Abstract
This paper challenges the assumption, widely taken for granted, that the nature of perception can be investigated independently of the question whether it does or does not figure in the self-consciousness of the perceiver. Kern argues that the main obstacle that hinders us in understanding the idea of an intrinsically self-conscious capacity for perception, which enables its bearer to know how things are, is based on the false premise that perception and judgment are two distinguishable capacities. By contrast, Kern argues that the perceptions of a being that is able to judge are not exercises of a capacity that is more primitive than its capacity for judgment, but rather a specific manner of its exercise. The two-capacity view is taken for granted by almost everybody in the debate about perceptual knowledge, including John McDowell, whose conception of perceptual knowledge gives us the most sophisticated and complex account of the relation between perception and judgment. Kern argues that the two-capacity view, as such, is confused. Perceiving how things are is a distinctive manner of making judgments about them. Perceptions, as such, equip their bearer with genuine knowledge of the world. Perception is, on this view, a fundamental cognitive capacity of the human mind to acquire knowledge of how things are.
