Abstract

Current philosophical debates about perception have largely ignored questions concerning the ontological structure of per-ceptual experience, so as to focus on its intentional and phenomeno-logical character. To illustrate and put pressure on this tendency, I revisit the controversy between doxastic views of perception and Gareth Evans's objection from over-intellectualization. I suggest that classic versions of the doxastic view are to a good extent driven by an ontological characterization of perceptual attitudes as nonfactive states or dispositions, not by a cognitively complex picture of percep-tual content. Conceived along these lines, the doxastic view unveils an ontologically significant story of perceptual experience for at least two reasons: on the one hand, that characterization avoids the line of reasoning leading up to sense-datum theories of perception; and, on the other, it bears on recent discussions about the temporal struc-ture of perceptual experience. Although I do not endorse the doxastic view, my goal is to highlight the importance of the relatively ne-glected ontological motivations thus driving that kind of account.