A common objection to sense-datum theories of perception is that they cannot give an adequate account of the fact that introspection indicates that our sensory experiences are directed on, or are about, the mind-independent entities in the world around us, that our sense experience is transparent to the world. In this paper I point out that the main force of this claim is to point out an explanatory challenge to sense-datum theories.

A number of philosophers have argued in favour of the Dependency Thesis: if a subject sensorily imagines an F then he or she sensorily imagines from the inside perceptually experiencing an F in the imaginary world. They claim that it explains certain important features of imaginative experience, in brief: the fact that it is perspectival, the fact that it does not involve presentation of sensory qualities and the fact that mental images can serve a number of different imaginings. I argue (...) that the Dependency Thesis is false and that, in any event, it does not have the explanatory credentials claimed for it. Some of the features of imaginative experience are incorrectly specified, namely the absence of presentation of sensory qualities. With a more precise idea of what we need to explain, I argue that the explanation should proceed by noting that imagination and perception have phenomenally similar contents and that this is to be explained in terms of the similar kinds of representations in play. I trace the consequences of my discussion for disjunctivist theories of perception, Berkeleian Idealism and the characterisation of knowing what an experience is like. (shrink)

A scholastic-Cartesian schema faithfully maps ordinary, effective ways of dealing with intentionality; yet its apparent incoherence provokes philosophers into opting for one of two stances, 'Cartesian' or 'direct realist', seemingly incompatible, yet each seem in accord with ordinary thought. A wide range of canonical and current theories, realist, idealist and hybrid, essentially involve one option or the other. We should instead consider why the language of intentionality, with its apparent anomalies, works so well. Released from the obligation to opt for (...) one stance over the other, we can identify a robust realism different in kind from anything currently on offer. (shrink)

A scholastic-Cartesian schema faithfully maps ordinary, effective ways of dealing with intentionality; yet its apparent incoherence provokes philosophers into opting for one of two stances, 'Cartesian' or 'direct realist', seemingly incompatible, yet each seem in accord with ordinary thought. A wide range of canonical and current theories, realist, idealist and hybrid, essentially involve one option or the other. We should instead consider why the language of intentionality, with its apparent anomalies, works so well. Released from the obligation to opt for (...) one stance over the other, we can identify a robust realism different in kind from anything currently on offer. (shrink)

A scholastic-Cartesian schema faithfully maps ordinary, effective ways of dealing with intentionality; yet its apparent incoherence provokes philosophers into opting for one of two stances, 'Cartesian' or 'direct realist', seemingly incompatible, yet each seem in accord with ordinary thought. A wide range of canonical and current theories, realist, idealist and hybrid, essentially involve one option or the other. We should instead consider why the language of intentionality, with its apparent anomalies, works so well. Released from the obligation to opt for (...) one stance over the other, we can identify a robust realism different in kind from anything currently on offer. (shrink)