ABSTRACT

A number of authors have recently cited phenomenal effects of covert attention as a source of objection to representationalism. These authors maintain that covert attention brings about changes to phenomenology that cannot be explained by changes in representational content. This paper deals with two related issues that are central to this debate: (1) how attention interacts with representational content and (2) how variations in the precision or determinacy of representational content should be incorporated into representationalist accounts of perceptual phenomenology. I address these issues in the course of responding to a series of recent anti-representationalist arguments that have been advance by Ned Block. I argue that attention can increase the precision of range content and that this provides a basis for defusing both the concerns raised by Block and more general concerns related to covert attention. I conclude by situating my response with respect to analogous proposals that have been developed around the determination relation.

摘要

最近，许多作者将秘密注意的显着影响作为反对代表主义的根源。这些作者坚持认为，秘密关注会导致现象学发生变化，而这些变化不能用表述内容的变化来解释。本文讨论了两个有关该辩论的核心问题：（1）注意力如何与表象内容相互作用；（2）应如何将表象内容的准确性或确定性的变化纳入感知现象学的表象主义解释中。我在回应内德·伯克（Ned Block）提出的一系列最近的反代表主义论据的过程中解决了这些问题。我认为注意力可以提高范围内容的精确度，这为化解Block提出的关注以及与秘密关注有关的更普遍的关注提供了基础。最后，我对围绕确定关系提出的类似建议做出了回应。