Perception

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-112
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
De Re ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
New Evil Demon Problem

Chapter 3 explores the epistemic role of consciousness in perception. Section 3.1 argues that unconscious perceptual representation in blindsight cannot justify beliefs about the external world. Section 3.2 argues that this is because phenomenal consciousness, rather than access consciousness or metacognitive consciousness, is necessary for perceptual representation to justify belief. Section 3.3 argues that perceptual experience has a distinctive kind of phenomenal character—namely, presentational force—that is not only necessary but also sufficient for perception to justify belief. Section 3.4 uses a version of the new evil demon problem to argue that the justifying role of perceptual experience supervenes on its phenomenal character alone. Section 3.5 defends this supervenience thesis against the objection that phenomenal duplicates who perceive distinct objects thereby have justification to believe different de re propositions.

Mentalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-220
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
Problem Section ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
New Evil Demon Problem

Chapter 6 develops a theory of epistemic justification designed to capture the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness: namely, phenomenal mentalism. Section 6.1 defines epistemic justification within the framework of evidentialism. Section 6.2 defines mentalism about epistemic justification and explores its connection with evidentialism. Section 6.3 argues for phenomenal mentalism, the thesis that epistemic justification is determined solely by your phenomenally individuated mental states, by appealing to intuitions about clairvoyance, super-blindsight, and the new evil demon problem. Section 6.4 argues for a phenomenal conception of evidence, which says that your evidence is exhausted by facts about your current phenomenally individuated mental states, and defends it against Timothy Williamson’s arguments for the E = K thesis. Finally, section 6.5 outlines an explanatory challenge for phenomenal mentalism, which sets the agenda for the second part of the book.

Direct Realism and the Extended Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Direct Acquaintance ◽  
The World

Representationalism rightly treats perception as a type of cognitive representation. However, it wrongly proposes that perceptual content determines phenomenal character. Rather, it is the form, not the content, of a perceptual representation that constitutes phenomenal character. For direct realism is true: Perception is that form of cognition in which representation and represented are the same. Other forms of cognition recruit representations that are distinct from what they represent. In contrast, perceptual representation extends the mind's reach into the world by casting the very object perceived in the role of a self-referential demonstrative. By fusing representation and represented perception provides direct acquaintance with what is seen exactly as it is seen to be and thus determines phenomenal character.

The Epistemic Role of Consciousness from a Practical Point of View

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-262
Author(s):  
Sean M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Practical Point ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper concerns the way that phenomenal consciousness helps us to know things about the world. Most discussions of how consciousness contributes to our store of knowledge focus on propositional knowledge. In this paper, I recast the problem in terms of practical knowledge by reconstructing some neglected strands of argument in William James’s analyses of bodily affect and habitual action in The Principles of Psychology (1890/1950). I will argue that my reading of James’s view provides a plausible account of how phenomenally conscious states feed practical knowledge. I will also show that my reconstruction of James view harmonizes well with recent empirical findings.

scholarly journals Anti-Individualism and Perceptual Representation: Interview With Tyler Burge

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-597
Author(s):  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Perceptual Psychology

Tyler Burge's anti-individualism – the view that individuating many of a creature's mental kinds is necessarily dependent on relations that the creature bears to the physical, or in some cases social, environment – backs his theory of perceptual representation, i.e. perceptual anti-individualism. Perceptual anti-individualism articulates a framework that, according to Burge, perceptual psychology assumed without articulation. In this interview, Burge talks about the main tenets and underpinnings of perceptual anti-individualism in relation to classic representational theories of perceptual experience, reductive theories of mental content, theories of phenomenal consciousness, and other associated topics.

Experience

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-153
Author(s):  
Casey O'Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
The Senses

This chapter argues that perceptual experience is richly multisensory. In particular, phenomenal consciousness is constitutively and irreducibly multisensory. The reason is that the phenomenal character of a conscious multisensory episode can include more than what is associated with each of the respective senses plus whatever accrues due to simple co-consciousness. Exercising multisensory capacities thus makes a phenomenal difference to perceptual consciousness. This difference can obtain whether or not it would enable a subject to discriminate between two otherwise equivalent experiences. It follows that the character of a perceptual episode is not exhausted by what belongs to each of the senses. Therefore, not all perceptual experience is modality specific. Coordination among the senses thus makes possible new forms of perceptual consciousness. Multisensory perception extends the varieties of experience.

Cognition

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-152
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
Functional Criterion

Chapter 4 explores the epistemic role of consciousness in cognition. Section 4.1 argues that all beliefs provide epistemic justification for other beliefs. Section 4.2 contrasts beliefs with subdoxastic states, which provide no epistemic justification for belief. Section 4.3 argues that this epistemic distinction between beliefs and subdoxastic states cannot be explained in terms of the functional criterion of inferential integration. Section 4.4 argues that this epistemic distinction must be explained in terms of the phenomenal criterion of conscious accessibility: the contents of beliefs are accessible to consciousness as the contents of conscious judgments. Section 4.5 argues that conscious judgments have phenomenal contents that supervene on their phenomenal character. Section 4.6 concludes with some proleptic remarks to explain why beliefs can provide epistemic justification for other beliefs only if their contents are accessible to consciousness.

The Epistemic Role of Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemic Role

What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? This book argues that consciousness plays an essential role in explaining how we can acquire knowledge and epistemically justified belief about ourselves and our surroundings. On this view, our mental lives cannot be preserved in unconscious creatures—zombies—who behave just as we do. Only conscious creatures have epistemic justification to form beliefs about the world. Zombies cannot know anything about the world, since they have no epistemic justification to believe anything. On this view, all epistemic justification depends ultimately on consciousness. This book builds a sustained argument for the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, which draws on a range of considerations in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. The book is divided into two parts, which approach the theory of epistemic justification from opposite directions. Part I argues from the bottom up by drawing on considerations in the philosophy of mind about the role of consciousness in mental representation, perception, cognition, and introspection. Part II argues from the top down by arguing from general principles in epistemology about the nature of epistemic justification. These mutually reinforcing arguments form the basis for a unified theory of the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, one that bridges the gap between epistemology and the philosophy of mind.

Direct Realism and Illusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Perceptual Error ◽  
Standard Response ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Ambiguous Stimuli ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Apparent Problem

The supposed problem of perceptual error, including illusion and hallucination, has led most theories of perception to deny formulations of direct realism. The standard response to this apparent problem adopts the mistaken presupposition that perception is indeed liable to error. However, the prevailing conditions of observation are themselves elements of perceptual representation, functioning in the manner of predicate modifiers. They ensure that the predicates applied in perceptual representations do indeed correctly attribute properties that perceived physical objects actually instantiate. Thus, perceptual representations are immune to misrepresentation of the sort misguidedly supposed by the spurious problem of perceptual misrepresentation. Granted the possibility that perceptual attribution admits of predicate modification, it is quite possible that perceptual experience permits both rudimentary and sophisticated conceptualization. Moreover, such treatment of perceptual predication rewards by providing an account of aspect alteration exemplified by perception of ambiguous stimuli.

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.

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