Many alleged counter-examples to intentionalism, the thesis that the phenomenology of perceptual experiences of a given sense modality supervenes on the contents of experiences of that modality, can be avoided by adopting a liberal view of the sorts of properties that can be represented in perceptual experience. I argue that there is a class of counter-examples to intentionalism, based on shifts in attention, which avoids this response. A necessary connection between the contents and phenomenal characters of perceptual experiences can be preserved by distinguishing perceptual phenomenology from the phenomenology of attention; but even if this distinction is viable, these cases put pressure on the thesis that phenomenal character can, in general, be explained in terms of mental representation.The core of intentionalism in the philosophy of perception is the thesis that there is the following necessary connection between the content and the phenomenal character (phenomenology) of perceptual experience:Minimal intentionalism. Necessarily, if two perceptual experiences of the same sense modality differ in phenomenology, then they differ in content. 1
As its title indicates, this book is about two kinds of properties of perceiving subjects: their phenomenal properties, and their representational properties. In particular, it focuses on three questions: What are phenomenal properties? What are representational properties? What is the relationship between phenomenal and representational properties? My answers to these questions are guided by two ideas, which have both been around for a long time. The first is that experience is transparent, in the sense that attention to one's perceptual experiences is, or is intimately involved with, attention to the objects and properties those experiences present as in one's environment. Though the label is due to Moore, versions of this idea can be found in earlier philosophers as well, and it has played a central role in recent work in the philosophy of perception. The second is that one of the roles of perceptual experience is to make objects and properties available to the perceiver for thought. The idea that perception must play this role is of course explicit in empiricists like Locke, and in recent work it has been emphasized by, among others, John McDowell and Mark Johnston. The term 'availability' is taken from Johnston's paper, 'The Obscure Object of Hallucination.' These two ideas are central enough to the book that it used to be called 'Transparency and Availability'-until an anonymous referee pointed out, reasonably, that no one would have any idea what a book with that title was about. If there's anything original in this book, it's the idea that, suitably formulated, these two ideas can go quite a long way in revealing the nature of the contents of experience, and the way in which those contents are related to phenomenal properties. Most of the book is concerned with tracing this argumentative path. The rest is concerned with some problems which arise from conclusions reached along the way. These problems are mainly metaphysical, and take us into questions both about the nature of propositions and the nature of phenomenal properties. As is true of any book like this, one can question the starting points, as well as some of the assumptions-often assumptions about whether certain sorts of experiences are possible or, about their veridicality conditions-made throughout. This book is the attempt to think through the consequences of certain assumptions which seem to me plausible starting points for thinking about
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