Abstract
Visual Associative agnosia is a rare perceptual impairment generally resulting from lesions in the infero temporal cortex. Patients suffering from associative agnosia are able to make accurate copies of line drawings, but they are unable to visually recognize objects - including those represented in line drawings - as belonging to familiar high-level kinds. The Rich Content View claims that visual experience can represent high-level kind properties. The phenomenon of associative agnosia appears to present us with a strong case for the Rich Content View. There are reasons for thinking that the experiences of an agnosic patient differ from those of a healthy subject. Given that there is a phenomenal contrast between the experiences of an associative agnosic and those of a healthy perceiver, one may argue that this contrast is due to differences in abilities to represent high-level kinds. I claim that there is indeed a phenomenal contrast between the visual experiences of an agnosic and those of a healthy perceiver. However, the explanation of this contrast that best fits the empirical data is compatible with the view that visual experience does not represent high-level kinds.
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Notes
Though the question of whether the content of perceptual experience is rich or thin is relevant for non-representationalists as well, see e.g. Prinz (2012).
There is a debate about whether rich content in perception involves cognitive penetration, as some arguments for rich content – typically those that are created by using the method of phenomenal contrast – seem to rely on the idea that non-perceptual mental states can penetrate the content of visual experience (See Siegel (2010, 10) for a discussion of this issue. See also Brogaard and Chomanski (2015) and Montague (2017) for further discussions).
These virtues are not well understood. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to go into a philosophical discussion of how we should understand them.
I here take Cognitive phenomenology to be the view that cognitive states such as beliefs and thoughts have phenomenal characters that are proprietary to such states. There are weaker and stronger versions of cognitive phenomenology (Bayne and Montague 2011). Further, see Montague (2017) for an argument for the view that the contrast is due to cognitive phenomenology.
There are basically two ways of doing this: 1) claim that there is a difference in low-level content, 2) claim that there is a difference in rich content, but not due to representations of categorical high-level kinds.
Bayne is aware of this possible reply. He convincingly argues that “associative agnosia involves the loss of a certain type of occurrent state and not simply the loss of a capacity or causal relation” (Bayne 2009, 396).
A proponent of the Rich Content View may insist that it is possible to imagine a case of ´pure´ agnosia where the agnosic patent’s perceptual impairment is linked to his inability to recognize objects as belonging to high-level kinds, and where his ability to perceive low-level properties is intact. But, if Siegel is right in claiming that it is a broadly empirical issue whether the Rich Content View is true or false, such objections seem irrelevant (Siegel 2010, 13).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tim Bayne, Fiona Macpherson and Anders Nes for helpful discussions on these topics. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for suggestions on the final draft.
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Hansen, M.K. Perception of High-Level Content and the Argument from Associative Agnosia. Rev.Phil.Psych. 9, 301–312 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0364-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0364-1