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Reconciling Perceptual Contents and Relations| title | Reconciling Perceptual Contents and Relations |
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| start_date | 2026/02/06 |
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| schedule | 11h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | Nicod meeting room |
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| summary | In this paper I consider whether perception might be both relational and contentful, and specifically, how explanations of perception might invoke both contents and relations. The context of this discussion is that we find ourselves largely in a ‘stand-off’ between representational and relational (or naïve realist) theories of perception. Content or representational theories explain perception as having contents: perceptions represent the world as being some way. Relational theories deny that perceptual experience have contents, they explain perception as constituted by relations to external objects, and the relations are hypothesized to be basic acquaintance or attentional or referential relations. Given that content and relational theories have different explanatory strengths and weaknesses and bring different insights to the table, I argue that it would be good if we could combine their insights.
The paper begins by giving an overview of mixed content-relational accounts to date. The bulk of the paper reconstructs the McDowell-Evans Singular Contents and De Re Senses approach as well as McDowell’s subsequent work to show how he offers a mixed view that integrates contents and relations. I build on this work, with a skill-based approach to the perceptual understanding or mode of presentation that secures our relation to individual things in the world and their properties. |
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| responsibles | Giardino |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2026/02/03 08:38 UTC |
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