Is there a tv in my head?: Content, Functional mapping, and the myth of the given

[eng]Just what are we talking about when we talk about the content of perception? There are a number of different questions which are often asked about the precise nature of this content, such as to what extent it is representational, and to what extent this representation is conceptual in character.1 However, these questions usually gloss over what it is to talk about perceptual content qua content, in their haste to talk about it qua representation or conception. On this basis, it is all too tempting to account for not only the specific character of the content, but also how it is individuated, in phenomenological terms.2 This is to say that perceptual content is understood as whatever is contained within an introspective domain to which we have some sort of special access. Wilfrid Sellars’ attack on the myth of the given has provided us with good reason to doubt the epistemic authority such special access to our inner states purportedly provides, and thus to doubt the efficacy of any account of perceptual content that gives introspection such a fundamental role.3 This is his critique of what Jim O’Shea has called the epistemic given.4 However, there is a further side to the myth that Sellars critiques, which O’Shea calls the categorial given. The aim of the present paper is to articulate and explain the latter by building upon Sellars’ critique of the former and the account of perception that ensues from it. This involves demonstrating some constraints governing accounts of perceptual content on the basis of the explanatory demands placed upon them as accounts of perception on the one hand, and the explanatory resources available to them as accounts of content on the other. The result will be an account of the myth of the categorial given that explains both why it is tempting and why we must resist this temptation