Visual experience: rich but impenetrable

According to so-called 'thin' views about the content of experience, we can only visually experience low-level features such as colour, shape, texture or motion. According to so-called 'rich' views, we can also visually experience some high-level properties, such as being a pine...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Toribio Mateas, Josefa
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2018
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Barcelona
Repository:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/106208
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/106208
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Filosofia de l'art
Philosophy of the art
Description
Summary:According to so-called 'thin' views about the content of experience, we can only visually experience low-level features such as colour, shape, texture or motion. According to so-called 'rich' views, we can also visually experience some high-level properties, such as being a pine tree or being threatening. One of the standard objections against rich views is that high-level properties can only be represented at the level of judgment. In this paper, I first challenge this objection by relying on some recent studies in social vision. Secondly, I tackle a different but related issue, namely, the idea that, if the content of experience is rich, then perception is cognitively penetrable. Against this thesis, I argue that the very same criteria that help us vindicate the truly sensory nature of our rich experiences speak against their being cognitively penetrable.