约翰•塞尔简介

　　塞尔生于1932年，当代著名哲学家，现为美国加州大学伯克利分校Slusser哲学教授，在语言哲学、心灵哲学和社会哲学领域贡献巨大，是目前在世的最著名的分析哲学家。他自1959年以来，任教于伯克利，曾获Jean Nicod Prize和国家人文科学奖章（2004）。他的“言语行为理论”、“人工智能理论”（中文屋论证）、“社会实在”等理论颇有影响。

     In Intentionality (1983)[1], I argued that the content of perceptual experiences gives us direct presentations of their objects and that the intentionality of perception thus differs from certain other forms of intentionality, such as belief and desire, in that it is presentational and not representational.  In that book, I did not go into much detail about the characteristics of presentational intentionality, but I believe that an understanding of it is essential to understanding perception.  Representations are sometimes perceivable and typically manipulable.  Perceptual presentations are never either.  You can see photographs, paintings, movies, television programs, and all of those are representations, but you cannot see visual experiences.  You cannot see visual images, another kind of representation, but you can manipulate them.  You cannot in that way manipulate visual experiences.  Failure to understand such points is responsible for a very large number of disasters over the past 350 years in philosophy, and I intend to discuss some of these in this article.  The article is a fragment of a book I am writing about perception.