The title refers to theories that require a certain sort of relation between X and an experience of S in order that S perceive X. The relation might be causal, counterfactual, doxastic, or otherwise. It is argued against such theories that there are possible cases in which X stands in the required relation to an experience of S and S does not perceive X and cases in which X is perceived though it does not stand in the required relation.

This paper tackles the problem of the nature of the space of perception. Based both on philosophical arguments and on results obtained from original experimental situations, it attempts to show how space is constituted concretely, before any distinction between the “inner” and the “outer” can be made. It thus sheds light on the presuppositions of the well-known debate between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind; it argues in favor of the latter position, but with arguments that (...) are foundationally antecedent to this debate. We call the position we defend enactive externalism. It is based on experimental settings which, in virtue of their minimalism, make it possible both to defend a sensori-motor/enactive theory of perception; and, especially, to inquire into the origin of the space of perception, showing how it is concretely enacted before the controversy between internalism and externalism can even take place. (shrink)

The aim of the analyzes carried out in this paper is to show that within the multitude of theories of perception which center their main presuppositions around the idea of action and embodiment, we can distinguish a body of approaches, which characteristically emphasize the following claims: that it is the living organism that should serve as perceiving subject; that perceptual states are not only a form of action but primarily a form of consciousness; that perceptual information is obtained by (...) perceiving subjects from the environment by means of so-called perceptual invariants. (shrink)

Psychological externalism is the thesis that the contents of many of a person's propositional mental states are determined in part by relations he bears to his natural and social environment. This thesis has recently been thrust into prominence in the philosophy of mind by a series of thought experiments due to Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. Externalism is a metaphysical thesis, but in this work I investigate its implications for the epistemology of the mental. I am primarily concerned (...) with the question whether externalism undermines the idea that a person typically knows the contents of her own thoughts, beliefs, and other propositional attitudes directly and authoritatively. I criticize arguments that have been advanced on behalf of a positive answer to this question, and argue that they rest on a faulty conception of the nature of first person authority, one which likens our access to our own minds to perception. An account of the basis of first person authority is sketched that locates our epistemic right to our self-ascriptions of propositional attitude not in our ability to discriminate among the various thought contents we might be thinking, but rather in our ability to express our thoughts, and to think with them in accordance with the norms of rationality. I consider also the question whether first person authority and externalism jointly make possible a refutation of certain forms of global skepticism, as has been famously argued by Putnam. I argue that Putnam's attempted refutation fails, because the crucial externalist claims that drive it are not knowable a priori. (shrink)

When proponents of cognitive externalism (CE) turn to empirical studies in cognitive science to put the framework to use and to assess its explanatory success, they typically refer to perception, memory, or motor coordination. In contrast, not much has been said about reasoning. One promising avenue to explore in this respect is the theory of bounded rationality (BR). To clarify the relationship between CE and BR, we criticize Andy Clark's understanding of BR, as well as his claim that (...) BR does not fit his version of CE. We then propose and defend a version of CE—“scaffolded cognition”—that is not committed to constitutive claims about the mind, but still differs from mainstream internalism. Finally, we analyze BR from our own CE perspective, thereby clarifying its vague appeals to the environment, and argue that cognitive internalism cannot explain important aspects of the BR program. (shrink)

Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes /seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors/. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be "phenomenally" the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!<br><br>Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) /reflective indiscriminability/. I build a "displaced perception" account of reflection on which indiscriminability (...) stems from shared "qualia". Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does /seeing/; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its "transparency"; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment. <br><br>The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up. (shrink)

Externalist representationalism is touted as a superior rival to naïve realism, and yet a careful analysis of the externalist representationalist's analysis of our ordinary perceptual experiences shows the view to be far closer to naïve realism than we might have expected. One of the central advertised benefits of representationalist views in general is that they are compatible with the idea that ordinary, illusory and hallucinatory perceptual experiences are of the same fundamental kind. Naïve realists are forced to deny the ‘common (...) fundamental kind claim’ and adopt disjunctivism. However, I argue that externalist representationalism is also a version of disjunctivism. Consequently, one of the main rivals to naïve realism turns out not to be a rival at all. (shrink)

I argue that phenomenal externalism is preferable to phenomenal internalism on the basis of externalism's explanatory power with respect to qualitative character. I argue that external qualities, namely, external physical properties that are qualitative independent of consciousness, are necessary to explain qualitative character, and that phenomenal externalism is best understood as accepting external qualities while phenomenal internalism is best understood as rejecting them. I build support for the claim that external qualities are necessary to explain qualitative character (...) on the basis of a model of color perception as a certain sort of information filter by which perceivers gain access to external qualities. (shrink)

