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Experientialism, Phenomenal Content and Perceptual Beliefs:

A Response to Lyons's Dilemma
K. L. Sylvan

0. Background and Overview

Lyons (2009) has raised a new dilemma for direct realist views on which experiences can
provide immediate prima facie justification for external world beliefs. The dilemma turns on
two contrasting pictures of experience. On the one hand, experiences might be identified
with sensations, which are "those low-level mental states that have qualia associated with
them…and thus perhaps a kind of qualitative content…but lack conceptual…content".1 On
the other hand, experiences might be identified with percepts, which are "those higher-level
states that involve the subsumption of distal stimuli under concepts and hence have a
conceptual…content".2 Given these two pictures, experientialist direct realism can be
understood in two ways: as sensation experientialism (SE) or percept experientialism (PE).

Lyons thinks neither version of experientialist direct realism is tenable. If, he contends, the
view is understood as SE, two prima facie disastrous problems arise. The first is the Problem of
Collateral Information. Even if sensations have content, their content is impoverished, and it is
hard to see how our ordinary perceptual beliefs can be justified on their basis without appeal
to collateral assumptions. So, much of the directness of direct realism will be lost.
Moreover, concerns about skepticism loom, since hard questions arise about how beliefs in
these assumptions might be noncircularly justified. The second problem is the Content
Problem. Lyons doubts that sensations have the kind of content that would render them fit
to stand in evidential relations. If they can’t stand in such relations, SE entails radical
skepticism. Since Lyons reckons these problems insoluble, he encourages us to reject SE.

If, on the other hand, experientialism is understood as PE, Lyons thinks that two more big
problems arise. The first is the Identity Problem. Given a functionalist account of belief, it is
plausible to think that percepts will often be identical to perceptual beliefs. If so, percepts
can’t serve as justifiers for perceptual beliefs unless such beliefs are self-justifying, which they
aren’t. So, Lyons thinks that PE borders on incoherence. The second problem is the
Qualitative Draining Problem. Lyons worries that percepts are too high-level for PE to qualify
as a form of experientialism. As he puts it, qualitative character “drains” as we ascend the
hierarchy of perceptual representations. This is problematic, since the motivating idea
behind experientialism was that justification supervenes on qualitative states, and everything
qualitative falls at the level of sensations and not of percepts. So, PE is false or, if true, not
really a form of experientialism. Hence, Lyons argues, since neither SE nor PE is a tenable
form of experientialist direct realism, we should abandon the general view.

In what follows, I’ll defuse Lyons’s dilemma. My response will have two parts. Firstly, I
think Lyons is mistaken that SE and PE are the only possible versions of experientialist
direct realism. Indeed, as I’ll suggest, there is a view that falls very neatly between SE and
PE that is far truer to the motivations of experientialism. This view is grounded in a
conception of experiences as states that are partly individuated by their phenomenal contents,

1 Lyons (2009), p.46 - 47.

2 Ibid., p.47.
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where C is a phenomenal content of E iff any state phenomenally identical to E ipso facto has
C. I think this is really the most natural understanding of experiential states. As I’ll argue,
experiences in this phenomenal content sense (“PC-experiences”) are both informationally
richer than sensations and qualitatively richer than percepts in Lyons’s proprietary senses.
So, I’ll suggest, there is a natural formulation of experientialism that can avoid the Problem
of Collateral Information, the Content Problem, and the Qualitative Draining Problem.

Although I'll recommend a view that falls between SE and PE, this is not because I grant
that Lyons’s objections to SE and PE are successful. Besides arguing that my view avoids
his dilemma, I’ll suggest that his second problem for SE can be solved, as well as his first
problem for PE. So, setting my own view aside, Lyons’s case against SE and PE is weak.

With these goals in mind, here’s how I’ll proceed. In §1, I distinguish between some
different versions of experientialism, discuss what Lyons calls the Delineation Problem, and
sketch the outlines of a solution to it. I’ll also describe how my PC-experientialism falls
between SE and PE, and signpost the import of this fact for the rest of the paper. In §2, I'll
rehearse Lyons’s dilemma and the finer details of the problems he raises for SE and PE. In
§3, §4 and §5, I'll show how PC-experientialism can avoid the first three problems; I'll also
explain in §5 how SE might not face the Content Problem. In §6, I argue that the Identity
Problem is illusory, and dissolves when a state/content equivocation is resolved. I'll take
stock of my points in §7, answer objections, and consider issues skirted in earlier sections.

1. Experientialism, the Delineation Problem and Phenomenal Content

1.1. Experientialism: Core Claims and General Divisions
A long tradition in epistemology has it that experiences play a foundational role in the
structure of epistemic justification. While there is also a long history of opposition to this
tradition, it retains many adherents and is at least as popular today as the main alternatives.
As a friend of the tradition, my focus in the following will be to respond to a new challenge
mounted in Lyons (2009). But before addressing Lyons's challenge, it will be useful to lay
down the core commitments of the traditional view and distinguish some subspecies of it.

Defenders of the traditional view are united in holding that experiences can provide direct,
noninferential justification for some of our beliefs. We can call this core claim experientialism.
All experientialists are foundationalists, and some think that the class of beliefs that are
directly justified by experience forms the exclusive bedrock on which the justification of all our
a posteriori beliefs rests. For this reason, some experientialists are internalists, and think the
justification of all our a posteriori beliefs supervenes on current consciously accessible mental
states. One can, however, consistently be an experientialist and think that there are more
properly basic beliefs than just the ones that are directly supported by experience. Extending
the foundations in this way could involve departures from internalism. So, experientialism
doesn't entail internalism. Nevertheless, few have explored such mixed theories.

Experientialists part company on the question of which of our beliefs can be directly justified
by experiences. Some (e.g., BonJour (2003) and Fumerton (1995)) think that only beliefs
about one's present experiences can be justified in this way, and that beliefs about the
external world or past experience are at best inferentially justified. I'll call this view classical
experientialism. Others (e.g., Pryor (2000), Brewer (2002), and Pollock and Cruz (1999)) agree
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that beliefs about experiences can be justified in this way, but also claim that beliefs about
the external world can. I'll call this view non-classical experientialism (NC-experientialism for
short). NC-experientialists have an advantage over classical experientialists in avoiding
radical skepticism, though even NC-experientialism may entail a milder skepticism. For this
reason, NC-experientialism has been more popular. It will be my focus in what follows.

1.2. The Delineation Problem for NC-Experientialism and Some Suggestions for a Solution
NC-experientialism is at best only a sketch of a view. To have definiteness, the view must be
supplemented with an answer to the following important question. If a subject S has a
perceptual experience E, what are the external world propositions that S thereby has direct
justification for believing? Following Lyons (2009), I'll call the problem of answering this
question the Delineation Problem. While I won't try to fully solve the Delineation Problem, I
do want to provide a more detailed discussion of it than often appears in the literature.

NC-experientialists have said remarkably little to address the Delineation Problem. Few try
to give much more than the following initial basis for an answer offered by Pryor (2000):

Let's distinguish among the beliefs we form by perception. Some propositions are
such that we see or seem to see that they are so in virtue of seeming to see that
other propositions are so. For instance, I seem to see that there's a policeman ahead
partly in virtue of seeming to see that there's a blue-coated figure ahead, and partly
in virtue of having certain…evidence…. I will call those propositions that we seem
to perceive to be so, but not in virtue of seeming to perceive that other propositions
are so, perceptually basic propositions, [ones] that our experiences basically represent.3

Given the notion of basic representation, Pryor in effect suggests that we solve the
Delineation Problem by claiming that we have direct prima facie justification for believing the
propositions that are basically represented by our experiences.

While I wouldn't endorse exactly this proposal, its general structure is attractive, at least by
the lights the motivate experientialism ab initio. Although one might form the belief that
there's a policeman ahead as rapidly and readily as one forms the belief that there's a blue-
coated figure ahead, it is natural to think that there is an asymmetry between them: if the
former is justified, it is in virtue of the fact that the latter is justified.4 Why should this be so?
Because, an experientialist can say, the content of the latter is more basic.

3 Pryor (2000), pp.538 - 539.

4 One might insist that it is obvious that the belief that there's a policeman ahead is basic. Hence, one might
reject this style of proposal out of hand. In reply, I am inclined to deny right away that we have any direct
intuitions about basicality. On this issue, I think Lyons (2009: 157) tells the right story:

I expect that our intuitions…are about justifiedness, rather than basicality per se. It is much more likely
that our beliefs about basicality are inferentially justified on the basis of some of these basic beliefs
about justifiedness. Here is how I suspect it goes: we have some…system that…produces as outputs
beliefs of the form 'S is justified in believing that p'…. When we note that S has no doxastic evidence
for p, we…infer that the belief that p was basic.

If this is the right way to determine basicality, the objection fails. The belief that there's a policeman ahead can
be grounded in doxastic evidence about how policemen normally dress. This evidence, together with the
appearance of a blue-coated figure, justifies the belief. Unless a story like this isn't generally available, there
wouldn't be a quick reason for thinking that the policeman belief is basic. So, it's not at all "obvious" that it is
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But what propositions are basically represented by experience? While this question raises
issues that I can't address at length here, one might think that part of the answer will be tied
to phenomenology. In particular, one might say that a proposition is basically represented
by E only if it is a phenomenal content of E, where phenomenal contents are defined as follows:

PC: For any experience E and content C, C is a phenomenal content of E iff E has
C and, necessarily, for every experience E*, if what it's like to have E* is the same as
what it's like to have E, then E* has C.5

Put briefly, phenomenal contents are contents shared by phenomenal twins. If we restrict
basic representation via PC, we get a rationale for denying that the policeman belief is basic.
One can imagine phenomenal twins S and S* having the same experience E as of a blue-
coated figure, but where the proposition that there is a policeman ahead is a content of E for
S but not a content of E for S*. Justification can only be direct if any subject with that
experience would receive that justification (defeaters aside). So, since the policeman belief
can’t be a phenomenal content, it is at best inferentially justified and ipso facto nonbasic. This,
at any rate, is the sort of thing experientialists would be inclined to say.

