Hill on perceptual contents, Thouless properties, and representational pluralism

Abstract

Part of a symposium on Christopher Hill's book, Perceptual experience. Hill argues that perceptual experiences typically represent objects as having exotic properties that he calls Thouless properties. This and his representational pluralism allow him to attribute less perceptual error than the view that experiences represent simple relational properties (only). However, I think it is plausible that perceptual systems do make these sorts of errors, which although pervasive and systematic, are relatively subtle and perfectly explicable. I also express some concerns about representational pluralism, especially in the context of a representationalist view of the phenomenal character of experience.