Intentionalism and Recurrent Cognitive Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
The Poor

Conscious perception carries distinctive phenomenal character. Intentionalism would account for this character by appeal to the wealth of information embedded in perceptual content while also cautioning that such opulent content exceeds the poor grasp of other types of conscious cognitive consideration. Intentionalism adds that introspective comparison of the differing phenomenal characters of contrastive perceptual episodes reveals only the episodes’ difference in content. Accordingly, intentionalism concludes that perceptual content alone determines phenomenal character. However, this conclusion fatally fails to accommodate the recalcitrant fact that the content of perceptual experience inferentially permeates reasoning, both theoretical and practical. So, the content of perception cannot be peculiar to that sensuous mode of cognition. Hence, it would seem that intentionalism is false.

Intentionalism’s Troubles Begin

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
The State ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Experiential Content ◽  
Over Time

This chapter puzzles over intentionalism’s odd exportation of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. Evidently, a perceptual state's phenomenal character is intrinsic to the state while its content is not. So, intentionalism’s reduction of character to content stumbles right out of the blocks. Also, but contrary to fact, if content were phenomenally determinative, all cognitive states with the same content would have the same character. Since perceptual content admits of minimal logical or conceptual complexity, over time a perceiver may find herself in perceptual states that have the same content but, contrary to intentionalism, different phenomenal characters. Moreover, throughout a continuous period of phenomenally stable conscious perception a perceiver might reason from, or about, her experiential content. Her reasoning would ensure fluctuation in her cognitive content despite the constancy of her phenomenal character. In short, perceptual content’s availability to cognition generally undermines intentionalism. Content does not determine character.

scholarly journals Nonconceptualism and content independence

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-340
Author(s):  
Sebastián Sanhueza Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Stress State ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
The State ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
Cognitive States

Abstract: State Nonconceptualism is the view that perceptual states (not perceptual content) are different in kind from cognitive states (not cognitive content), insofar as a subject could be in perceptual states even if she lacked the concepts necessary to describe those states. Although this position has recently met serious criticism, this piece aims to argue on its behalf. A point I specifically want to highlight is that, thanks to State Nonconceptualism, it is possible to characterize perceptual experiences as nonconceptual or concept-independent without relying on the notion of perceptual content - a feature I term here the content independence of State Nonconceptualism. I think one should welcome this result: for, although a nonconceptualist characterization of perceptual experience is quite plausible, nonrepresentationalist approaches to perception have persuasively challenged the thought that perceptual experiences have representational content. This brief piece is divided into three parts: (i) I introduce two versions of Perceptual Nonconceptualism, namely, Content and State Nonconceptualism; (ii) I go on to stress State Nonconceptualism’s content independence; and (iii), I briefly address three prominent objections against the state nonconceptualist.

The Price of Twin Earth

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (281) ◽  
pp. 689-710
Author(s):  
Brandon James Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
Content Internalism

Abstract Liberals about perceptual contents claim that perceptual experiences can represent kinds and specific, familiar individuals as such; they also claim that the representation of an individual or kind as such by a perceptual experience will be reflected in the phenomenal character of that experience. Conservatives always deny the latter and sometimes also the former claim. I argue that neither liberals nor conservatives have adequately appreciated how the content internalism/externalism debate bears on their views. I show that perceptual content internalism entails conservativism when conjoined with one other, extremely plausible premise. Hence, liberals are committed to perceptual contents externalism, yet they have failed to fully address the consequences that this has for their view. Moreover, the argument is easily adapted to perceptual experiences of Twin Earthable properties, like colour and shape. I use this last result to show why existing conservative arguments that appeal to Twin Earth plausibly overgeneralize.

Dimensions of Perceptual Content

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Causal Theory Of Perception ◽  
The Right

This chapter presents a causal theory of perception according to which perceiving something is, in outline, equivalent to its producing or sustaining, in the right way, a phenomenal representation of it. Commonly, the perceived object plays this causal role reliably enough to yield perceptual knowledge, provided we form perceptual beliefs that appropriately correspond to what we see. But the theory does not imply that seeing is conceptual, entails believing, or has propositional perceptual content. The notion of content is clarified, and several types are described, including a hallucinatory kind. This causal representational view also accommodates “inner perception” of elements, such as images—as is appropriate to the breadth of “perception.” But the most important point here is that explaining the causal character of the perceptual relation partly on the basis of information represented in the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience does not entail the perceiver’s acquiring beliefs that propositionalize that information.