One increasingly popular view in the philosophy of perception isexternalismabout sensible qualities, according to which sensible qualities such as colors, smells, tastes, and textures are features, not of our minds, but of mind-independent, external objects in the world. The primary motivation for this view is that perceptual experience seems to betransparent—that is, when we attend to sensible qualities, it seems like what we are attending to are features of external objects, not our own minds. Most (if not all) externalists (...) are either naïve realists or externalist representationalists. However, in this article, I argue that those who are moved by the primary motivation for externalism should instead be sense-datum theorists, for externalists’ primary motivation supports the sense-datum theory, not their actually favored views. I argue that externalists should focus on different motivations, get new ones, or become sense-datum theorists. (shrink)

Active externalism (also known as the extended mind hypothesis) says that we use objects and situations in the world as external memory stores that we consult as needs dictate. This gives us economies of storage: We do not need to remember that Bill has blue eyes and wavy hair if we can acquire this information by looking at Bill. I argue for a corollary to this position, which I call ‘internalism.’ Internalism says we can acquire knowledge on a need‐to‐know (...) basis by consulting portable, inner analogues of the world. This, however, leads to a dilemma. If the knowledge was stored in memory, it is difficult to see how we could have acquired it by consulting inner analogues, for it would seem that we knew it already. Moreover, if it was stored in memory, we lose the economies of storage that provide much of the rationale for external memory stores and hence for their inner analogues. If, on the other hand, the knowledge was not stored in memory, it is difficult to see how we could have acquired it by consulting inner analogues, for it was not there to be acquired. I propose a solution to this problem that turns on the concept of nonconceptual content, and I relate the solution to Stephen Kosslyn's (1994) architecture of perception and visual mental imagery. Viewed in a broader context, the solution shows that the world leaks into the mind, as well as mind leaking into the world. (shrink)

In this paper, I credit Quine with having implicitly held a view I had long urged on him: externalism. Quine was the first fully to recognize that all there is to meaning is what we learn or absorb from observed usage. This entails the possibility of indeterminacy, thus destroying the myth of meanings. It also entails a powerful form of externalism. There is, of course, a counter-current in Quine's work of the mid century: the idea of stimulus meaning. (...) Attractive as this choice of empirical base is compared to such options as sense data, appearances, and percepts, it has serious difficulties. In general, an externalism which ties the contents of observation sentences and perceptual beliefs directly to the sorts of situations that usually make them true is superior to those forms of empiricism which introduce intermediaries between word and object. (shrink)

This paper examines Hutcheson’s moral sense theory’s attack on internalism and his defense of an innovative version of externalism. I show that Hutcheson’s distinction between exciting and justifying reasons supports a type of externalist theory not anticipated by Brink, Smith, or McDowell. In Moral Sense Externalism, moral judgment relies upon the perceptions of a moral sense, and the felt quality of these perceptions introduces to judgment an affective dimension. Thus feeling is a constituitive part of what it is (...) to have a justifying reason for a moral act even when it is not the direct motive to action. (shrink)

We think that certain of our mental states represent the world around us, and represent it in determinate ways. My perception that there is salt in the pot before me, for example, represents my immediate environment as containing a certain object, a pot, with a certain kind of substance, salt, in it. My belief that salt dissolves in water represents something in the world around me, namely salt, as having a certain observational property, that of dissolving. But what exactly (...) is the relation between such states and the world beyond the surfaces of our skins? Specifically, what exactly is the relation between the contents of those states, and the world beyond our bodies? (shrink)

In this lecture I describe the path by which I was led to the “semantic externalism” for which I was honoured with the Rolf Schock Prize. Although my interest in linguistics goes back as far as my undergraduate days, it was conversations with Jerrold Katz and Jerry Fodor at MIT (where all three of us taught at the time) in the 1960s that first led to an effort by all three of us to develop semantic theories. My own direction (...) was a false one, by my present lights; at that time all three of us defended the “internalist” view that the meaning of a word is fixed by a “battery of semantical rules” implicitly known by each speaker. I describe how I was led to the realization that this could not be right, and finally to the views I defended in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning' ”. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that perception justifies belief about the external world in virtue of its phenomenal character together with its relations to the external world. But I argue that perceptual relations to the external world impact on the justifying role of perception only by virtue of their impact on its representational content. Epistemic level-bridging principles provide a principled rationale for avoiding more radically externalist theories of perceptual justification.

