An attempt is made to pinpoint the way in which perception is related to belief. Although, for familiar reasons, it is not true to say that we necessarily believe in the existence of the objects we perceive, nor that they actually have their ostensible characteristics, it is argued that the relation between perception and belief is more than merely contingent.There are two main issues to address. The first is that ‘collateral’ beliefs may impede perceptual belief. (...) It is argued that this still assigns an essential role to belief in perception, though the belief may be of an attenuated form. The second is Fred Dretske’s claim that even attenuated belief may be entirely absent from perception. It is argued that ‘non-epistemic’ perception can be understood only by employing the concept of ‘epistemic’ perception; that the former can occur only partially---i.e., within perceptions that are otherwise epistemic; and that by switching attention from the perception of objects to the Phenomenological tradition’s concern with the perception of world, we can see that perception must be entirely permeated with ‘doxastic’ force. (shrink)

An attempt is made to pinpoint the way in which perception is related to belief. Although, for familiar reasons, it is not true to say that we necessarily believe in the existence of the objects we perceive, nor that they actually have their ostensible characteristics, it is argued that the relation between perception and belief is more than merely contingentThere are two main issues to address. the first is that ‘collateral’ beliefs may impede perceptual belief. (...) It is argued that this still assigns an essential role to belief in perception, though the belief may be of an attenuated form. the second is Fred Dretske's claim that even attenuated belief may be entirely absent from perception. It is argued that (a) ‘non‐epistemic’perception can be understood only by employing the concept of ‘epistemic’perception; (b) that the former can occur only partially—i.e., within perceptions that are otherwise epistemic; and (c) that by switching attention from the perception of objects to the Phenomenological tradition's concern with the perception of world, we can see that perception must be entirely permeated with ‘doxastic’force. (shrink)

This book offers solutions to two persistent and I believe closely related problems in epistemology. The first problem is that of drawing a principled distinction between perception and inference: what is the difference between seeing that something is the case and merely believing it on the basis of what we do see? The second problem is that of specifying which beliefs are epistemologically basic (i.e., directly, or noninferentially, justified) and which are not. I argue that what makes a (...) class='Hi'>belief a perceptual belief, or a basic belief, is not any introspectible feature of the belief but rather the nature of the cognitive system, or "module", that is causally responsible for the belief. Thus, even zombies, who in the philosophical literature lack conscious experiences altogether, can have basic, justified, perceptual beliefs. -/- The theories of perceptual and basic beliefs developed in the monograph are embedded in a larger reliabilist epistemology. I use this theory of basic beliefs to develop a detailed reliabilist theory: Inferentialist Reliabilism, which offers a reliabilist theory of inferential justification and which solves some longstanding problems for other reliabilist views by demanding inferential support for some—but not all—beliefs. The book is an instance of a thoroughgoingly naturalistic approach to epistemology. Many of my arguments have an empirical basis, and the view that I endorse reserves a central role for the cognitive sciences—in particular, cognitive neuroscience—in filling in the details of an applied epistemological theory. (shrink)

Perceptual experience is one of our fundamental sources of epistemic justification—roughly, justification for believing that a proposition is true. The ability of perceptual experience to justify beliefs can nevertheless be questioned. This article focuses on an important challenge that arises from countenancing that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable. -/- The thesis of cognitive penetrability of perception states that the content of perceptual experience can be influenced by prior or concurrent psychological factors, such as beliefs, fears and desires. Advocates of (...) this thesis could for instance claim that your desire of having a tall daughter might influence your perception, so that she appears to you to be taller than she is. Although cognitive penetrability of perception is a controversial empirical hypothesis, it does not appear implausible. The possibility of its veracity has been adduced to challenge positions that maintain that perceptual experience has inherent justifying power. -/- This article presents some of the most influential positions in contemporary literature about whether cognitive penetration would undermine perceptual justification and why it would or would not do so. -/- Some sections of this article focus on phenomenal conservatism, a popular conception of epistemic justification that more than any other has been targeted with objections that adduce the cognitive penetrability of experience. (shrink)

Some philosophers, such as N. R. Hanson, have suggested that one's perceiving an object entails one's having a particular perceptual belief, and not just some belief or other, about that object. This article constructs an argument showing that such a view generates an infinite regress of required perceptual beliefs.

