Expectations Without Content

Abstract

In this paper I show how the way experience presents things to us can be treated without attributing a representational content to experience. The basic claim that experience can present us with more things than the range of things available to us in thought is neutral with respect to the choice between a content account of experience and a naïve content-free account. I show how Meyer's theory of expectations in accounting for our experience of music supports the naïve account. Expectations provide an account of the conditions that enable things to be salient in experience as targets for attention. Expectations do not provide a content to experience. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.