What is perception? What is, if any, its content? What is the contribution of perception to knowledge? Perception and Its Content: Toward the Propositional Attitude View argues that perception has conceptual, propositional, and world-dependent content. After criticizing those theories of experience that conceive it as contentless (the causal-linkage approach and naive realism), the book examines the nature of perceptual content.
Daniel Kalpokas critically scrutinizes different varieties of non-conceptualism and claims that the content of experience is partly conceptual. Perception and Its Content defends the propositional-attitude view, according to which perceptual content is propositional in nature, and explores the world-dependent character of such content. Kalpokas holds that the content of experience is composed of concepts and the presented objects, such as they appear from the subject's point of view and determined environmental conditions. According to this view, perception provides non-inferential knowledge of the truth-makers of our judgments and beliefs. Furthermore, and importantly, that view sheds light on how the mind relates to the world.
Industry Reviews
"Daniel Kalpokas' ingenious book manages to put the messy and intricate debate on the content of perceptual experience in proper order. His claim that perceptual experience is contentful is supported by tight argumentation and cannot be easily dismissed. His more ambitious claim that content is both conceptual and propositional is thought-provoking, and advanced in a clear and straight-to-the-point style. If Kalpokas is right, a great deal of current philosophy of perception needs to be rethought. Right or wrong, no one has gone that far on McDowell and Sellars' path. Curiously, in philosophy, even going down the furthest on the wrong path can be a remarkable achievement. If anyone, from now on, is to criticize the view that perceptual experience is contentful, conceptual and propositional, this one must address Perception and Its Content." -- Marco Aurelio Sousa Alves, Federal University of Sao Joao del-Rei, Brazil