| In his book A Theory of Sentience, Austen Clark sketches out a sensory representational "feature-placing" schema according to which space-time regions, rather than objects, are picked out and attributed one or more features. In this thesis, I show that Clark's own arguments are internally inconsistent, empirically inadequate, or metaphysically flawed. The problems that plague his feature-placing account, I argue, can be avoided if visual objects, rather than regions, serve as the referents to which visual sensory systems causally and informationally connect and if visual objects, rather than regions, are the individuals to which features are predicated. I further argue that the sort of content implied by a visual object version of feature-placing, while not uncontroversial, is reasonable insofar as it allows explanation of common-sense and experimental fact. |
