ABSTRACT
Does the term “looks”, as used perceptually, have multiple senses or a single one? What is its sense or senses? These are not questions that Brian Loar himself addressed although he had much to say about physicalism and the nature of phenomenal states (and he uses the term “appearances” on any number of occasions). The present essay attempts to fill this gap. It begins with the view of Frank Jackson that there are three different senses of the term “looks” in perceptual contexts: the epistemic sense, the comparative sense and the phenomenal sense. Roderick Chisholm also held that there are three senses, though for Chishom, Jackson’s phenomenal sense is replaced with a non-comparative one. More recently, some philosophers have sided with Chisholm, e.g., Alex Byrne and Mike Thau; others have claimed that there are just comparative and epistemic senses, e.g., Charles Travis, while still others have argued that there is only a single sense, the comparative one, e.g., Wylie Breckenridge.
In this essay, I argue that there is indeed just a single sense attaching to the word “looks”, but this sense is neither epistemic nor comparative; nor is it phenomenal, as Jackson elaborates the phenomenal sense. A correct understanding of “looks” has consequences, I maintain, both for the thesis that visual experiences have a representational nature and for how we think of visual illusions.
