Abstract

I argue that perceptual content is distinctive in kind from the content of pure cognition, a difference which shows up experientially in the determinate character of perceptual experience. We see determinate individuals and determinate properties, seeing each as members or instantiations of describable kinds. I show that there is no tension in conceiving perception as both conceptually articulated and determinate. Rather, we became misled into thinking that there is a tension as a result of misinterpretations of the mid-twentieth century diagnoses of the framework of givenness. ;We can articulate the determinate character of perceptual experience by using complex demonstrative singular terms and complex demonstrative predicates. I argue that, like the content of demonstrative expressions, perceptual content is 'impure' in the sense that it involves the represented object or attribute in its conditions of meaningfulness. Examination of the nature of demonstrative contents shows that there is no tension in conceiving demonstrative content as both 'impure' and fully conceptual. ;We can understand perceptual content's 'impure' and determinate character once we recognize that perception is not a receptive, passive faculty but an activity. Perception makes up a functional unit with skillful action in the sense that the possibility of each presupposes the other: skillful actions are those we undertake in response to the determinate features of our environment as they are made available in the 'impure' content of perceptual experience, while the contentfulness of perception requires the integration of 'perceptual' information with information from our sense of our bodily activity. Perceptual content arises in a context of bodily activity because it is spatial in nature and the possibility of genuinely spatial content requires such activity. The fact that content which arises out of the integration of 'perceptual' information and information from bodily activity has an irreducibly egocentric component explains perceptual content's nondescriptive nature. ;I dispel any qualms that my account is not continuous with science by supplying the framework for a scientific explanation of the visual processes which are the causal enabling conditions for perceptual experience. I show that a Gibsonian or ecological approach to the causal conditions which enable perceptual experience allows us to explain its 'impure' determinate character