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The Goldilocks Problem of the specificity of visual phenomenal content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Schroer
Robert Schroer*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1121 University Drive, Duluth, MN55812, USA
*
*Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Existentialist accounts maintain that visual phenomenal content takes the logical form of an existentially quantified sentence. These accounts do not make phenomenal content specific enough. Singularist accounts posit a singular content in which the seen object is a constituent. These accounts make phenomenal content too specific. My account gets the specificity of visual phenomenal content just right. My account begins with John Searle’s suggestion that visual experience represents an object as seen, moves this relation outside the scope of the existential quantifier and then replaces it with the relation of objects being ‘present as accessible’, as described by Alva Noë.

Keywords

perceptual contentphenomenal contentsingular contentexistentially quantified contentveridical illusion
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 3-4 , August 2014 , pp. 476 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2014

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