And so this kind of restriction would be attractive to experientialists: denying it directly

contravenes experientialist hunches. If the restriction isn't made, it will be possible for there
to be phenomenal twins who differ in their direct justification for some perceptual beliefs
(defeaters aside). There could be phenomenal twins T and T* such that there is a perceptual
proposition P that T is justified in believing but that T* is not justified in believing (defeaters
aside). This would look wrong to anyone who thinks that differences between subjects in
direct prima facie justification for perceptual beliefs should be traceable to experiential
differences. So, although an experientialist may not be forced to approach the Delineation
Problem by appealing to a PC-based restriction, most experientialists would want to do so.

Many questions remain even once the restriction to phenomenal contents is made. Some
turn on views about where to draw the line between conceptual and nonconceptual content.6
Assuming that there is nonconceptual content, does it follow from this view that if S is
immediately justified in believing that P, P is a nonconceptual content? One might argue

basic. Objections of this kind are too quick, and must be supplemented with reasons for thinking that the
belief in question can't (normally) be grounded in doxastic evidence.
5 I take this formulation from Silins (ms). Silins offers a few arguments against the view that S is immediately

justified in believing some external world proposition P on the basis of E only if P is a phenomenal content.
As he notes, though, most of his arguments can be answered by reasonable restrictions. To take the one
problem he discusses for which he does not suggest a restriction, suppose that you and I are looking at different
beach balls but having identical experiences, where we both believe propositions expressed by "That thing is
round". Here it is plausible to think that if we're justified in holding these beliefs, we're immediately justified.
(What further doxastic evidence could we appeal to? None, as far as I can see.) But we believe different
propositions. So, it's false that if S is immediately justified in believing some external world proposition P on
the basis of an experience E, it's a phenomenal content of E that P. Here the appropriate response is a two-
dimensionalist one: we're still both immediately justified in believing the same primary intension, and so we can
restrict the claim to primary intensions. One might also restrict the claim to object-independent propositions.
6 It is a vexed question whether nonconceptual and conceptual content are even distinctive kinds of content.

Heck (2000) usefully distinguished between state nonconceptualism and content nonconceptualism, and pointed out that
most of the arguments in the literature only establish the former view, not the latter. Speaks (2003) reinforces
this verdict. My own sympathies lie with state nonconceptualism. As we'll see later, the distinction between
these two pictures is important for understanding how nonconceptual states might serve as evidential justifiers.
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that the answer must be "yes" as follows. If C is a conceptual content of S's experience E,
we can imagine a phenomenal twin S* of S who lacks the concepts used to articulate C. If
S* and S are twins but C is a content of S's experience but not S*'s, C isn't a phenomenal
content of E. So, no conceptual contents are phenomenal contents. So, on PC-
experientialism, it will follow that if S is directly justified in believing C, C is nonconceptual.

Whether this argument works depends on whether it's true that one can leave the
phenomenal character of an experience unchanged if one "removes" its conceptual content
but leaves its nonconceptual content intact. While this assumption may be plausible for
some conceptual contents, I doubt that it is a general truth. Some conceptual contents of
experiences can enrich their qualitative character. If so, then excising some conceptual
contents from experiences will shift their feel. And if this is true, it is pretty much inevitable
that some conceptual contents are phenomenal contents. Accordingly, the line of reasoning
we just considered is almost certainly unsound; the burden of proof falls on its defender.

Granting that some conceptual contents are phenomenal, which ones are they? I don't see a
general answer to this question that follows from an overarching account of the nature of
conceptual content, though there may be one to be had. As far as I can tell, arguments for
answers to this question must be conducted on a case-by-case basis; perhaps a pattern can be
generalized, but I don't see that there is any nice general truth of the form "Only contents
that can be had when concepts of type C are had are phenomenal". But I’ll refrain from
exploring this issue for now, and revisit it in the next subsection, §3 and §5.

Much more needs to be said about all this. But the following crucial morals can be
tentatively drawn, and will be important for what will follow. Firstly, the best and most
natural formulation of NC-experientialism makes appeal to phenomenal contents. When
NC-experientialists say that experiences can directly justify beliefs, they are best understood
as talking about experiences as states that are individuated by their phenomenal content and
character.7 Secondly, phenomenal contents crosscut levels of representation. Perhaps many
phenomenal contents are nonconceptual, but some are conceptual. And, thirdly, as we'll see
later, these latter contents are not merely conceptual, but also often high-level.

The first of these points will be crucial for dismantling Lyons's attack on NC-
experientialism. As we'll see, he engages in dangerous oversimplification when he assumes
that experiences can only be understood as sensations or percepts. The other two points will
be crucial for seeing why none of Lyons's problems for the versions of NC-experientialism
he discusses confronts the best and most natural formulation of the view. This will all
suffice to show that his central dilemma doesn't get close to touching NC-experientialism.

1.3. The Theories from §1.2 and Lyons's Taxonomy

Lyons's arguments turn on a division he draws among experientialist theories. To set the
stage for my response, I want to examine his taxonomy and point out that it fails to classify
the version of experientialism that emerged from my discussion of the Delineation Problem.

7 Given a strong, Tye-style representationalism, this would be redundant, and we could just say that experiences

are states that are wholly individuated by their phenomenal contents. But I here leave open the question, and
don't presuppose that there can be no qualitative features that aren't reducible to representational features.
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PC-experientialism occupies a middle ground between the extremes of Lyons's division.

This gives experientialists a strong foothold for replying to his central dilemma.

Lyons discusses two general versions of experientialism: sensation experientialism (SE) and
percept experientialism (PE). On the former view, sensations populate the nondoxastic bedrock
on which the justification of our a posteriori beliefs rests, and differences in the direct
justification of perceptual beliefs trace to sensational differences. On the latter view, the
bedrock is populated by percepts, and differences in the immediate justification of perceptual
beliefs require differences in the percepts had by different subjects.

What is the difference between sensations and percepts? Lyons gives us a rough account:

[S]ensation is the raw, direct experiential consequence of the stimulation of sense

organs, while perception involves processing of information…. I will stipulate that
sensations, for the present purposes, are those low-level mental states that have
qualia associated with them (and thus perhaps a kind of qualitative content) but lack
conceptual and propositional content, while percepts are those higher-level states
that involve the subsumption of distal stimuli under concepts and hence have a
conceptual -- and I will assume propositional -- content.8

To fix ideas, Lyons explains how the distinction between sensations and percepts applies to
cases. One is Necker's cube, about which he says this: "When the cube shifts from facing
down and to the left to facing up and to the right, this is a shift from one percept to another
competing and incompatible percept. The drawing only produces a single sensation,
however."9 Crucially, he makes an addendum: "I don't deny that there's an introspectible,
experienced difference when the cube shifts, just that this is a difference in the visual
sensation."10 So, in Lyons's terminology, differences in phenomenal character don't
necessitate differences in sensation.11 There can be many-to-one mappings from characters
to sensations, just as there can be many-to-one mappings from percepts to sensations.

8 Lyons (2009), pp.42, 46 - 47.

9 Ibid., p.43.
10 Ibid., p.43.
11 But Lyons is shifty about whether differences in qualitative character are tracked by differences in sensation

or vice versa. In the remarks I've been quoting, he allows that there can be phenomenal differences without
sensational differences. A lot of his dilemma would seem to turn on this. But at other times he says things that
suggest the reverse. Before posing some problems that arise from absent and inverted qualia cases, he says
this: "Sensations, I assume, are individuated by their qualitative character, so if two agents have different qualia,
then they have different sensations, and if an agent has no qualia, that agent has no sensations" (Ibid., p.50).
Doesn't this pose a problem for me? After all, I have said that PC-experientialism falls in between SE
and PE. If phenomenal and sensational content are the same, this can't be right. Well, if this passage is given
priority, then the letter of what I say might have to be revamped, but the spirit will remain unchanged.
On the first presentation of my argument, I'll be saying that PC-experientialism is better than SE
because it avoids a lot of the objections that Lyons presents for SE. But if the further quote is given priority
instead, I restate my argument: what is really wrong is that Lyons's objections to SE fail, and the first horn of
his dilemma is weak. If we give priority to the PC-based picture of sensations, then my main point is this:
sensations -- which just are PC-experiences -- are much informationally richer than Lyons makes them out to
be; they are also phenomenally rich, and so SE doesn't confront the problems putatively confronted by PE. All
my arguments that were initially intended to show that PC-experiences can serve the right role for the
experientialist in avoiding Lyons's dilemma would then go to show that SE experientialism doesn't actually face
any of Lyons's worries. If sensational content really is phenomenal content, then there shouldn't be a Problem
of Collateral Information, nor all the related skeptical concerns Lyons tries to press. So, I pose a new
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And as Lyons makes clear with other examples, he holds that there can be not just many-to-
one mappings from percepts to sensations, but also many-to-one mappings from sensations
to percepts: "The visual sensation produced by the coal changes when the coal is brought
indoors, but the coal does not appear to change colors."12 In cases like this, Lyons suggests
that the percept is supposed to remain constant, while the sensation changes.

Given these examples and Lyons's account of the distinction, it is clear that PC
experientialism falls between SE and PE. To see this, notice first that phenomenal contents
are more fine-grained than sensations. As Lyons's remarks on Necker's cube indicate, he
thinks the aspect switch does shift phenomenal character. And so it is plausible to claim that
the phenomenal contents of the experiences one has before and after the switch differ. Yet the
sensation is the same. So, phenomenal content differences don't yield sensation differences.

