知觉经验与知觉内容

知觉(perception)是指我们通过视觉、听觉、触觉、嗅觉、味觉等感觉器官而获得的对事物以及外部世界的意识感知.知觉经验(perceptual experience)的一个显著的特点是它具有某种现象特征,即知觉者会体验到一种"那究竟像什么(what it is like)"的感觉.例如,一个人会从红色视觉经验中体验到"红色究竟像什么"的意识感受性(qualia).知觉内容(perceptual content)粗略地讲是指通过知觉经验向知觉者所传递的信息.关于知觉问题在哲学上的重要性,我们可以从以下几点来看:在形而上学方面,知觉是我们了解外部物理世界究竟存在什么的主要手段;在认识论方面,研究知觉是研究我们如何达到关于外部物理世界的知识的主要手段;在语言哲学方面,知觉内容是我们的心灵与外部物理世界的关联及互动在语言实践上的体现;在心灵哲学方面,知觉经验中的现象特征与意识及意向性之间存在着深层的内在联系.     

Perceptual Content Defended

Recently, the thesis that experience is fundamentally a matter of representing the world as being a certain way has been questioned by austere relationalists. I defend this thesis by developing a view of perceptual content that avoids their objections. I will argue that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with perceptual experience being representational. As it will show that most objections to the thesis that experience has content apply only to accounts of perceptual content on which perceptual relations to the world play no explanatory role. With austere relationalists, I will argue that perceptual experience is fundamentally relational. But against austere relationalists, I will argue that it is fundamentally both relational and representational.     

Phenomenology and Perceptual Content

Terence Horgan and John Tienson argue that there is phenomenal intentionality, that is, “a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone”. However, their arguments are open to two lines of objection. First, Horgan and Tienson are not sufficiently clear as to what kind of content it is that they take to be determined by, or to supervene on, phenomenal character. Second, critics have objected that, for their conclusion to follow, Horgan and Tienson would first have to establish the covariation of phenomenology and intentional content, but even so, phenomenal intentionality would still emerge as less plausible than its converse, representationalism. I will address these two challenges by appeal to Husserlian ideas. A consideration of perceptual phenomenology (i.e., phenomenal character) shows that there is a kind of perceptual content that is, indeed, determined by phenomenal character. Such content is conceived in terms of fulfillment conditions, or what it takes to bring aspects of objects and scenes to different, and more complete, ways of givenness. We can establish the primacy of phenomenology, relative to such fulfillment‐conditional content, by tracing it back to the basic phenomenology of visual and other sensations.     

Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content

Abstract

According to John McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. This paper criticizes this view by claiming that there is a certain kind of representational and non‐conceptual perceptual content that is sensitive to bodily skills. After a brief introduction to McDowell’s position, Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of body schema and Gibson’s notion of affordance are presented. It is argued that affordances are constitutive of representational perceptual content, and that at least some affordances, the so‐called ‘conditional affordances’, are essentially related to the body schema. This means that the perceptual content depends upon the nature of the body schema. Since the body schema does not pertain to the domain that our conceptual faculties operate upon, it is argued that this kind of perceptual content cannot be conceptual. At least some of that content is representational, yet it cannot feature as non‐demonstrative conceptual content. It is argued that if it features as demonstrative conceptual content, it has to be captured by private concepts. Since McDowell’s theory does not allow for the existence of a private language, it is concluded that at least some representational perceptual content is non‐conceptual.     

Surface Colour is not a Perceptual Content

In this paper, I consider a view that explains colour experience by the independent representation of surface and illumination. This view implies that surface colour is a phenomenal perceptual content. I argue from facts of colour phenomenology to the conclusion that surface colour is not a phenomenal perceptual content. I then argue from results of surface-matching experiments to the conclusion that surface colour is neither a perceptual content of any kind nor any sort of computational output of the perceptual system. These conclusions contradict widely accepted views in both the philosophy of perception and colour science. I finish by considering and rejecting a competing account of the surface-matching results, according to which surface colour is represented indeterminately in perception.     

知觉内容、规范及其本体论解释

从一种广义的自然主义框架出发,关于内容的基本哲学问题是:在一个本无内容的自然界中内容是如何可能的?具言之,内容源于何处,其地位之特殊性何在,内容与非内容的自然存在之间有何关系?本文通过对柏济新著《客观性之起源》中的相关观点,及其与当代不同种类的诠释主义立场之间的潜在争论的述评,试图对上述问题给出某种合理解答.这一解答涉及一种受自然进化约束的、与可诠释性条件相伴随的规范性.这是一种与自然主义相容的非还原主义立场.     

