There are three distinct projects - ontological, phenomenological, and conceptual - to pursue in the philosophy of perception. They are, however, rarely distinguished. Failure to distinguish them has resulted in their being pursued as one. Their completion then requires that they admit of the same solution, while accommodating the existence of misperception and the scientific facts concerning the perceptual process. The lesson to learn from misperceptions and those facts is, however, that no such common solution is possible, and that the (...) projects must, and can, be pursued separately. Pursuit of the phenomenological and conceptual projects then requires a context in which discourse concerning objects of perception is permitted without ontological commitment to such objects. This is supplied by treating certain uses of perceptual locutions as within a context of pretense. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to sketch a new structural version of the Representative Theory of Perception which is supported both by conceptual and empirical arguments. To this end, I will discuss, in a first step, the structural approach to representation and show how it can be applied to perceptual consciousness. This discussion will demonstrate that perceptual experiences possess representational as well as purely sensational properties. In a second step, the focus will switch to empirical cases of synaesthesia. (...) In particular, I will stress that certain synaesthetic experiences are well-suited to corroborating a structural account of the perceptual mind. The overall picture that emerges in this paper prompts a new view of perceptual consciousness that is ruthlessly structural. (shrink)