Perception, Concepts, and Memory

Abstract

A n intentional theory of perception claims that perceptual states have an intentional content that represents the world as being some way.' This is to see experiences as akin to propositional attitudes such as beliefs: believing that there is a glass on the table is being in a state with an intentional content. To claim that an experience has an intentional content is not necessarily to identify experiences with beliefs or to attempt to reduce them to the acquisition of beliefs;2 after all, one does not always believe things to be the way that they appear. Denying that experience is the same kind of attitude as belief does still allow one to suppose that the two kinds of mental state are nevertheless both attitudes to the same kind of content. The question I wish to raise here is whether that supposition is correct. How far can one push this analogy between belief content and appearances? We think of beliefs as conceptual states, the possession of a belief resting on one's capacities to think about objects and properties. Could experiences be conceptual states in this way: the appearance of things being restricted by one's conceptual capacities? I shall argue that the answer to this question is negative. An important part of the role of perception in one's mental economy is its commerce with belief, but perceptions also give rise to memories. The latter connection reveals that perceptual experiences have a richer phenomenological character than one's conceptual resources need allow.