Abstract
I open my eyes and see that the lemon before me is yellow. States like this—states of seeing that \(p\)—appear to be visual perceptual states, in some sense. They also appear to be propositional attitudes (and so states with propositional representational contents). It might seem, then, like a view of perceptual experience on which experiences have propositional representational contents—a Propositional View—has to be the correct sort of view for states of seeing that \(p\). And thus we can’t sustain fully general non-Propositional but Representational, or Relational Views of experience. But despite what we might initially be inclined to think when reflecting upon the apparent features of states of seeing that \(p\), a non-propositional view of seeing that \(p\) is, I argue, perfectly intelligible.
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Acknowledgments
I was inclined to pursue what I call the visuo-epistemic view above thanks to a very helpful conversation with Tim Crane. I have also benefited from discussions with Michael Sollberger, John Turri, Richard Gray, Alessandra Tanesini, Nikolas Gisborne, Tom Avery, Lee Walters, Mike Martin, Nat Hansen, and Kathrin Glüer-Pagin. Versions of this material were presented at a conference on Context, Meaning and Implicit Content in Cerisy in June 2011, the PLM conference in Stockholm in September 2011, the Cardiff University Philosophy of Perception Workshop in October 2011, and the MindGrad Conference at Warwick University in December 2011. I am grateful to the audiences on those occasions for helpful comments. I am especially grateful for comments on previous drafts from Mark Eli Kalderon, Louise Richardson, Paul Snowdon, and Matt Soteriou. And for very helpful input thanks to the editors and two anonymous referees for Synthese.
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French, C. Perceptual experience and seeing that \(p\) . Synthese 190, 1735–1751 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0259-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0259-3