I begin by describing what I call simple naïve realism. Then I describe relevant empirical results. Next, I develop two new empirical arguments against simple naive realism. Then I briefly look at two new, more complex forms of naïve realism: one due to Keith Allen and the other due to Heather Logue and Ori Beck. I argue that they are not satisfactory retreats for naive realists. The right course is to reject naive realism altogether. My stalking horse is contemporary naive (...) realism but there is a larger, positive lesson: new empirical results support a brain-based theory of sensory consciousness. (shrink)

A preview of my book *Perception*. Discusses the relationship between perception and the physical world and the issue of whether reality is as it appears. Useful examples are included throughout the book to illustrate the puzzles of perception, including hallucinations, illusions, the laws of appearance, blindsight, and neuroscientific explanations of our experience of pain, smell and color. The book covers both traditional philosophical arguments and more recent empirical arguments deriving from research in psychophysics and neuroscience. The addition of chapter summaries, (...) suggestions for further reading and a glossary of terms make Perception essential reading for anyone studying the topic in detail, as well as for students of philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and metaphysics. (shrink)

A common view in the philosophy of perception holds that states of seeing objects face to face have particular contents. When you see, say, a dog face to face, your visual state represents the particular dog that is in front of you. In this paper, I argue for a related claim about states of seeing objects in conventional photographs. When you see a dog in a photograph, for example, your visual state represents the particular dog that was in front of (...) the camera when the photograph was taken, that is, the photograph's depictum. The argument in this paper proceeds in two steps. In the first step, I discuss states of seeing objects face to face. I argue that such a state represents the particular object whose surface is responsible for the optical information that the visual system uses to construct the state's attributive representational content. In the second step, I apply the result of this discussion to states of seeing objects in photographs. I argue that a state of seeing an object in a photograph has a particular content that represents the object that was in front of the camera when the photograph was taken. (shrink)

The viability of a naïve realist theory of memory was a lively debate for philosophers of mind in the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, though, naïve realism has been largely abandoned as a non-starter in the memory literature, with representationalism being the standard view held by philosophers of memory. But rather than being carefully argued, the dismissal of naïve realism is an assumption that sits at the back of much recent theorizing in the philosophy of memory. In (...) this paper, we identify three reasons why philosophers of memory have felt compelled to outright reject naïve realism. We argue that none of those reasons are successful. Thus, far from being a non-starter, we argue that naïve realism is a theoretical perspective that needs to be given serious consideration in current philosophy of memory debates. (shrink)

Aesthetic perception is one of the most interesting topics for philosophers and scientists who investigate how it influences our interactions with objects and states of affairs. Over the last few years, several studies have attempted to determine “how aesthetics is represented in an object,” and how a specific feature of an object could evoke the respective feelings during perception. Despite the vast number of approaches and models, we believe that these explanations do not resolve the problem concerning the conditions under (...) which aesthetic perception occurs, and what constitutes the content of these perceptions. Adopting a naturalistic perspective, we here view aesthetic perception as a normative process that enables agents to enhance their interactions with physical and socio-cultural environments. Considering perception as an anticipatory and preparatory process of detection and evaluation of indications of potential interactions, we argue that the minimal content of aesthetic perception is an emotionally valued indication of interaction potentiality. Aesthetic perception allows an agent to normatively anticipate interaction potentialities, thus increasing sense making and reducing the uncertainty of interaction. This conception of aesthetic perception is compatible with contemporary evidence from neuroscience, experimental aesthetics, and interaction design. The proposed model overcomes several problems of transcendental, art-centered, and objective aesthetics as it offers an alternative to the idea of aesthetic objects that carry inherent values by explaining “the aesthetic” as emergent in perception within a context of uncertain interaction. (shrink)

