Experience and Content

The 'content view', in slogan form, is 'Perceptual experiences have representational content'. I explain why the content view should be reformulated to remove any reference to 'experiences'. I then argue, against Bill Brewer, Charles Travis and others, that the content...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Byrne, Alex
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Blackwell Publishing 2009
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50132
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3652-1492
Description
Summary:The 'content view', in slogan form, is 'Perceptual experiences have representational content'. I explain why the content view should be reformulated to remove any reference to 'experiences'. I then argue, against Bill Brewer, Charles Travis and others, that the content view is true. One corollary of the discussion is that the content of perception is relatively thin (confined, in the visual case, to roughly the output of 'mid-level' vision). Finally, I argue (briefly) that the opponents of the content view are partially vindicated, because perceptual error is due to false belief.