Because of this, the view we discussed in the last section doesn’t qualify as a version of SE.
Suppose that we have a version of experientialism that solves the Delineation Problem by
claiming that if S has an experience E, S is directly justified in believing all and only those
propositions that are basically represented by E, where a proposition is basically represented
by E only if it's a phenomenal content of E. As the cube switches, phenomenal content switches.
Moreover, when the cube appears to face a certain direction, it doesn't to do so in virtue of
some more basic appearance. So, on this view, there is a difference in basic representation.
There would ipso facto be a difference in prima facie direct justification between subjects who
saw the cube in these different ways. Since, in Lyons's jargon, the sensation is constant, this
view doesn't qualify as a version of SE. SE wouldn't predict this difference.

More generally, the gap between percepts and phenomenal contents is narrower than that
between percepts and sensations. To see this, consider these cases of amodal completion:

FIG.1

There is a real phenomenal difference between seeing the figure on the left as four white
Pac-Man shapes and four short lines sitting on top of a blue background with nothing else in

dilemma. Either (i) Lyons opts for the thin picture of sensations assumed in his remarks on Necker's cube and
in other places, or (ii) he identifies sensations with PC-experiences as suggested in the further quote in the
section on absent and inverted qualia arguments. If (i), all my arguments go through exactly as they are stated.
If (ii), then I rephrase my strategy: what my arguments really show is that SE doesn't face the problems Lyons
tries to pose for it. So, the shiftiness poses no big problem for me.
12 Ibid., p.44.
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the foreground, and seeing it as a blue square occluding four white circles and a cross. What
it's like to see one differs from what it's like to see the other, much like in the case of
Necker's cube, since aspect switching is possible. Similarly, there's a phenomenal difference
between seeing the figure on the right as a circle wedged in a typewriter-shaped object in the
same ground, and a circle in the foreground partly occluding a square in the background.
What it's like to see one differs from what it's like to see the other. Plausibly, then, there's a
difference in phenomenal content between my experiences of the amodally completed
figures that more naturally stand out on a first glance and the experiences I have when I see
an array of oddly shaped objects involving no amodal completion. There is also a difference
at the level of percepts -- presumably the same one. But, in Lyons's proprietary terminology,
there's no difference at the level of sensation. And thus there is a gap between sensations
and percepts but no similar gap between phenomenal contents and percepts.

Although the gap between the phenomenal contents of interest to PC-based view and
percepts is narrower, there still isn't a one-to-one mapping between the former and the
latter. So, PE and PC-based experientialism don’t coincide. There are three reasons for this.

Firstly, percepts as Lyons understands them are less fine-grained than phenomenal contents.
Walking around a rectangular table or looking at a piece of coal in different lighting
conditions, it is plausible to suppose that the phenomenally grounded representations of the
table that I have do vary. But, as Lyons says, the percept of the table is unchanged or at least
changed very little. So, phenomenal content differences don't entail percept differences.

Secondly and relatedly, the fact that percepts are so high-level and conceptual makes it
possible for phenomenal twins to have different percepts. Lyons would, after all, claim that
if a herpetological expert and a novice look at a copperhead, their percepts may differ: one
sees it as a copperhead, the other just sees it as a snake.13 And so percept differences don't
entail phenomenal content differences.

Finally, only representationally basic contents were relevant for solving the Delineation
Problem on the theory discussed in §1.2. But, at least on the initial statement of PE Lyons
offers, it's possible for a nonbasic percept -- one had in virtue of having another percept --
to be a direct justifier. So, there’s another difference between PC-experientialism and PE.

As I'll maintain, the upshot of all this is that Lyons's core dilemma for experientialism can be
answered by PC-based theories that draw subtler distinctions than PE and SE.

And there is nothing ad hoc about taking a PC-based view to be a more exemplary version of
experientialism than PE or SE. The appeal to basic representation was present in Pryor's
work. As I said before, a PC-based restriction on basic representation is what one would
expect from an experientialist. Moreover, the phenomenal content sense of 'experience' is
more adequate in tracking ordinary usage than a reading of 'experience' as sensation or perception
in Lyons's proprietary senses. For it is intuitive to think that one’s experience does change
when one undergoes an aspect switch in examining Necker’s cube. It is also intuitive to
think that one’s experience changes when one looks at a piece of coal in different lighting
conditions. Neither of Lyons’s proprietary notions tracks this sense of ‘experience’. The

13 This, at any rate, is what gets said in Lyons (2005).

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PC-grounded sense tracks phenomenal character, and the primary sense of 'experience' just is
one on which experiential and phenomenal differences coincide.

Given this point, I will not be upset if I cannot fully save SE or PE from Lyons’s argument.
He may be right that these less subtle theories face some insurmountable problems. I will be
content to show that a PC-based version of experientialism of the sort that Pryor and others
would favor can escape the argument; most careful experientialists would, after all, prefer a
PC-based view to both SE and PE for the reasons I've mentioned. So, with this in mind, I’ll
now turn to Lyons's dilemma for experientialism.

2. Lyons's Dilemma for NC-Experientialism

Lyons's core argument against NC-experientialism takes the following form:

Lyons's Dilemma (LD):

1. "Experience" admits of a sensation reading and a percept reading. So, there are two
experientialisms: sensation experientialism (SE) and percept experientialism (PE).
2. If SE is true, sensations provide the basis for the justification of perceptual beliefs.
3. But it is hard to see how sensations can provide an adequate basis for the direct
justification of perceptual beliefs. This view faces at least two intractable problems:
a. The Problem of Collateral Information. There is a gap between the information
implicit in sensations and the information explicit in percepts. So,
sensations could only justify beliefs that share content with perceptual
beliefs together with a big host of auxiliary assumptions. But if this is right,
our perceptual beliefs wouldn't be immediately justified. Moreover, the view
that it is only the sensations together with auxiliary assumptions that justify
our perceptual beliefs couldn't get off the ground, because there couldn't be
a noncircular justification for these auxiliary assumptions. The view would
lead to radical skepticism, and should be rejected for this reason.
b. The Content Problem. Sensations lack the kind of content needed to be
evidential justifiers for beliefs, and perhaps lack content altogether. So,
sensations can't stand in evidential relations to beliefs, and ipso facto can't be
direct evidential justifiers.
4. Since problems (a) and (b) are insoluble, SE is false.
5. If PE is true, percepts provide the basis for the justification of perceptual beliefs.
6. But it is hard to see how percepts can be direct evidential justifiers in the sense
required by PE or in a way that would be truly experientialist. For PC faces the
following big problems:
c. The Identity Problem. When a percept has the right functional role, it just is
the perceptual belief whose justification is in question. So, unless the
perceptual belief is self-justifying, the percept can't serve to justify it.
d. The Qualitative Draining Problem. Even if the percept and the perceptual
belief were distinct, the percept is really too high-level to be particularly
experiential; as we ascend the hierarchy of representations to the level of
percepts, qualitative character drains out. So, even if percepts could be
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direct justifiers, this wouldn't establish experientialism, since PE wouldn’t

really count as a version of experientialism.
7. Since problems (c) and (d) are insoluble, PE is false.
8. So, since SE and PE are the only versions of NC-experientialism, NC-
experientialism is false.

There are a few further problems that Lyons adds to (a - b) and (c - d) for SE and PE. But
I’ll focus on (a - d), since I think these are much more serious and difficult.

In my two-part reply to LD, I'll first argue in §3, §4 and §5 that a PC-based experientialism
can evade the Problem of Collateral Information, the Qualitative Draining Problem, and the
Content Problem. The upshot will be that this kind of experientialism has all the advantages
that PE has over SE but doesn't suffer from PE's disadvantages. I'll then provide a separate
discussion of the Identity Problem in §6, since I don’t even think that PE faces this problem;
defenders of PE therefore don’t even need to retreat to a PC-based view to avoid it.

3. Phenomenal Content and the Problem of Collateral Information

The Problem of Collateral Information arises for SE due to the informational coarseness of
sensations. To illustrate the problem, Lyons draws attention to figures like this:

FIG.2

Looking at FIG.2 as presented tends to produce an impression of a depression in a surface;

looking at it upside down produces an impression of a sphere. As Lyons says, "[T]here is
nothing in the sensation that determines [this impression]…. This, according to the
standard story in perceptual psychology, is because the visual system "assumes" that objects
are uniformly shaded and lit from above. This assumption…is independent of and collateral
to the sensation itself."14 So, concludes Lyons, "it is hard to see how the sensation might
justify -- evidentially justify, that is -- the perceptual belief that there is something convex out
there unless the possessor of the perceptual belief also (justifiedly) believes that things are
generally lit from above."15 And so SE is at least incompatible with the claim that such
beliefs are immediately justified, and ceases to be a version of non-classical experientialism.
Moreover, "[t]he standard sorts of worries arise: there is no obvious way for an agent to have
justified beliefs about the location of the light sources prior to having justified
perceptual…beliefs. Threats of circularity and skepticism loom."16

The source of the worry here is that the content of the sensation is too impoverished: it is
compatible with both the convexity and concavity beliefs. Although I agree that this would

14 Lyons (2009), p.54 - 55.

15 Lyons (2009), p.55.
16 Lyons (2009), p.55.
 11

be enough to cast doubt on SE, no similar concern arises for versions of experientialism that
appeal to phenomenal content. There is a phenomenal difference when, after imagining
myself looking at a bunch of orbs with nests of fireflies in the bottom, I look at FIG.2 and
see such an orb, versus when I look at FIG.2 with an unadulterated imagination and see a
depression. The feel of these two experiences differs subtly but noticeably (as one can feel
via an aspect switch), and so the two time-slices of me are not phenomenal twins. Moreover,
a phenomenal twin of the first time-slice would have an experience representing an orb,
while a phenomenal twin of the second would have an experience representing a depression.
Thus, the phenomenal contents are more fine-grained than the sensation in these cases.

