The Admissible Contents of Experience

Which objects and properties are represented in perceptual experience, and how are we able to determine this? The papers in this collection address these questions together with other fundamental questions about the nature of perceptual content.

• The book draws together papers by leading international philosophers of mind, including Alex Byrne (MIT), Alva Noë (University of California, Berkeley), Tim Bayne (St Catherine’s College, Oxford), Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin), Richard Price (All Souls College, Oxford) and Susanna Siegel (Harvard University)
• Essays address the central questions surrounding the content of perceptual experience
• Investigates how are we able to determine the admissible contents of experience
• Published in association with the journal Philosophical Quarterly

Introduction (Fiona Macpherson, University of Glasgow).

1. Perception And The Reach Of Phenomenal Content (Tim Bayne, University of Oxford).

2. Seeing Causings And Hearing Gestures (Steven Butterfill, University of Warwick).

3. Experience And Content (Alex Byrne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

4. Is Perception A Propositional Attitude? (Tim Crane, University College London).

5. Conscious Reference (Alva Noë, University of California, Berkeley).

6. What Are The Contents Of Experiences? (Adam Pautz, University of Texas at Austin).

7. Aspect-Switching And Visual Phenomenal Character (Richard Price, University of Oxford).

8. The Visual Experience Of Causation (Susanna Siegel, Harvard University).

9. The Admissible Contents Of Visual Experience (Michael Tye, University of Texas at Austin).

Index.

Katherine Hawley is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews and Editorial Chair of the Philosophical Quarterly. She has published articles in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science, and is the author of How Things Persist (2001).

Fiona Macpherson is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience, University of Glasgow. She has recently also been a Research Fellow at the Centre for Consciousness, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. She has published articles in philosophy of mind, psychology and perception and is a co-editor (with Adrian Haddock) of Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge (2008).

Which objects and properties are represented in perceptual experience? Although perceptual experiences frequently give rise to beliefs, the content of these beliefs do not always simply reflect the contents of the experiences on which they are based. Instead, they often rest on background knowledge and beliefs, as well as experience. This raises the question of how are we able to determine what the admissible contents of experience are, whether they include singular or existential contents, and whether they include contents pertaining to causation or natural kinds.

The papers in this collection address these issues, together with questions concerning the nature of perceptual content. They deal with the central issues of whether perceptual content is similar to the content of the propositional attitudes; whether all states with content fall neatly into the categories of either belief or experience. The book also focuses on whether there exists a continuum from states that are more like perceptual experiences to states that are more like belief, and, indeed, ultimately whether we should consider perceptual experiences to have content at all.

This ground-breaking volume is published in association with the journal Philosophical Quarterly.