The representational and phenomenal richness of perceptual experience

Bibliographic Data

ID21549565
AuthorsElisabetta Sacchi (San Raffaele University of Rome, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume39
Issue3
Pages289-314
Publication date2025-01-21
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTHEORIA An International Journal for Theory History and Foundations of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0495-4548 • E-ISSN: 2171-679X
PublisherEHU Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1387/theoria.25523
OpenAlexW4406701170
LanguageEN
References cited17

This paper deals with the issue of the admissible content of perceptual experience at the centre of the debate that opposes Conservatives and Liberals —who advocate, respectively, a Sparse and a Rich Content-View— and aims, specifically, to consider how this debate interacts with the Externalism/Internalism debate in philosophy of perception. Indeed, apart from a few exceptions (Siegel, 2006, 2010, 2013; Bayne, 2009; Ashby, 2020a; Raleigh, 2022), this issue has not yet been sufficiently addressed, and the present paper, in the wake of the aforementioned works, aims to focus on this issue in order to assess whether it would be more congenial for a Liberal to adopt content internalism or rather content externalism. In my paper I argue that the best move the Liberal should make is to endorse externalism with regard to the content of perceptual experience and internalism with regard to its phenomenal character. But, as it will turn out, this combination can only be sustained consistently if the Liberal discards the standard interpretation of one of its central claims, the so-called (Ashby, 2020a, p. 689) “phenomenal reflection claim” (PRC) —the claim according to which perceptual properties are reflected in/reverberate in the phenomenology of the experience— and adopts a different interpretation of it. To indicate what alternative interpretation of PRC the liberal should provide is one of the main goals of the paper

Biology · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Perception · Species richness · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Communication · Neuroscience · Psychology · Ecology

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