Reply to Block: Adaptation and the Upper Border of Perception

Ned Block’s sketch of my account of perception is accurate. He makes a valuable substantive contribution. I shall outline some points about psychological kinds, and then focus on methodological issues. Initial inputs into perceptual systems and very early results of processing these inputs are pre-representational informational-registrational states. Such states correlate with, are caused by, and function to correlate with features of the environment. But they do not have accuracy conditions as an aspect of their natures. They are not perceptual states. Perceptual states are representational states with accuracy conditions as aspects of their natures. Perceptual states are embedded in perceptual constancies, capacities to perceptually represent a given attribute or particular under a wide range of proximal stimulation. Perceptual states are always associated with certain types of short-term perceptual memory and perceptual anticipation. Perception, perceptual memory, and perceptual anticipation figure in guiding pre-conceptual actional representation. These four types of representational states are usefully thought of as operating at the same level of representation. All occur in an animal’s psychology if any does. All occur in very simple animal psychologies. In evolution, they are the first representational states that have veridicality conditions. Perception is the causal basis for the other three types of states and provides many of the attributives employed by the other three. But all have similar representational formats. All are modal: visual, auditory, tactile,