ABSTRACT
Visual perception is distinctively suited to processing the spatial properties of objects, e.g. shape, volume, size or motion. In contrast, the sense of touch is geared toward providing information about the so-called material properties of objects, e.g. texture, hardness, weight or temperature. The chapter first fleshes out the notion of perceptual judgment. Then, it discusses Held and collaborators’ work with congenitally blind children and the way in which their study has been criticized in contemporary literature. Even though perceptual experiences and perceptual judgments share all these properties, they are different types of mental events. Perceptual experiences have only sensory phenomenology, i.e. the kind of phenomenology that could be shared by creatures with and without the relevant concepts. A number of well-known experimental results show a dissociation between the content of visual experiences and the information that guides the subject’s fine-grained sensorimotor action based on those experiences.
