Perceptual Presence

There are different ways to bring a cypress tree to mind. We might think about atree, speak about it, or imagine it. The cypress might come to us unbidden inmemory, or in dream. But we might also see a cypress tree, or feel its branches inour hands. This way of bringing the tree to mind is distinctive because the treeitself seems to be present in our experience. Our experience has perceptualpresence.In this doctoral thesis, I defend an account of perceptual presence. My accounthas descriptive and explanatory aspects. In the descriptive account, I argue thatperceptual presence is a strand of phenomenal character whereby experiencemanifestly depends on mind-independent objects. I identify two forms ofmanifest dependence, manifest spatial dependence and manifest temporaldependence. Each form reflects the apparent fulfilment of an enabling conditionfor successful perception. My explanatory account locates perceptual presencewithin a metaphysical framework. I argue that perceptual presence can beaccommodated within a point of view-act-object framework, and reject appeals toan attitude-content framework. I also reject the view that presence is notperceptual at all.Both the descriptive and explanatory aspects of the thesis are guided by the aimof placing perceptual experience within a broader account of the mind. Thisinvolves attending to the similarities and differences between perceptualexperience and other kinds of experience, both in their phenomenal character andfunctional role. Sensory imagination and experiential memory are especiallyvaluable here, for though their phenomenal characters are in some ways like thatof perceptual experience, they don’t possess presence. As a companion to myaccount of perceptual presence, I offer an account of the phenomenal pastness ofexperiential memory. Pastness is to be explained by experiential memory’scharacteristic pattern of dependence both on its objects and its subject.