There are passages in Kant’s writings according to which empirical intuitions have to be (a) singular, (b) object-dependent, and (c) immediate. It has also been argued that empirical intuitions (d) are not truth-apt, and (e) need to provide the subject with a proof of the possibility of the cognized object. Having relied on one or another of the a-e constraints, the naïve realist readers of Kant have argued that it is not possible for empirical intuitions to be representations. Instead they (...) have argued for a relationalist reading of empirical intuitions in terms of an acquaintance relation between the subject and the intuited object. -/- For the sake of argument, I will grant the naïve realist reader of Kant that empirical intuitions should satisfy all the a-e constraints. Nevertheless, by incorporating these constraints, one by one, into a representationalist theory of empirical intuitions, I will show that not only doesn’t a naïve realist reading of empirical intuitions follow, but also that the naïve realist has hastily overlooked a range of perfectly representationalist readings of intuitions available to Kant and his representationalist allies. On the positive side, I will argue that there is an extra constraint on intuitions—i.e., that givenness does not require presence to consciousness—that directly goes against any naïve realist account of intuitions. (shrink)

Relationalism maintains that perceptual experience involves, as part of its nature, a distinctive kind of conscious perceptual relation between a subject of experience and an object of experience. Together with the claim that perceptual experience is presentational, relationalism is widely believed to be a core aspect of the naive realist outlook on perception. This is a mistake. I argue that naive realism about perception can be upheld without a commitment to relationalism.

Duncan Pritchard has recently defended a view he calls ‘epistemological disjunctivism’, largely inspired by John McDowell. I argue that Pritchard is right to associate the view with McDowell, and that McDowell’s ‘inference-blocking’ argument against the sceptic succeeds only if epistemological disjunctivism is accepted. However, Pritchard also recognises that epistemological disjunctivism appears to conflict with our belief that genuine and illusory experiences are indistinguishable (the ‘distinguishability problem’). Since the indistinguishability of experiences is the antecedent in the inference McDowell intends to block, (...) I suggest that his argument rests on an inconsistent set of premises. In support of this, I show that Pritchard’s response to the distinguishability problem is incompatible with the conclusion of the ‘inference-blocking’ argument, and that the response available in McDowell’s work relies on a mistaken conception of fallibility. Either McDowell must deny the sceptic’s premise that perceptual experiences are indistinguishable, or he must give up his conclusion that perceptual warrant can be indefeasible. (shrink)

The paper presents a new theory of perceptual demonstrative thought, the property-dependent theory. It argues that the theory is superior to both the object-dependent theory (Evans, McDowell) and the object-independent theory (Burge).

This paper develops a mechanistic account of basic mental agency by identifying similarities between two of its major exemplars: endogenous attention and imagination. Five key similarities are identified: i) that both capacities are driven by currently prioritised goals that are either person-level or apt to become person-level. ii) that both deliver their outputs to the working memory iii) that both range across all and only conceptual contents; iv) that both proceed under the guidance of norms and/or habits; and v) that (...) both directly activate rather than inhibit content. These five features are consolidated by proposing that basic mental agency is essentially the power to call for conceptual content and hold it within our working memories. (shrink)

It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make (...) phenomenological predictions of the required sort. So, as a result, opponents must resign themselves to attacking specific incarnations of naïve realism, or approach matters quite differently. (shrink)

This paper examines the dispute between Burge and McDowell over methodology in the philosophy of perception. Burge (2005, 2011) has argued that the disjunctivism posited by naive perceptual realists is incompatible with the results of current perceptual science, while McDowell (2010, 2013) defends his disjunctivism by claiming an autonomous field of enquiry for perceptual epistemology, one that does not employ the classificatory schemes of the science. Here it is argued that the crucial point at issue in the dispute is Burge’s (...) acceptance, and McDowell’s rejection, of the ‘Cartesian idealization’ of mind as a self-contained system. Burge’s case against disjunctivism rests on the assumption of a clearly demarcated boundary between mind and world, a picture of the mind that McDowell’s philosophy reacts against. This boundary is required for scientific, causal explanations of perceptual processing because it is a simplifying assumption that helps present scientists with a clearly demarcated object of investigation. Concurring with McDowell, I conclude that philosophers need not carve up their objects of investigation in the same way. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I intend to review the intentionalist account of perceptual experience in order to deal with some difficulties that it faces in adequately specifying the nature and object of perceptual experience. My aim is to show that it is possible for the intentionalists to incorporate the disjunctivist thesis that the object of perception is part of perceptual experiences, without renouncing the common factor principle. I argue that, in order to do this, it is necessary to engage with (...) the concept of biological function and to review the concept of a perceptual object. RESUMO: Este artigo visa a abordar algumas das dificuldades que o intencionalismo perceptivo enfrenta, ao especificar a natureza da experiência perceptiva e o objeto da percepção. Meu objetivo é mostrar que o intencionalista pode incorporar a tese associada ao disjuntivismo de que o objeto da percepção é parte da experiência perceptiva, sem abrir mão do princípio do fator comum. Eu defendo que, para fazer isso, é necessário recorrer ao conceito de função biológica e realizar uma revisão do conceito de objeto da percepção. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a conflict between two theses held by John McDowell, namely i) the claim that we are under a standing obligation to revise our beliefs if reflection demands it; and ii) the view that veridical experience is a mode of direct access to the world. Since puts no bounds on what would constitute reasonable doubt, it invites skeptical concerns which overthrow. Conversely, since says that there are some experiences which we are entitled to trust, it (...) undermines the prescriptive scope of. Drawing on C. S. Peirce's distinction between genuine and contrived doubt, I maintain that critical revisions of beliefs should be triggered only by unwanted disruptions of habits, thereby restoring unity between McDowell's two theses. (shrink)

