The main theme of my commentary might appear to be driven by an overexcited optimism for the new theory. To be clear, I have not claimed that PP is correct. Even its main proponents are quick to point out that important open issues remain. My claim is that it is worthwhile to consider the full implications of PP, given the convincing evidence presented so far. In this commentary, I have tried to suggest some of the implications that have not yet been mentioned—implications for perceptual content, consciousness, and applied cognitive neuroscience. These implications can be summarized as follows:
PP urges an organism-relative conception of perceptual content.
Historical a priori accounts of the structure of perceptual experience converge with results from PP.
There are a number of areas in which PP can find important practical applications.
The final section includes some challenges for future research. The main challenge is one that has been familiar in one form or another for several decades in the philosophy of mind. This challenge is to address the tension between the way in which we understand and explain our behavior using natural language, on one hand, and our best theory of human behavior from cognitive neuroscience, which, arguably, is PP, on the other hand. In closing I should note that even if key elements of PP are eventually rejected, it might still turn out that our best model of the mind supports some of the themes I have been discussing.
Acknowledgments
I thank Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer Windt for helpful detailed comments on an earlier draft. This research was supported by the EC Project VERE, funded under the EU 7th Framework Program, Future and Emerging Technologies (Grant 257695).