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 precision

The standard view in philosophy of mind is that the way to understand the difference between perception and misperception is in terms of accuracy. On this view, perception is accurate while misperception is inaccurate. However, there is some evidence (albeit controversial evidence) that perceptual experience actually involves widespread inaccuracy. I add to that evidence in the paper. Then I point toward a way of understanding the difference between perception and misperception, not in terms of accuracy alone, but in terms of precision. That is, I argue that perceptual experience is designed to enable more fine-grained discrimination among the properties that are most useful for action, even if that involves inaccuracy. The view in this paper motivates a new account of illusion, on which illusions are imprecise as well as inaccurate. I call this the Precision Account of Illusion.     

Perceptual Learning

The extent of adult improvement in not only complex but also simple perceptual tasks is remarkable. Although this phenomenon has been noted and studied since the middle of the 19th century, recent advances in the study of brain physiology and anatomy afford new insights. Improvement specificity suggests that changes involve early sensory cortical areas, previously thought to lose their plasticity following the first years. The critical role of selective attention, even in learning the simplest tasks, as well as the precedence of learning easy cases, suggests the involvement of high-level cortical areas. Learning easy cases is more general than learning difficult cases. This pattern suggests the involvement of both high- and low-level areas in an orderly manner, with easy learning beginning at high-level areas and harder cases being resolved by access to low-level areas. The mapping of behavioral findings to underlying brain sites provides a unified framework for this interdisciplinary field.     

Perceptual Particularity

Perception grounds demonstrative reference, yields singular thoughts, and fixes the reference of singular terms. Moreover, perception provides us with knowledge of particulars in our environment and justifies singular thoughts about particulars. How does perception play these cognitive and epistemic roles in our lives? I address this question by exploring the fundamental nature of perceptual experience. I argue that perceptual states are constituted by particulars and discuss epistemic, ontological, psychologistic, and semantic approaches to account for perceptual particularity.     

Perceptual Intuitionism

In the recent metaethical literature there has been significant interest in the prospects for what I am denoting ‘Perceptual Intuitionism’: the view that normal ethical agents can and do have non‐inferential justification for first‐order ethical beliefs by having ethical perceptual experiences, e.g., Cullison 2010, McBrayer 2010, Vayrynen 2008. If true, it promises to constitute an independent a posteriori intuitionist epistemology, providing an alternative to intuitionist accounts which posit a priori intuition and/or emotion as sources of non‐inferentially justified ethical beliefs. As it is formulated, it is plausible that a necessary condition for the view is the truth of Ethical Perception: normal ethical agents can and do have perceptual experiences (at least some of which are veridical) as of the instantiation of ethical properties. In this paper a sophisticated and promising account of Ethical Perception is offered. Extant objections are shown to fail. However, it will be argued that it is far from obvious that the account of Perceptual Intuitionism which emerges constitutes an independent alternative to other intuitionist accounts. This is because we have reason to think that ethical perceptual experience may be epistemically dependent on other epistemic sources, e.g. a priori intuition or emotion.     

Against Perceptual Conceptualism

This paper is concerned with the question of whether mature human experience is thoroughly conceptual, or whether it involves non-conceptual elements or layers. It has two central goals. The first goal is methodological. It aims to establish that that question is, to a large extent, an empirical question. The question cannot be answered by appealing to purely a priori and transcendental considerations. The second goal is to argue, inter alia by relying on empirical findings, that the view known as ‘state-conceptualism’ is false. We will argue that our experiences do involve non-conceptual elements. That is, a subject may enjoy an experience with a particular phenomenal aspect, without possessing the concept needed for the specification of the content of that aspect, and moreover, without being able to acquire that concept upon having that experience.     

Nondoxastic Perceptual Evidence

How does a particular experience evidence a particular perceptual belief for us? As Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 98) puts it, “[W]hat makes it the case that a particular way of being appeared to—being appeared to greenly, say—is evidence for the proposition that 1 see something green?” Promising, but unsuccessful, answers cite a reliable connection between our having the experience and the belief's being true, our having good reason to believe in such a connection, the proper functioning of our faculties, and objective epistemic norms. A superior view, developed here, is that our experience of being appeared to greenly evidences for us that something is green because we have learned to identify green objects by experiences of that sort. Our learning to do so amounts to our adopting an epistemic norm directing us to form that belief on the basis of that experience.     

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.