Illusions of Optimal Motion,Relationism, and Perceptual Content

Austere relationism rejects the orthodox analysis of hallucinations and illusions as incorrect perceptual representations. In this article, I argue that illusions of optimal motion (IOMs) present a serious challenge for this view. First, I submit that austere‐relationist accounts of misleading experiences cannot be adapted to account for IOMs. Second, I show that any attempt at elucidating IOMs within an austere‐relationist framework undermines the claim that perceptual experiences fundamentally involve relations to mind‐independent objects. Third, I develop a representationalist model of IOMs. The proposed analysis combines two ideas: Evans' dynamic modes of presentation and Fine's relational semantics for identity.     

State Versus Content: The Unfair Trial of Perceptual Nonconceptualism

It has recently been pointed out that perceptual nonconceptualism admits of two different and logically independent interpretations. On the first (content) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the kind of content perceptual experiences have. On the second (state) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the relation that holds between a subject undergoing a perceptual experience and its content. For the state nonconceptualist, it thus seems consistent to hold that both perceptual experiences and beliefs share the same (conceptual) content, but that for a subject to undergo a perceptual experience, the subject need not possess the concepts involved in a correct characterization of such content. I argue that the consistency of this position requires a non-Fregean notion of content that fails to capture the way the subject grasps the world as being. Hence state nonconceptualism leaves perceptual content attribution unsupported. Yet, on a characterization of content along the relevant (neo-Fregean) lines, this position would become incoherent, as it would entail that a subject could exercise cognitive abilities she doesn’t possess. I conclude that, given the notion of content demanded by the debate, the state view does entail the content view after all.

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Perceptual Nonconceptualism: Disentangling the Debate Between Content and State Nonconceptualism

In this paper I argue, against recent claims by Bermúdez (2007) and Toribio (2008), that within the debate about whether perceptual experiences are nonconceptual, ‘state nonconceptualism’ (or the ‘state view’) can be a coherent and plausible position. In particular, I explain that state nonconceptualism and content nonconceptualism, when understood in their most plausible and motivated form, presuppose different notions of content. I argue that state nonconceptualism can present a plausible way of unpacking the claim that perceptual experiences are nonconceptual once the notion of content it should presuppose is taken into account; and once this notion of content is clearly distinguished from the one usually presupposed by content nonconceptualism, the criticisms that Bermúdez and Toribio place against state nonconceptualism become ineffective.     

目标或背景:联合搜索知觉学习的内容

采用颜色-形状联合搜索任务探讨短期特征联结知觉学习的效果和机制。训练被试在由不同颜色和形状组合的字母干扰子中搜索具有特定颜色和形状的目标字母,训练时间约为40分钟。通过训练,被试搜索特定的颜色-形状联结的目标字母的能力有所提升,并且学习效应能够迁移至背景改变目标不变的条件中,但是不能迁移至背景不变目标改变的条件中。这一结果提示,被试在进行短期联合搜索知觉学习时,学习到的是目标,而并非背景或目标与背景的联系。     

The Non-conceptual Content of Perceptual Experience: Situation Dependence and Fineness of Grain

I begin by examining a recent debate between John McDowell and Christopher Peacocke over whether the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual. Although I am sympathetic to Peacocke's claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual, I suggest a number of ways in which his arguments fail to make that case. This failure stems from an over-emphasis on the "fine-grainedness" of perceptual content -a feature that is relatively unimportant to its non-conceptual structure. I go on to describe two other features of perceptual experience that are more likely to be relevant to the claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual. These features are 1) the dependence of a perceived object on the perceptual context in which it is perceived and 2) the dependence of a perceived property on the object it is perceived to be a property of.     

Perceptual Content,Information, and the Primary/Secondary Quality Distinction

Our perceptual systems make information about the world available to our cognitive faculties. We come to think about the colors and shapes of objects because we are built somehow to register the instantiation of these properties around us. Just how we register the presence of properties and come to think about them is one of the central problems with understanding perceptual cognition. Another problem in the philosophy of perception concerns the nature of the properties whose presence we register. Among the perceptible properties are colors and shapes, for example, and there is a long philosophical tradition of drawing and refusing to draw metaphysical distinctions between them. This paper makes a claim about the information-theoretic approach to perceptual cognition in order to argue for a fundamentally epistemological distinction between colors and shapes. What makes shapes and colors seem so different to us is how we carry information about their presence around us. In particular, we can come to know more about the shapes on the basis of perceiving them than we can come to know about the colors. One interesting feature of how this distinction is drawn is that it partially vindicates Locke’s claim that our ideas of primary qualities like shapes resemble them in ways our ideas of colors do not.