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This chapter explores the ‘direct’ aspect of direct perceptual realism, and in particular, Kant's theory of non-conceptual perceptual content. A cognition is direct in the Kantian sense if and only if it refers ‘immediately’ (unmittelbar) to an object, and in turn, a cognition refers immediately to an object if and only if it is non-epistemic (belief-independent), non-conceptual (concept-independent), and otherwise unmediated (in the sense that it does not, or at least need not, refer by means of any other sort of representational faculty, representational content, psychological intermediary, or physical intermediary). Since all beliefs intrinsically contain concepts, then non-conceptuality is both necessary and sufficient for a cognition's being non-epistemic. It is argued that non-conceptuality is also both necessary and sufficient for a perception's being otherwise unmediated. Thus, non-conceptuality is both necessary and sufficient for the directness of perception.

A picture provides both configurational content concerning its design features, and pictorial or recognitional content about its external subject. This chapter argues that a picture's design both encodes artistically relevant design content, and in turn that design content encodes the subject content of the picture — producing overall a double content structure. An adequate theory for this structure should be able to explain the ambiguities involved in abstracting two levels of visual content from a single visible surface, as well as explaining the systematic relations between the two kinds of content. The chapter provides an orientational theory — based on a recently developed spatial logic of orientational concepts — for this purpose, and shows how depictive and perceptual content in general can be usefully explained in these orientational terms. This account of picturing also integrates well with a previously developed, more generic double content theory of art, and it is also plausible in cognitive science terms.

This introductory essay aims to explain why and in what way perception became a very central field of philosophical research by asking what questions contemporary philosophers of perception are concerned with and how they are different from the ‘old’ philosophical questions about perception. The answer is threefold. First, the questions contemporary philosophers of perception are concerned with are that they have intricate links to other subfields of philosophy: epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, aesthetics, even value theory. To put it somewhat provocatively, philosophy of perception no longer seems to be merely a subfield of philosophy of mind. Second, rather than taking for granted that questions about perception are questions about representation, many contemporary philosophers of perception either question the concept of perceptual representation or try to clarify what this concept means. Finally, an important feature of the new way of arguing about philosophical questions concerning perception is that paying close attention to empirical findings about perception seems to be the norm, rather than the exception.

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.

What kind of information is found in visual experience, and what kind can be found only in judgments made on its basis? Do we visually experience arrays of colored shapes, variously illuminated, and sometimes moving? Or does visual experience involve more complex features, such as personal identity, causation, and kinds such as bicycle, keys, and cars? This chapter argues that kind properties can be represented in experience. The contents of visual experience are not limited to colour, shape, illumination, and motion.

There are powerful reasons to think of perceptual content as determined at least in part by the environment of the perceiving subject. Externalist views such as this are often rejected on grounds that they do not give a good account of hallucinations. The chapter shows that this reason for rejecting content externalism is not well founded if we embrace a moderate externalism about content, that is, an externalist view on which content is only in part dependent on the experiencing subject“s environment. The chapter starts by motivating content externalism. It then argues that hallucinations are best understood in terms of a deficiency of veridical perceptual experiences. The chapter discusses the consequences of this thesis by developing a view of hallucinations that is committed to externalism about content.

This chapter explores the connection between the volume’s remaining fourteen contributions. One of the main observations made along the way is that debates about whether perceptual experience has content cannot be resolved independently of addressing the question of what the constituents of content would be, if perceptual experience did have content. It is also argued that the view that perception has content in a minimal sense, together with uncontroversial assumptions, entails that perception has content in a strong sense.

Chapter 4 develops Fregean particularism, thereby providing the details of my account of singular content. Fregean particularism advances a new understanding of singular modes of presentation: perceptual content is constituted by the perceptual capacities employed and the particulars (if any) thereby singled out. These modes of presentation can be individuated at the level of content types and token contents. Perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions with the same phenomenal character are constituted by employing the same perceptual capacities; they thereby share a content type. But the token content of perception, hallucination, and illusion differs at least in part. If one perceives a particular, one employs perceptual capacities that successfully single out that particular. Thereby, the token content is constituted by the particular singled out and thus is singular content. If one fails to single out a particular (perhaps because one is suffering an illusion or hallucination), the token content is gappy.

In this previously unpublished follow‐up to ‘Another Look at Colour’, McGinn evaluates a possible objection to the account developed there. In McGinn's view, ‘colours are simple monadic primitive properties whose instantiation supervenes on complex relational dispositions to appear to perceivers in such‐and‐such ways’. According to the objection (which McGinn labels ‘the neutrality thesis’), the phenomenology of colour experience is wholly uninformative with respect to the ontological nature of colour (i.e. the kind of property colours must be); thus, for instance, the question of whether colours are identical to, or rather supervene on, dispositions need not arise. McGinn argues against the neutrality thesis, ultimately defending a kind of externalism about perceptual content, according to which ‘visual experience is a relation between a conscious subject and a cluster of properties, which may or may not be instantiated’. McGinn concludes by criticizing McDowell's neo‐Kantian view of perceptual appearance.

