Roderick Chisholm argued that ‘look’ can be used in three different ways: epistemically, comparatively and non-comparatively. Chisholm’s non-comparative sense of ‘look’ played an important role in Frank Jackson’s argument for the sense-datum theory. The question remains..

In Philosophy Without Intuitions Herman Cappelen argues that unlike what is commonly thought, contemporary analytic philosophers do not typically rely on intuitions as evidence. If they do indeed rely on intuitions, that should be evident from their written works, either explicitly in the form of ‘intuition’ talk or by means of other indicators. However, Cappelen argues, while philosophers do engage in ‘intuition’ talk, that is not a good indicator that they rely on intuitions, as ‘intuition’ and its cognates have many (...) meanings that are irrelevant to this particular question. He identifies three other indicators and argues by appeal to case studies that these indicators are not present. I argue here that an account of intuitions as intellectual seemings draws attention to intuition features that Cappelen does not consider. These intuition features appear to be regularly present in the works of contemporary analytic philosophers. (shrink)

I start out by reviewing the semantics of ‘seem’. As ‘seem’ is a subject-raising verb, ‘it seems’ can be treated as a sentential operator. I look at the semantic and logical properties of ‘it seems’. I argue that ‘It seems’ is a hyperintensional and contextually flexible operator. The operator distributes over conjunction but not over disjunction, conditionals or semantic entailments. I further argue that ‘It seems’ does not commute with negation and does not agglomerate with conjunction. I then show that (...) the mental states expressed by perceptual uses of ‘seem’ have nonconceptual, yet perspectival contents. In the final part of the paper I argue that while the content of the mental states expressed by perceptual uses of ‘seem’ are nonconceptual, having a mental state of this type requires possessing conceptual abilities corresponding to what the mental state represents. (shrink)

Perceptual reports are utterances of sentences that contain a perceptual verb, such as ‘look’, ‘sound’, ‘feel’, ‘see’, and ‘perceive’. It is natural to suppose that at least in many cases, these types of reports reflect aspects of the phenomenal character and representational content of a subject’s perceptual experiences. For example, an utterance of ‘my chair looks red but it’s really white’ appears to reflect phenomenal properties of the speaker’s experience of a chair. Whether perceptual reports actually reflect these things is (...) a substantial question and one with which this entry will be partially concerned. This article begins with a linguistic analysis of perceptual verbs and then considers some potential implications of this analysis for the philosophy of perception, given the assumption that perceptual reports sometimes express truths. (shrink)

According to phenomenal conservatism, if it seems to S that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has some degree of justification for believing P. Phenomenal conservatism has received its fair share of criticism. Among other things, it has been argued that too many beliefs for which the agent has no justification come out as having some degree of justification, given phenomenal conservatism. I believe many of these criticisms are justified. Here I want to propose and defend a (...) close cousin of phenomenal conservatism, a position I will call ‘sensible dogmatism’. Sensible dogmatism is the view that a specific subset of seemings, which I call non-epistemic seemings, can confer justification on belief when they are grounded in the content of memory, introspection or perception. I argue that this position avoids the most devastating problems for phenomenal conservatism while inheriting its virtues. (shrink)

The paper argues that the English verb ‘to see’ can denote three different kinds of conscious states of seeing, involving visual experiences, visual seeming states and introspective seeming states, respectively. The case for the claim that there are three kinds of seeing comes from synesthesia and visual imagery. Synesthesia is a relatively rare neurological condition in which stimulation in one sensory or cognitive stream involuntarily leads to associated experiences in a second unstimulated stream. Visual synesthesia is often considered a case (...) of illusory visual experience. This, however, turns out to be a questionable characterization, as there is evidence suggesting that the brain must cognitively process the stimulus in order for the associated synesthetic experience to arise. Furthermore, some very vivid, visual forms of synesthesia do not involve additional processing in the visual cortex. Visual synesthetic experience is likely to be a non-veridical state of seeming rather than an illusory visual experience. Visual seeming states are cognitive states distinct from visual experiences in terms of their representational richness and their neural correlates. Visual seeming states that are non-deviantly causally related to the states of affair they represent constitute a type of non-experiental seeing. Introspective seeming states that are non-deviantly causally related to underlying visual images constitute a second type of non-experiental seeing. The English verb ‘to see’ can denote all three types of seeing, which is to say that ‘to see’ is polysemous. (shrink)

The article provides the state of the art on the debate about whether the logical form of ‘look’ statements commits us to any particular theory of perceptual experience. The debate began with Frank Jackson’s (1977) argument that ‘look’ statements commit us to a sense-datum theory of perception. Thinkers from different camps have since then offered various rejoinders to Jackson’s argument. Others have provided novel arguments from considerations of the semantics of ‘look’ to particular theories of perception. The article closes with (...) an argument of this sort for a representational theory of perceptual experience. (shrink)

An Essay in the Metaphysics of Propositions Berit Brogaard. TRANSIENT TRUTHS An Essay in. the Metaphysics ofProposizions BERIT BROGAARD Transient Truths This page intentionally left blank Transient Truths An. Cover.

