Masoud Afshar; Mostafa Taqavi
Abstract
Which properties of the objects do we receive by our senses when we perceptually experience them? According to a common philosophical belief, sensible properties include simple ones. ...
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Which properties of the objects do we receive by our senses when we perceptually experience them? According to a common philosophical belief, sensible properties include simple ones. As for vision, these properties include color, shape, illumination, special relations, and motion. So the what-ness of things or their causal relations - for example- cannot be received via sensation. We have them- of course- in our experiences but, only after some operations of cognitive faculty on what is already received. Recently, people argue against this conception of perceptual experience. Our concern here would be exclusively on natural kind properties, for their special philosophical significance; visually experiencing natural kinds, would exclude some important general accounts of perception as out of the case. In this paper, after some introductory remarks, we try to introduce the method of phenomenal contrast as a general algorithm that should be followed if we are intended to infer anything about the content of experience on the basis of its phenomenal character. We do this by examining Ned Block's seemingly alternative method for determining the content of experience and showing that, that is just another case of applying the same method. Then rejecting some of its main criticism we defend Siegel’s own application of her method to infer that we visually experience natural kind properties.