Various prominent theories of pain assume that it is pain’s biological function to inform organisms about damage to their bodies. I argue that this is a mistake. First, there is no biological evidence to support the notion that pain was originally selected for its informative capacities, nor that it currently contributes to the fitness of organisms in this specific capacity. Second, neurological evidence indicates that modulating mechanisms in the nociceptive system systematically prevent pain from serving a primarily informative role. These (...) considerations threaten to undermine standard perceptual and representational accounts of pain. (shrink)

Different authors offer subtly different characterizations of naïve realism. We disentangle the main ones and argue that illusions provide the best proving ground for naïve realism and its main rival, representationalism. According to naïve realism, illusions never involve per- ceptual error. We assess two leading attempts to explain apparent perceptual error away, from William Fish and Bill Brewer, and conclude that they fail. Another lead- ing attempt is assessed in a companion paper, which also sketches an alternative representational account.

In Burge [Disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. Philosophical Topics 33: 1–78, 2005], I criticized several versions of disjunctivism. McDowell defends his version against my criticisms in McDowell [Tyler Burge on disjunctivism. Philosophical Explorations 13: 243–55, 2010]. He claims that my general characterization fails to apply to his view. I show that this claim fails because it overlooks two elements in my characterization. I elaborate and extend my criticisms of his disjunctivism. I criticize his positions on infallibility and indefeasibility, and reinforce my (...) earlier charges that his views on perception and epistemology are hyper-intellectualized. The central point in my rejection of his disjunctivism concerns his claim that the science of perceptual psychology is irrelevant to his disjunctivist classification of perceptual states. I hold that this claim shows lack of familiarity with the science and serious misunderstanding of it. The basic deficiency in McDowell's disjunctivism is that it, like other versions, is incompatible with well-established scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Can philosophical theories of perception defer to perceptual science when fixing their ontological commitments regarding the objects of perception? Or in other words, can perceptual science inform us about the nature of perception? Many contemporary mainstream philosophers of perception answer affirmatively. However, in this essay I provide two arguments against this idea. On the one hand, I will argue that perceptual science is not committed to certain assumptions, relevant for determining perceptual ontology, which however are generally relied upon by philosophers (...) when interpreting such science. On the other hand, I will show how perceptual science often relies on another assumption, which I call the ‘Measuring instrument conception’ of sensory systems, which philosophers of perception should clearly reject. Given these two symmetric lines of argument, I will finally suggest that we ought to think differently about the relationship between perceptual science and the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Pictures are 2D surfaces designed to elicit 3D-scene-representing experiences from their viewers. In this essay, I argue that philosophers have tended to underestimate the relevance of research in vision science to understanding the nature of pictorial experience. Both the deeply entrenched methodology of virtual psychophysics as well as empirical studies of pictorial space perception provide compelling support for the view that pictorial experience and seeing face-to-face are experiences of the same psychological, explanatory kind. I also show that an empirically informed (...) account of pictorial experience provides resources to develop a novel, resemblance-based account of depiction. According to what I call the deep resemblance theory, pictures work by presenting virtual models of objects and scenes in phenomenally 3D, pictorial space. (shrink)

According to “actionism” (Noë 2010), perception constitutively depends on implicit knowledge of the way sensory stimulations vary as a consequence of the perceiver’s self-movement. My aim in this contribution is to develop an alternative conception of the role of action in perception present in the work of Gareth Evans using resources provided by Ruth Millikan’s biosemantic theory of mental representation.

