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Notes

1. I shall concentrate in this paper on vision.
2. See for example D. Dennett (1991) and (2002); Susan Blackmore (2002).
3. K. O'Regan and A. Noë (2001); A. Noë (2002).
4. The label is used by Alex Byrne in his defence of the position (2001).
5. M. Tye (1995), p.137.
6. On Tye's account, the representational and intentional contents of experience are equated: see for example Tye (1995) ch. 4. I believe that this equation is mistaken: the sensory, representational and intentional contents of experience all differ. I do not argue the point explicitly here, though reasons for taking this different view are hinted at in the text.
7. J. McDowell (1994/96), p.51.
8. For examples, see N. Block (1990) and Forthcoming; and W. Sellars (1956), (1975), 1977) and (1981a).
9. The precise nature of the sensory component of experience is not made entirely clear in Sellars' earlier work such as the seminal (1956), but is clarified in later writings such (1977) and (1981a).
10. R. Rensink (2000a) and (2000b).
11. These aims are spelled in his (1963b) and (1981a).
12. Ned Block (Forthcoming).
13. As Sellars spells out in his (1982a) Lecture II, part VII.
14. The distinction is defended by, amongst others, T. Nagel (1986).
15. I shall use the terms 'sensory' and 'phenomenal' interchangeably.
16. J. Levine (2001); see also the arguments in N. Block and R. Stalnaker (1999).
17. W. Sellars (1975), p.306-7.
18. As S. Sturgeon expresses the point (2000) p. 9.
19. J. Valberg, (1993), p.4-5.
20. W. Sellars (1981b).
21. Peacocke (1992) chapter 3. Many other modern theorists have made a distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content that broadly corresponds to the distinction Sellars makes between low-level, primitive concepts, and higher-level concepts that involve some kind of a self-awareness on the part of the subject; see, for example, J. Bermudez (1998).
22. See for example Sellars' remarks at the start of the third Carus Lecture (1981a).
23. For example in (1956) sections 16 and 22.
24. W. Sellars (1968).
25. W. Sellars (1956), section 60.
26. W. Sellars (1982), Lecture III, sections 2 – 5 and passim.
27. There is a complication caused by the fact that Sellars tends to conflate the third-person version of the subtraction argument with the thesis that there is a common content to veridical, illusory and hallucinatory experiences. For reasons I have argued elsewhere (1998), I believe that Sellars is entitled to this later claim. Since the point is tangential to the sensory/conceptual distinction, however, I shall not pursue this dimension of Sellars' argument here.
28. J. McDowell (JP 1998), p.443-4. In point of fact, hallucinations are unlikely to share common impingements at the retina with veridical experiences, but McDowell's point is clearly intended to refer to inner proximate neural causes of experiences.
29. As J. Levine has argued (2001).
30. (1956), section 62.
31. W. Sellars (1975), sec 50 and 51, p.308
32. W. Sellars (1977) sections III and IV.
33. W. Sellars (1982), Lec. I, sec. 88, p.20.
34. W. Sellars (1982), Lec. I p.3.
35. W. Sellars (1982) sections 43 and 44, p.11.
36. Cf. L. Wittgenstein (1953), Part I, 151-154, and W. Sellars (1963a).
37. The essential contrast between sensory states and concepts, and dispositional nature of latter, is emphasised by J Bennett in his illuminating discussion of Kant's conception of experience (1974), chapter 2.
38. Note especially Sellars' criticisms around section 26 of his (1956).
39. deVries and Triplett, (2000), p.38.
40. It is important to realise that this problem is not circumvented by the adoption of a Direct Realist approach. For example, even if a total perceptual experience of red has as a constituent the objective property of physical redness belonging to the public object seen (or an instance of redness), a property that is equally open to view by all normal observers, this does not explain how the perceiver comes by the concept of the relevant nonconceptual sensory state that occurs as a component of the experience. For as we have argued, such sensory states do not, in themselves, involve concepts. So the Direct Realist is still stuck with the same problem of abstraction, of explaining how the subject moves from having a nonconceptual sensory state of redness to a conceptual grasp of what is experienced.
41. In his recent book D. Smith discusses some of the various phenomenological aspects of experience that are, it might be claimed, distinct from the sensory level: (2002) Chapter 5 passim.
42. There may be some kind of similarity with vividly imagining a red shape, but that is quite a different issue; what is visualised in the imagination is not essential to my thought.
43. McDowell (1998), p.442, and p.451. McDowell's account of perceptual experience is not reductionist in the way that Armstrong's belief analysis of perception is. Nevertheless, we are still owed an account of the precise way in which the intentional state of seeming to see that p differs from merely thinking that p.
44. Sellars is not of course alone in emphasising the importance of training – the idea plays an key role in L. Wittgenstein (1953).
45. P. Strawson (1979), part I.
46. Alan Millar defends an equivalent claim in Chapter 1 of his (1991).
47. This entails that the representational content of the experience is of two kinds: sensory states represent the situations that typically cause them; the concepts involved in experience represent, in a different way, those aspects of the scene that my thoughts are intentionally directed at. This raises interesting issues about the complexity of perceptual content that I plan to pursue in a further paper.
48. F. Dretske has argued a similar position over many years: see for two example, (1969), ch 2, and more recently, (1993).
49. It is important to notice here that this point is independent of the debate between 'theory theory' and 'simulation theory'. For even the advocate of simulation theory has to provide an account of how we understand the framework of mental states that we apply in our own case.
50. As deVries and Triplett observe, Sellars' account of sensory states is not straightforwardly functionalist in the way that his account of thoughts is: see their (2000) p.169.
51. Simon, D. and Chabris, C. (1999).
52. There is extensive discussion of a number of different experiments demonstrating Inattentional Blindness in A. Mack and I. Rock (1998)
53. A. Clark (2002).
54. A. Mack and I. Rock (1998), chapter 8.
55. See, for example, A. Mack (2002), R. Rensink (2000a) and J. Wolfe (1997).
56. Rensink (2000a) p.22; see also his (2000b).
57. Rensink (2000a) p. 22
58. A. Clark (2002) p.188.
59. Thanks are due to Steve Torrance and John Rose for many valuable discussions on the issues raised in this paper, and especially to Bill de Vries, who also provided helpful comments on an earlier draft.