Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?

Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):452-469 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It is widely agreed that perceptual experience is a form of intentionality, i.e., that it has representational content. Many philosophers take this to mean that like belief, experience has propositional content, that it can be true or false. I accept that perceptual experience has intentionality; but I dispute the claim that it has propositional content. This claim does not follow from the fact that experience is intentional, nor does it follow from the fact that experiences are accurate or inaccurate. I end by considering the relationship between this question and the question of whether experience has non-conceptual content.

Other Versions

reprint Crane, Tim (2011) "Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?". In Macpherson, Fiona, The Admissible Contents of Experience, pp. 83–100: Wiley-Blackwell (2011)

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
3,172 (#6,493)

6 months
162 (#22,192)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Tim Crane
Central European University

Citations of this work

The Problem of Perception.Tim Crane & Craig French - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Perceptual Content Defended.Susanna Schellenberg - 2011 - Noûs 45 (4):714 - 750.
Perceptual content and the content of mental imagery.Bence Nanay - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1723-1736.
Why maps are not propositional.Elisabeth Camp - 2018 - In Alex Grzankowski & Michelle Montague, Non-Propositional Intentionality. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 19-45.

View all 204 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Criteria, defeasibility, and knowledge.John McDowell - 1988 - In Jonathan Dancy, Perceptual knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 455-79.
Perception and conceptual content.Alex Byrne - 2013 - In Matthias Steup & John Turri, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 231--250.
The contents of perception.Susanna Siegel - 2005 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Believing in things.ZoltĂĄn Gendler SzabĂł - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (3):584–611.

Add more references