Perception and the reach of phenomenal content

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 59, Issue 236, 2009, Pages 385-404

  Bayne, Tim ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 75949100843     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: 14679213     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2009.631.x     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Strictly speaking, it is representations of properties rather than properties themselves that are low-level or high-level. Nevertheless, it is very convenient to refer to represented properties as low-level and high-level, and I shall help myself to this convenience on occasion
2. I use the phrase 'perceptual phenomenality' rather than the more common 'perceptual phenomenology', on the ground that 'phenomenology' is best reserved for a discipline rather than a certain type of mental state or property. Those who find talk of 'phenomenality' off-putting can simply replace it with talk of 'phenomenology'
3. See T. Nagel, 'What is it Like to Be a Bat?', Philosophical Review, 83 (1974), pp. 435-50
4. For discussion of the nature of phenomenal content, although not always under that label, see U. Kriegel, 'Phenomenal Content', Erkenntnis, 57 (2002), pp. 175-98
5. D. Chalmers, 'The Representational Character of Experience', in B. Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2004), pp. 153-80
6. C. McGinn, 'Consciousness and Content', Proceedings of the British Academy, 74 (1988), pp. 219-39
7. T. Horgan and J. Tienson, 'The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality', in D. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford UP, 2002), pp. 520-33
8. C. Siewert, The Significance of Consciousness (Princeton UP, 1998)
9. M. Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness (MIT Press, 1995), p. 141
10. J. Prinz, 'A Neurofunc-tional Theory of Consciousness', in A. Brook and K. Akins (eds), Cognition and the Brain (Cambridge UP, 2005), pp. 381-96
11. and 'The Intermediate Level Theory of Consciousness', in M. Velmans and S. Schneider (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 247-60
12. J. Lyons, 'Perceptual Belief and Nonexperiential Looks', in J. Hawthorne (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, 19: Epistemology (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 237-56
13. R. van Gulick, 'Deficit Studies and the Function of Phenomenal Consciousness', in G. Graham and G.L. Stephens (eds), Philosophical Psychopathology (MIT Press, 1994), pp. 25-49, at p. 46
14. S. Siegel, 'Which Properties are Represented in Perception?', in T.S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds), Perceptual Experience (Oxford UP, 2005), pp. 481-503
15. J. Fodor, The Modularity of Mind (MIT Press, 1983), pp. 94-7
16. Theorists who appear to be sympathetic towards conservatism include A. Clark, A Theory of Sentience (Oxford UP, 2000)
17. R. Jackendoff, Consciousness and the Computational Mind (MIT Press, 1987)
18. H. Langsam, 'Experiences, Thoughts, and Qualia', Philosophical Studies, 99 (2000), pp. 269-95
19. J. Levine, 'Materialism and Qualia', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64 (1983), pp. 354-61
20. E. Lormand, 'Nonphenomenal Consciousness', Noûs, 30 (1996), pp. 242-61
21. Theorists who appear to be sympathetic towards liberalism include P. Carruthers, Phenomenal Consciousness (Cambridge UP, 2000)
22. A. Goldman, 'The Psychology of Folk Psychology', Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 16 (1993), pp. 15-28
23. Horgan and Tienson; D. Pitt, 'The Phenomenology of Cognition, or, What it is Like to Think that P', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 69 (2004), pp. 1-36
24. Siewert; G. Strawson, Mental Reality (MIT Press, 1994)
25. Tye, Consciousness, Color, and Content (MIT Press, 2000), pp. 73-6
26. See Goldman; Horgan and Tienson; Pitt; Siewert; Siegel. See Kriegel, and Siegel, 'How Can We Discover the Contents of Experience?', Southern Journal of Philosophy, 45 (2007) Suppl., pp. 127-42, for discussion of the contrast methodology as such