This introductory chapter explains perceptual learning as long-term changes in perception that are the result of practice or experience. It distinguishes perceptual learning from other nearby concepts, including perceptual development and cognitive penetration. It then delineates different kinds of perceptual learning. For instance, some kinds of perceptual learning involve changes in how one attends, while other cases involve a learned ability to differentiate two properties, or to perceive two properties as unified. The chapter uses this taxonomy to distinguish different cases of perceptual learning in the philosophical literature, including by contemporary philosophers such as Susanna Siegel, Christopher Peacocke, and Charles Siewert. Finally, it outlines the function of perceptual learning. Perceptual learning serves to offload onto our quick perceptual systems what would be a slower and more cognitively taxing task were it to be done in a controlled, deliberate manner. The upshot is that this frees up cognitive resources for other tasks.

If pragmatic representations are perceptual states, then a number of important debates in the philosophy of perception need to be re-evaluated. This chapter argues that the perceptually attributed properties (that is, the properties we perceive objects as having) include “action-properties”—properties relevant for the performance of one’s action. Further, the focus on pragmatic representations also provides new insights for the debate about “sensory individuals”—the objects we perceive. It is also argued that we do need to talk about perceptual representations in order to describe some features of perception, and that pragmatic representations are not to be considered as the representation of the dorsal visual subsystem.

This chapter seeks to establish whether the cognitive penetration of experience is compatible with experience having nonconceptual content. Cognitive penetration occurs when one’s beliefs or desires affect one’s perceptual experience in a particular way. This chapter examines two different models of cognitive penetration and four different accounts of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. It argues that one model of cognitive penetration—‘classic’ cognitive penetration—is compatible with only one of the accounts of nonconceptual content that It identifys. The chapter then considers the other model of cognitive penetration—cognitive penetration ‘lite’. It provides reasons to think that this is compatible with three accounts of nonconceptual content. Moreover, it argues that the account of nonconceptual content that it is not compatible with is a spurious notion of nonconceptual content that ought to be abandoned. Thus, it claims that cognitive penetration lite is compatible with all reasonable specifications of nonconceptual content.

This chapter argues that when we learn to recognize natural kinds, such as pine trees, this should be understood not in terms of kind properties coming to be represented in our perception, but simply in terms of a shift in our attention, which causes us to represent new low-level properties, such as colors, shapes, and textures. Susanna Siegel has argued that kinds, such as pine trees, can look phenomenally different to someone once that person becomes disposed to recognize them, and that the best explanation for this is that kind properties, such as being a pine tree, can become represented in perception. The chapter details an alternative explanation for the different look of the pine tree: a shift in one’s attentional pattern onto other low-level properties. Philosophers have alluded to this alternative before, but the chapter provides a comprehensive account of the view, drawing on the science of perceptual learning.

One dimension of the controversy over whether evaluative properties are presented in perceptual content has general roots in the debate over whether perceptual content, in general, is rich or austere. This chapter argues that we need to recognize a level of rich non-sensory perceptual content, drawing on experiences of chicken sexing and speech perception, to capture what our experience is like and our epistemic entitlements. In both cases (and many others), we are not conscious of the precise perceptual cues that are the basis for discriminations and, thus, the characterization of the phenomenal content of such experiences must go beyond sensory properties. Nevertheless, this point is arguably insufficient to establish the perception of evaluative properties. Their representation requires the subject to respond in certain ways. The chapter discusses how this should go for the case of pain and then, in outline, for moral properties.

Both common sense and dominant traditions in art criticism and philosophical aesthetics maintain that aesthetic features or properties are perceived. However, there are many reasons to be sceptical of this. This chapter defends the thesis—that aesthetic properties are sometimes represented in perceptual experience—against one of those sceptical opponents who maintains that perception represents only low-level properties, and since all theorists agree that aesthetic properties are not low-level properties, perception does not represent aesthetic properties. This chapter offers a novel argument—the argument from seeing-as—against that sceptic which moves from consideration of ambiguous figures to consideration of visual art, concluding that aesthetic properties are sometimes perceived and delivers a general lesson for philosophy of perception. Contrary to extant theories of rich perceptual content, aesthetic properties are better candidates for high-level perceptual contents than standardly theorized rich contents like natural kinds.