Content, Sensation and Perception

Abstract

This paper aims at clarifying the relationship between the sensory aspects and the “demonstrative” aspect o fperception that has attracted the interest of philosophers like Evans and McDowell. On the basis of abroadly Husserlian analysis of perceptual demonstrative modes of presentation, on the one hand and, a recent version of the sense-data theory of perceptionon the other —without the drawbacks thathavetended to render that theory impopular among philosophers— correspondences between the “sensory phase” and the “demonstrative and conceptual phase” of perception are proposed, once those “phases” have been characterized, respectively, by non-conceptual and conceptual contents. The keypoint of the relationship between these is then explained by appealing to a certain synthetic operation. Finally, an attempt is made to show that this is a more satisfactory proposal than the alternative by John Campbell.