The topic of perceptual experience lies at the center of a number of important debates in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the psychology of perception. In recent years, it has become one of the most vibrant areas of philosophy, provoking an enormous amount of high-level debate and discussion. The essays in this volume provide novel perspectives on a wide range of questions about the nature and content of perceptual experience. They address topics like representationalism, disjunctivism, and non-conceptual content, as well as others like perceptual illusion and the phenomenology of pe ... More

The topic of perceptual experience lies at the center of a number of important debates in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the psychology of perception. In recent years, it has become one of the most vibrant areas of philosophy, provoking an enormous amount of high-level debate and discussion. The essays in this volume provide novel perspectives on a wide range of questions about the nature and content of perceptual experience. They address topics like representationalism, disjunctivism, and non-conceptual content, as well as others like perceptual illusion and the phenomenology of perceptual experience. Some of the essays employ traditional philosophical methods of conceptual analysis; others bring recent empirical research to bear on traditional philosophical questions. Among the issues the essays address are the following: What reasons do we have for thinking that perceptual experience represents the world as being a certain way, and (assuming that it does) what sorts of features do we have reason to think that it represents? Assuming that it has representational content, what is that content like? What is the relation between the representational content of perceptual experience, and its phenomenal character? What is the relation between perceptual experience and perceptual success, and can the one be analyzed in terms of the other? What does the structure of perceptual experience tell us about our own physical and cognitive make-up?