ABSTRACT In the English language contemporary literature, there are mainly two philosophical approaches to interpretation of the Zhuangzi’s Happy Fish debate. The two approaches to the famous passage are the logical, which focuses on analysis, and the non-analytic, which focuses on context. The approaches are in tension with one another since one implies that the other is wrong. This paper suggests that the view that Zhuangzi holds an externalist view of justification according to the debate (here abbreviated as ZE) reconciles (...) the approaches. ZE is the interpretation that says that in the debate, Zhuangzi is an externalist, in particular, a process reliabilist, because he takes sense perception as means to attaining knowledge. ZE reconciles the two approaches in that in each of them ZE is implicit. Ultimately, this paper not only offers a perspective about the two approaches, it also offers a view about the debate. (shrink)

We think that certain of our mental states represent the world around us, and represent it in determinate ways. My perception that there is salt in the pot before me, for example, represents my immediate environment as containing a certain object, a pot, with a certain kind of substance, salt, in it. My belief that salt dissolves in water represents something in the world around me, namely salt, as having a certain observational property, that of dissolving. But what exactly (...) is the relation between such states and the world beyond the surfaces of our skins? Specifically, what exactly is the relation between thecontentsof those states, and the world beyond our bodies? (shrink)

Locke characterizes sensitive knowledge as knowledge of the existence of external objects present to the senses, and in terms of an ‘assurance’ that falls short of the certainty of intuition and demonstration. But it is unclear how this fits with his general definition of knowledge, as the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and it is unclear how that assurance can amount to knowledge, rather than amounting to mere probability (which he contrasts with knowledge). Some contend that (...) Locke does not regard sensitive knowledge as genuine knowledge, but only honourifically calls it knowledge. In contrast, I argue that Locke holds that sensitive knowledge is knowledge, though he takes the conditions for it to be very different from the conditions for intuitive and demonstrative knowledge. It is not the assurance alone which Locke thinks qualifies sensitive knowledge as such: it is also the fact that the assurance arises from the actual employment of the senses upon external objects, and the fact that the senses do not generally deceive us, which he thinks qualifies sensitive knowledge as genuine knowledge. That there is a (tacit) form of externalism in Locke's account of sensitive knowledge is the main thesis of this paper. (shrink)

It has been objected recently that naïve realism is inconsistent with an empirically well-supported hypothesis that unconscious perception is possible. Because epistemological disjunctivism is plausible only in conjunction with naïve realism (for a reason I provide), the objection reaches it too. In response, I show that the unconscious perception hypothesis can be changed from a problem into an advantage of epistemological disjunctivism. I do this by suggesting that: (i) naïve realism is consistent with the hypothesis; (ii) the contrast (...) between epistemological disjunctivism and epistemic externalism explains the difference in epistemic import between conscious and unconscious perception. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to focus on the claim, prominently made by sensorimotor theorists, that perception is something we do. I will argue that understanding perceiving as a bodily doing allows for a strong non-dualistic position on the relation between experience and objective physical events, one which provides insight into why such relation seems problematic while at the same time providing means to relieve the tension. Next I will show how the claim that perception is something we (...) do does not stand in opposition to, and is not refuted by, the fact that we often have perceptual experience without moving. In arguing that cases of motionless perception and perception-like experience are still doings it will be pointed out that the same interactive regularities which are engaged in in active perception still apply to them. Explaining how past interactive regularities can influence current perception or perception-like experience in a way which remains true to the idea that perception is a doing, so I will argue, can be done by invoking the past -- the past itself, however, not its representation. The resulting historical, non-representational sensorimotor approach can join forces with Gibsonian ecological psychology -- provided that such is also understood along lines that don't invoke externalist remnants of contents. (shrink)

Kant sometimes compares human beings with animals and angels and grants human beings a middle position. But contrary to what one might expect, his transcendental philosophy does not apply well to animals or angels. The question of whether we share perception with animals has no good answer in his system that has to be taken as a single piece and does not allow for introducing steps of empirical, real developments. Differently from Kant, McDowell does compare human beings with animals, (...) but he is not a transcendental philosopher and his attempts to find support in Kant are problematic. Although McDowell says that concepts go "all the way out" and Kant says the categories go "all the way down," which sounds similar, Kant talks of a priori categories, not empirical concepts. Burge is definitely not a transcendental philosopher like Kant. Up front he strongly relies on empirical studies, especially animal perception. Nevertheless, his quest into mental content introduces first-person perspectives that have a metaphysical flavor, and this makes - at least to me - comparisons with Kant tempting again. (shrink)

