Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?

Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):452-469 (2009)
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Abstract

It is widely agreed that perceptual experience is a form of intentionality, i.e., that it has representational content. Many philosophers take this to mean that like belief, experience has propositional content, that it can be true or false. I accept that perceptual experience has intentionality; but I dispute the claim that it has propositional content. This claim does not follow from the fact that experience is intentional, nor does it follow from the fact that experiences are accurate or inaccurate. I end by considering the relationship between this question and the question of whether experience has non-conceptual content.

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Tim Crane
Central European University

Citations of this work

The Problem of Perception.Tim Crane & Craig French - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Perceptual Content Defended.Susanna Schellenberg - 2011 - Noûs 45 (4):714 - 750.
Perceptual content and the content of mental imagery.Bence Nanay - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1723-1736.
The intentionality and intelligibility of moods.Jonathan Mitchell - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):118-135.

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References found in this work

Perception and conceptual content.Alex Byrne - 2013 - In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Blackwell. pp. 231--250.
The contents of perception.Susanna Siegel - 2005 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Scenarios, concepts, and perception.Christopher Peacocke - 1992 - In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.
Believing in things.Zoltán Gendler Szabó - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (3):584–611.

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