in the class is expected to make reasonably regular contributions to this list: at least one reasonably substantial posting every week (you can miss three weeks without penalty), discussing issues arising from the readings, from class discussion, and from the mailing list itself.  Of course people are welcome and encouraged to post more often. These postings substitute for biweekly short papers of 1-2 pages each.

Assessment

Assessment will be based most heavily on a final paper, and will also be based on in-class presentations, mailing list contributions, and class participation.

Schedule

Here is a very approximate plan for the course, with associated readings.  This is very likely to be revised as things develop. 

Week 1 (Tue 1/21): Introduction

• Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Chapters 1-5

Week 2 (Tue 1/28): Sense-datum theories

• Ayer, The argument from illusion (The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, Chapter 1
• Moore, The refutation of idealism

Week 3 (Tue 2/4): Sellars on sense-datum theories

• Sellars, Empiricism and the philosophy of mind, sections 1-29

Week 4 (Tue 2/10): Austin on sense-datum theories

• Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, Chapters 1-6

Week 5 (Tue 2/17): The causal theory of perception

• Lewis, Veridical hallucination and prosthetic vision
• Snowdon, Perception, vision, and causation

Week 6 (Tue 2/24): Disjunctive theories of perception

Week 7 (Tue 3/2): The intentionality of perception

• Anscombe, The intentionality of sensation
• Travis, The silence of the senses

Week 8 (Tue 3/9): Representationalist theories of perception

• Tye
• Block

Week 8 (Tue 3/23): Representationalist theories II

• Chalmers, The representational character of experience

Week 10: (Tue 3/30):