The historically most central epistemological issue concerning perception, to which this article will be almost entirely devoted, is whether and how beliefs about physical objects and about the physical world generally can be justified or warranted on the basis of sensory or perceptual experience—where it is internalist justification, roughly having a reason to think that the belief in question is true, that is mainly in question (see the entry justification, epistemic: internalist vs. externalist conceptions of). This issue, commonly referred (...) to as “the problem of the external world,” divides into two closely related sub-issues, which correspond to the first two main sections below. The first of these issues has to do with the nature of sensory experience and its relation to the physical world; it is typically (though as we shall see not altogether perspicuously) formulated as the question of what are the immediate objects of awareness in sensory experience or, in a variant but essentially equivalent terminology, of what is given in such experience. Perhaps the most historically standard, though not currently the most popular answer to this question has been that it is sense-data (private, non-physical entities that actually have the immediately experienced sensory qualities) that are the immediate objects of awareness or that are given. The second issue has to do with the way in which beliefs about the physical world are justified on the basis of such sensory experience. If it is concluded that physical objects are not themselves given, the two main answers to this question are representationalism or indirect realism (the view that the immediate objects of experience represent or depict physical objects in a way that allows one to infer justifiably from such experience to the existence of the corresponding “external” objects) and phenomenalism (the view.. (shrink)

Husserl and Sartre’s analyses of mental imagery and some of the latest cognitive research on vision provide a framework for understanding a number of films by Hitchcock (Psycho and Rear Window) and Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou), films which similarly probe the subtleties and uses of mental imagery. One of the many ways to enjoy these films is to see them as explorations of visual phenomenology; they allow us to enact, as well as reflect upon, mental images as part of the (...) film experience.<br><br><br><br><br><br>. (shrink)

Incompatibilism is the view that privileged knowledge of our own mental states cannot be reconciled with externalism regarding the content of mental states. Davidson has recently developed two arguments that are supposed to disprove incompatibilism and establish the consistency of privileged access and externalism. One argument criticizes incompatibilism for assuming that externalism conflicts with the mind‐body identity theory. Since mental states supervene on neurological events, Davidson argues, they are partly ‘in the head’ and are knowable just by (...) reflection. Another argument rejects incompatibilism by repudiating the object perception model of introspection. Once extemalism is freed from the internalist idea that thoughts take objects which are inner epistemological intermediaries, Davidson maintains, it poses no threat to privileged self‐knowledge. It is argued that neither of these arguments is successful, since both disprove assumptions irrelevant to incompatibilism. Moreover, it is indicated how Davidson would have to go about defending his positive account of privileged self‐knowledge against the principal incompatibilist arguments. (shrink)

Robert Kirk; XIII*—The Trouble with Ultra-Externalism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 293–308, https://doi.org/.

One reason philosophers have addressed the metaphysics of color is its apparent relevance to the sciences concerned with color phenomena. In the light of such thinking, this paper examines a pairing of views that has received much attention: color physicalism and externalism about the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that the latter is a dubious conception of the workings of our perceptual systems. Together with flawed appeals to the empirical literature, it has led some philosophers to grant (...) color physicalism a scientific legitimacy it does not merit. This discussion provides a useful entry into broader points pertaining to debates about color realism and the relationship between philosophical theories of color and the relevant empirical literatures. A sketch of a novel form of color realism is offered, as is an example that fills in some details of that sketch. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is wholly determined by, or even reducible to, its representational content. In this essay I put forward a version of intentionalism that allows (though does not require) the reduction of phenomenal character to representational content. Unlike other reductionist theories, however, it does not require the acceptance of phenomenal externalism (the view that phenomenal character does not supervene on the internal state of the subject). According the view offered (...) here, phenomenal characters essentially represent subject-environment relations that are relevant to the possibilities for causal interaction between the subject and the environment; relations of the kind that J. J. Gibson dubbed affordances. I argue for this view chiefly through an examination of spatial perception, though other cases are also considered. The view assumes that a phenomenal character has an essential functional role; though it need not be assumed that a functional role is sufficient for a phenomenal character. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a problem I call the “Conditional Position Problem” that arises for Ernest Sosa’s externalist epistemology. The problem is that, due to a phenomenon of epistemic circularity, one is unable to attain the reflective knowledge that one is justified in believing that perception is reliable, and is confined to the merely conditional position that one is so justified if perception is reliable. The problem is similar but different from a problem that Barry Stroud has (...) tried to formulate. However, because of space limitations I cannot explain in detail what makes the two problems different. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I explain the structural features of Sosa’s epistemology that allow the problem to arise; I also describe the normative task that is thwarted by the Conditional Position Problem; then I expound the problem itself. I proceed to examine one response that Sosa can give based on a simple inferential manoeuvre and explain why that response fails; then I examine another response he can give based on a complex form of self-support, and explain why this response also fails. I conclude explaining why the problem I present is specifically a problem for externalism. In an appendix, I very briefly describe what I take to be the main reason that justifies my claim that Stroud's problem is not the same as the problem I develop. (shrink)