Several commentators have recently attributed conflicting accounts of the relation between veridical perceptual experience and hallucination to Husserl. Some say he is a proponent of the conjunctive view that the two kinds of experience are fundamentally the same. Others deny this and purport to find in Husserl distinct and non-overlapping accounts of their fundamental natures, thus committing him to a disjunctive view. My goal is to set the record straight. Having briefly laid out the problem under discussion and the terms (...) of the debate, I then review the proposals that have been advanced, disposing of some and marking others for further consideration. A.D. Smith’s disjunctive reading is among the latter. I discuss it at length, arguing that Smith fails to show that Husserl’s views on perceptual experience entail a form of disjunctivism. Following that critical discussion, I present a case for a conjunctive reading of Husserl’s account of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Much of recent philosophy of perception is oriented towards accounting for the phenomenal character of perception—what it is like to perceive—in a non-mentalistic way—that is, without appealing to mental objects or mental qualities. In opposition to such views, I claim that the phenomenal character of perception of a red round object cannot be explained by or reduced to direct awareness of the object, its redness and roundness—or representation of such objects and qualities. Qualities of perception that are not captured by (...) what one is directly aware of or by representational content are instances of what Gilbert Harman has called “mental paint” (Block, 1990; Harman, 1990). The claim of this paper is that empirical facts about attention point in the direction of mental paint. The argument starts with the claim (later modified) that when one moves one's attention around a scene while keeping one's eyes fixed, the phenomenology of perception can change in ways that do not reflect which qualities of objects one is directly aware of or the way the world is represented to be. These changes in the phenomenology of perception cannot be accounted for in terms of awareness of or representation of the focus of attention because they manifest themselves in experience as differences in apparent contrast, apparent color saturation, apparent size, apparent speed, apparent time of occurrence and other appearances. There is a way of coping with these phenomena in terms of vague contents, but vague contents cannot save direct realism or representationism because the kind of vagueness required clashes wth the phenomenology itself. (shrink)

On the face of it, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views bear a strong resemblance to contemporary disjunctivist theories of perception, especially John McDowell’s epistemological disjunctivism. Like McDowell (and other disjunctivists), Merleau-Ponty seems to be a direct realist about perception and holds that veridical and illusory perceptions are distinct. This paper furthers this comparison. Furthermore, it is argued that elements of Merleau-Ponty’s thought provide a stronger case for McDowell’s kind of epistemological view than McDowell himself provides. Merleau-Ponty’s early thought can be used to (...) develop a unique version of epistemological disjunctivism that is worth consideration alongside contemporary views on perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophy, scientific psychology, and common sense all distinguish perception from cognition. While there is little agreement about how the perception–cognition boundary ought to be drawn, one prominent idea is that perceptual states are dependent on a stimulus, or stimulus-dependent, in a way that cognitive states are not. This paper seeks to develop this idea in a way that can accommodate two apparent counterexamples: hallucinations, which are prima facie perceptual yet stimulus-independent; and demonstrative thoughts, which are prima facie cognitive yet stimulus-dependent. (...) The payoff is not only a specific proposal for marking the perception–cognition boundary, but also a deeper understanding of the natures of hallucination and demonstrative thought. (shrink)

