Perceptual experience and perceptual knowledge
Mind 118 (472):1013-1041 (2009)
| Abstract | Commonsense epistemology regards perceptual experience as a distinctive source of knowledge of the world around us, unavailable in ‘blindsight’. This is often interpreted in terms of the idea that perceptual experience, through its representational content, provides us with justifying reasons for beliefs about the world around us. I argue that this analysis distorts the explanatory link between perceptual experience and knowledge, as we ordinarily conceive it. I propose an alternative analysis, on which representational content plays no explanatory role: we make perceptual knowledge intelligible by appeal to experienced objects and features. I also present an account of how the commonsense scheme, thus interpreted, is to be defended: not by tracing the role of experience to its contribution in meeting some general condition on propositional knowledge (such as justification), but by subverting the assumption that it has to be possible to make the role of experience intelligible in terms of some such contribution | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesBill Brewer (2008). How to Account for Illusion. In Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford University Press.
Bill Brewer (2001). Precis of Perception and Reason. Philosophy And Phenomenological Research 63 (2):405-416.
Uriah Kriegel (2004). Perceptual Experience, Conscious Content, and Nonconceptual Content. Essays in Philosophy 5 (1):1-14.
T. M. Crowther (2006). Two Conceptions of Conceptualism and Nonconceptualism. Erkenntnis 65 (2):245-276.
Hannah Ginsborg (2011). Perception, Generality, and Reasons. In Andrew Reisner & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Reasons for Belief. Cambridge University Press.
Susanna Schellenberg (2010). The Particularity and Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience. Philosophical Studies 149 (1).
Tamar Szabó Gendler (2006). Introduction: Perceptual Experience. In John Hawthorne & Tamar Szabó Gendler (eds.), Perceptual Experience. Oxford University Press.
Susanna Schellenberg (2011). Perceptual Content Defended. Noûs 45 (4):714-750.
David Hilbert (1994). Is Seeing Believing? PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994:446 - 453.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-02-08Total downloads64 ( #14,699 of 556,895 )Recent downloads (6 months)4 ( #20,653 of 556,895 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
