How can perception yield knowledge of the world? One challenge in answering this question is that one necessarily perceives from a particular location. Thus, what is immediately perceptually available is subject to situational features, such as lighting conditions and ones location. Nonetheless, one can perceive the shape and color of objects. My dissertation aims to provide an explanation for how this is possible. The main thesis is that giving such an explanation requires abandoning the traditional model of perception as a two-place relation between subjects and objects in favor of a model of perception as a three-place relation between subjects, objects, and situations.
In a first part, I show that treating perception as a three-place relation allows one to embrace the motivations for phenomenalism and indirect realism by recognizing that objects are presented a certain way, while preserving the intuition that subjects directly perceive objects. Second, it allows one to acknowledge that perceptions are not just individuated by the objects they are of, but by the way those objects are presented given the situational features.
In a second part, I spell out the consequences of the situation-dependency of perception for perceptual content. I argue that a view on which perception represents objects is compatible with the idea that perception is a matter of standing in relation to objects, if perceptual content is understood in terms of potentially gappy content schema. If one acknowledges that perception is both relational and representational, the problems of pure relationalist and pure intentionalist accounts can be avoided. In contrast to pure relationalism, such a view explains how veridical and hallucinatory experiences can be phenomenologically indistinguishable. Both experiences share a common content schema. But in contrast to pure intentionalism, the view explains how the content of these experiences differ. In the case of a veridical experience, the content schema is saturated by an object. In a hallucination, the content schema is gappy. My dissertation explores the implications of these ideas for the particularity of perception and the relation between perceptual consciousness, content, and attention.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04252007-173254 |
| Date | 26 June 2007 |
| Creators | Schellenberg, Susanna |
| Contributors | Rick Grush, Stephen Engstrom, Anil Gupta, Robert Brandom, John McDowell |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04252007-173254/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0181 seconds