Representationalism and anti-representationalism about perceptual experience

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Abstract

Many philosophers have held that perceptual experience is fundamentally a
matter of perceivers being in particular representational states. Such states are
said to have representational content, i.e. accuracy or veridicality conditions,
capturing the way that things, according to that experience, appear to be. In this
thesis I argue that the case against representationalism — the view that
perceptual experience is fundamentally and irreducibly representational — that is
set out in Charles Travis’s ‘The Silence of the Senses’ (2004) constitutes a
powerful, but much misunderstood and neglected argument against this
prevailing philosophical orthodoxy.
In chapter 2, I present an interpretation of Travis’s arguments that poses a
dilemma for the representationalist concerning the indeterminacy and
availability of perceptual content. Chapters 3 and 4 evaluate a variety of
arguments in favour of such content based upon the nature of appearances, or
‘looks’, including those by Byrne (2009), Siegel (2010) and Schellenberg
(2011b), each of which I find to be problematic. Finally, chapters 5 and 6
examine the relationship between representational content and phenomenal
character, i.e. what perceptual experience is subjectively like, outlining some
potential responses to Travis’s anti-representationalism. These include the
external individuation of content and self-knowledge, and the operation of
perceptual discriminatory capacities, the latter of which does not necessarily
favour a representationalist account of experience.
I conclude that Travis’s arguments establish substantive constraints upon the
nature and role of perceptual content. Moreover, I argue that the debate centres
less upon the existence of such content than its explanatory role, particularly in
relation to phenomenal character and the contents of other mental states: belief,
intention, thought, knowledge, and so on. This in turn highlights the need for
representationalists to better clarify the role of the contents their theories posit,
and why such theories constitute a better explanation of the relevant
phenomena than the corresponding non-representational view.

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