For this reason, the phenomenal content in each case is not equally compatible with the
convexity and concavity beliefs. So, if 'experience' is read in the PC-based sense rather than
the sensation sense, one can hold that the experience in the first case justifies me in holding
the orb belief and not the depression belief, and the experience in the second case justifies
me in holding the depression belief but not the orb belief without the assistance of auxiliary
assumptions. The extra informational fineness of grain had by PC-experiences brings the
collateral information lacked by the sensation along with it, as it were. So, in this case, the
Problem of Collateral Information isn't a concern for the sophisticated experientialist.

Now, one might worry that this style of solution doesn't generalize. But I don't see any basis
for this worry. If we turn to other cases where the Problem of Collateral Information arises
for SE, the same reply looks just as plausible. Consider, for example, the cases of amodal
completion in FIG.1. As I pointed out in discussing FIG.1, there is a phenomenal
difference between seeing the figure on the left as four white Pac-Man shapes and four short
lines sitting on top of a blue background with nothing else in the foreground, and seeing it as
a blue square occluding four white circles and a cross. What it's like to see one differs from
what it's like to see the other. Phenomenal content once again differs between my two time-
slices. The same reply is available here to the sophisticated experientialist, though cases like
this would again raise a serious concern for the sensation experientialist. The same holds for
the figure on the right in FIG.1, and, as we also noted, Necker's cube. In general, it does
seem that the "assumptions" made by the visual system have a reflection in phenomenology,
even if not, in Lyons's proprietary sense, sensation. I'll return to this point further in §5.

So, the Problem of Collateral Information can be significantly diminished if not completely
solved. The burden falls on Lyons to generate cases where our strategy is inapplicable; the
cases he offers in the text are unconvincing, and can be accounted for by PC-experientialism.

4. Phenomenal Content and the Qualitative Draining Problem

Simply showing that a version of experientialism grounded in phenomenal content avoids
the problems for SE isn't enough to avoid LD. One must also show that it can avoid the
problems for PE; PE, after all, also avoids the problems posed for SE. I think a view
grounded in phenomenal content can avoid the problems for PE. I'll take the Qualitative
Draining Problem first and delay discussion of the Identity Problem until I’ve tackled the
Content Problem. As I'll argue later, Lyons argument that PE confronts the Identity
Problem is unconvincing; moreover, I doubt that there is such a problem for any view.

Here is the core of the Qualitative Draining Problem in Lyons's own words:
 12

At the low end of the hierarchy, the states are vivid and qualitatively rich…. But the
evidential import of these states is far from clear…. As we ascend the hierarchy, the
colors drain away from the states. Informationally rich but qualitatively
impoverished, the higher-level states close the percept-belief gap but leave nothing
subjective for the agent to go on…. Such state[s] [do] little to appease the internalist
worries that motivated experientialism in the first place…. [T]here is nothing
particularly experiential about this highest level representation. The states that
deserve to be counted as experiential states are the lower level states, to which [(a) -
(c) in LD] apply.17

In replying to this objection, I first want to reiterate what a PC-based version of

experientialism claims. For, on the face of it, such a theory does avoid this problem. I then
want to consider a series of objections one might try to pose for the prima facie solution that
all draw on the cognitive scientific metaphor of a hierarchy of representations that Lyons
invokes. I'll argue that these objections either miss the mark or rest on false assumptions.

A defender of PC-experientialism will fix the notion of experience by appeal to phenomenal

character. He'll insist that, whatever else we might say about experiences, we must agree that
they are individuated by their phenomenal characters: E = E* iff what it's like to undergo E
is the same as what it's like to undergo E*. Furthermore, he'll point out that phenomenal
characters bring certain contents along with them -- viz., phenomenal contents -- and that
these contents are very rich and fine-grained. So, put carefully, what the experientialist view
we've been considering claims is this: if S is in experiential state E and E has the phenomenal
content that C, then S has direct, prima facie justification for believing that C.

Now mark that we have nowhere made the strong representationalist claim that phenomenal
characters just are phenomenal contents. A defender of this view is free to think of
phenomenal characters and contents as distinct. All he assumes is that they're both bound
up together in experiences, and that experiences can't be identical unless they have the same
phenomenal character and therefore, by the definition of phenomenal content, the same
phenomenal content. The fact that phenomenal characters bring contents with them says
nothing immediate about whether content can be reduced to character or vice versa. There
can be necessary entailment relations between properties even if neither property can be
analyzed in terms of the other. That something is red entails that it is colored, but, as many
have been eager to point out, there is no solution to the equation redness = coloredness + X.

When these points are borne in mind, I don't see that PC-based experientialism confronts
any Qualitative Draining Problem. What are the things that do direct justificatory work on
our view? Experiences. What are experiences? Minimally, they are token mental states that
are type-identical iff subjects that are in these states (and only these states) are phenomenal
twins. How can experiences have evidential bearing on beliefs? They can have such bearing
because they necessarily have certain contents -- viz., phenomenal contents. Experiences in
the simple, commonsense sense that we're discussing are qualitatively rich but also have
straightforward evidential import. As we argued in the last section, they have much clearer
evidential import than sensations, because their contents are richer, and theories that appeal
to them face no Problem of Collateral Information.

17 Lyons (2009), p.69.

 13

So, insofar as there are experiences in this straightforward, familiar sense, the version of
experientialism we've been discussing does not face any Qualitative Draining Problem.
Experiences as our theory understands them are by definition qualitatively rich, and, given
the notion of phenomenal content, they can also have straightforward evidential bearing.
Moreover, as we saw in the last section, this bearing extends far enough to directly justify
ordinary external world beliefs without the help of auxiliary assumptions.

Do vestiges of the Qualitative Draining Problem remain? One might argue for a 'yea' in the
following way. Experiences in the sense posited by this theory don't fall anywhere in the
cognitive scientific hierarchy of representational states that Lyons was discussing. But it is a
necessary condition for solving the Qualitative Draining Problem that one pick states from
those in the hierarchy. So, the theory at hand simply cheats and fails to address the problem.

The right reply to this objection is that there is no reason to accept the preconditions for
solving the Qualitative Draining Problem that it presupposes. Experiences in the
straightforward sense we're discussing are best understood as composite states that are partly
constituted by representational states drawn from many levels in the hierarchy. None of the
individual states in the hierarchy is a very good deserver of the name 'experience'. So,
insofar as one isn't simply an antirealist about experiences, one will have to allow that these
representational elements can add up to form something like experience in the familiar,
phenomenal character-grounded sense. And, as I've insisted, if there are such experiences,
then the Qualitative Draining Problem can be solved by a properly sophisticated
experientialist theory. Unless one insists on antirealism about experiences and denies that
the representational elements acknowledged in the hierarchy don't add up to any further
whole, there's no good reason why the problem can't be solved in this way.

Once again, none of this is to deny that one might distinguish between the qualitative
character and representational content of an experiential state. One doesn't have to be a
strong representationalist to hold the theory we've been discussing. The fact that such a
distinction might be drawn wouldn't pose a problem for the theory. Experiences are direct
justifiers. The fact that experiences have phenomenal contents is part of what enables them
to have evidential bearing on beliefs. But experiences are also rich in phenomenal character
-- indeed, on our understanding of 'experience', they couldn't be otherwise. This is enough
to solve the Qualitative Draining Problem, because all the presser of the problem can
reasonably demand is that we identify some real state that is both qualitatively rich enough to
be a real basis for an experientialist theory and that is contentful enough to have the right sort
of evidential import for beliefs. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

But doesn't the experientialist owe us an account of why the phenomenal character of the
experience matters? After all, not just any state with the right sort of content can justify.
This is a good question. But it strikes me as a quite separate one, and one that would take a
lot of orthogonal discussion to answer. The basic concern behind the Qualitative Draining
Problem is that there simply might not be a state that is both qualitatively rich and has the
right kind of content to at least make it possible to see how it could have evidential bearing
on beliefs. As I've suggested, this problem can be solved, and one doesn't have to explain
 14

how phenomenal character makes a contribution to justification to solve it.18 Indeed, the
Qualitative Draining Problem isn't just separate from this deeper problem. It's prior to it,
since the latter problem couldn't be formulated if the former problem were insoluble.

5. Phenomenal Content and the Content Problem

Does a version of experientialism grounded in phenomenal content face the Content
Problem? I don't think so. But before arguing for this claim, I'll step back and take a closer
look at what Lyons takes the Content Problem to be, for I also want to suggest that SE may
not face such a problem, at least in its most severe form. Ultimately, I think we should
prefer a PC-based experientialism to SE, and I have little at stake in the success of SE; it is,
however, worth noting exactly how many contentious issues Lyons skirts in dumping the
Content Problem on SE and proclaiming it intractable.

The core of Lyons's argument that SE faces the Content Problem is as follows:

On the face of it, sensations lack the kind of content necessary to serve as evidential
justifiers for beliefs. Perhaps sensations lack content altogether, but they at least
lack propositional/conceptual content; the mental representations that involve
categorizations of distal stimuli are percepts, not sensations. Consequently,
sensations are not capable of standing in evidential relations to perceptual or
appearance beliefs, any more than my foot or a rock is.19

The argument isn't quite exhausted by this passage. Lyons goes on to consider the possibility
of grounding SE in four views about the nature of evidence, and argues that each view either
collapses SE into anti-experientialism or fails to solve the problem. I will ignore these
considerations, because I'm inclined to favor only one of these views of evidence as a
tenable ground for experientialism -- viz., a view on which there must be an appropriate
semantic relationship (e.g., entailment) between experiences and beliefs for the former to
serve as evidence for the latter. If this is the picture of evidence that one combines with SE,
then Lyons's argument is indeed exhausted by the quoted passage.

