Abstract
When characterizing the content of a subject’s perceptual experience, does their seeing an object entail that their visual experience represents it as being a certain way? If it does, are they thereby in a position to have perceptually-based thoughts about it? On one hand, representationalists are under pressure to answer these questions in the affirmative. On the other hand, it seems they cannot. This paper presents a puzzle to illustrate this tension within orthodox representationalism. We identify several interesting morals which may be drawn in response, each of which teaches us something interesting and important about perceptual experience and its interface with cognition and related phenomena.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2625-2646 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Philosophical Studies |
| Volume | 177 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Sep 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding was provided by the Israel Science Foundation (Project No. 1220/17) and The Humanities Fund.
Funding Information:
We would like to thank everyone who attended a departmental colloquium at the University of Haifa for their helpful questions on this material. Special thanks also to Jonathan Berg, David Jenkins, Arnon Keren, and Samuel Lebens for their comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature B.V.
Keywords
- Analog representation
- Attention
- Format
- Iconic representation
- Perceptual experience
- Representationalism
- Seeing
- Singular thought
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy