Perceptual Content and Gist

Dr. Tim Bayne (University of Manchester)

The philosophy of perception has recently been animated by the question of whether visual experience represents so-called 'high-level' properties, such as being a pine tree or being a stethoscope, or whether the only admissible contents of visual experience are 'low-level' properties, such as colour, orientation and motion. In the first half of this paper I examine different conceptions of what precisely this debate is about. In the second half of this paper I explore the question of whether research into perceptual gist might have a bearing on this debate.