Show-Me the Argument

Jack Lyons gave an invigorating and fascinating talk on perceptual kinds last Friday. The main issue of Jack’s talk concerned the content of perception. What is represented by perceptual states? He laid out several different options, starting with a very restrictive view and ending up with a very liberal view. A restrictive view, like Russell’s account, holds that only colors and shapes are represented in experience. A more liberal view holds that 3-D objects are represented in experience and an even more liberal view holds that properties like familiarity or cruelty are represented in experience. Jack argued for a moderate view that perceptual states represent things as belonging to perceptual kinds, e.g., quadruped constitutes a perceptual kind. There’s a characteristic way quadrupeds look. In the Q&A we talked about the connection between the semantics and metaphysics of perception. The semantic issue concerns the content of perception and the metaphysical issue concerns the objects of perception. In the Q&A Jack said that these two issues are independent. For instance, you could be a classical sense-datum theorist and still consistently hold a very liberal view about the semantics of perception. I think this is right, but it poses an interesting situation. Suppose you hold a classical sense-data theory on which the direct objects of experience are private mental objects. You combine this with a liberal view re the semantics of perception on which (say) experience has content that there’s a 3-D solid object. Question: in virtue of what does this state have the content it does? How does this state come to represent a 3-D solid object when it is comprised of private mental objects?