18
While I lack space to solve this further problem, the intuitive basis for a solution to it has been suggested by
Huemer (1998), who points to the distinctive forcefulness of perceptual phenomenology:

Objects are presented to us in experience as real…. This quality I refer to as the forcefulness of
perceptual experience, and it is a necessary feature of all perceptual experience…. We can see that
forcefulness is a distinguishable feature of experience…by comparing perceptual experience with
imagination…. [I]magination is… neutral vis-à-vis the reality of its objects. You may happen to believe
that the object you imagine exists, but your imagination does not add any force to that proposition;
your imagining the cat doesn't make it so that a cat seems to be present. In contrast, your perceptually
experiencing a cat…does make it seem as if a cat is actually present. That is why, even if a particular
imagining had the same content as a perceiving, it could still never be mistaken for a perceiving.

The best solution to the problem would appeal to this aspect of perceptual experience, and would also, I think,
appeal to some kind of representationalism. The phenomenal character of a perceptual experience that is
shared with an extremely vivid imaginative experience presents a certain distinctive content because it can be
reductively identified with that content. The additional phenomenal feature of forcefulness is part of what
gives this presentation justificatory heft. These two explanatory threads weave together to give us the core of a
solution to the problem. The details, however, remain to be worked out.
19 Lyons (2009), p.62.
 15

There are, I think, several slips in Lyons's reasoning. The cue for the first is in the claim that
sensations "at least lack propositional/conceptual content". On many views, propositional and
conceptual content aren't the same thing. Without departing from standard assumptions, we
can assume that conceptual contents are contents that have concepts as constituents,
whether they are Fregean senses or the types of which concrete psychological concepts are
tokens. There are views on which not all propositional content is conceptual in this sense.
One example is any view that makes room for Russellian propositions that have particulars
and properties as their constituents.20 Another example would be any Stalnakerian view on
which propositions are sets of possible worlds. One could think that sensations determine
contents of these sorts. If one did, sensations could have propositional content. Indeed, if
sensations have accuracy conditions at all, one would have good reason to suppose that
sensations at least have genuinely propositional contents like this. What else could explain
their accuracy conditions? And if Lyons goes on to deny that sensations have accuracy
conditions, it behooves him to give an argument, since, on the face of it, they certainly do;
he has done little or nothing so far to cast doubt on this more fundamental matter.

And the literature on nonconceptual content is full of proposals of this kind. After Heck
(2000) and others insisted on the important distinction between state nonconceptualism and
content nonconceptualism, it became controversial to think that traditional arguments like the
Richness Argument do anything to establish that perceptual experiences have a distinctive
kind of content that beliefs lack. If state nonconceptualism is as far as these old arguments
take us, it is perfectly open to think that sensations have Russellian or possible-worlds
contents. If they do, it would be easy to see how they could stand in evidential relations to
beliefs, at least in the semantically restrictive sense of 'evidence' I've had in mind.

Now, to be sure, debates about whether state conceptualism or content nonconceptualism is

the right view are still open. But this shouldn't worry the defender of SE, for two reasons.

First, it's harder to establish content nonconceptualism, so state nonconceptualism is a more

natural default position. Content nonconceptualists grant that the traditional arguments
have to be tweaked in circuitous and nontrivial ways to yield content nonconceptualism.
Defenders of SE should be very happy that the view that would assist their position is the
default view. While this certainly isn't to presuppose that they're on the 'winning side', it is fair
to assume that they are on the 'safer' side. This is no small matter. Given the
interconnectedness of so many contentious issues in philosophy, having an alliance with all
default views on deeper questions is about as much as one can reasonably wish for!

Secondly, even if content nonconceptualism is true, it is still an open question whether

sensations can bear evidential relations to beliefs. The main point of Heck (2000) is
precisely to argue contra philosophers like McDowell and Brewer that experiences can serve
as evidence and stand in semantic relationships with beliefs even if their content is
nonconceptual in a distinctive way. This reveals the second slip in Lyons's passage: even if
sensations lack propositional content, it doesn't follow that they can't serve as evidence in
the restrictive sense we've been using.

20There are also views that posit additional constituents that aren't conceptual. King (2007) thinks that
syntactic relations are constituents of propositions. Larson and Ludlow (1993) think that contents have lexical
constituents, though they may refrain from calling their interpreted logical forms 'propositions'.
 16

I lack space to argue at any length for state nonconceptualism here, or to promote Heck's
attempts to show that even states that have a distinctively nonconceptual kind of content can
serve as evidence (if there are any, as state nonconceptualists would deny). The point is
simply that Lyons's argument is way too fast. There are major dialectical options that he
totally ignores, and those who favor these options could avoid his objections, at least on the
terms that he himself has established. Unless Lyons offers further objections to these
positions or can show that his worries generalize against them (and, given the nature of
objections, there is no reason to think they will!), moves are available to defenders of SE.
Indeed, these are moves that existing defenders of SE have already made many times in the
literature. So, though it would take a detailed defense of these moves to give an airtight
guarantee that we can avoid Lyons's objections, there is a considerable burden on him to
explain why these moves are inadvisable or ineffectual; otherwise his arguments fail.

The last and most important potential slip in the passage is Lyons's remark that '[t]he mental
representations that involve categorizations of distal stimuli are percepts, not sensations'.
Given Lyons' proprietary use of 'sensation', I might be willing to grant that sensations do not
involve categorizations of distal stimuli. If so, then even if SE doesn't face the Content
Problem in its most severe form, SE will still have a hard time accounting for the immediate
justification of many of our perceptual beliefs. But whether there is a phenomenally rich
level of representation that does involve such categorizations is an open question, and one to
which I'd give a positive answer. In particular, we should ask whether experiences in the
sense of states that always track differences in phenomenal character involve such
categorizations. A general question that bears on this is how high-level the representations
carved by phenomenal contents can be.

This takes us back to the question whether a PC-based experientialism can offer a
satisfactory answer to the Content Problem. There are at least two desiderata for a
satisfactory answer here: (i) that it be shown that experiences in the PC-based sense can
serve as evidence in a semantically restrictive sense, and (ii) that the content had by
experiences that enables them to serve as such evidence is rich enough to allow the view to
avoid skepticism. I'm ultimately doubtful that SE can satisfy desideratum (ii), though, as I've
just argued, there are clear strategies that defenders of SE can use to capture desideratum (i).

Since a PC-based experientialism is at least as rich as SE, it can satisfy desideratum (i) if SE
can. And it also stands a better chance of satisfying desideratum (i) than SE. This is
because, as I've suggested throughout, nonconceptual contents aren't the only phenomenal
contents. There are, I think, plenty of conceptual contents that are also phenomenal
contents. Setting aside whatever worries one has about the evidential relevance of states
with nonconceptual contents, no one disputes that at least some states with conceptual
content can stand in evidential relations. Some (e.g., Brewer and McDowell) think that only
states with conceptual content can stand in evidential relations, but no one to my knowledge
would currently deny that states with conceptual content stand an antecedently clearer chance
of being evidentially relevant than states that only have nonconceptual content.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether any experientialist view short of PE can satisfy
desideratum (ii). Even if there are conceptual phenomenal contents, it doesn't immediately
follow that a PC-experientialism is up to the task. So, we must ask: can PC-experientialists
show that their favored variety of nondoxastic evidence is rich enough to avoid skepticism?
 17

I've already partly answered this question in discussing the Problem of Collateral
Information. Since phenomenal characters plausibly bring the collateral information that is
implicit in sensations along with them, a PC-based theory doesn’t face the kind of skepticism
that SE faced in the light of the Problem of Collateral Information. But now I want to
outline more explicitly how one should argue that phenomenal contents are high-level.

I think there's a strategy that gives us good reason to think that a PC-based experientialism
can have success in satisfying (ii). The strategy isn't perfectly general, and must be
conducted on a case-by-case basis. This, as I suggested earlier, is because there is probably
no interesting answer to the question whether there are types of conceptual contents such
that all and only conceptual phenomenal contents fall under those types.21 To steal some
terminology from metaphysicians, I suspect that brutalism about this question is inevitable.22

Notwithstanding the disappointment and anticlimax of such brutalism, there is a strategy for
showing that PC-experientialism can satisfy desideratum (ii). It takes the following form:

The Phenomenal Flow-Chart (PFC):

1. We consider a target conceptual content C, and consider two experiences E and
E* that are otherwise phenomenally as similar as possible, one of which has C and
the other of which lacks C.

2. (A) If E and E* are overall phenomenally distinct, we conclude that it is a

necessary condition for E and E* to be identical that E and E* share C.

(B) If E and E* are overall phenomenally identical, we conclude that it isn't a

necessary condition for E and E* to be identical that E and E* share C.

3. (A*) If (2A) is the correct route, we conclude that C is an essential property of

the experience that had it.

(B*) If (2B) is the correct route, we conclude that C isn’t an essential property of
the experience that had it.

4. (A**) If (3A*) is the right route, we conclude that C is a phenomenal content.

(B**) If (3B*) is the right route, we conclude that C isn't a phenomenal content.

5. We then apply this reasoning across the board and thereby discover to what
extent high-level conceptual contents can be phenomenal contents.

