The Eirenic Position and Two Kinds of Explanation: Further Elaboration

As a result of movements by both of us, McDowell's and my position are in agreement on one important point: that the same modes of presentation feature both in the contents of perception and the contents of judgment. I discus further an issue on which we still differ, viz. whether the states that make judgments reasonable can be the same states as those we share with non-human animals. Gupta argues that modes of presentation never feature in the contents of perceptual judgments, and gives an example to illustrate this thesis. I argue that his description of the example is correct, but that it does not undermine the claim that the modes of presentation that feature in perceptual contents can also feature in the contents of judgments. I dispute Hill's statement that I am committed to the possibility of logical concepts featuring in the content of perception. In reply to Hill's description of the notion of a mode of presentation as "deplorably vague", I argue that for perceptual modes of presentation, which are in question here, we can say that mode M is distinct from mode M′ if and only if it is possible to perceive an object in way M without perceiving it in way M′. Rubner states that perceptions have accuracy conditions but not correctness conditions. He defends a Burgean position, against which I argue that the phenomena can all be explained using only predicational content. The fact that in 'that FG' the position of F does not look predicational does not show it not to be so. The position of 'B' in the formula ‘Der Ref B’ in Quine's predicate-functor logic does not look predicational; but the semantics for such a formula shows 'B' to be predicational. I dispute Sedivy's statement that the Eirenic position implies that we can perceive things only in the ways that non-human animals can perceive things. The Eirenic position implies only that we share some perceptual contents with the non-human animals, not that we share all. I also argue that identity of an element of perceptual content, such as perception of the gravitational vertical, across the perceptions of multiple different kinds of creature, is consistent with those creatures having very different kinds of life-activity. Conor states that “modes of presentation in experience can be more determinate or finely grained than modes of presentation in thought”. I reply that anything that is determinate in perception can be thought about in correspondingly determinate ways, by suitable use of perceptual demonstratives in thought. Epstein draws a contrast between vehicle-magnitudes and what he calls “represented magnitudes” or “content-magnitudes”. I accept the distinction, but question whether it undermines my position. In the relevant examples, I do not think there is any such thing as operating on the relevant kind of content without there being a corresponding operation on a magnitude or some other subpersonal representation