The debate concerning whether or not we sometimes perceptually experience ‘high-level’ properties is closely connected to a couple of other topics that have also received very extensive attention over the past few decades. Firstly, whether and to what extent perceptual states can be ‘penetrated’ by cognitive mental states. Secondly, whether and how we might be able to distinguish between perception and cognition. The aim for this paper will be to argue against a proposal made by Fred Dretske (2015) for how we can test whether two subjects have visual experiences with different phenomenal characters when they both look at the exact same scene. Dretske thought that the results of his proposed test would favour the ‘Sparse’ view that we do not really visually experience high-level properties—and also to weigh against the view that visual experience can be cognitively penetrated by the subject’s non-perceptual beliefs. We can also consider Dretske’s proposal as one specific example of a more general approach concerning…
˜