Defending the content view of perceptual experience / by Diego Zucca.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zucca, Diego, author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Perception (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

xi, 380 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

Summary:

In recent years, there has been a notable increase in philosophical interest in perception. Perception is the basic and primary way in which we get in touch with our world in cognitive and active terms: by perceiving the surrounding world, we come to form true beliefs about it and successfully inhabit it through our actions. As such correctly understanding the nature of perception will help to shed light on many other central philosophical issues. This book offers a defence of the content view of perceptual experience, of the idea that our perceptual experiences represent the world as being a certain way. and so have representational content. An articulated framework is provided for understanding the nature of these experiences in terms of contentful states, as well as for exploring the epistemological, semantical and phenomenological consequences of such an understanding. In addition, the book also includes a detailed and systematic account of how we conceive and ascribe the content of our experiences and their relation to our phenomenology, beliefs and knowledge of the world. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 The Semantics of Seeing and Related "Experiential" Predicates

Introduction 11

Part I A Methodological Remark 13

Part II Seeing Something 15

II.1 Basic Conditions

II.2 Some Objections

II.3 Transparency

Part III Seeing That P, Seeing That a Is F 26

III.1 Propositionality

III.2 Factivity

III.3 Opacity

III.4 Literal/Metaphorical

III.5 Object-Seeing and Fact-Seeing

III.6 Conceptuality

III.7 Definition

Part IV Seeing-As, Seeing Something As Something 36

IV.1 Implicativity and Normative Evaluability

IV.2 Recognition

IV.3 "Thick" Categories and Sensible Profiles

IV.4 Definition

IV.5 What Is a Sensible Profile? The SCM-Properties

IV.6 The Features of Seeing-As

Part V Looking, Seeming, Appearing 46

V.1 Looks/Seems/Appears: Analogies and Differences

V.2 A Principle Governing "Looks" Ascriptions

V.3 Three Uses of "Looks"

V.4 Is There a Phenomenological "Looks"?

V.5 The Phenomenological "Looks" Is Not Independent

V.6 "Looks F" Depends on "Is F"

V.7 To Sum Up

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 2 Some Basic Features of Perceptual Experience

Introduction 67

Part I The Belief Theory: Philosophical Arguments For and Against 68

I.1 The Belief Theory

I.2 Virtues of the Belief Theory

I.3 The Argument From Illusion, the Belief Theory and the Adverbialist View

I.4 The Problems of the Belief Theory. Objections and Possible Replies

I.5 The Belief Theory and the Phenomenological Adequacy Constraint

I.6 Beliefs, Inferences, Concepts: Rationality Constraint and Generality Constraint

I.7 Further Difficulties of the Belief Theory

Part II Against the Belief Theory: Arguments from Experimental Evidence 88

II.1 Inattentional- and Change- Blindness: There Is Seeing Without Noticing

II.2 The Sperling Experiment and What It Tells With Respect to the Belief Theory

II.3 The Case of Visual Associative Agnosia and the Belief Theory

II.4 The Case of Optic Ataxia and the Belief Theory

II.5 The Case of Blindsight and the Belief Theory

Chapter 3 The Content View

Introduction 105

Part I The Core Idea of the Content View (CV) 106

I.1 Introducing the Content View

I.2 The Content View and the Belief Theory

I.3 Phenomenal Character and Representational Content

I.4 Transparency and Richness of Details

I.5 The Scenario Content Introduced

Part II Some Prima Facie Virtues of the Content View 117

II.1 Distinctive Features of States with Intentional Content

II.2 Perceptual Experience and Accuracy

II.3 The Content View and Ordinary Semantics of "Seeing" and "Looking"

Chapter 4 The Content View Articulated

Introduction 129

Part I Layers and Components of Perceptual Content 130

I.1 Beyond the Scenario Content

I.2 Proto-propositional Content and Seeing-As

I.3 Scenario Content and Object-Seeing

I.4 Three Layers of Content

I.5 The Limits of Dretske's Theory of Seeing

Part II Objects and Properties: How They Feature in Perceptual Content 149

II.1 Back from Recognition to Discrimination

II.2 Object-Seeing through Property Discrimination

II.3 Which Basic Semantic Ingredients Shape the Content of Visual Perception?

II.4 Object-Dependency and Singularity

II.5 Demonstrative Contents and Semantic Gap

Chapter 5 Phenomenal Character and Kinds of Perceptual Content

Part I Phenomenal Character and Representational Content 174

I.1 Reconsidering Looks within the Content View

I.2 The Case of Perceptual Constancy

I.3 How Are We Aware of the Mode of Our Perceptual Experiences?

I.4 From Content Externalism to Phenomenal Externalism?

Part II Fregean vs. Russellian Content 215

II.1 To Recap Where We Are

II.2 Chalmers's Third Way: the Do able-Content View

II.3 Weaknesses of the Double-Content View

II.4 Perceptual Content and Character Are Wide, External, Russellian

Chapter 6 Seeing-As and the Range of Represented Properties

Part I Seeing-As between "Thin" Properties and "Thick" Properties

I.1 Sensible Profiles and the Properties They Are Made Out Of

I.2 Liberals and Conservatives

I.3 A "Thin" and a "Thick" System? The Dual Content View

Part II The Phenomenal Contrast Method 244

II.1 Introducing the Phenomenal Contrast Method

II.2 Cyrillic Words and Pine Trees

II.3 Does Visual Agnosia Support the Liberal View?

II.4 Do Ambiguous Figures Support the Liberal View?

Part III The Dual Content View: Beyond the Phenomenal Contrast Method 266

III.1 The Dual Content View Principle

III.2 Preparatory vs. Constitutive Cognitive Processes

III.3 The (Blurry) Superior Bound of Perceptual Content

III.4 Perceptual Content Is Moderately Rich and Outstrips Phenomenal Content

Chapter 7 Bringing the Disjunctivist Challenge into the Intentionalist View

Introduction 297

Part I Disjunctivism Introduced 298

I.1 What Is Disjunctivism?

I.2 The Reasons for Disjunctivism: The Detachment Problem

Part II The Good, the Bad and the Neutral: A Moderately Disjunctive Intentionalism 308

II.1 The Priority of the Successful

II.2 Function and Content

II.3 Where Do We Put Illusions?

II.4 A Problem: The "Function" of Hallucinations

II.5 The Semantic Gap of Hallucinatory Contents

II.6 Beyond the Detachment Problem

Concluding Remarks.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-377) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781443882750

1443882755

OCLC:

937455124

Publisher Number:

99966987086