Perceptual experience : relations and representations/

The aim of this dissertation is to elaborate and assess the Relational View of perceptual experience, and to compare it to its main rival, the Representational View. Roughly stated, the core claim of the Relational View is that veridical perceptual experience is basically a matter of perceiving material entities in one's environment. By contrast, the Representational View holds that all kinds of perceptual experience consist in a propositional attitude-i.e., in representing a proposition to the effect that one's environment is a certain way. In Chapter 1, I attempt to improve upon previous articulations of the Relational View's account of veridical experience by way of contrasting it with the Representational View. I then turn to the Relational View's account of non-veridical perceptual experience (i.e., illusions and hallucinations), and I argue that the most plausible account is a version of disjunctivism-roughly, a view on which veridical and at least hallucinatory experiences are fundamentally different. Finally, I outline and assess the main motivations that have been offered for the Relational View. In Chapter 2, I consider existing objections to the Relational View, and I argue that several of them are misguided. An objection that isn't misguided, however, is the worry that the Relational View cannot give plausible accounts of non-veridical perceptual experiences. I argue that this objection is not (yet) fatal to the Relational View on the grounds that certain Relationalist accounts of illusions and hallucinations have been under-explored, and I conclude Chapter 2 by elaborating and defending them.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Logue, Heather, 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alex Byrne.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55181

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55181