It has been claimed that empirical work in psychology requires the attribution of representational content to perceptual states: that is, the attribution of veridicality conditions to those states. This is a claim that can only be evaluated by the examination of actual empirical research. In this paper I argue that talk of ‘representation’ in at least one area of research in the psychology of perception can be reinterpreted so as to avoid the attribution of veridicality conditions. This area is the (...) study of human capacities to perceive the relative numerosities of collections of objects. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in William Blake’s attitude toward the visual. Blake denies the value of sense perception, and of perceptible natural objects, as sources of genuine insight. And he is dismissive of “natural religion” on the grounds that natural objects as present to the senses are insufficient to ground religious experience.Blake’s own spiritual experiences are, however, typically described in intensely visual terms. As a child of eight, he saw “a tree filled with angels” on the common at Peckham (...) Rye in south London, and throughout his life reported “visions” as a source of insight. The narrative of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” is largely composed of.. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of perception, even those with otherwise widely differing beliefs, often hold that universals enter into the content of perceptual experience. This doctrine can even be seen as a trivial inference from the observation that we observe properties – ways that things are – as well as things. I argue that the inference is not trivial but can and should be resisted. Ordinary property perception does not involve awareness of universals. But there are visual experiences which do involve determinate (...) universals: following Wittgenstein, I call these ‘aspect experiences’. The common view of perceptual content effectively conflates aspect experiences with mere property perceptions. Wittgenstein’s later writings on the philosophy of psychology provide an alternative way to think about both aspects and properties. It also forms a contrast with Wittgenstein’s own early treatment of perception in the Tractatus, the doctrine of which is much closer to the contemporary norm among philosophers of perception. In seeing how Wittgenstein moved away from his early view, we can see how we might move away from that norm. (shrink)