Abstract
Smithies defends the phenomenal sufficiency thesis, according to which every perceptual experience provides immediate, defeasible justification to believe some content in virtue of its phenomenal character alone. This commentary challenges this thesis by presenting two kinds of knowledge, the possession of which seems necessary for perceptual justification.
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Informativity is more basic than reliability. For instance, we can believe that a newspaper is such that it informs us what happens in our society without believing that it is reliable. But the opposite direction does not hold.
This amnesia case is analogical to the case in which one knows that one is in a mental state representing P, but she does not know whether it represents P as true, false, desirable, undesirable, or others.
We want to leave it open whether the amnestic subject is inclined to judge that there is a yellow banana in front of her. Our point is that even if she is so inclined, she cannot understand why; she cannot understand that it is her perceptual experience that inclines her to judge that there is a yellow banana.
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This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 21K00011 and 20K00001.
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Ogusa, Y., Niikawa, T. A challenge to the phenomenal sufficiency thesis. AJPH 1, 16 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00018-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00018-2