The strategy behind PFC in helping the defender of PC-experientialism satisfy desideratum
(ii) is straightforward. Take any case in which Lyons says that experiences are too

21 Fales (1996) in some ways anticipates this point. He was one of the first, I think, to realize that the given is
representationally loaded territory – much more loaded than early discussants supposed. Indeed, he seems to
think that pretty much any content can be given. I’m not certain that this is right, but, if it is, what I’m about to
call brutalism about the question at issue is inevitable.
22 Markosian (1998) introduced this term. Brutalism as an answer to Van Inwagen's Special Composition

Question is the view that SCQ admits of no true, non-trivial and finitely long answer. Although I'm not
certain, I suspect the question I'm discussing lacks a non-brutal answer in exactly the way in which SCQ does.
 18

informationally coarse because they lack a certain content C, and that skeptical worries
therefore arise about how we could be perceptually justified in believing that C. The tactic
for the PC-experientialist will be to insist on the (A)-horn of (2) and claim that experiences
which differ only in respect of having content C are phenomenally distinct; he can then
argue via the (A*)-horn of (3) and the (A**)-horn of (4) that the best explanation for this
phenomenal distinctness is that C is a phenomenal content.

We've already seen PFC deployed in my discussion of the Problem of Collateral

Information. As I suggested there, we can respond to Lyons by noting that experiences that
differ just in respect of having a conceptual content that incorporates the relevant collateral
information are phenomenally distinct. And, as I suggested, this strategy helps with all the
cases Lyons discusses. Of course, given brutalism, we can't provide a safety result that there
is no case where the Problem of Collateral information might arise. But we have a piecemeal
strategy: every time we are accused of the problem, we apply PFC and thereby avoid it.

PFC has also already made an appearance in other literature in the form of what Bayne
(2009) calls contrast arguments for high-level phenomenal content, arguments that appeal to
cases where states are identical in low-level perceptual content, distinct in high-level content,
and also phenomenally distinct. Siegel (2005) and Bayne (2009) offer contrast arguments of
this sort; given space constraints here, I have to defer to them, since their detailed and
intricate papers are devoted to showing that PFC can be used to establish that there is much
higher-level phenomenal content (though PFC as exactly stated above is my invention).

Notably, though, Bayne's tactic is more sophisticated than Siegel's and mine, and in a way
that circumvents one very important objection to PFC; for this reason it's worth describing
at some length. Bayne notices that many may be rather unsatisfied with the introspective
phenomenology that Siegel and I use to undertake steps (A) and (B) in (2): notoriously,
phenomenal appeals don't tend to be phenomenally appealing -- rather than settling disputes,
they typically lead to obstinate, heel-digging stalemates. Shrewdly, Bayne suggests that an
appeal to cognitive science can assist the believer in higher-level phenomenal content.

His strategy is to point to cases of associative agnosia in which there are "impairment[s] in
perception that [are] not due to elementary sensory malfunction". In these cases, low-level
sensory content remains the same, but patients radically lose their grip on higher-level
content. After citing a number of striking cases, Bayne makes the following suggestion:

Although we have no direct access to the patient's phenomenal state, it is extremely

plausible to suppose that the phenomenal character of his visual experience has
changed. But what kind of perceptual content has the patient lost? He has not lost
low-level perceptual content, for those abilities that require the processing of only
low-level content remain intact. The patient's deficit is not one of form
representation but of category representation. Hence high-level perceptual
representation -- the representation of an object as a stethoscope, a can-opener or a
comb -- can enter into the contents of perceptual phenomenality.23

23 Bayne (2009), p.391.

 19

This sort of case provides a firmer reply to those who insist that some putative contrast
cases are actually phenomenally identical, and who respond to introspective
phenomenological arguments with heel digging. Indeed, as Bayne suggests, his strategy
allows the liberal about phenomenal content to settle disputes in which opponents of higher-
level content claim that the differences are just nonconceptual sensational differences:

The thought that contrast cases can always be accounted for in low-level terms is
particularly hard-pressed when confronted with associative agnosia. Although
associative agnosia is often impure in the sense that the patient also has some degree
of impairment to low-level perception, it can also take a pure form. The patient
[with associative agnosia] in the previous section is a case in point. Although he
could not group objects by category, he could match them to visually identical
objects, and his performance on tests of immediate visual recall was excellent.24

So, to the extent that there are cases of agnosia to match many cases of higher-level
categorization, it will be increasingly plausible on empirical grounds to think grant that the
reach of phenomenal content is considerably high.

But, once again, an airtight argument that all higher-level contents satisfying some
interesting, finite, nontrivial description C will be brutally tough to furnish, given brutalism.

I'd tentatively hypothesize that the reason why this is so is that the reach of phenomenal
content is a thoroughly contingent point of psychology; given suitably different modular
organizations of perceptual processing mechanisms in different possible organisms, almost
any conceptual content could be or fail to be a phenomenal content. Of course, given how
hard it is for patients with associative agnosia to get around, it isn't very likely that cognizers
for whom no conceptual contents are phenomenal contents would wend their way through
the world very well; indeed, given this point and assuming that Bayne's strategy is on the
right track, there might be some evolutionary argument to the effect that lots of higher-level
contents are phenomenal contents. I won't try to develop that argument here. I instead
defer to the much more detailed cases that Siegel and Bayne have made to the effect that
high-level contents of many kinds are phenomenal contents; it would be tedious to reinvent
the wheel and repeat all their case-by-case considerations here.

Does the brutal contingency of the reach of phenomenal content mean that we can't give a
persuasive argument that PC-experientialism can satisfy desideratum (ii)? I don't think so,
though it may mean that skepticism might crop up in bizarre places for the PC-
experientialist, given the messy quirks of psychology. But, again, I haven't been trying to
establish a safety result that desideratum (ii) is satisfiable. I have just pointed to a general
strategy (viz., PFC) as well as to some phenomenological and empirical implementations of it
(e.g., the points adduced to reduce if not solve the Problem of Collateral Information) that
provide grounds for considerable optimism. In the course of all this, I've also defeated the
crucial examples on which Lyons's argument rests. This is all I could reasonably hope to
achieve here. Given the points I've made and the arguments offered by the likes of Siegel,
Bayne and others, it is perfectly fair for the burden of proof to now shift to Lyons and
conservatives about phenomenal content to find cases were PFC is inapplicable. Since

24 Ibid. (2009), p.393.

 20

brutalism is probably true and phenomenality's conceptual reach is probably a thoroughly

contingent piece of psychology, I don't see a better way to conduct this debate.

Until Lyons and phenomenal conservatives knock the ball back into our court, we can
tentatively conclude that PC-experientialism stands a very good chance of satisfying
desideratum (ii). And since it is already straightforward that at least some phenomenal
contents are conceptual, PC-experientialism automatically stands a better chance of satisfying
(ii) than SE. As it happens, SE itself probably doesn't have a problem with desideratum (i),
for the reasons I explained: defensible views about nonconceptual “content” really make it
unproblematic that even sensations in Lyons's proprietary sense can stand in evidential
relations. In any case, I will be content with the conclusion that there is a version of NC-
experientialism (viz., PC experientialism) that doesn't face the Content Problem, and that, at
least given some attractive assumptions, Lyons well might be mistaken that SE faces it.

So, there is much greater room for optimism about the ability of NC-experientialists to
tackle the Content Problem than Lyons makes out. Exactly how great this optimism should
be is a question it would take another paper to resolve. But, given the strategy outlined by
PFC and the plausible empirical and phenomenological implementations of it that can be
made, I think our optimism should be considerable. If NC-experientialism faces skeptical
problems, it probably isn't because it faces the Content Problem or the Problem of Collateral
Information; if anything, it would be because it's a species of internalism.25 But that's a
different, older problem – the sort of problem that Goldman (1999) raised. It's not the one
that Lyons wanted to raise, and that’s all I’m concerned with here.

6. The Identity Problem, Percepts and Functionalist Theories of the Attitudes

I turn to the second problem that Lyons poses for PE: the Identity Problem. So far my
strategy for replying to Lyons has been to concede to some degree that SE and PE confront
the problems he poses, but to maintain that the independently more attractive PC-based
version of the view doesn't face them. I'll take a different tack with the Identity Problem,
since I want to argue that no theory, including PE, faces this problem. Lyons's argument for
the existence of the problem is defective, and the problem vanishes when we see why.

To see why Lyons thinks the Identity Problem arises, we have to rehearse a common
argument for the distinctness of percepts and beliefs. Huemer (1998) gives us an exemplary
statement of this argument in discussing informed responses to the Müller-Lyer illusion:

The top line looks (hence, seems) longer than the bottom line. Even if one knows
for certain that the top line is the same length as the bottom line, it still looks longer.
Now, this is not to say that perceptual seemings can never be affected by one's
beliefs. However, the example shows that the seeming is a state different from
belief -- it can seem to you as if P even if you do not believe that P; indeed, even if
you are absolutely convinced that not-P. Of course, seeming does have something
to do with belief -- people normally believe that things are the way they seem.

The argument can be summarized a little more succinctly and clearly as follows:
25Even so, I suspect that one can weaken the internalist commitments of NC-experientialism so that, when
expressed in a PC-based form, the view faces no more skeptical problems than any externalist view. But it
would take another paper yet to discharge this promissory note.
 21

The Standard Distinguishability Argument (SDA)

1. When I have a percept with the content that P, I can withhold belief that P.
2. If it is possible for me to have a percept with the content that P while withholding
belief that P, then the percept and the belief are distinct.
3. So, percepts and beliefs are distinct, though we often have both at the same time.

