Ambiguous figures and the spatial contents of perceptual experience: a defense of representationalism

Abstract

Representationalists hold that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is identical with, or supervenes on, an aspect of its representational content. As such, representationalism could be disproved by a counter-example consisting of two experiences that have the same representational content but differ in phenomenal character. In this paper, I discuss two recently proposed counterexamples to representationalism that involve ambiguous or reversible figures. I pursue two goals. My first, and most important, goal is to show that the representationalist can offer plausible responses to both counter-examples. My second goal is to show the implications of these responses for the nature of the spatial representational contents of perceptual experiences.

Perception of Faces and Other Progressively Higher-Order Properties

“…Such high-order properties would indeed not be grasped if attention merely played a pre-perceptual role, that is, it worked as a spotlight in order for the perceptual mechanism to operate once one's gaze it fixated (Pylyshyn 2003;Raftopoulos 2009). 10 The perceptual character of holistic attention can clearly be seen if one sticks to ambiguous figures (Jagnow 2011), in which the alternate mobilization of grouping properties is particularly evident. In the following figure made of a grid of nine squares (Fig.…”

Different Kinds of Fusion Experiences

“…'Aspect dawning' pictures show this point, but perceptually ambiguous pictures show it even better. As Jagnow (2011) points out, in the following grid one can see either an X-shaped structure in front of a background, or a crossshaped structure in front of another background. Yet if one focused one's attention just on adjacent cells in the grid, one could not entertain this sort of Gestalt switch.…”