Canales lógicos de paquetes de datos de GPRS

The fourth and final condition that Travis places upon p-representation is that

the contents of experience must be recognisable to the perceptual subject. This is

perhaps the most important and contentious of Travis’s conditions, and consists

of two main claims. First, perceptual experience must be recognisable as a form

of representation since ‘you cannot represent things to people as so in a way they simply cannot recognize as doing that’ (Travis 2004: 63). This is not to say that we are always, or even normally, aware of being represented to in perception, or that perceptual subjects are necessarily capable of accurately

describing the nature and content of their experiences — something that is

clearly not the case. Rather, it must at least be possible in principle — perhaps

through philosophical reasoning and reflection — to recognise the

representational nature of experience as such.

Second, and more importantly for present purposes, we must be capable of recognising the content of our experiences. That is to say, we must be able to know what it is that is being represented to us, or equivalently, what it would take for any given perceptual experience to be veridical. Again, this does not mean that we are in practice able to determine whether the relevant state of affairs obtains, or to elucidate the relevant accuracy conditions in a formal manner. Indeed, these tasks may require considerable conceptual and/or empirical investigation. Rather, the suggestion is that we must be able to grasp or recognise how the world would need to be in order for perceptual experience to accurately represent it. When perceptually encountering an object that looks

like a lemon, for example, it should be apparent to the subject — that is to say, it

is cognitively available to them — that their experience is as of a lemon, or that

the experience should lead them to form beliefs concerning lemons and not, say, potatoes or bars of soap. If the object turned out to be a potato or a ringer for a lemon, such as an identical looking lemon-shaped bar of soap, then this discrepancy would be something that is at least potentially discernible to the subject, perhaps by occasioning surprise or disbelief upon discovering the unexpected object.

We can characterise this condition upon p-representation as follows:

Recognisability: perceptual subjects must be capable of recognising the representational content of any given p-representation solely in virtue of having that very experience.

By this we mean that the subject must be able to recognise both what their

perceptual experience represents to be the case, and how the world would have

to be in order for their experience to be veridical; i.e. having some intuitive or implicit grasp of their experiences’ accuracy or truth conditions. This leaves it

open both whether they know that the relevant conditions obtain (something

that cannot be required for perceptual experience alone), and in what such

knowing consists.

The condition is motivated by epistemological considerations concerning

Face-value and Givenness since if experience presents the world to the subject as

being some particular way (Objectivity), then it must be possible to recognise

what way that is on the basis of that experience (5.2.1). This marks out p- representation as occurring at the personal, rather than sub-personal, level, making experience on the representationalist model analogous to testimony. Experiences, we might say, testify or report to the subject how things are, with the contents of these reports corresponding to individual p-representational contents. Of course it is precisely this analogy with testimony that anti- representationalists are concerned to reject, since they deny that experiences have any such content.

For the time being, I will leave the sense of ‘recognition’ with which Travis is operating as largely intuitive, though this will require further clarification in due course (5.2). The relevant sense must allow for the possibility of subjects being capable of coming to know both the contents of their experiences and that their experience is representational. However, it need not be defined in terms of explicit knowledge. Rather, some form of tacit understanding or grasp of the conditions required for an experience’s accuracy will suffice. These may be

cashed out in terms of practical or cognitive abilities, i.e. knowledge-how rather

than knowledge-that. In particular, such recognisability may (though need not)

manifest itself in the phenomenology of experience, as reflected by its

phenomenal character; e.g. in an object’s looking red or as located at a

particular point in egocentric space.

A notable aspect of the above condition is that the content of perceptual experience must be recognisable ‘in virtue of the experience itself’. This is intended to rule out the possibility that such content is recognisable on the basis of prior or subsequent knowledge, expectations or behaviour, since if this were

the case then it would be unclear in what sense this shows experience to be

representational as opposed to that other thing. Similarly, it cannot be the case that one recognises the content of experience solely as a result of beliefs and judgements formed on the basis of it. This would serve to demonstrate that belief or judgement were representational, but not experience, since it would give no reason to attribute the representational content to the latter, other than perhaps as an explanation of how the former get their content, which is precisely the kind of error that anti-representationalists accuse their opponents of making. Furthermore, since such forms of autorepresentation entail that the

subject already accepts their contents as true, Givenness would fail to obtain.

making the representational contents of perception (if there are any) recognisable in the relevant sense. Rather, Travis argues, there must be some special feature or aspect of perceptual experience in virtue of which its representational content is apparent, as discussed below (2.2.5).

The precise formulation of Recognisability, along with the precise sense of

‘recognition’ in this context, is central to Travis’s argument from looks (2.3.2), much of which rests upon it. Indeed, if a representationalist were to reject this condition outright, then this argument (though not some of Travis’s subsequent

arguments) would fail to go through.12 _{However, such a rejection is not without}

its costs, since the basic principle is closely connected not only with Face-value

and Givenness, but with the connection between representational content and perceptual phenomenology (5.2.3). Indeed, it is a consequence of some forms of intentionalism that the elements of p-representation that figure in phenomenal character are in some sense ‘recognisable’ to the subject. Thus, to give up on

Recognisability would entail a denial of some forms of intentionalism.13

Furthermore, without Recognisability it is difficult to see what work the notion

of representation is supposed to be doing, except as a placeholder or term of art. Such ‘non-recognisable’ forms of p-representation would not constitute a familiar form of representation as such. If the notion of representation that representationalists employ is supposed to be the familiar one that we apply to maps, photographs, language, etc., it would present a serious issue if the content of perception turned out to be opaque to the experiencing subject. As Travis (2004: 86) puts it,

[T]hat we are represented to in experience is meant to be a familiar phenomenon; something we can tell is happening. It is not just events occurring in visual processing mechanisms of which we are all ignorant. It should not come to us as a complete surprise someday, to be sprung on us by future neurophysiologists, that we are thus represented to (uselessly, of course, since we were all ignorant of it).

Travis’s claim, then, is that p-representational content must be grounded in a subject’s ability to recognise what is represented to them in experience, which in turn grounds any subsequent judgements or beliefs made on the basis of it. Furthermore, there must be some principled way of determining in any particular case precisely what the content of a given experience is. If not, then we leave open the possibility that it is the contents of judgements or beliefs that fix the content of experience, rather than, as representationalists typically claim, the other way around.

12 _{I consider such a rejection in connection with Burge’s (2010) account of representational} content in chapter 5.

13 _{Intentionalists who hold a supervenience rather than identity thesis of phenomenal} character can endorse the Face-value condition whilst rejecting Recognisability since not every difference in representational content need be reflected in perceptual phenomenology.