This article focuses on situations and emotional perception. To this end, I start with the Kuleshov effect wherein identical shots of performers manifest different expressions when cut to different contexts. However, I conducted experiments with a twist, using Darth Vader and non-primates, and even here expressions varied with contexts. Building on historically and conceptually linked Gibsonian, Gestalt, phenomenological and pragmatic schools, along with consonant experimental work, I extrapolate these results to defend three interconnected points. First, I argue that while (...) perceiving expression is sometimes about reading minds, it is more squarely about perceiving solicitations or closures for action. Second, I frame expressions as a subcategory of Gibson’s affordances. This includes those showing up through context, in turn suggesting Kuleshov-like scenarios are not mere perceptual tricks. Third, I maintain that situations—with or without other human beings—have action-motivating expressive qualities or what Gestalt theorists called physiognomic characters, following Werner. These likewise emerge through ecological relations, and are very much like affordances and in the world as much as them. With resemblance theories, my account agrees that we perceive expression in the world. However, it indicates a broad range of cases in which expression shows up as consequences of overall situations that solicit or close actions, as opposed to mere resemblance between entities and human expressions. (shrink)

Theories of practical reason must meet a psychological requirement: they must explain how normative practical reasons can be motivationally efficacious. It would be pointless to claim that we are subject to normative demands of reason, if we were in fact unable to meet those demands. Concerning this requirement to account for the possibility of rational motivation, internalist approaches are distinguished from externalist ones. I defend internalism, whilst rejecting both ways in which the belief‐desire model can be instantiated. Both the Humean (...) and the Kantian instantiation of that model fail to account for the internal connection between normative and motivating reasons required by internalism. The two classes of reasons rather come to be seen as mutually exclusive. Opposing the belief‐desire model, I argue that rational motivation can only be established by reference to emotion. Emotions are affective perceptions. They have motivational force so that they can contribute to the explanation of action. At the same time they can rationalise actions because they have an intentional content which resembles the content of sensory perception in being representational. Because of this, the emotions can noninferentially justify judgements, which in turn can justify actions. I conclude by outlining the Aristotelian account of practical reason and ethics that emerges from integrating the emotions into practical reasoning. Doing the right thing is much more a matter of seeing things right than of drawing the right inferences. Seeing things right, in its turn, is not only to justify an action: it necessarily implies to be motivated to act accordingly. (shrink)

