My primary aim in this book is to understand and explain origins of representational aspects of mind, particularly in representation of the physical world. Under what conditions does accurate objective representation of the physical world begin? Since the inquiry centers on what it is to represent the physical world in this initial way, and since objective representation of the physical world is the most elementary type of representation, the aim is to understand the nature of representational mind at its lower border. A corollary of this primary aim is to explain the extreme primitiveness of conditions necessary and sufficient for this elementary type of representation perception. A secondary aim is to show that nearly all prominent philosophical work on this topic over the previous century over-intellectualized these conditions. That is, philosophers claimed that meeting the conditions requires psychological capacities that are much more intellectual than the capacities in fact are.
Tyler Burge presents a substantial, original study of what it is for individuals to represent the physical world with the most primitive sort of objectivity. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind. Origins of Objectivity illuminates several long-standing, central issues in philosophy, and provides a wide-ranging account of relations between human and animal psychologies.