Perceptual Content, Phenomenal Contrasts, and Externalism

Content externalism and phenomenal character: a new worry about privileged access

A central question in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind is whether the thesis of content externalism threatens a common doctrine about privileged access. According to this doctrine, an individual knows the contents of her thoughts independently of empirical observation. It is argued that if the contents of a subject’s thoughts are in part individuated by environmental factors, as...

Shoemaker on Phenomenal Content

In a series of papers and lectures, Sydney Shoemaker has developed a sophisticated Russellian theory of phenomenal content (1994, 2000, 2001, 2003). It has as its central motivation two considerations. One is the possibility of spectrum-inversion without illusion. The other is the transparency of experience. Consider the possibility of spectrum inversion. It might be that the color experience J...

The Phenomenal Content of Experience

We discuss in some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottom-up from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The dis...

Externalism and Self-Knowledge: Content, Use, and Expression

The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief

Experiences and beliefs are different sorts of mental states, and are often taken to belong to very different domains. Experiences are paradigmatically phenomenal, characterized by what it is like to have them. Beliefs are paradigmatically intentional, characterized by their propositional content. But there are a number of crucial points where these domains intersect. One central locus of inter...