Percepción: Pasividad y Actividad - Camilo Ordóñez

The principal goal of this thesis is twofold: first, to present argumentatively some problems that can be found inthe theory of perception that John McDowell recommends and, second, to build, using the thesis of the objectdependenceof content, a proposal about the nature of perceptual content that avoids the problems listed above.With such goal in mind, in the first chapter it will make a reconstruction of McDowell’s theory of perception,trying to clarify the meaning and scope of the thesis that perception is a passive cognitive process and is anexpression of the second nature. That is crucial in order to understand how McDowell can sustain thatperception has content and that such content presents the world. Then, in the second chapter, it will show twoproblems that arise from the characterization of perception as a passive process: first, I will present an ownargument to show that if perception is passive, it is difficult to understand how perception can have content, ifthe consistency with McDowell’s explanation of content is retained; second, inspired in some contemporaryauthors like Kalpokas and Peschard, I will present an argument to show that if perception is passive, it is difficultto understand how perceptual contents can justify thoughts and judgments. Finally, in the third chapter, I willpropose a version of perception in terms of an acquaintance, near to Russell’s sense of this notion, with theworld, whose content is specified in terms of a fregean-Sinn object-dependent, in a special sense of objectdependence:dependence with the presence. Such version of perception will be consistent with the essence of McDowell’s philosophy, because it is inspired in some thesis of his philosophy of language, but it will allowsolving the problems presented in chapter 2.