27. Of course, the argument is not completely novel. See van Gulick for an embryonic presentation of the case
28. See, for useful overviews of agnosia, M.J. Farah, Visual Agnosia, 2nd edn (MIT Press, 2004)
29. G.W. Humphreys and MJ. Riddoch, To See But Not to See (Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1987)
30. H. Lissauer, 'Ein Fall von Seelenblindheit nebst einem Beitrage zur Theorie derselben' [1890], tr. J.M. Lissauer, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 5 (1988), pp. 155-92
31. H.-L. Teuber, 'Alteration of Perception and Memory in Man', in L. Weiskrantz (ed.), Analysis of Behavioural Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 268-375, at p. 293
32. A.B. Rubens and D.F. Benson, 'Associative Visual Agnosia', Archives of Neurology, 24 (1971), pp. 305-16, at pp. 308-9
33. For achromatopsia, see M.F. Beauvois and B. Saillant, 'Optic Aphasia for Color and Color Agnosia', Cognitive Neuropsychology, 2 (1985), pp. 1-48
34. C.A. Heywood and A. Cowey, 'Cerebral Achromatopsia', in G.W. Humphreys (ed.), Case Studies in the Neuropsychology of Vision (London: Plenum, 1999), pp. 17-39
35. R.W. Kentridge et al., 'Chromatic Edges, Surfaces, and Constancies in Cerebral Achromatopsia', Neuropsychologia, 42 (2004), pp. 821-30
36. For akinetopsia, see S. Zeki, 'Cerebral Akinetopsia (Visual Motion Blindness)', Brain, 114 (1991), pp. 811-24
37. N. Motomura et al., 'Auditory Agnosia', Brain, 109 (1986), pp. 379-91
38. I. Peretz, 'Brain Specialization for Music', Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (2001), pp. 28-33
39. Tye, Consciousness, Color, and Content, p. 61: see also Ten Problems, p. 140
40. T. Hansen et al., 'Memory Modulates Color Appearance', Nature Neuroscience, 9 (2006), pp.1367-8
41. Although pure cases of associative agnosia are relatively rare, one does not need pure cases to show that associative agnosia is not merely a matter of low-level visual impairment: see G. Ettlinger, 'Sensory Deficits in Visual Agnosia', Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 19 (1956), pp. 297-301
42. A. Cowey et al., 'Ettlinger at Bay', in A.D. Milner (ed.), Comparative Neuropsychology (Oxford UP, 1998), pp. 30-50
43. Instead, one need only find patients with associative agnosia whose low-level visual impairments are no more serious than those of patients without associative agnosia, and such cases have indeed been found: see Farah; E.K. Warrington, 'Agnosia', in R. Vinken et al. (eds), Handbook of Clinical Neurology (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1985), pp. 333-49
44. Cf. Lyons, 'Perceptual Belief
45. Tye, Consciousness, Color, and Content
46. It should be noted that there is some evidence that conceptual knowledge of a domain is not entirely unaffected in associative agnosia (see Farah, pp. 152-3)
47. See T. Burge, 'Individualism and Psychology', Philosophical Review, 95 (1986), pp. 3-45
48. M. Davies, 'Externalism and Experience', in N. Block et al. (eds), The Nature of Consciousness (MIT Press, 1997), pp. 309-28
49. See Chalmers, 'The Representational Character of Experience'
50. B. Thompson, 'Senses for Senses', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 87 (2008), pp. 99-117
51. I. Biederman and M.M. Shiffrar, 'Sexing Day-old Chicks', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13 (1987), pp. 640-5
52. H.H. Price, Perception (London: Methuen, 1932), pp. 18-19
53. F. Jackson, 'Epiphenomenal Qualia', The Philosophical Quarterly, 32 (1982), pp. 127-36
54. I am not claiming that one cannot construct a compelling version of the knowledge argument centring on the representation of an object as a square. Rather, my claim is only that it is much more difficult to construct square-based versions of the knowledge argument than it is to create a red-based version of the argument
55. This paper was presented at a workshop on the Admissible Contents of Experience at the University of Glasgow organized by Fiona Macpherson, and I am grateful to Fiona and the other participants in that workshop for their comments on this paper. I have also benefited greatly from the comments of Uriah Kriegel and David Chalmers