Response to Christopher Peacocke: Perception

Aestheticians set out principled ways of thinking about music, but usually at the expense of the inclusive approach demanded by today’s pluralistic musical culture. In this response I welcome the openness of Peacocke’s approach, suggesting some relational properties of music additional to those he discusses: the “topics” of eighteenth-century music, which condense metaphorical “hearing-as” into historical stereotypes; performance style, which always involves reference to or play with other styles; the constructions of social relationship that music affords, whether real or imagined; and history, which raises the issue of the relationship between aesthetics and the historical other. When Peacocke, like other aestheticians, says “we hear structure”, who are “we”? And who does “we” exclude? If we define music as “ours” in relation to historical or cultural others, can there actually be an aesthetics that is both principled and inclusive?

Variation and Change in Appearances

Consider sentence (1): The boat looks immense, yet it also looks small. Predications of “is immense” and “is small” applied to the same object appear to be contradictory, but (1) need not be contradictory. When do appearances conflict with each other, and how can this be marked in our judgments about appearance? In 1953, G. E. Moore argued that the possible truth of (1) shows that there must be multiple senses of “looks.” Moore’s example prefigures by thirty years a much-cited discussion by Christopher Peacocke about trees and apparent size with which Peacocke illustrates a contrast between sensational and representational properties of experience. This chapter argues that Moore’s argument for different senses of “looks” is unsound, and hence that we need a different explanation of how we mark the contrast between appearances which conflict and those which do not. The essay closes by offering such an account.

How to Understand Perceptual Learning

This introductory chapter explains perceptual learning as long-term changes in perception that are the result of practice or experience. It distinguishes perceptual learning from other nearby concepts, including perceptual development and cognitive penetration. It then delineates different kinds of perceptual learning. For instance, some kinds of perceptual learning involve changes in how one attends, while other cases involve a learned ability to differentiate two properties, or to perceive two properties as unified. The chapter uses this taxonomy to distinguish different cases of perceptual learning in the philosophical literature, including by contemporary philosophers such as Susanna Siegel, Christopher Peacocke, and Charles Siewert. Finally, it outlines the function of perceptual learning. Perceptual learning serves to offload onto our quick perceptual systems what would be a slower and more cognitively taxing task were it to be done in a controlled, deliberate manner. The upshot is that this frees up cognitive resources for other tasks.

The Sources of Self-Consciousness

We can think about the sources of self-consciousness in either a genetic or an epistemic sense. That is, we can think either about the origins of the capacity to think self-conscious thoughts or about the warrant that we have for our self-conscious judgments. These two sets of questions are independent but related. This paper explores the role that the genetic dimension of self-consciousness plays in understanding the epistemology of self-consciousness. I will take as my foil a recent account of some key features of the epistemic dimension of a particular type of self-conscious judgment – the account offered by Christopher Peacocke in his book Being Known (Peacocke 1999). Working through the example of how the bodily self is represented in visual perception shows how the primitive foundations from which self-consciousness emerges in the course of cognitive development are also the foundation for the epistemic status of full-fledged self-conscious thoughts.

Un análisis del contenido protoproposicional de Peacocke

En su caracterización del contenido no conceptual, Christopher Peacocke realiza un esfuerzo constante por diferenciar el contenido no conceptual protoproposicional que propone del contenido de tipo conceptual. En este trabajo analizaré tales esfuerzos para concluir que resultan infructuosos, llevando al autor a lo que podría denominarse como una rotulación incorrecta del contenido protoproposicional como no conceptual. Para ello, reconstruiré la posición no conceptualista de Peacocke y señalaré, mediante los ejemplos que el mismo autor ofrece, la gran similitud que existe entre ciertos contenidos y procesos paradigmáticamente conceptuales, y los ejemplos de contenidos y procesos que el autor considera como protoproposicionales y presuntamente no conceptuales.

La théorie représentationnelle de la conscience phénoménale et le problème des apparences visuelles

Selon la théorie représentationnelle de la conscience phénoménale (TRCP), le caractère phénoménal d’une expérience consciente serait épuisé par son contenu représentationnel. Certaines remarques de Christopher Peacocke soulèvent un problème majeur pour la TRCP. Dans son livreConsciousness, où il défend une version de la TRCP, Christopher Hill propose une solution à ce problème, selon laquelle lesqualiavisuels seraient des «apparences visuelles» conçues comme des propriétés relationnelles d’objets externes. Je soulève deux problèmes auxquels la solution de Hill doit faire face. Pour surmonter ces problèmes, je suggère une interprétation différente de l’idée selon laquelle lesqualiavisuels sont des apparences visuelles.