This thesis mounts an attack against accounts of perceptual justification that attempt to analyze it in terms of evidential justifiers, and has defended the view that perceptual justification should rather be analyzed in terms of non-evidential justification. What matters most to perceptual justification is not a specific sort of evidence, be it experiential evidence or factive evidence, what matters is that the perceptual process from sensory input to belief output is reliable. I argue for this conclusion in the following way. (...) Chapter 1: The Arguments from HallucinationChapter 1 presents a skeptical argument from hallucination that starts from a premise about the alleged introspective indistinguishability of perception and hallucination, and concludes that perceptual knowledge is impossible. Underlying this argument are certain assumptions about the nature of perceptual justification, and different responses to the argument portray different views of perceptual justification. Evidentialism and dogmatism both reject the premise that appearances do not provide evidence sufficient for perceptual knowledge, although they disagree about the precise nature of the appearances. Epistemological disjunctivism rejects the premise that introspectively indistinguishable experiences provide the same evidence, while upholding the idea that some sort of evidence, namely factive evidence, is necessary for perceptual justification and knowledge. Process reliabilism rejects the premise that evidence is necessary for perceptual knowledge on the grounds that even perceptual justification can be obtained without evidence, as long as the cognitive process producing the belief is reliable.Chapter 2: EvidentialismChapter 2 starts by introducing some motivations for experientialist views of perceptual justification, such as evidentialism and dogmatism, which hold that conscious experiences evidentially justify perceptual beliefs. These motivations have to do with their ability to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition that demon-deceived subjects have justified perceptual beliefs and the Blindsight Intuition that blindsighters do not have justified perceptual beliefs. However, experientialist views are also faced with a Sellarsian dilemma: either experience is construed as non-propositional, but then the proposed evidential relation is unclear, or experience is construed as propositional, but then it is ad hoc to hold that they can evidentially justify without being justified themselves.Chapter 2 continues with a discussion of evidentialism, which grasps the first horn of this dilemma. I argue that evidentialism cannot adequately explain why a non-propositional experience constitutes evidence for this rather than that belief, and also does not provide any account of how to determine which belief fits an evidence-set which partly consists out of non-propositional experiences. Although a reliabilist version of evidentialism can provide a better account of these matters, it suffers from counter-intuitive predictions about justification and a conception of evidence that is so liberal that it could even include blindsighters and clairvoyants as having such evidence.Chapter 3: DogmatismChapter 3 focuses on variants of dogmatism, a theory of perceptual justification that grasps the second horn of the Sellarsian dilemma by holding that a perceptual experience with the content that p is sufficient for immediate prima facie justification of the belief that p. I first argue that dogmatism should identify perceptual experiences with high-level conscious states to accommodate the problem of novice vs. expert identification and the problem of the speckled hen. I then argue that this version of dogmatism still fails to meet a certain explanatory challenge which I dub the `Distinctiveness Problem'. Dogmatism should explain what is so distinctive about perceptual experience that enables it, in contrast with desire and imagination, to evidentially justify the belief that p without, in contrast with belief, being justified itself.Phenomenalist answers to this problem fail because they either do not provide a distinctive property of perceptual experience, or else provide a property that is reducible to or possibly caused by beliefs. In both cases, dogmatism would have the result that intuitively unjustifying experiences, such as imaginations, nevertheless become capable of justifying beliefs. Moreover, phenomenalists still need some explanation of why phenomenology is epistemically relevant at all.A new variant of the problem of the speckled hen is an intuitive illustration of this point against dogmatists. If a perceptual experience that p is not reliably connected to the fact that p or the belief that p, then beliefs based on this experience simply will not be intuitively justified. One possible response to this problem incorporates reliability into the content of experience in the sense that an experience cannot have the content that p if it is not reliably connected to both the fact that p and the belief that p. However, this will lose the motivation from the New Evil Demon Scenario, and will make large concessions towards reliabilism.Chapter 4: Epistemological DisjunctivismGiven these problems for experientialist views of perceptual justification, chapter 4 focuses on a different evidential account of justification: epistemological disjunctivism. According to the Justified True Belief version of Epistemological Disjunctivism, the fact that I see that p is the factive and reflectively accessible evidence in virtue of which I know that p. I argue that JTBED faces formidable problems: first, it cannot adequately deal with the basis problem, second, it cannot accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition, third,it faces the problem of hyper-intellectualization, and fourth, it has no good account of reflective access.Knowledge First Epistemological Disjunctivism, in contrast, holds that seeing that p just is a way of knowing that p. The fact that I see that p constitutes my justification for believing that p, even though it is not necessary for my knowledge that p. Although this view solves most of the above problems, I argue that KFED still faces a challenge of its own: its notion of justification is so strong that justification entails knowledge but is not itself entailed by it. This means that it too faces a hyper-intellectualization objection because it cannot accommodate animal justification, and that it too will struggle to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition.Nevertheless, there is something to the epistemological disjunctivist idea that higher-order capabilities are important to perceptual justification. Specifically, higher-order capabilities provide one with a way of accommodating the Blindsight Intuition without appealing to the notion of experiential evidence: blindsighters are epistemically worse off than normal human perceivers because they lack higher-order beliefs about how they are gaining their information. If one holds that these higher-order beliefs provide a special sort of justification for perceptual beliefs, then blindsighters lack this type of justification. Chapter 5: Process ReliabilismAfter displaying the problems of several evidential accounts of perceptual justification, chapter 5 introduces a non-evidential account: process reliabilism. The classic version of this view holds that the reliability of a belief-forming process is necessary and sufficient for the prima facie justification of a specific set of beliefs, namely, those that arise out of belief-independent processes. Two classic major problems for this view consist of counterexamples to both the necessity and sufficiency of reliability for justification. Although the Generality Problem raises some difficulties for reliabilism, they do not appear to be insurmountable.The second part of chapter 5 focuses on a variety of process reliabilism, inferentialist reliabilism, that is explicitly aimed at responding to clairvoyance cases. According to inferentialist reliabilism, one should distinguish between basic and non-basic beliefs, where basic beliefs are those that result out of the non-inferential operation of an inferentially opaque cognitive system that developed in a natural way. Reliability is only sufficient for the justification of basic beliefs, while non-basic beliefs also require conditional reliability and justification of the beliefs on which they are based.This distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs is meant to answer the challenge arising out of clairvoyance cases because these are all supposedly cases in which the resulting beliefs arenon-basic. However, I argue that the beliefs in these cases come out as non-basic primarily because of the etiological constraint on cognitive systems, a constraint that is unfortunately undermotivated. It seems that beliefs can be justified even if they are produced by a cognitive system that developed by accident, or by a system that was artificially designed to produce those beliefs. So even though the inferentialist reliabilist might have a point in distinguishing between basic and non-basic beliefs, it is still in need of a different response to clairvoyance cases. Chapter 6: Rejoinders for ReliabilismChapter 6 improves on the inferentialist reliabilist account of justification by presenting a different way of dealing with the clairvoyance cases and New Evil Demon Scenario. I start from the empirically plausible idea that we know that we are perceiving when we are perceiving, not because of the use of experiential evidence, but rather, because of an unconscious source-monitoring mechanism. I then argue that the existence of such a source-monitoring mechanism could be used to explain why clairvoyance cases actually have to do with defeat rather than absence of prima facie justification: beliefs that pop up in our head should be recognized as stemming from untrustworthy sources, and so we acquire defeating higher-order beliefs about the first-order beliefs. I also argue that this defeat should be able to occur even if the higher-order beliefs are themselves unjustified. This defeater-account of clairvoyance is preferable to several externalist alternatives. Making reliability relative to a specific world seems rather ad hoc, and further requirements on justification, such as evidence-based belief, cognitively integrated belief, or properly produced belief, all appear unnecessary and are susceptible to adapted versions of the clairvoyance case.I further argue for an alternative inferentialist reliablist response to the New Evil Demon Intuition which treats it as mistaken rather than correct. The New Evil Demon Intuition might arise because of a mistaken view of actual perceptual justification as having to do with experiential evidence. This mistaken view could be explained by the fact that experience is actually reliably connected to belief and is often cited in response to a knowledge-challenge. If this is a correct analysis of the New Evil Demon Intuition, then there is an element of question-begging involved when this scenario is still pressed against inferentialist reliabilists who do not adhere to the experientialist assumption it presupposes.With the inferentialist reliabilist account in hand,we are able to see that many of the premises of the epistemological argument from hallucination are problematic. Evidence does not appear to be required for perceptual knowledge, as perceptual justification does not even require such evidence. Moreover, if we accept a reliabilist model of introspection, then we are often able to know on the basis of introspection that we are perceiving rather than hallucinating. Once one gets clear about the alternatives, it becomes apparent that the argument thrives on internalist assumptions about justification and knowledge that one need not accept. (shrink)