Relationalism maintains that mind-independent objects are essential constituents of veridical perceptual experiences. According to the argument from hallucination, relationalism is undermined by perfect hallucinations, experiences that are introspectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptual experiences but lack an object. Recently, a new wave of relationalists have responded by questioning whether perfect hallucinations are possible: what seem to be perfect hallucinations may really be something else, such as illusions, veridical experiences of non-obvious objects, or experiences that are not genuinely possible. This paper argues (...) that however well new wave relationalism may handle brains in vats, drug users “seeing” pink elephants, and other extraordinary hallucinations, it struggles to accommodate mundane hallucinations, such as “hearing” your child cry out from the room down the hall when she is actually sound asleep or “feeling” vibrations on your thigh even when your phone isn't in your pocket. Mundane hallucinations are best explained as byproducts of noise in the perceptual system, and noise-induced hallucinations are resistant to the strategies that new wave relationalists deploy to explain away other hallucinations. Mundane hallucinations can thus underpin an especially powerful version of the argument from hallucination. (shrink)

Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. John Campbell’s relational theory is a prominent representative of the latter (...) approach, and the main focus of this paper. We argue that Campbell’s theory is problematic for a variety of reasons, through which runs a common thread: most of the problems that the theory is faced with arise from the relational view of perception that he endorses, and, more generally, they suggest that perceptual experience is not sufficient for an analysis of joint attention. (shrink)

Do perceptual experiences always inherit the content of their neural correlates? Most scientists and philosophers working on perception say ‘yes’. They hold the view that an experience’s content just is (i.e. is identical to) the content of its neural correlate. This paper presses back against this view, while trying to retain as much of its spirit as possible. The paper argues that type-2 blindsight experiences are plausible cases of experiences which lack the content of their neural correlates. They are not (...) experiences of the stimuli or stimulus properties prompting them, but their neural correlates represent these stimulus properties. The argument doesn’t depend on any special view of what it is for an experience to be of a stimulus or stimulus property. The upshot is that, even assuming there is a deep relationship between experiential content and neural content, that relationship is more complex than simple identity. (shrink)

: For quite some time now there has been an ongoing debate whether authoritative self-knowledge is compatible with anti-individualism.1 One influential line of argument against compatibilism is due to Paul Boghossian (1998). I argue that Boghossian misconstrues what the anti-individualist really is committed to. This defence of compatibilism is elaborated by showing how the Twin Earth thought experiment is meant to speak in favour of anti-individualism. Partly this will show that Boghossian is wrong in his denial that empirical background knowledge (...) is imported into the Twin Earth experiment. The main points argued are that Boghossian fails to realize, both, (1) that anti-individualism does not involve concept-individuation in terms of reference, and (2) that anti-individualism assumes a core of representational success. In effect, these two points constitute an entirely new way to defend compatibilism, a way that seems to have gone unnoticed in the literature. (shrink)

When you hallucinate an object, you are not in the normal sort of concurrent causal sensory interaction with that object. It's standardly further inferred that the hallucinated object does not actually exist. But the lack of normal concurrent causal sensory interaction does not imply that there does not exist an object that is hallucinated. It might be a past‐perceived object. In this paper, I argue that this claim holds for at least some interesting cases of hallucination. Hallucinations generated by misleading (...) cues (e.g. ‘seeing’ Kanizsa triangles), hallucinations of Charles Bonnet Syndrome patients, and dreams are experiences of past‐perceived objects. (shrink)

Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere (...) intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used to show that it also affords genuine awareness of future events. Constructivist views of memory might challenge the idea of memory as genuine awareness of remembered events. We explain how our view is consistent with both constructivist and anti-causalist conceptions of memory. There is still room for an interpretation of episodic memory as enabling genuine awareness of past events, even if it involves reconstruction. (shrink)

Mental imagery has often been taken to be equivalent to “sensory imagination”, the perception‐like type of imagination at play when, for example, one visually imagines a flower when none is there, or auditorily imagines a music passage while wearing earplugs. I contend that the equation of mental imagery with sensory imagination stems from a confusion between two senses of mental imagery. In the first sense, mental imagery is used to refer to a psychological attitude, which is perception‐like in nature. In (...) the second sense, mental imagery refers to a mental content, which can be grasped via different attitudes. I will show that failure to acknowledge the distinction between these senses of mental imagery has muddled philosophical discussion. This distinction brings much needed clarity to debates where sensory imagination and mental imagery are invoked, shedding light on issues such as the nature of imagistic mental states, and the representational powers and limits of mental imagery. I will conclude by sketching a general attitudinal account of imagination that does justice to both senses of mental imagery, outlining a promising framework for understanding imagination. (shrink)

