Much of the debate between naïve realism and the content view has focused on a particular aspect of perceptual phenomenology: the phenomenal immediacy that distinguishes perceptual experiences from both imagery experiences and conscious thoughts. According to a version of the argument from hallucination, we should prefer the content view to naïve realism because the former, unlike the latter, can provide a unified explanation of the fact that both hallucinatory and veridical experiences possess immediacy. However, the standard variety of the content view that can provide such an explanation is not in a position to provide a unified explanation of a distinct aspect of perceptual phenomenology: perceptual experiences possess a presentational character that they share with imagery experiences (and which distinguishes both from conscious thoughts). Accordingly, I present an argument from imagination in defense of a non-standard variety of the content view—the sensory vehicle theory. Unlike its competitors, the sensory vehicle theory can provide unified explanations of why hallucinatory and veridical perceptual experiences possess immediacy, and why perceptual and imagery experiences possess their presentational character; as such, this theory provides a better explanation of the phenomenal facts than does either naïve realism or the standard variety of the content view.

My aim is to defend a peculiar epistemic version of the particularity thesis, which results from a sui generis combination of what I call the ‘singular relational view’ and what I call the ‘relativistic content view.’ Particulars are not represented as part of putative singular content. Instead, we are perceptually acquainted with them in the relevant sense that experience puts us in direct perceptual contact with them. And the content of experience is best modelled as a propositional function, that is, the content of a complex predicate that is true or false only relative to some circumstances of evaluation.