The following theses form an inconsistent triad. -/- REPRESENTATIONISM: The phenomenal properties of a perceptual experience are identical to (some of) the experience’s representational properties. -/- PHENOMENAL INTERNALISM: The phenomenal properties of a perceptual experience supervene on the intrinsic properties of the experience’s subject. STRONG EXTERNALISM: None of the representational properties of a perceptual experience is fixed by the intrinsic properties of the experience’s subject. -/- The fact that these three theses are jointly inconsistent is one of the emerging (...) problems in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception and consciousness. It’s a problem because the theses are all quite attractive. Our aim here is to make the problem explicit and survey the options for resolving it. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a theory of perception distinct both from classical sense-datum theories and from intentionalist theories, that is theories according to which one perceives external objects by dint of a relation with a propositional content. The alternative I propose completely rejects any representational element in perception. When one sees that an object has a property, the situation or state of affairs of its having that property is one's perception, so that the object and (...) property are literally part of one's mind. The most obvious objection to this view is that it embodies a rampant form of idealism. It is argued to the contrary, via consideration of the metaphysics of situations, that the theory is entirely consistent with a robustly realist view of the world. (shrink)

Predictive processing accounts of perception assume that perception does not work in a purely bottom-up fashion but also uses acquired knowledge to make top-down predictions about the incoming sensory signals. This provides a challenge for foundationalist accounts of perception according to which perceptual beliefs are epistemically basic, that is, epistemically independent from other beliefs. If prior beliefs rationally influence which perceptual beliefs we come to accept, then foundationalism about perception appears untenable. I review several ways in (...) which foundationalism might be reconciled with PP from both an internalist and externalist perspective, and argue that an externalist foundationalism provides the best match with PP. (shrink)