The paper discusses radical constructivism about episodic memory as developed by Kourken Michaelian under the name of “simulationism”, a view that equates episodic memory with mental time travel. An alternative, direct realist view is defended, which implies disjunctivism about the appearance of remembering. While admitting the importance of mental time travel as an underlying cognitive mechanism in episodic memory, as well as the prima facie reasonableness of the simulationist’s critique of disjunctivism, I formulate three arguments in defense of disjunctivism, which (...) thus appears to be a feasible alternative to radical constructivism. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain (...) perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. So far from undermining the credibility of naïve realism, Berger and Nanay simply draw our attention to an important question to be considered by naïve realists in future work. Namely, which of the approaches considered is most likely to provide an accurate account of unconscious perception in each of its purported incarnations? (shrink)

There is a recent surge in interest in agential accounts of perception, i.e. accounts where activity plays a central role in accounting for the nature of perceptions. Within this camp, Lisa Miracch...

There is a recent surge in interest in agential accounts of perception, i.e. accounts where activity plays a central role in accounting for the nature of perceptions. Within this camp, Lisa Miracch...

According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, externalism (...) seems unable to account for the strong intuition that these subjects’ beliefs are nonetheless justified. I think these considerations do not at all help the internalist cause. I argue that by appealing to the anti-individualistic nature of perception, it can be shown that skeptical scenarios provide no reason to prefer internalism to externalism. (shrink)

According to the bootstrapping problem, any view that allows for basic knowledge (knowledge obtained from a reliable source prior to one’s knowing that that source is reliable) is forced to accept that one can utilize a track-record argument to acquire justification for believing that one’s belief source is reliable; yet, we tend to think that acquiring justification in this way is too easy. In this paper I argue, first, that those who respond to the bootstrapping problem by denying basic knowledge (...) succumb to over-intellectualizing epistemology, and secondly, reliabilist views avoid over-intellectualization only at the expense of sanctioning bootstrapping as a benign procedure. Both of these outcomes are difficult to bear. To ward off each of these unsavory outcomes, I propose an alternative solution that draws on a distinction between two separate epistemic concepts: entitlement and justification. (shrink)

According to the Disjunction Problem, teleological theories of perceptual content are unable to explain why it is that a subject represents an F when an F causes the perception and not the disjunction F v G, given that the subject has mistaken G’s for F’s in the past. Without an adequate explanation these theories are stuck without an account of how non-veridical representation is possible, which would be an unsettling result. In this paper I defend Burge’s teleological theory of perception (...) against the Disjunction Problem, arguing that a perceptual state’s representing what I call an error-prohibiting disjunctive property is incompatible with the truth of perceptual anti-individualism. And because perceptual anti-individualism is at the heart of Burge’s theory, I conclude that Burgeans need not be concerned with the Disjunction Problem. (shrink)

This paper aims to outline, and argue for, an approach to episodic memory broadly in the spirit of knowledge-first epistemology. I discuss a group of influential views of epsiodic memory that I characterize as ‘two-factor accounts’, which have both proved popular historically and have also seen a resurgence in recent work on the philosophy of memory. What is common to them is that they try to give an account of the nature of episodic memory in which the concept of knowledge (...) plays no explanatory role. I highlight some parallels between these two-factor accounts and attempts to give a reductive definition of knowledge itself. I then discuss some problems two-factor accounts of episodic memory face in explaining the distinctive sense in which episodic recollection involves remembering personally experienced past events, before sketching an alternative approach to episodic memory, which takes as basic the idea that episodic memory involves the retention of knowledge. I argue that we can give an exhaustive constitutive account of what episodic memory is, and how it differs from other types of mental states, by considering what particular type of knowledge is retained in episodic memory, and what exactly having that knowledge consists in. (shrink)

In this essay I distinguish categories of animals by their mental capacities. I then discuss whether punishment can be appropriate for animals of each category, and if so what form punishment may appropriately take for animals of each category. The aim is to illuminate each type of punishment through comparison and contrast with the others. This both forestalls the overintellectualization of punishment which arises from viewing humans as the only paradigm case and forestalls the underintellectualization of human punishment which results (...) from making no essential reference, in an account of human punishment, to the human capacity for specifically critical reasoning. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