Lyons objects to premise (2). He denies the underlying assumption that the fact that
percepts can lose the functional role of belief shows that they are always distinct from beliefs.
This assumption rests on the further assumption that "being a belief is an essential property
of a mental state".26 Lyons points out that this assumption fails on a standard view of
attitudes as functional relations to representations, and suggests that when a high-level
perceptual representation has the functional role characteristic of belief, "it is a belief; when
it doesn't, it is a mere percept".27 So, "when R has both this role and the role appropriate to
percepts…there is no obvious sense in which the percept is something distinct from the
belief". Lyons notes that, on the picture arising from such functionalist theories, "'accepted'
percepts may actually be beliefs even though 'rejected' percepts are not."28

So, if percepts in plenty of cases take on the functional role distinctive of belief, then it won't
follow that there are plenty of nondoxastic percepts. And even if there were lots of cases
where percepts don't take on a doxastic functional role, that fact would scarcely help the
defender of PE. After all, the defender of PE wants to claim that if I have a percept with
content P and believe that P on this basis, I am justified in believing that P. But if my belief that
P isn't distinct from this basis, the basis can't justify my belief unless it is self-justifying.
Since I need to believe that P on the basis of the percept to be (doxastically) justified in
believing that P on the basis of the percept, it would follow that our perceptual beliefs are
never justified unless they are self-justifying. This is disastrously absurd. So, Lyons
concludes, SDA is "actually quite unconvincing upon closer scrutiny".29

Unfortunately, though, Lyons's own response to SDA is itself unconvincing upon closer
scrutiny. I think that the response turns on a state/content equivocation.

There is a use of 'belief' to refer to mental representation types (e.g., sentence types in
Mentalese) or, if one likes propositions.30 On this use, beliefs are the objects of doxastic

26 Lyons (2009), p.71.

27 Ibid., p.71.
28 Ibid., p.71.
29 Ibid., p.70.
30 I prejudice the syntax of this sentence in favor of eliminativism about propositions because the original

presentation of the functionalist account of belief in Field (1978) to which Lyons alludes took this form. Field
took it to be an advantage of his account of belief that it allowed one to "obtain most of the advantages of
regarding belief and desire as relations to propositions, without the attendant liabilities". (Field (1978): 37) On
his account, one can take 'that'-clauses to pick out Mentalese sentence types, and regard quantification over
objects of belief as quantification over these entities rather than propositions; there's no need to add
propositions, since "everything that is semantically of interest is already there in the truth-theoretic semantics
[for the Mentalese sentence types]"; so, "instead of saying that a person is related to the set of possible worlds
in which Russell was hairless…why not instead say that he is related to a sentence that consists of a name that
stands for Russell copulated with a predicate that stands for hairlessness?". (Field (1978), p.39) Frankly, this
ontologically stingy thought strikes me as extremely worthy of revival!
 22

attitudes. When someone says that Jack and Jill share the belief that it is going to rain
tomorrow, she is plausibly interpreted as using 'belief' in this sense. There is also a use of
'belief' that refers to a relational psychological state. When someone says that Jack's belief
that it is going to rain made him sad, she is plausibly interpreted as using 'belief' in this sense.
Belief states are the targets of epistemic evaluation, not Mentalese sentences or propositions.
When we ask whether John is justified in believing that S, we are asking whether John is
justified in taking a certain attitude toward a sentence S in Mentalese, an attitude that consists in
his bearing functional relations to S. Although there is a notion of "propositional
justification", this doesn't show that propositions or token sentences in Mentalese are targets
of epistemic evaluation. When I say that the proposition that P is justified for S at t, all I
mean is that there is some basis or some process that S could employ in arriving at a justified
belief that P. Ascriptions of propositional justification are just shorthands for ascriptions of
counterfactual facts about what someone would be doxastically justified in believing.31

When this distinction is borne clearly in mind, Lyons's reply to SDA doesn't work. The
objects of epistemic evaluation are belief states, and there is no reason to think that belief
states can be identified with percepts. Even when a percept takes on the functional role
distinctive of beliefs, percepts don't thereby become belief states. Belief states and percepts
remain distinct, and aren't even the sorts of things that could be identified with each other.
So, if the concern was that a percept couldn't justify a given belief if it was just identical to
that belief, there is no ground for it. A percept can only be a 'belief' in the content or
representation sense, not in the state sense. Since the belief state is the target of ascriptions
of justification, and this state is distinct from the percept, the claim that the percept justifies
the belief state doesn't entail that the belief state is self-justifying if justified at all. To put all
this more simply, SDA is simply unsound if 'belief' is understood in the second sense. Since
it should be understood in that sense, Lyons's attack on SDA fails.

An analogy can make this point clearer. It is becoming popular to think that the objects of
telic desires can sometimes provide direct reasons for telic desires.32 This is a view held inter
alia by Parfit (forthcoming) and Scanlon (1998). 'Desire' is ambiguous in the same way as
'belief'. Suppose that John desires a pleasurable experience (say, the taste of coffee ice
cream). The phrase "one of John's desires" could refer to a pleasurable experience, but it
could also refer to the state of John's desiring a pleasurable experience. To make the
distinction explicit, we can use "desire1" to refer to desires in the object sense, and "desire2"
to refer to desires in the state sense. Given this distinction, the following is clearly a bad
argument against the Parfit-Scanlon view:

Question-Begging Argument 1 (QBA1)

1. If the Parfit-Scanlon view is true, desires1 can directly justify desires2.
2. But it is incoherent to think that desires1 directly justify desires2; desires can't be self-
justifying.
3. So, the Parfit-Scanlon view is false.

31 This, at least, is an attractive and pretty standard way of looking at things that goes back to Goldman (1979)

and perhaps earlier. But see Turri (ms) for dissent.

32 "Objects of desires" here does not mean "propositional contents"; it means facts, properties or even

particulars, depending on one's choice metaphysics for desires and their relata.
 23

Premise (2) begs the question, and the claim after the semicolon in (2) is a non sequitur once
the two senses of "desire" are distinguished. I take it that QBA1 would do nothing to flap
the confidence of Parfit or Scanlon. But if we sharply distinguish between the state and
content or representation senses of 'belief', any worries about the fact that percepts can be
"beliefs" in the latter sense should dissolve for the same reason, as we can now move to see.

Now, as a matter of fact, ordinary discourse doesn't follow functionalist accounts of belief or
cognitive science in allowing us to call percepts "beliefs" in the content sense. But we can
stipulatively introduce some terminology to formulate a parallel argument to QBA1 that is
just as unconvincing. Suppose we introduce the locution "S accepts percept P" to talk about
S's assent to the deliverance of percept P, and use the word "acceptance" to refer
ambiguously both to the thing accepted and to the state of accepting. Since percepts can be
accepted in our stipulative sense, we can call them acceptances in the first sense. Stepping
outside of this loose talk, we also can use "acceptance1" to pick out the former sense and
"acceptance2" to pick out the latter sense. Consider then the following analogue of QBA1:

Question-Begging Argument 2 (QBA2)

1. If PE is true, acceptances1 can directly justify acceptances2, since percepts

can be acceptances1.
2. But it is incoherent to think that acceptances1 can directly justify
acceptances2; acceptances can't be self-justifying.
3. So, PE is false.

Just like in QBA1, (2) begs the question, and the negation of the claim after the semicolon
doesn't even follow from the consequent of (1) once the two senses of "acceptance" are
distinguished. If ordinary discourse permitted us to call percepts 'beliefs' in the content or
representation sense, we could formulate an argument just like QBA2 to see why the residual
worry is empty. So, I don't see a basis for moving from the fact that percepts can take on
the functional role of beliefs in the representation or content sense to the rejection of PE.

Given these points, Lyons fails to give us a good reason to reject the Standard
Distinguishability Argument. Even if there is some sense in which percepts can be regarded
as beliefs, it is not a sense that would provide any non-question-begging, antecedent reason
for denying that percepts can be direct justifiers of beliefs in the state sense. There is, after
all, some sense in which pleasurable experiences might be regarded as desires, but this clearly
yields no non-question-begging, antecedent reason for denying that pleasurable experiences
can be direct justifiers of desires in the state sense. So, I don't think there is any deep
challenge to PE or any other version of experientialism posed by Lyons's attempts to press
the Identity Problem. Lyons's arguments are simply unsound, and moreover there is quite
clearly no symmetrical problem for the Parfit-Scanlon View.

7. A Recap, Some Further Issues and Concluding Remarks

I've covered a lot of ground, and it will be useful to recap the main thrust of each of the
sections. Moreover, several deeper issues cropped up en passant or in footnotes. I'll also
briefly consider these, extend the discussion of them, and draw some concluding morals.
 24

The core argument I’ve been pushing is that Lyons’s dilemma against NC-experientialism is
unsound. There is a view that falls neatly between SE and PE. Experiences in the natural
and familiar phenomenal content sense are at once informationally richer than sensations
and qualitatively richer than percepts, at least in Lyons’s proprietary senses of these terms.33
These two facts about PC-experiences enable the PC-experientialist to weave his way out of
the tangles of all of Lyons’s main arguments. Since, as I explained from the get-go, this
version of experientialism is the one that one would expect from experientialists, my points
directly undermine Lyons’s dilemma: the version of NC-experientialism that most
experientialists would, as a matter of principle, defend elegantly evades all four problems.

The PC-experientialist strategy for avoiding the Problem of Collateral Information was
simple. As we saw, in the central cases that Lyons uses to raise the problem (e.g., cases of
amodal completion), it is perfectly plausible to suppose that there can be aspect switching
and ipso facto phenomenal contrast. And there is a simple explanation for the contrast (as
well as the effects on our doxastic states that the contrast tends to produce): there is a
difference in phenomenal content. This difference in phenomenal content gives PC-
experiences increased informational fineness of grain. In virtue of this, there is no need for
appeal to collateral assumptions. The experience brings them with, as it were: a subject who
is presented with a PC-experience as of a depression in a surface does not need to appeal to
assumptions about lighting conditions to receive prima facie justification for believing that
such a depression is before him.

