Review of Perceptual Experience

“The book starts with foundational debates about representational content and defends accounts of the metaphysics of perceptual objects, introspection, pain, the demarcation problem, and the epistemology of perception, among many other topics.”

“Hill sets forth five major goals for his book.”

“One is to “advance the cause of representationalism by proposing detailed representationalist accounts of the main dimensions of perceptual experience””

“His second goal is to offer an account of the distinction between appearance and reality.”

“His third goal is to defend an account of perceptual phenomenology and consciousness.”

“His fourth goal is to the outline the relationship between perception and higher-level cognitive states.”

“His fifth and final goal is to outline a plausible version of externalism.”

“In Chapter 1, Hill lays out his vision of perceptual representation.”

“more truncated and less comprehensive than similar treatments in recent years from Nicholas Shea (2018) and Karen Neander (2017).”

“Chapters 2 and 3 form a connected discussion of appearance and reality in perception.”

“Hill defends a novel version of perceptual relativity, one according to which the way things appear depends in part on internal factors (like attention) that are distinct from the objective properties of distal objects.”

“Our awareness of objects depends in part on the contributions made by memory, cognition, and motor control systems working in concert.”

“Yes, there is a sense in which a tree appears smaller as it moves further away, but there is also a strong introspective feeling that the tree itself is not changing size (and empirical evidence suggests that subjects can variably attend to both sets of features).”

Commentator’s Note: Cf. Meillassoux on primary and secondary qualities.

“Given the recent focus on multisensory interactions in the philosophy of perception, the absence of any engagement with these sorts of cases was disappointing.”

“In chapter 4 Hill explores our awareness of particulars, and he provides an argument for existentialism. This view is contrasted with particularism, which holds that particular objects are represented by perceptual experiences. Existentialism instead holds that only general features— that is, content that could be expressed by an existentially quantified proposition—are represented in perception.”

“Chapter 5 provides an account of perceptual phenomenology.”

“Chapter 6 provides an account of pain.”

“He argues for a quasi-perceptual form of awareness for pain, where pain itself is a special form of nociceptive awareness combined with an attitudinal theory of painfulness (the negative felt quality associated with pain, what makes it hurt).”

“I want to note that Hill uses a novel terminological convention for talking about pain processing that I find extremely useful, namely, speaking in terms of N-stimuli, N-processes, N-events, N-states, and N-responses. I think this is a helpful way of thinking about the complexity of pain processing, especially when trying to offer an explanation of pain experiences.”

“Hill ultimately defends the idea that pains are identical with N-events.”

“Hill holds that our current folk categories for pain are often contradictory and incoherent, and he intends this view as a prescriptive account that offers a more explanatory and useful conception of pain.”

“One central concern for the attitudinal view is that the empirical evidence seems against it. Kent Berridge is famous for showing a dissociation between liking and wanting, and for showing that the intrinsic motivation of pain and other states cannot be explained by the attitudes we take towards them”

“In Chapter 7 Hill gives us an account of consciousness, and an account of how it is related to awareness of phenomenal character.”

“Chapter 8 concerns the relation between perception and concepts.”

“The final Chapter 9 examines the epistemology of perception.”

“Here Hill defends an externalist account of epistemic justification for perception.”

“Neander, K. (2017). A mark of the mental: In defense of informational teleosemantics. MIT Press.”

“Shea, N. (2018). Representation in cognitive science. Oxford University Press.”