I defend both conceptualists and nonconceptualists against an attack which has been leveled at them by critics such as Byrne (Perception and conceptual content In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, Malden, pp 231-250, 2005), Speaks (Philos Rev 114:359–398, 2005), and Crowther (Erkenntnis 65:5–276, 2006). They distinguish a ‘state’ reading and a ‘content’ reading of ‘(non)conceptual’ and argue that many arguments on either side support only the respective state views, not the respective content views. To prepare (...) the ground for my defense, I argue for an understanding of the state view in terms of concept exercise rather than concept possession and provide an overview of versions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism of different strengths. I then argue that conceptualists and nonconceptualists tacitly accept a so-called ‘state-to-content’ principle, show that existing defenses of this principle fail, and provide a new defense of it. It draws on the sources of the nonconceptualism debate, viz. the need to do justice both to the phenomenology of experience and to its epistemological role and to account for the existence of perceptual content and thought content. I argue that epistemological considerations together with considerations from the subject’s perspective support the claim that conceptual thought has conceptual and propositional content, whereas nonconceptual experience has nonconceptual and non-propositional content. (shrink)

Fodor advocates a view of cognitive processes as computations defined over the language of thought (or Mentalese). Even among those who endorse Mentalese, considerable controversy surrounds its representational format. What semantically relevant structure should scientific psychology attribute to Mentalese symbols? Researchers commonly emphasize logical structure, akin to that displayed by predicate calculus sentences. To counteract this tendency, I discuss computational models of navigation drawn from probabilistic robotics. These models involve computations defined over cognitive maps, which have geometric rather than logical (...) structure. They thereby demonstrate the possibility of rational cognitive processes in an exclusively non-logical representational medium. Furthermore, they offer much promise for the empirical study of animal navigation. (shrink)

This paper surveys selected (though arguably representative) versions of metaphysical and epistemological disjunctivism. Although they share a common logical structure, it is hard to find a further common denominator among them. Two main conclusions are: (1) a specific standpoint on the nature of perceptual relation is not such a common denominator, which means that it is very unlikely that all of these views could be refuted with a single objection; (2) contrary to what its name suggests, disjunctivism can be correctly (...) expressed without the employment of disjunction. (shrink)

Recently, it has been objected that naïve realism is inconsistent with an empirically well-supported claim that mental states of the same fundamental kind as ordinary conscious seeing can occur unconsciously (SFK). The main aim of this paper is to establish the following conditional claim: if SFK turns out to be true, the naïve realist can and should accommodate it into her theory. Regarding the antecedent of this conditional, I suggest that empirical evidence renders SFK plausible but not obvious. For it (...) is possible that what is currently advocated as unconscious perception of the stimulus is in fact momentaneous perceptual awareness (or residual perceptual awareness) of the stimulus making the subject prone to judge in some way rather than another, or to act in some way rather than another. As to the apodosis, I show that neither the core of naïve realism nor any of its main motivations is undermined if SFK is assumed. On the contrary, certain incentives for endorsing naïve realism become more tempting on this assumption. Since the main motivations for naïve realism retain force under SFK, intentionalism is neither compulsory nor the best available explanation of unconscious perception. (shrink)

According to unconscious perception hypothesis (UP), mental states of the same fundamental kind as ordinary conscious seeing can occur unconsciously. The proponents of UP often support it with empirical evidence for a more specific hypothesis, according to which colours can be seen unconsciously (UPC). However, UPC is a general claim that admits of many interpretations. The main aim of this paper is to determine which of them is the most plausible. To this end, I investigate how adopting various conceptions of (...) colour and perceptual phenomenal character affects UPC’s resilience to objections. This brings me to the conclusion that the most plausible reading of UPC is the one according to which the phenomenal character of colour perception (i) is constituted by colours qua primitive mind-independent qualities of the environment and (ii) is not essentially tied to consciousness. My conclusion not only identifies the most plausible interpretation of UPC, but also highlights and supports an unorthodox version of the relational theory of perception, which is a perfectly viable yet so far overlooked stance in the debate about unconscious perception. (shrink)