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  1. Everything is clear: All perceptual experiences are transparent.Laura Gow - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (2):412-425.
    The idea that perceptual experience is transparent is generally used by naïve realists and externalist representationalists to promote an externalist account of the metaphysics of perceptual experience. It is claimed that the phenomenal character of our perceptual experience can be explained solely with reference to the externally located objects and properties which (for the representationalist) we represent, or which (for the naïve realist) partly constitute our experience. Internalist qualia theorists deny this, and claim that the phenomenal character of our perceptual (...)
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  2. The Limitations of Perceptual Transparency.Laura Gow - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (265):723-744.
    My first aim in this paper is to show that the transparency claim cannot serve the purpose to which it is assigned; that is, the idea that perceptual experience is transparent is no help whatsoever in motivating an externalist account of phenomenal character. My second aim is to show that the internalist qualia theorist's response to the transparency idea has been unnecessarily concessive to the externalist. Surprisingly, internalists seem to allow that much of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience depends (...)
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  3.  45
    Beyond adverbialism: A new non‐relational theory of perceptual experience.Laura Gow - 2021 - Mind and Language 38 (1):2-19.
    All non-relational views of perceptual experience face Jackson's famous many-property problem. I argue that the original problem, and the existing responses to it, have focused too closely on the controversial terminology for which adverbialism is best known. We can also direct Jackson's many-property problem explicitly onto the adverbialist's metaphysics, generating a new challenge. The responses contemporary adverbialists and non-relationalists have made to the original objection are not successful against this challenge. We need a new non-relational account. I sketch an outline (...)
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  4.  30
    Intentionality as intentional inexistence.Laura Gow - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (8):1371-1385.
    One of Mark Textor’s main aims in Brentano’s Mind is to refute Brentano’s claim that intentionality – the capacity our mental acts have for being of, about, or directed on something – is the mark of the mental. I defend the view that Brentano analysed intentionality in terms of intentional inexistence (and so wasn’t an intentionality primitivist as Textor suggests). And I argue that we can regard intentionality as being the mark of the mental, but only if we give a (...)
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  5.  82
    A new theory of absence experience.Laura Gow - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (1):168-181.
    European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  6. Colour.Laura Gow - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (11):803-813.
    The view that physical objects do not, in fact, possess colour properties is certainly the dominant position amongst scientists working on colour vision. It is also a reasonably popular view amongst philosophers. However, the recent philosophical debate about the metaphysical status of colour properties seems to have taken a more realist turn. In this article, I review the main philosophical views – eliminativism, physicalism, dispositionalism and primitivism – and describe the problems they face. I also examine how these views have (...)
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  7. Why Externalist Representationalism is a Form of Disjunctivism.Laura Gow - 2017 - Ratio 31 (S1):35-50.
    Externalist representationalism is touted as a superior rival to naïve realism, and yet a careful analysis of the externalist representationalist's analysis of our ordinary perceptual experiences shows the view to be far closer to naïve realism than we might have expected. One of the central advertised benefits of representationalist views in general is that they are compatible with the idea that ordinary, illusory and hallucinatory perceptual experiences are of the same fundamental kind. Naïve realists are forced to deny the ‘common (...)
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  8.  29
    Are sensory experiences contingently representational? A critical notice of David Papineau's The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience.Laura Gow - 2021 - Mind and Language 36 (4):627-635.
    David Papineau develops a new argument against representationalism, centering on the idea that sensory experiences are essentially representational on this view. He defends his own “qualitative view” according to which sensory experiences are only contingently representational. I discuss his main argument against essentialist representationalism and then provide two challenges for his positive account. First, Papineau's theory faces a dilemma when it comes to explaining the contents of our perceptual beliefs in situations where the conscious character of sensory experience comes apart (...)
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  9.  44
    Empty Space, Silence, and Absence.Laura Gow - 2021 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (7):496-507.
    The idea that we can perceive absences is becoming increasingly popular in contemporary philosophy of mind, and seeing empty space and hearing silence are alleged to be two paradigmatic examples. In this paper, I remain neutral over the question of whether empty space experiences and experiences of silence are genuinely perceptual phenomena, however, I argue that these experiences do not qualify as absence experiences. Consequently, our experiences of empty space and silence cannot be appealed to as proof of the perceptual (...)
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  10. Colour hallucination: A new problem for externalist representationalism.Laura Gow - 2017 - Analysis 77 (4):695-704.
    Externalist representationalists claim that the phenomenal character of a visual perceptual experience is determined by the representational content of that experience. Their deployment of the idea that perceptual experience is transparent shows that they account for representational content with reference to the properties which are represented – the properties out there in the world. I explain why this commits the externalist representationalist to objectivism and realism about colour properties. Colour physicalism has proved to be the position of choice for externalist (...)
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  11.  53
    Necessarily Veridical Hallucinations: A New Problem for the Uninstantiated Property View.Laura Gow - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2):569-589.
    Philosophers of perception have a notoriously difficult time trying to account for hallucinatory experiences. One surprisingly quite popular move, and one that cross-cuts the representationalism/relationalism divide, is to say that hallucinations involve an awareness of uninstantiated properties. In this paper, I provide a new argument against this view. Not only are its proponents forced to classify many hallucinations as veridical, such experiences turn out to be necessarily veridical. In addition, I show that representationalists who endorse the uninstantiated property view must (...)
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  12.  33
    Sensorama: A Phenomenalist Analysis of Spacetime and its Contents, by Michael Pelczar: New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. vii + 239, £45. [REVIEW]Laura Gow - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (1):205-206.