It is widely assumed that perception is a source of reasons (SR). There is a weak sense in which this claim is trivially true: even if one characterizes perception in purely causal terms, perceptual beliefs originate from the mind's interaction with the world. When philosophers argue for (SR), however, they have a stronger view in mind: they claim that perception provides pre- or non-doxastic reasons for belief. In this article I examine some ways of developing this view and criticize them. (...) I exploit these results to formulate a series of constraints that a satisfactory account of the epistemic role of perception should fulfil. I also make a positive suggestion: coherentists are right when they claim that only beliefs can be reasons for other beliefs. Nevertheless, I depart from traditional coherentism, for I do not buy its conception of perception as bare sensation, nor explicate the justificatory status of beliefs in terms of coherence. My point is rather that, when one invokes experience to justify a belief, the justifying state must have structural features of beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss (material) object seeing. Such seeing is, as Dretske has argued, non-epistemic: S's seeing o doesn't entail that S has any knowledge or belief about o. Though such seeing, I suggest, is epistemically significant in that it is knowledge-explaining. That is, `S sees o' can (in the right circumstances) be a perfectly good answer to the question `How does S know that o is F?', thus indicating that S's seeing o can be a source of S's (...) knowledge (see Cassam). I defend this perspective against a challenge which claims that it is rather S's seeing that o is F which is knowledge-explaining; propositional seeing, not object seeing. I argue, against this, that S's seeing that o is F is a way of knowing---that is, it is a matter of S's knowing that o is F by visual means. And so, I suggest, seeing that o is F is not suited to be a source of S's knowledge that o is F. Having defended the conception of object seeing's epistemic significance set out I then address the task of explaining what accounts for its epistemic significance. I suggest that the place to look for giving such an account is to the constitutive conditions on seeing and knowing (see Peacocke). I adopt the perspective of a naive realist and suggest the following: if S sees o and so the constitutive conditions on seeing o are met, then some of the constitutive conditions on knowing things about o will be met. This is because, I argue, for a naive realist part of what is involved in S's seeing o is that o itself is a literal constituent of S's o seeing experience. But, if they understand o as a relatively thick particular (as they should for reasons I set out), then this means that just in virtue of seeing o, S has a reason to believe something about o. This is because thick particulars are states of affairs, and states of affairs are reasons for beliefs (in virtue of them bearing the truthmaking relation to truths, a relation which I argue is an epistemic favouring relation). If a thick particular is a literal constituent of your perceptual experience, then that particular---that reason for beliefs about o---is accessible or available for exploitation in cognition. And this just means that a particular constitutive condition on knowing about o is satisfied. (shrink)

In a 2010 article Turri puts forward some powerful considerations which suggest that Williamson's view of knowledge as the most general factive mental state is false. Turri claims that this view is false since it is false that if S sees that p, then S knows that p. Turri argues that there are cases in which (A) S sees that p but (B) S does not know that p. In response I offer linguistic evidence to suppose that in propositional contexts (...) “see” does not have the sort of meaning (a purely perceptual meaning) which would sustain Turri's claims about the cases he offers (specifically, the (A) verdicts). (shrink)

(1) A <em>perceptual state</em> is an 'ecological' state of an animal; by contrast, an <em>attentional posture</em> is a 'psychological' state of an animal's stream of consciousness. The latter has content, the former (being nonpsychological) lacks it. The content of the latter is certainty in the existence of the target of attention (a qualitative state of an external object) with the nature it has. (2) I carry forward the view from 'There it is' to rebut hallucination worries about the 'certainty' plank. (...) (3) In response to spectral inversion worries, I urge a 'political' stance (cosmopolitanism abroad, regionalism at home) about the metaphysics presupposed in the 'nature' plank. (4) I sketch an expressivist semantics for 'this is white but looks red' on which it <em>informs</em> that this is white, <em>presupposes</em> that this exists, and <em>expresses</em> a purely predicative object-directed belief ascribing <em>redness</em>. (shrink)

This paper discusses and criticizes Segal’s 1989 argument against singular object-dependent thoughts. His argument aims at showing that object-dependent thoughts are explanatorily redundant. My criticism of Segal’s argument has two parts. First, I appeal to common anti-individualist arguments to the effect that Segal’s type of argument only succeeds in establishing that object-dependent thoughts are explanatorily redundant for those aspects of subjects’ behaviour that do not require reference to external objects. Secondly, Segal’s view on singular thoughts is at odds with his (...) view on the semantics of proper names, which favours the singularity and object-dependency of the truth-conditions of sentences in which they occur. In particular, his views are at odds with a position he holds, that truth-conditional semantics can adequately account for all aspects of speakers’ linguistic competence in the use of proper names. (shrink)

This edited volume offers ten new essays on semantics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of linguistics by top scholars in the field. Covering a wide range of topics, the collection is sure to be of interest to scholars in those areas as well as some philosophers of mind. Because of the diversity of topics and perspectives inherent in the collection, readers will find both exposition and debate among the contributors.

The semantics of a sentence containing a perception verb such as see or hear depends to a high degree on the exact syntactic form of the perception verb’s complement. Let us compare sentence (1), where the complement is tenseless, with (2), where the complement is a tensed clause.

Narrative passages told from a character's perspective convey the character's thoughts and perceptions. We present a discourse process that recognizes characters'.