The Goldilocks Problem of the specificity of visual phenomenal content

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4):476-495 (2014)
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Abstract

Existentialist accounts maintain that visual phenomenal content takes the logical form of an existentially quantified sentence. These accounts do not make phenomenal content specific enough. Singularist accounts posit a singular content in which the seen object is a constituent. These accounts make phenomenal content too specific. My account gets the specificity of visual phenomenal content just right. My account begins with John Searle's suggestion that visual experience represents an object as seen, moves this relation outside the scope of the existential quantifier and then replaces it with the relation of objects being ‘present as accessible’, as described by Alva Noë

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Author's Profile

Robert Schroer
University of Minnesota, Duluth

Citations of this work

Perceptual experiences of particularity.Błażej Skrzypulec - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind.John R. Searle - 1983 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Action in Perception.Alva Noë - 2004 - MIT Press.

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