CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONTENT IN PERCEPTION

Abstract

Normal perception involves conscious experience of the world. What I call the Content View, (CV), attempts to account for this in terms of the representational content of perception. I offer a new argument against this view. Personal level perceptual content involves the determination of a fineness of grain in the predicational information conveyed to the subject. This depends on her exercise of personal level capacities such as categorization and discrimination that in turn require her conscious selective attention to specific worldly elements. Yet visual consciousness of the world obtains where conscious attention is not directed as well as where it is. So visual consciousness cannot be understood in terms of perceptual content. I elucidate and defend this line of argument and consider its implications for (CV).<br/>