TY - JOUR AU - McClelland, Tom PY - 2021/05/10 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Seeing the forest for the trees: Scene perception and the admissible contents of perceptual Experience JF - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences JA - PhiMiSci VL - 2 IS - SE - Articles DO - 10.33735/phimisci.2021.19 UR - https://philosophymindscience.org/index.php/phimisci/article/view/8942 SP - 1-27 AB - <p>Debates surrounding the high-level contents of perceptual experience focus on whether we<br>perceive the high-level properties of visual objects, such as the property of being a pine tree. This<br>paper considers instead whether we perceive the high-level properties of visual scenes, such as<br>the property of being a forest. Liberals about the contents of perceptual experience have offered a<br>variety of phenomenal contrast cases designed to reveal how the high-level properties of objects<br>figure in our visual experience. I offer a series of equivalent phenomenal contrast cases intended<br>to show how the high-level properties of visual scenes also figure in visual experience. This<br>first-person evidence of high-level scene perception is combined with third-person evidence from<br>the extensive empirical literature on scene categorisation. Critics of liberalism have attempted to<br>deflate existing phenomenal contrast cases by explaining the contrasts in terms of non-perceptual<br>contents or in terms of attentional changes. I show that neither response is applicable to my<br>contrast cases and conclude that we do indeed perceptually experience the high-level properties<br>of visual scenes.</p> ER -