This essay aims to expose the metaphysical underpinnings of enactivism. While enactivism relies heavily on rejecting the traditional mind-body problem by excluding the familiar thought experiments that favor phenomenal dualism, the crucial point that is overlooked is instead the brain-body problem, specifically the crucial interaction between the brain and the bodily limbs in their embodied activities of perception and cognition. If enactivism is correct, differences in sensory experience necessarily entail differences in embodied activity—this is the metaphysical core of enactivism, (...) which we think is entirely wrong. We will argue that a physical or biological body ("Körper") is configured or shaped into a perceptually living body ("Leib") by brain patterns and not by embodied activity or by the so-called sensorimotor contingencies. Undoubtedly, embodied actions influence sensory perception. However, since variations in embodied actions do not necessarily lead to variations in sensory experience, they are not metaphysically constitutive of these experiences (supervenience claim). (shrink)

In this paper, I compare various theories of perception in relation to the question of the epistemological and ontological status of the qualities that appear in perceptual experience. I group these theories into two main views: quality externalism and quality internalism, and I highlight their contrasting problems in accounting for phenomena such as perceptual relativity, illusions and hallucinations. Then, I propose an alternative view, which I call qualitative relationism and which conceives of the subject and the object of (...) perceptual experience as essentially related to one another in a process of co-constitution out of fundamental qualities. I lend support to this view by drawing on Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, which I complement with a form of neutral monism. I argue that the investigation of the temporal structure of perceptual experience leads us to find at its heart a qualitative process that is more fundamental than the two relata of perception and that gives rise to them. Then, I extend this account of perception into a general theory of intentionality and experience and I develop its implications into a neutral monist metaphysics. (shrink)

I present a view of conscious perception that supposes a processual unity between the activity in the brain and the perceived event in the external world. I use the rainbow to provide a first example, and subsequently extend the same rationale to more complex examples such as perception of objects, faces and movements. I use a process-based approach as an explanation of ordinary perception and other variants, such as illusions, memory, dreams and mental imagery. This approach provides (...) new insights into the problem of conscious representation and phenomenal consciousness. It is a form of anti- cranialism different from but related to other kinds of externalism. (shrink)

This paper responds to critical comments by Christopher Hill, Ram Neta, and Nico Orlandi on my book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence (OUP 2018). It addresses questions about why analyzing mental states in terms of capacities is more explanatory powerful than analyzing them in terms of processes. It further develops my view of functions and their relation to mental capacities. It clarifies the internalist commitments of my externalist view of content, consciousness, and evidence. The topics addressed include (...) further the many-properties problem, the relation between what is perceived and what is represented, as well as the evidential transparency principle. (shrink)

Despite the fact that many of our beliefs are justified by perceptual experience, there is relatively little exploration of the connections between epistemic justification and perceptual content. This is unfortunate since it seems likely that some views of justification will require particular views of content, and the package of the two might be quite a bit less attractive than either view considered alone. I will argue that this is the case for epistemic internalism. In particular, epistemic internalism requires a view (...) of perceptual content that results in an error theory of perception. This, in turn, hobbles the internalist’s account of perceptual justification. While there are various stages along the way at which one can resist the argument, each one will involve significant commitments that highlight heretofore unacknowledged connections between justification and content. Even if the internalist is willing to make these moves and resist the argument, the argument reveals a novel way for the epistemic externalist to resist one of internalism’s main arguments. (shrink)

In Mossio & Taraborelli (2008) we challenged the assumption according to which the ecological and sensorimotor approaches are mere conceptual variations on the same enactive theme. We showed, on the contrary, that they endorse substantially different notions of an 'action-dependent perceptual invariant' and we submitted that this distinction has interesting theoretical and empirical implications. This dissimilarity between ecological and sensorimotor theories stems, in our view, from a more fundamental divergence on the nature of perceptual information. Since Gibson's work, the ecological (...) approach has adopted a fundamentally realist stance, according to which this information is 'picked up', 'revealed', 'encountered' and 'exploited' by the organism (as a range of affordances) but not 'constituted' by the activity of the organism. In contrast, sensorimotor approaches take an explicit interactivist position, which sees the perceiver's motor activity as a determinant of perceptual information itself. Pascal & O'Regan (2008) suggest that our analysis of the relationship between ecological, sensorimotor and enactive theories would benefit from a further distinction. The original enactive approach (Varela et al. 1991; Maturana, 2002; Thompson, 2007), they argue, should not be lumped together with contemporary sensorimotor approaches to perception: whereas sensorimotor theories endorse an externalist view of perception, according to which 'perception can only be understood as a form of interaction of the organism with the environment', the original enactive approach by Varela and collaborators would have strong 'idealist underpinnings'. (shrink)