Percepts and Concepts

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 8 describes a number of essential differences separating perceptual experiences from high-level cognitive phenomena, and, in particular, from concepts and propositional attitudes. The chapter embraces the widely accepted view that concepts are akin to words in that they have reference and belong to logical categories, along with the companion view that the propositions that are the objects of attitudes like belief and desire are like sentences in that they have truth conditions and logical forms. In sum, concepts and propositions are quasi-linguistic. Not so for perceptual representations. The chapter argues that perceptual experiences are metaphysically independent of conceptualization. It also maintains that, on the one hand, perceptual representations lack the logical properties that are essential to concepts and propositions, and that, on the other hand, the former representations differ from the latter in that they are often isomorphic to the domains and individual entities that they represent.