The Aspectuality of Perceptual Experience: Learning / Knowing How to See

Arnon Cahen (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)

Abstract:  In this talk, I will be concerned with the aspectuality of conscious perceptual experience. Aspectuality is a property of perceptual experience that can colloquially be expressed by noting that (conscious) perception is not merely of something or other, of tables and chairs, animals and faces, but it presents to us what it is of as being some way or other – where this has both phenomenological and functional (cognitive and epistemic) consequences. That perceptual experience is aspectual will not be my main concern here (though I will provide some support for this claim, by way of illustrating and clarifying the phenomenon). Rather, my concern is more specifically with what might account for its aspectuality, and how certain challenges from the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, might shape such an account. In particular, I will argue against the plausibility of certain traditional accounts that ground aspectuality in a perceiver’s background theories, conceptual endowment, or via the phenomenon of cognitive penetration. I will then briefly develop an alternative account, and highlight some of its implications and merits with respect to the cluster of challenges afflicting the traditional accounts and with respect to what the study of (conscious) perception should involve.