A pluralist theory of perception: deep awareness

Event details

It is usually assumed that when I see an orange mango, my perception essentially involves at most one kind of direct awareness. Here I begin to defend the pluralist theory of perception, which says that my perception essentially involves two radically different kinds of awareness that are exercised in concert. First, I deploy a successful sensory representation of the mango and some of its property-instances. This explains various differences between my perception and a matching hallucination. Second, I have deep awareness of certain universals, which is a kind of awareness that reveals part – but not all – of their essences. This explains various similarities between my perception and a matching hallucination. In this talk, I focus especially on defending the pluralist theory as it pertains to deep awareness.