The book attempts, in as comprehensive a way as possible, to make clear the central issues for the theory of knowledge, so as to provide a framework for that subject and also to indicate something of the way in which, as the author believes, the issues should be faced.

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INTRODUCTION If there is one underlying implication in the following essays it is the inadequacy of the information-processing model for cognitive ...

The traditional empiricist view of perception is that in perception we receive information through the senses of the so-called external world. This idea is reflected in the notions of the ‘given’ and of 1‘data’ which have figured so largely in theories of perception. Even if philosophers of this persuasion have gone on to say something about what we do with the data, it remains true that at rock bottom and in the last resort perception is thought of as something passive. (...) I have tried to chart the historical issues elsewhere, and I shall not repeat anything about them here. That is not my concern. I am here interested in the question whether the notion of a purely passive perceiver makes any sense in itself. That it does not has been suggested by philosophers on occasion. There are some brief remarks to that effect in G.E.M. Anscombe’s Intention ; and Stuart Hampshire’s Thought and Action lays great weight on action in connection with our awareness of the world, although I do not myself believe that the exact nature of the connection is clearly worked out by him. Some aspects of his views, however, have been taken up by Campbell Garnett with explicit reference to perception in his The Perceptual Process, with a resulting theory that bears more than a superficial resemblance to that of Maine de Biran. (shrink)

It has frequently been argued that there is a clear and irreducible difference between statements of fact and statements of value. To say “X is cobalt” and “X is good” is to make statements differing not merely in detail but in kind. To attempt to reduce the second type of statement to the first is to commit the “naturalistic” fallacy. To attempt to reduce the first type of statement to the second is to commit the “idealistic” fallacy. In this paper, (...) I shall accept this position as correct but argue that, far from settling the question of value science, it is merely the elementary premise from which all discussion of this matter must begin. (shrink)