Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

The Necessary and Jointly Sufficient Conditions for a Higher-level Property to Be Perceivable [Topical Collection]

Topics: Cognitive science, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of perception
Keywords: Grouping operation, Higher-order properties, Method of phenomenal contrast, Perceivability criterion

 

In this paper, first of all, I want to give a criterion for the perceivability of higher-level properties, i.e., the properties that depend for their own instantiation on the instantiation of low-level properties (colors, shapes, sounds, textures …); namely, conditions that are necessary and jointly sufficient in order for such a property to be perceivable. Here it is: the higher-level property is given i) immediately; ii) via a grouping operation that involves a perceptual form of attention. Moreover, I want to show why some candidate higher-level properties fulfill it and some other such candidates don’t (they are only pseudo-perceivable).

Higher-level properties are the properties that typically depend, in a generic way, on low-level properties (colors, shapes, sounds, textures …; these latter properties can be given only via a list, Helton 2016) for their instantiation. Indeed typically at least, some low-level property or other must be instantiated in order for a higher-level property to be instantiated.

Clearly enough, not all higher-level properties can be grasped perceptually. To take a paradigmatic case of non-perceivable higher-level properties, normative properties, such as institutional properties involving conventions and norms, e.g. being a curator, being a president, being a professor, cannot be so grasped. But what about the rest? In the literature on philosophy of perception, a lot of candidates…

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