scholarly journals Perceptual Experience and Degrees of Belief

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Raleigh ◽  
Filippo Vindrola
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Perceptual Confidence

Abstract According to the recent Perceptual Confidence view, perceptual experiences possess not only a representational content, but also a degree of confidence in that content. The motivations for this view are partly phenomenological and partly epistemic. We discuss both the phenomenological and epistemic motivations for the view, and the resulting account of the interface between perceptual experiences and degrees of belief. We conclude that, in their present state of development, orthodox accounts of perceptual experience are still to be favoured over the perceptual confidence view.

Reply to Keith A. Wilson

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
The Senses

In my essay, ‘The Silence of the Senses’ (2004, revised 2013) I argued that perceptual experience has no representational content, or at least none if you exclude the content of a perceiver’s, or experiencer’s responses to his experience, e.g., in a case of perceiving, recognizing...

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.

The Metaphysics of Representation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Robert G. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Final Layer ◽  
The World ◽  
Interactive Relationship ◽  
Compositional Interpretation ◽  
The One

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.

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 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.

scholarly journals Verbal Expressions of Confidence and Doubt

2009 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline J. Wesson ◽  
Briony D. Pulford
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lower Confidence ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Present Tense

The development of a taxonomy of expressions expressing the degree of confidence or certainty felt in the correctness of one's judgments, knowledge, or beliefs is reported. 30 phrases expressing confidence and doubt were rated by 96 British participants on a 7-point scale to indicate how much confidence or doubt they felt each phrase expressed. The expressions were rank ordered, based on their mean ratings, to produce a continuum of cues expressing confidence, ranging from high to low. 9 of the 30 expressions were rated as expressing lower confidence when phrased in the past tense than in the present tense. The expressions reported in this study form a useful tool for researchers who are investigating the communication of confidence and degrees of belief, especially in relation to giving advice, influence, and persuasion.

The Present State of the Art

1984 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 344-346
Author(s):  
Peter A. Magaro
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
State Of The Art
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