Empirically Informed Philosophy of Mind online Seminar
We will welcome Géraldine Carranante, Temporary Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Nantes University and affiliated researcher at the CAPhi (Centre Atlantique de Philosophie) for the following presentation
Can we list what we can see? Rethinking the admissible content of perception with sensory templates
The philosophical debate on admissible perceptual content deals with the different kinds of objects and/or properties that can be represented in perceptual states. Should we assume that only low-level properties (such as color, contrast, etc.) can be included in the content of a perceptual state or is it also the case for some high-level properties (social, evaluative, etc.)? I argue that this debate initially conflates two distinct philosophical projects: (1) the kind of content perception can have, and (2) the kinds of facts or properties in the world that can be grasped through perception. In this talk, based on the theoretical model of the linear observer in psychophysics, I will clarify this confusion by introducing the concept of sensory template. A sensory template is an internal representation within the perceptual system which encodes the critical features of a stimulus necessary for its detection. I will present strong empirical and theoretical reasons to posit the existence of such entities. Finally, I will defend the idea that the perceptual content can be redefined as the output of activated sensory templates within a perceptual system. This operationalization of the notion of perceptual content helps not only to distinguish more clearly between the two aforementioned philosophical projects, but also to dissolve a pervasive philosophical myth in this debate: the idea that one can produce an exhaustive list of possible perceptual contents under normal viewing conditions.