Susanna Siegel

• Harvard University

Can perceptual experiences be states of uncertainty? We might expect them to be, if the perceptual processes from which they are generated, and the behaviors they help produce, take account of probabilistic information. Yet, it has long been presumed that perceptual experiences purport to tell us about our environment, without hedging or qualifying...

What kinds of transitions in the mind constitute inference? A powerful idea, found in Frege, is that inference from state X to state Y requires the inferrer to represent in some way that X supports Y. This chapter argues that this model of inference would be stable and motivated only if the inferring subjects met a self-awareness condition, in whic...

Potential cognitive penetrators include moods, beliefs, hypotheses, knowledge, desires, and traits. The challenge to perceptual justification posed by cognitive penetrability seems related to a circular structure of belief‐formation that it introduces. This chapter addresses on a simple and popular theory of perceptual justification known as dogmat...

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts a Buddhist denial of persisting or even momentary selves. Our paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's [2018 Ganeri, Jonardon. 2018. Mental Time Travel and Attention, Australian Philosophical Review 4/1: 353–73. [Google Scholar]] ‘Mental Time Travel an...

It is often assumed that while beliefs redound on the rational standing of a subject, perceptions do not. An irrational belief detracts from the rationality of believers, according to this assumption, but perceptions cannot do the same. I argue that perceptual experiences can have a rational standing, and that their epistemic status can be modulate...

If you are picking blueberries and you think that fat berries are best, you’ll be less likely to overlook them. Here, perception is influenced in a humdrum way by beliefs and desires. Your desire for fat berries makes you search for them, and your beliefs about where they are likely to be influences where you look when you search.Can perception be...

J. J. Gibson invented the word “affordance” to denote possibilities of action for a creature. It is controversial whether any affordances are perceptually salient. This chapter assumes that some are and focuses on affordances that are salient, not just as possible actions that might happen or might not, but instead as necessities or mandates. Exper...

Clark advertises the predictive coding (PC) framework as applying to a wide range of phenomena, including attention. We argue that for many attentional phenomena, the predictive coding picture either makes false predictions, or else it offers no distinctive explanation of those phenomena, thereby reducing its explanatory power.

What do we see? We are visually conscious of colors and shapes, but are we also visually conscious of complex properties such as being John Malkovich? This book develops a framework for understanding the contents of visual experience, and argues that these contents involve all sorts of complex properties. The book starts by analyzing the notion of...

This paper argues that despite the differences between perception and belief, perception involves states that are importantly similar to beliefs: conscious visual experiences. According to the Content View, these experiences have contents in the form of accuracy conditions. The paper develops and defends the Content View, discusses its significance...

Philosophy

The thesis that we can visually perceive causal relations is distinct from the thesis that visual experiences can represent causal relations. I defend the latter thesis about visual experience, and argue that although they are suggestive, the data provided by Albert Michotte's experiments on perceptual causality do not establish this thesis. Turnin...

Disjunctivism about perception is a view about the relation between veridical ex- periences and hallucinations. Suppose that I see a green cube, and my experience is veridical—no illusion or hallucination is involved.¹ The veridical experience, accord- ing to disjunctivists, includes as constituents the bit of the world that is perceived and the pe...

One of Block's conclusions, motivated by partial-report superiority experiments, is that there is phenomenally conscious information that is not cognitively accessible. We argue that this conclusion is not supported by the data.

How can we discover the contents of experience? I argue that neither introspection alone nor naturalistic theories of experience content are sufficient to discover these contents. I propose another method of discovery: the method of phenomenal contrast. I defend the method against skeptics who doubt that the contents of experience can be discovered...

I argue that there are phenomenological constraints on what it is to see an object, and that these are overlooked by some theories that offer allegedly sufficient causal and counterfactual conditions on object-seeing. Philosophy

Philosophy

What is the difference between perception and mere sensation? Take a typical perceptual experience, such as an experience of seeing a sh or a table, and a merely sensory experience, such as the experience of "seeing stars" or of enjoying a red phosphene. One difference between these experiences is that in the rst case there is an external object th...

What kind of information is found in visual experience, and what kind can be found only in judgments made on its basis? Do we visually experience arrays of colored shapes, variously illuminated, and sometimes moving? Or does visual experience involve more complex features, such as personal identity, causation, and kinds such as bicycle, keys, and c...

Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy

Siegel defends "Limited Intentionism", a theory of what secures the semantic reference of uses of bare demonstratives ("this", "that" and their plurals). According to Limited Intentionism, demonstrative reference is fixed by perceptually anchored intentions on the part of the speaker.

1 Eden In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory. When an apple in Eden looked red to us, the apple was gloriously, perfectly,...