From PhilPapers forum Epistemology:

2010-10-20
Reading Recommendations: Human observation & knowledge
Reply to Varun Bhatta

Hi, 

I take it that your area of interest is concerns observational knowledge and the relation between knowledge and perception more generally. Suggesting "the" books - not to mention the essays - would make a very long list. Here is a short one: 

- Historical:

Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Reid, Mill  

Kant, Kant, Kant 

- Modern (analytic and other):

Logical positivism (M. Friedman has useful historical stuff) esp. Carnap and Schlick. Ayer is related. Earlier empiricists include Moore, Broad, Price. The span between, say, Mill and Broad is complex and interesting. Similarly in Germany between, say, Lotze and Heidegger (esp. Neo-Kantianism, Phenomenology). Also the pragmatists, like Pierce and James, and work influenced by them, including C. S. Lewis: Mind and the World Order (1929). 

- Modern (analytic): 

Chisholm: Perceiving (1957), essays (and epistemology intro books)

Quine: Word and Object (1960), various essays

Strawson: Bounds of Sense (1966)

Sellars: Science, Perception, and Reality (1963) (including "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind"), various essays

- Recent (analytic):

Much work esp. on knowledge, perception, justification. An example from only this year, presenting a comprehensive theory, is Burge: Origins of Objectivity.


Best, J. D.