How to Index Visual Contents

Abstract

According to the Content View (CV), visual perceptual experiences represent the subject’s surroundings or have representational content. A critical question posed by Charles Travis against CV is how the subject of experiences could index or introspectively ascribe a specific representational content of a given (occurring) visual experience: if her visual experiences incorporate representational contents, how could she ascribe a particular content to any given visual experience of hers? According to Travis, while visual representation is supposed to be “a familiar phenomenon; something we can tell is happening” (Travis 2004: 86), there is no good available evidence that our visual experiences represent our surroundings; and he thinks so because there seems to be no method of visual contents’ indexation or self-ascription. The aim of this paper is to show how CV could meet what I shall call the Indexing Problem for perceptual — more specifically, visual — content. My main positive suggestion turns on the thought that the contents of visual experiences could be indexed by the way things demonstrably look to the subject of experiences.