…I note a great difference between a “percept” and a “perceptual judgment”. The latter is a mental description of a percept, in language or other symbols. [—] But the elements of the perceptual judgments correspond to no separate elements of the percepts. The judgments “represent” the percepts only in the sense that the future self will interpret them as representing the percepts.That is why I call them symbols; for by a symbol I mean a sign which represents its object only by virtue of the fact that it will be interpreted as doing so.