Seeing what you want
Seeing what you want
There has been recent interest in the hypothesis that we can directly perceive some of each other’s mental features. One popular strategy for defending that hypothesis is to claim that some mental features are embodied in a way that makes them available to perception.
Here I argue that this view would imply a particular limit on the kinds of mental feature that would be perceptible (Section 2). I sketch reasons for thinking that the view is not yet well-motivated (Section 3). And I present an alternative, epistemological strategy (Section 4). The epistemological strategy is to discern which features of our environment are perceptible by reflection on our capacity to identify them.
If the epistemological strategy is accepted it becomes plausible that we sometimes directly perceive some of each other’s mental features. But it becomes implausible to suppose that our perceptual access is limited in the way the embodied view would imply. I end by sketching reasons to think that we sometimes directly perceive each other’s desires (Section 5).
554-564
Mcneill, William
be33c4df-0f0e-42bf-8b9b-3c0afe8cb69e
November 2015
Mcneill, William
be33c4df-0f0e-42bf-8b9b-3c0afe8cb69e
Abstract
There has been recent interest in the hypothesis that we can directly perceive some of each other’s mental features. One popular strategy for defending that hypothesis is to claim that some mental features are embodied in a way that makes them available to perception.
Here I argue that this view would imply a particular limit on the kinds of mental feature that would be perceptible (Section 2). I sketch reasons for thinking that the view is not yet well-motivated (Section 3). And I present an alternative, epistemological strategy (Section 4). The epistemological strategy is to discern which features of our environment are perceptible by reflection on our capacity to identify them.
If the epistemological strategy is accepted it becomes plausible that we sometimes directly perceive some of each other’s mental features. But it becomes implausible to suppose that our perceptual access is limited in the way the embodied view would imply. I end by sketching reasons to think that we sometimes directly perceive each other’s desires (Section 5).
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Seeing What You Want online version 2015
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Accepted/In Press date: 25 April 2015
e-pub ahead of print date: 29 May 2015
Published date: November 2015
Organisations:
Philosophy
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Local EPrints ID: 393211
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/393211
ISSN: 1053-8100
PURE UUID: 75a2d685-d0e2-4d6b-a201-4e8ce67a0c74
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Date deposited: 22 Apr 2016 12:59
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:53
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