Online research in philosophy

An overview of the epistemology of perception, covering the nature of justification, immediate justification, the relationship between the metaphysics of perceptual experience and its rational role, the rational role of attention, and cognitive penetrability. The published version will contain a smaller bibliography, due to space constraints in the volume.

Questions about perception remain some of the most difficult and insoluble in both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Perception provides a highly accessible introduction to the area, exploring the philosophical importance of those questions by re-examining the sense-datum theory, once the most popular theory of perception. Howard Robinson surveys the history of arguments for and against the sense-datum theory, from Descartes to Husserl. Robinson contends that the objections to the theory, particularly Wittgenstein's attack on privacy and those of the physicalists, have been unsuccessful. He argues for returning to the theory in order to understand perception. In doing so, he seeks to overturn a consensus that has dominated the philosophy of perception for nearly half a century.

An attempt is made to pinpoint the way in which perception is related to belief. Although, for familiar reasons, it is not true to say that we necessarily believe in the existence of the objects we perceive, nor that they actually have their ostensible characteristics, it is argued that the relation between perception and belief is more than merely contingent There are two main issues to address. The first is that `collateral' beliefs may impede perceptual belief. It is argued that this still assigns an essential role to belief in perception, though the belief may be of an attenuated form. The second is Fred Dretske's claim that even attenuated belief may be entirely absent from perception. It is argued that (a) `non-epistemic' perception can be understood only by employing the concept of `epistemic' perception; (b) that the former can occur only partially-i.e., within perceptions that are otherwise epistemic; and (c) that by switching attention from the perception of objects to the Phenomenological tradition's concern with the perception of world, we can see that perception must be entirely permeated with `doxastic' force.

As our chief aim is a comprehensive theory of perception which will cover all the facts, ... JR Smythies' Analysis of Perception I discuss in Ch. VI, § 6. ...

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.

Significant attention has been paid to Berkeley's account of perception; however, the interpretations of Berkeley's account of perception by suggestion are either incomplete or mistaken. In this paper I begin by examining a common interpretation of suggestion, the 'Propositional Account'. I argue that the Propositional Account is inadequate and defend an alternative, non-propositional, account. I then address George Pitcher's objection that Berkeley's view of sense perception forces him to adopt a 'non-conciliatory' attitude towards common sense. I argue that Pitcher's charge is no longer plausible once we recognize that Berkeley endorses the non-propositional sense of mediate perception. I close by urging that the non-propositional interpretation of Berkeley's account of mediate perception affords a greater appreciation of Berkeley's attempt to bring a philosophical account of sense perception in line with some key principles of common sense. While Berkeley's account of perception and physical objects permits physical objects to be immediately perceived by some of the senses, they are, most often, mediately perceived. But for Berkeley this is not a challenge to common sense since common sense requires only that we perceive objects by our senses and that they are, more or less, as we perceive them. Mediate perception by suggestion is, for Berkeley, as genuine a form of perception as immediate perception, and both are compatible with Berkeley's understanding of the demands of common sense.

Two Themes to the Course: a.) How are we to understand the contrast between direct and indirect or immediate and mediate perception? b.) Is there any cogent reason to think we don’t have sense experience of the world around us?

Two cross-modal experiments provide partial support for O'Regan & Noë's (O&N's) claim that sensorimotor contingencies mediate perception. Differences in locating a target sound accompanied by a spatially disparate neutral light correlate with whether the two stimuli were perceived as spatially unified. This correlation suggests that internal representations are necessary for conscious perception, which may also mediate sensorimotor contingencies.