Vol. 44 No. 2 (2024)
Articles

What Is It Like To Be in a Pure Perceptual State?

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  • Sergio Cermeño-Aínsa
Sergio Cermeño-Aínsa
Departamento de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, España.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.e1042

Published 2024-11-08

Keywords

  • Estados perceptivos puros,
  • Contenido no conceptual,
  • Formato icónico,
  • Fenoménicamente peculiar
  • Pure Perceptual States,
  • Nonconceptual Content,
  • Iconic Format,
  • Phenomenally Peculiar
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The idea of pure perception —perception without any cognitive influence— is central to the science and philosophy of perception. For many, to be in a pure perceptual state is to be in a state whose content is nonconceptual, whose format is iconic, and whose phenomenology is unique. This paper explores this possibility and finds that the idea of pure perception, at least when defined in these terms, is untenable. Besides significant specific worries derived from the properties characterizing these states, I have not found empirical grounds indicating the possibility of individuating these states: neither looking inside oneself (introspection), nor looking inside others (psychology), nor looking inside the brain (neuroanatomy), suggests the existence of pure perceptual mental states.

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