Intentionalism, Cognition, and Representation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Perceptual State ◽  
Content Of Experience

This chapter continues consideration of reductive intentionalism without embracing the doctrine, framing it in the context of cognitive science. Cognition, including perception, is representation. An agent’s cognitive, perhaps perceptual, state is a relation binding the agent to a proposition by means of her mental representation. Intentionalism would explicate the phenomenal character of a perceiver's experience in terms of the content of her prevailing perceptual representation. While minimal intentionalism maintains that the phenomenal character of the perceiver's experience merely supervenes on her representation's content, maximal intentionalism would reduce character to content. For maximal intentionalism maintains that phenomenal character is simply what introspection finds. Yet, according to maximal intentionalism, introspection, when tuned to conscious perception, detects only the content of experience. Hence, the maximalist identifies phenomenal character with the content carried by perceptual representation.

In Defense of Perceptual Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Schellenberg
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
The Way

Chapter 5 takes a step back and traces the way in which excessive demands on the notion of perceptual content invite an austere relationalist account of perception. It argues that any account that acknowledges the role of discriminatory, selective capacities in perception must acknowledge that perceptual states have representational content. The chapter shows that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with representationalism. Most objections to the thesis that perceptual experience has representational content apply only to austere representationalist accounts, that is, accounts on which perceptual relations to the environment play no explanatory role. By arguing that perceptual relations and perceptual content are mutually dependent the chapter shows how Fregean particularism can avoid the pitfalls of both austere representationalism and austere relationalism. With relationalists, Fregean particularism argues that perception is constitutively relational, but with representationalists it argues that it is constitutively representational.

Perceptual Experience, Conscious Content, and Non-Conceptual Content

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uriah Kriegel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
The Face ◽  
Content Of Experience ◽  
Representational Approach

One of the promising approaches to the problem of perceptual consciousness has been the representational theory, or representationalism. The idea is to reduce the phenomenal character of conscious perceptual experiences to the representational content of those experiences. Most representationalists appeal specifically to non-conceptual content in reducing phenomenal character to representational content. In this paper, I discuss a series of issues involved in this representationalist appeal to non-conceptual content. The overall argument is the following. On the face of it, conscious perceptual experience appears to be experience of a structured world, hence to be at least partly conceptual. To validate the appeal to non-conceptual content, the representationalist must therefore hold that the content of experience is partly conceptual and partly non-conceptual. But how can the conceptual and the non-conceptual combine to form a single content? The only way to make sense of this notion, I argue, leads to a surprising consequence, namely, that the representational approach to perceptual consciousness is a disguised form of functionalism.

scholarly journals Re-examining Husserl’s Non-Conceptualism in the Logical Investigations

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Logical Investigations ◽  
Hybrid View ◽  
Vicious Regress ◽  
Categorial Intuition ◽  
Conceptual Nature

Abstract A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that is also deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid an objection raised by Walter Hopp – that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress.

scholarly journals Perceiving Exploding Tropes

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Almäng
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Property A ◽  
Qualitative Nature ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
Over Time

The topic of this paper is the perception of properties. It is argued that the perception of properties allows for a distinction between the sense of the identity and the sense of the qualitative nature of a property. So, for example, we might perceive a property as being identical over time even though it is presented as more and more determinate. Thus, you might see an object first as red and then as crimson red. In this case, the property is perceived as identical over time, even though the sense of the qualitative nature (the redness, the crimson redness) of the property is changing. The distinction between the sense of identity and the sense of quality is explicated in terms of perceiving a particular property, a trope, and perceiving it as an instance of a universal. It is subsequently argued that the perceived tropes cannot constitute the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience.

Filling-in is for finding out

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 781-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Pessoa ◽  
Evan Thompson ◽  
Alva Noë
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
World Model ◽  
Perceptual Mapping ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Perceptual Completion ◽  
The World ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
The Brain

The following points are discussed in response to the commentaries: (1) A taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena should rely on both phenomenological and mechanistic criteria. (2) Certain forms of perceptual completion are caused by topographically organized neural processes – neural filling-in. (3) The bridge locus, understood as the final site of perceptual experience in the brain, should be replaced by the principle that each token percept has a neural substrate that is nomically sufficient for it, all else being equal. (4) Analytic isomorphism – the view that there must be a pictorial or spatial neural-perceptual isomorphism at the bridge locus – should be rejected. Although more abstract kinds of isomorphism are central to the neural-perceptual mapping, the perceptual cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of the neural, and therefore the explanation of perception cannot be reduced to uncovering neural-perceptual isomorphisms. (5) The task of vision is to guide action in the world, not to construct a detailed world-model in the head. (6) Neural filling-in facilitates the integration of information and thereby helps the animal find out about its environment. (7) Perceptual content needs to be understood at the level of the person or animal interacting in the world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document