Does what we want influence what we see?
Abstract
I aim to show that the content of our perceptual states depends
counterfactually on the action we want to perform. Most
philosophical and psychological theories of perception claim or
at least assume the opposite: they conceive of perception as allpurpose: what we want to do does not influence what we see. I
will argue that the content of one's perceptual state does vary as
the action one is inclined to perform varies. To put it very
simply, what we see does indeed depend on what we want to
do. After clarifying what counterfactual dependence means in
my claim, I will give a two step argument. (a) one's visual
attention (sometimes) depends counterfactually on one's
intention to perform an action (everything else being equal) and
(b) one's perceptual content (always) depends counterfactually
on one's visual attention (everything else being equal). If we put
these claims together, what we get is that one's perceptual
content depends counterfactually on one's intention to perform
an action (everything else being equal).