Abstract

The dissertation is a defense of a robust conception of perceptual content. I challenge the idea that there is a logical gap between the intentional contents of our perceptual states and the contents of our beliefs. The contents of our perceptions can, I argue, logically imply the contents of our beliefs. ;This conception of perceptual content has far-reaching consequences for epistemology and the understanding of mind. ;The case for Cartesian skepticism, I argue, makes essential use of a restricted view of perceptual content, on which the contents of our perceptual states never imply the contents of our beliefs. Skepticism exploits the idea that there is no way to bridge this logical gap between what we perceive and what we believe. I show that there is no such gap, and hence that skepticism is unfounded. ;Contemporary views of consciousness also suffer from an unduly restricted conception of perceptual content. Many philosophers now understand consciousness in terms of "qualia"---non-intentional properties of our experiences. I argue that this is a hold-over from the idea that perceptual content is restricted to facts about sense-data or sensations. Once we adopt a robust conception of perceptual content, we see that consciousness is properly understood in terms of our ability to perceive in a way that implies knowledge of the world. The notion of consciousness is an epistemic notion. ;Finally, I argue that the restricted conception is responsible for a misguided approach to perceptual psychology. Psychologists and cognitive scientists try to understand perceptual psychology by finding mental mechanisms or mental processes at work in perception. This belief in mental processes is driven by the idea that our minds must bridge a logical gap between perception and belief or knowledge. That gap is supposedly bridged by some process of inferring, or of extracting information. But if the contents of perception logically imply the contents of belief, there is no gap to bridge---and hence no process of bridging it. ;The result is a more holistic and humanistic view of perception and the study of it. We will not understand the psychology of perception by analyzing it into constituent parts, or mental sub-processes. To understand perceptual psychology is to understand how it is related to other phenomena---how, for example, our perceptual capacities influence, and are influenced by, features of our environment, physiology, education, beliefs, and desires. We understand perceptual psychology not by dissecting the mind of the perceiver, but by appreciating the role that perception plays in human life