And as I suggested in discussing the Content Problem and the second desideratum for its
solution, this strategy isn’t insufficiently general. Contrast arguments of both empirical and
phenomenological varieties can be offered to show that many, many high-level contents are
phenomenal. Indeed, such arguments have been developed extensively by the likes of Bayne
and Siegel, and Bayne’s shrewd appeal to cases of associative agnosia provides the PC-
experientialist with a way of avoiding heel-digging stalemates with Lyons and conservatives
about phenomenal content. Bayne’s suggested resolution is, in fact, one that should appeal
to the very naturalistically minded Lyons, and is one that secures one of the “special”
advantages that Lyons claims for his own anti-experientialist theory (viz., that it affords a
way of settling questions of proper basicality scientifically).

Thankfully, then, there is a solid basis for thinking that the reach of phenomenal content is
considerable, and one that should appeal to the phenomenologically and naturalistically
minded alike. Nevertheless, given brutalism, the reach of phenomenal content is probably a
thoroughly contingent artifact of psychology, one that could differ massively across possible
worlds, and that cannot be expressed in some straightforward, finite, nontrivial, recursive
format. There may be no interesting generalization to be made about which contents are

33 Once again, there is some inconsistency in Lyons’s discussion of sensations. At many points (e.g., in his

agenda-setting discussion of Necker’s cube, which seems at first intended to provide a sort of ostensive
definition of “sensation”), he allows that there can be differences in phenomenal character without
corresponding differences in sensation. In a couple of places, though, he says exactly the reverse.
As I said in footnote 11, this ambiguity only has a very superficial effect on my argument. If
sensations are understood in the first fashion, then my argument goes through exactly as I’ve stated it
throughout. If sensations are understood in the second fashion, my argument really amounts to this: the first
half of Lyons’s dilemma is unsound, and SE doesn’t really face the Content Problem or the Problem of
Collateral Information. Either way the considerations I’ve raised throughout provide a reply to Lyons.
 25

phenomenal, and no reason (except maybe an evolutionary one) why the reach of
phenomenal content should be great. But in our world, at least, the reach is lofty, and frees
the PC-experientialist from the pitfalls of skepticism. Given the strategy afforded by the
Phenomenal Flow-Chart and the implementations we’ve explored, the burden falls on Lyons
to knock the PC-experientialist from his clouds, and to show that the reach of phenomenal
content is not as high-flown as I’ve suggested.

As we also saw, PC-experientialism avoids the Content Problem. It may succeed in avoiding
the Content Problem in a rather trivial way. As I suggested, it’s quite possible that no theory
discussed by Lyons is threatened by this problem. For there are numerous ways in which
even the defender of a version of experientialism that appeals to only to contents that are
“nonconceptual” might avoid the problem. For example, the defender of SE could be a
state nonconceptualist. State nonconceptualists deny that there is any difference between
the kinds of contents had by different experiential states: they simply claim that concept
possession is a necessary condition for being in some and not a necessary condition for
being in others. Given that the kind of content had by conceptual and nonconceptual states
is the same, and that the worry behind the Content Problem is that sensations couldn’t serve
as evidence because they lack appropriate semantic properties, there is no basis for this worry
unless it is completely general. But if it is completely general, Lyons needs a new argument.
Apart from appeals to state nonconceptualism (which is the default in point of logical
strength), defenders of SE might also take Heck’s tack and argue that even states that have
only an importantly distinctive kind of nonconceptual content can serve as evidence in an
appropriately semantically restrictive sense. If so, there would be a further way out of the
Content Problem.

If SE can avoid this aspect of the Content Problem, so can PC-experientialism. But even if
it’s true that only states with conceptual content can serve as evidence in the semantically
restrictive sense, PC-experientialism can still plausibly avoid this problem. And the reason is
simple: given our solution to the Problem of Collateral Information and the points that arose
in connection with our optimistic and liberal suggestions about the reach of phenomenal
content, it is plausible that concepts can enrich phenomenal character. If so, it will be
plausible (in virtue of the Phenomenal Flow-Chart) that many conceptual contents are
phenomenal contents. And for this reason, it will also be plausible that many PC-
experiences have conceptual content, and ipso facto can serve as evidence in the semantically
restrictive sense at issue. So, even granting content nonconceptualism and the falsity of a
Heck-style position about the ability of nonconceptual states to serve as evidence, PC-
experientialism needn’t face the problem.

Now, although experiences in the phenomenal content sense are nearly if not exactly as
high-level as percepts, and are frequently conceptually rich, they do not face any Qualitative
Draining Problem. The reasons are clear. Experiences in the PC-based sense are
phenomenally loaded: in point of definition, they are token mental states that are type-
identical iff subjects that are in these states (and only these states) are phenomenal twins.
And given that there is a solution to the Problem of Collateral Information, as well as one to
the Content Problem, there is no problem seeing how they can have evidential bearing. And
so the fact that PC-experientialism avoids the problem via the richness of PC-experience
does not entail that it falls into the pit of skepticism, as Lyons’s dilemma would suggest.
 26

And so PC-experientialism avoids three of the problems on which Lyons’s dilemma turned.
As for the fourth – viz., the Identity Problem – it is simply not a problem for any view. The
arguments that Lyons uses to press the problem against PE are simply no good. They turn
on a state/content equivocation, and when the equivocation is resolved in the relevant way,
they become transparently unsound. Their unsoundness is transparent per se, but I made it
even more vivid via a comparison with a terrible parody argument against a Parfit-Scanlon
picture about object-given reasons for telic desires.

Given all these points, PC-experientialism is as immune to Lyons’s dilemma as a view can
get. Of course, given brutalism, the PC-experientialist can’t provide an airtight safety result
against skepticism. But, given brutalism, there simply couldn’t be such a result for any
version of experientialist direct realism.

And, to be slightly blunt but extremely serious, it isn’t reasonable to demand such a result of
any epistemological theory whatsoever. No version of externalism comes readily equipped
to provide such a result. In the case of any version of process reliabilism, it will always be an
open question whether any given perceptual belief is formed by a reliable process type (even
if the type is selected by some solution to the Generality Problem). The point should
generalize, as far as I can tell, against any similarly structured externalism, and this covers the
central open candidates (virtue epistemology, process reliabilism, and proper functionalism).
So the PC-experientialist is in no particularly unique situation here. Accordingly, the
objection at hand overgeneralizes, and, if it's serious, places a burden on everyone.

Particularist methodology can reasonably demand a broadly anti-skeptical theory, but it

cannot demand a theory that entails that there is justifiedness in every single case where we’d
pretheoretically want to find it. To think that we could never be epistemically badly off is
optimistic to the point of absurdity. The mere fact that thinking that we are always
epistemically badly off is pessimistic to the point of absurdity is no counterargument at all.

If one still yearns for a safety result, one suffers from philosophical gluttony. There is
nothing special about the brutalism faced by PC-experientialism. Similar brutalism confronts
all prominent forms of externalism (process reliabilism, virtue epistemology and proper
functionalism alike), since the epistemic status of our doxastic inventories on all such
theories is a thoroughly contingent empirical matter. And, relatedly, the kind of optimism
that we’ve motivated for PC-experientialism is of a piece with the rule-circular optimism that
appeals to cognitive science might motivate for process reliabilism or externalisms of its ilk.

So, although I can’t satisfy the gluttonous among us, neither can anyone else. And so, given
my arguments in the foregoing pages, I think that it is fair to say that the burden of proof
rests on Lyons, his fans, and the coterie of phenomenal conservatives. If they want to shift
it, let them take up arms and bring new arguments that aren't as flawed as Lyons's dilemma.
 27

8. References
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Quarterly 59: 385 - 404.

BonJour, Laurence and Sosa, Ernest. 2003. Epistemic Justification. Oxford: Blackwell.

Brewer, Bill. 2002. Perception and Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fales, Evan. 1996. A Defense of the Given. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Field, Hartry. 1978. "Mental Representation." Erkenntnis 13.1: 9 - 61.

Fumerton, R. 1995. Metaepistemology and Skepticism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Goldman, Alvin. 1979. “What Is Justified Belief?” in G. Pappas (ed.) Justification and
Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Goldman, Alvin. 1999. “Internalism Exposed.” The Journal of Philosophy 96.6: 271 – 293.

Heck, Richard. 2000. "Nonconceptual Content and the Space of Reasons." Philosophical
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Huemer, Michael. 1998. "A Direct Realist Account of Perceptual Awareness." PhD
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King, Jeff. 2007. The Nature and Structure of Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Lyons, Jack C. 2005. “Perceptual Belief and Nonexperiential Looks.” Philosophical

Perspectives 19: 237 – 256.

Lyons, Jack C. 2009. Perception and Basic Beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Markosian, Ned. 1998. "Brutal Composition." Philosophical Studies 92.3: 211 - 249.

Pollock, John and Cruz, Joe. 1999. Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (2nd Ed).

Pryor, Jim. 2000. "The Skeptic and the Dogmatist." Nous 34.4: 517 - 549.

Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe To Each Other. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP.

Siegel, Susanna. 2005. "Which Properties Are Represented in Experience?" in Hawthorne,

J. and Gendler, T. (eds.) Perceptual Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Silins, Nico. Ms. "Immediate Justification and Mediated Content." http://arche-wiki.st-

and.ac.uk/~ahwiki/pub/Arche/SecondBasicKnowledgeWorkshop/PaperofImmediateJustif
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Speaks, Jeff. 2003. "Is There a Problem about Nonconceptual Content?" The Philosophical
Review 114.3: 359 - 398.

Turri, John. Ms. “On the Relationship between Propositional and Doxastic Justification.”
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