ProtoSociology

Volume 22, 2006

Compositionality, Concepts and Representations II

Elka Shortsleeve and Kelly Trogdon

Any adequate account of the content of perceptual experience should meet the following four constraints. First, it should simply tell us what perceptual content is. Second, it should explain why some perceptual states are transparent in a manner no cognitive states are. Third, it should explain – perhaps explain away – the apparent discrepancy between the capacity for richness in representational detail of the content of perceptual states and the relative representational sparseness of the content of cognitive states. Fourth, it should provide intuitively acceptable accuracy conditions for perceptions. Our paper outlines an account of perceptual content that meets these desiderata, in addition to being simple and, we think, intuitively appealing.