Constancy Mechanisms and Distal Content: a Reply to Garson

Abstract

Sensory perceptions represent things in the outside world. This mundane fact raises a major problem for naturalistic theories of content: the ‘distality problem’. In a previous paper for this journal, I presented a solution to this problem which makes central appeal to constancy mechanisms. Justin Garson, also in this journal, recently criticized my solution and suggested a Dretskean alternative to it. Here, I defend my proposal by arguing, first, that Garson's criticisms ultimately miss the mark, and secondly, that his Dretskean alternative is not viable, because it faces two fundamental problems: the empirical problem and the problem of changing response functions.