Perception: Where Mind Begins

Philosophy 89 (3):385-403 (2014)
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Abstract

What are the earliest beings that have minds in evolutionary order? Two marks of mind are consciousness and representation. I focus on representation. I distinguish a psychologically distinctive notion of representation from a family of notions, often called ‘representation’, that invoke information, causation, and/or function. The psychologically distinctive notion implies that a representational state has veridicality conditions as an aspect of its nature. Perception is the most primitive type of representational state. It is a natural psychological kind, recognized in a mature science: perceptual psychology. This kind involves a type of objectification, and is marked by perceptual constancies. The simplest animals known to exhibit perceptual constancies, perception, and representation in a distinctively psychological sense, are certain arthropods. Representational mind, or representational psychology, begins in the arthropods. We lack scientific knowledge about the beginnings of consciousness. Consciousness is neither necessary nor sufficient for perception. I conclude by reflecting on the kinds mind and psychology.

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Tyler Burge
University of California, Los Angeles

Citations of this work

Entitlement: The Basis for Empirical Epistemic Warrant.Tyler Burge - 2020 - In Peter Graham & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), Epistemic Entitlement. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 37-142.
The nature of perceptual constancies.Peter Https://Orcidorg288X Schulte - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):3-20.

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References found in this work

Intentional systems.Daniel C. Dennett - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (February):87-106.

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