Theories of perceptual content and cases of reliable spatial misperception

Abstract

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non‐semantic, non‐intentional, and non‐phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving up their core commitments.

Hill on perceptual relativity and perceptual error

“…Since this function may have been performed only rarely, it is consistent with Millikan's view that typically when a representation is tokened, its content is not present (Artiga, 2013;Godfrey-Smith, 1991). Nonetheless, consumer-based teleosemantics arguably cannot handle all examples of normal misperception (Rubner, 2023), so this point has limited force.…”