Philosophy 290-4

Spring 2012

Number Title Instructor Days/time Room
290-4 Graduate Seminar: The Intentionality of Perceptual Experience Searle Th 11-1 234 Moses

I think many, indeed most, of the philosophic confusions about perception come from a failure to understand the intentionality of perceptual experience. Many philosophers deny that perception has intentionality, and even those who accept it tend to give a false account of the intentionality. A correct account will not only enable us to give an adequate account of perceptual experiences but to refute the standard mistakes in the field, such as phenomenalism, the representative theory, disjunctivism, etc. This subject obviously opens up into a whole lot of related subjects in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind, and I intend to pursue several of those.