Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Ram Neta (2004). Perceptual Evidence and the New Dogmatism. Philosophical Studies 119 (1-2):199-214.What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
| Export citation | Other links: springerlink.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library 
Similar books and articles
Whether empirical givenness has the reliability that foundationalists expect is a point about which some philosophers are highly skeptical. Sellars took the doctrine of givenness as a “myth,” denying the existence of immediate perceptual experience. The arguments in contemporary Western epistemology are concentrated on whether sensory experience has conceptual contents, and whether there is any logical relationship between perceptions and beliefs. In fact, once the elements of words and conceptions in empirical perception are affirmed, the logical relationship between perceptual experience and empirical belief is also affirmed. This relationship takes place through perceptual experience acting as evidence for beliefs. The real problem lies in how one should distinguish between the different relationships with perception of singular beliefs and of universal beliefs, and in how singular beliefs can provide justification for universal beliefs.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The author argues that coherence views of justification, in spite of their crucial insight into the interpenetration of our beliefs, neglect a key constraint on justification: they are unable to accommodate the epistemic significance of experience. Epistemic justification is not just a function of our beliefs and their interrelations. Both, beliefs and experiences, are relevant to the justification of an empirical belief. Experience is not itself a form of belief or disposition to believe; it cannot be analyzed in doxastic terms. And, yet, nondoxastic experiences play a justificatory role, not merely a causal role. The positive epistemic status of a perceptual belief depends upon being appeared to in appropriate ways. It is important that, for an ordinary perceptual belief to be justified, one does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, the ways of being appeared to, not our beliefs about them, that are required for justification.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Open-minded people should endorse dogmatism because of its explanatory power. Dogmatism holds that, in the absence of defeaters, a seeming that P necessarily provides non-inferential justification for P. I show that dogmatism provides an intuitive explanation of four issues concerning non-inferential justification. It is particularly impressive that dogmatism can explain these issues because prominent epistemologists have argued that it can’t address at least two of them. Prominent epistemologists also object that dogmatism is absurdly permissive because it allows a seeming to provide justification even if the seeming was caused in some apparently inappropriate way. I conclude by disarming this objection.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: onlinelibrary.wiley.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: onlinelibrary.wiley.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I argue that its appearing to you that P does not provide justification for believing that P unless you have independent justification for the denial of skeptical alternatives – hypotheses incompatible with P but such that if they were true, it would still appear to you that P. Thus I challenge the popular view of ‘dogmatism,’ according to which for some contents P, you need only lack reason to suspect that skeptical alternatives are true, in order for an experience as of P to justify belief that P. I pursue three lines of objection to dogmatism, having to do with probabilistic reasoning, considerations of future or hypothetically available justification, and epistemic circularity. I briefly sketch a fall-back position which avoids the problems raised.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: web.mit.edu jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: web.mit.edu jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In this paper I argue that it's possible that the contents of some visual experiences are influenced by the subject's prior beliefs, hopes, suspicions, desires, fears or other mental states, and that this possibility places constraints on the theory of perceptual justification that 'dogmatism' or 'phenomenal conservativism' cannot respect.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: onlinelibrary.wiley.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: onlinelibrary.wiley.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Arguments for scepticism about perceptual knowledge are often said to have intuitively plausible premises. In this discussion I question this view in relation to an argument from ignorance and argue that the supposed persuasiveness of the argument depends on debatable background assumptions about knowledge or justification. A reasonable response to scepticism has to show there is a plausible epistemological perspective that can make sense of our having perceptual knowledge. I present such a perspective. In order give a more satisfying response to scepticism, we need also to consider the standing of background beliefs. This is required since the recognitional abilities that enable us to have perceptual knowledge are informed by, or presuppose, a picture or conception of the world the correctness of which we have not ascertained. The question is how, in the face of this, to make sense of responsible belief-formation. In addressing this problem I make a suggestion about the standing of certain crucial beliefs linking appearances with membership of kinds.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I argue that our justification for beliefs about the external physical world need not be constituted by any justified beliefs about perceptual experiences. In this way our justification for beliefs about the physical world may be nondoxastic and this differentiates my proposal from traditional foundationalist theories such as those defended by Laurence BonJour, Richard Fumerton, and Timothy McGrew. On the other hand, it differs from certain non-traditional foundationalist theories such as that defended by James Pryor according to which perceptual experience is sufficient to justify beliefs about the external world. I propose that justification for propositions describing our perceptual experiences partially constitutes any justification we may possess for beliefs concerning the external world. In this way, our justification for beliefs about the physical world may only be inferential since it is grounded in any justification we have for at least one other proposition. This theory occupies an intermediate position between the two aforementioned foundationalist accounts, which allows it to sidestep problems that confront each of them.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper investigates the justification of certain beliefs central to scientific realism. Some have claimed that the underdetermination of a theory by empirical evidence implies that belief in the truth of the theory and in the existence of the corresponding unobservable entities is unjustified. It is argued that the justification of certain realist beliefs is similar to the justification of our perceptual beliefs. Neither are justified by argument from more basic beliefs, and their underdetermination by the evidence does not affect their justification.
No categories
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Liberals claim that some perceptual experiences give us immediate justification for certain perceptual beliefs. Conservatives claim that the justification that perceptual experiences give us for those perceptual beliefs is mediated by our background beliefs. In his recent paper 'Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic', Nico Silins successfully argues for a non-Moorean version of Liberalism. But Silins's defence of non-Moorean Liberalism leaves us with a puzzle: why is it that a necessary condition for our perceptual experiences to justify us in holding certain perceptual beliefs is that we have some independent justification for disbelieving various sceptical hypotheses? I argue that the best answer to this question involves commitment to Crispin Wright's version of Conservatism. In short, Wright's Conservatism is consistent with Silins's Liberalism, and the latter helps to give us grounds for accepting the former.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: informaworld.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: informaworld.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Consider the skeptic about the external world. Let’s straightaway concede to such a skeptic that perception gives us no conclusive or certain knowledge about our surroundings. Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible—there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs. Let’s also concede to the skeptic that it’s metaphysically possible for us to have all the experiences we’re now having while all those experiences are false. Some philosophers dispute this, but I do not. The skeptic I want to consider goes beyond these familiar points to the much more radical conclusion that our perceptual experiences can’t give us any knowledge or even justification for believing that our surroundings are one way rather than another.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Ram Neta, Perceptual evidence and the new dogmatism
 Back
All discussions
Start a new thread
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.