The present paper investigates the first step of rational belief acquisition. It, thus, focuses on justificatory relations between perceptual experiences and perceptual beliefs, and between their contents, respectively. In particular, the paper aims at outlining how it is possible to reason from the content of perceptual experiences to the content of perceptual beliefs. The paper thereby approaches this aim by combining a formal epistemology perspective with an eye towards recent advances in philosophy of cognition. Furthermore the paper restricts its (...) focus, it concentrates on the case of color perception and perceptual beliefs about color. (shrink)

My thesis traces Russell's development of his theory of belief from 1913 to 1918 under the impact of his student, Ludwig Wittgenstein. ;In chapter one I focus on Russell's multiple relation theory of belief from 1910 to early 1913 and on Russell's view of perception as a relation between minds and objects. I show that, on Russell's theory, acts of believing or judging are intended to explain the different types of judgments and to account for how propositions (...) acquire a complete sense. I argue that Russell faces difficulties explaining the status of relations occurring in propositions which are believed, and that his account of how we perceive types of objects is in tension with his theory that beliefs are facts. ;In chapter two I examine Wittgenstein's influence on Russell's 1913 work, Theory of Knowledge. I argue that in Theory of Knowledge Russell responds to Wittgenstein's objections to his theory of judgment by proposing a theory of unnamable asymmetrical relations and unasserted mental relations. I further argue that Russell begins to see that, without postulating further judgments and thus entailing a vicious regress, his notion of perception cannot support an adequate account of distinctions between types of entities judged. I claim---with Sommerville and others---that Russell's "paralysis" in the face of Wittgenstein's criticisms in 1913 concerns his inability to explain judgment without explaining type distinctions and vice versa. ;In chapter three I examine the development of Russell's thought between 1914 and late 1918 in response to Wittgenstein. I suggest that in early 1918 Russell begins to accept Wittgenstein's claim that in belief-contexts, the proposition is a fact consisting of grammatical relations of words. I further claim that, unlike Wittgenstein, Russell explains all such relations by giving an account of our psychological needs and limitations. Finally I conjecture that Russell begins to be inclined to reject his relational conception of perception, and of belief as involving a subject, not only because he begins to take neutral monism more seriously, but also because of difficulties internal to his theory of perception, difficulties that Wittgenstein may have suggested to him. (shrink)

According to a traditional view, there is no categorical difference between the phenomenology of perception and the phenomenology of imagination; the only difference is in degree (of intensity, resolution, etc.) and/or in accompanying beliefs. There is no categorical difference between what it is like to perceive a dog and what it is like to imagine a dog; the former is simply more vivid and/or is accompanied by the belief that a dog is really there. A sustained argument against (...) this traditional view is prosecuted by Sartre, who develops an alternative according to which there is a categorical difference between the two phenomenologies. This paper draws on Sartre’s work in this area to develop a similar account of perception and imagination as categorically different. (shrink)

In book 10 of the Republic we find a new argument for the division of the soul. The argument’s structure is similar to the arguments in book 4 but, unlike those arguments, it centres on a purely cognitive conflict: believing and disbelieving the same thing, at the same time. The argument presents two interpretive difficulties. First, it assumes that a conflict between a belief and an appearance—e.g. disbelieving that a stick partially immersed in water is, as it appears, bent—entails (...) a conflict between beliefs. Prima facie, there is only one belief, the belief that contradicts the appearance. Second, it is unclear what parts of the soul Plato intends to divide between: some argue that it is, as in book 4, a partition between a rational and a non-rational part; others argue that it is a new partition between a higher and a lower subdivision of the rational part. This paper offers solutions to both difficulties through an analysis of what Plato means by φαινόμενα, ‘appearances’, and δόξαι, ‘beliefs’. It is argued, first, that the relevant appearances are entirely sensory but nonetheless sufficiently belief-like to (a) warrant being called δόξαι and (b) oppose, by themselves, our beliefs; there is no need for a third mental state, a belief that assents to the appearance. A second claim concerns a central line in the argument, 602e4–6, that has served as the primary evidence that the partition is within the rational part of the soul. Those who wish to avoid this conclusion generally resort to alternative, and less natural, translations of 602e4–6. It is argued that this is unnecessary: once we have correctly understood sensory appearances, we see that the standard translation of 602e4–6 in fact entails a division between a rational and a non-rational part of the soul. (shrink)

Perception can’t have disjunctive content. Whereas you can think that a box is blue or red, you can’t see a box as being blue or red. Based on this fact, I develop a new problem for the ambitious predictive processing theory, on which the brain is a machine for minimizing prediction error, which approximately implements Bayesian inference. I describe a simple case of updating a disjunctive belief given perceptual experience of one of the disjuncts, in which Bayesian inference (...) and predictive coding pull in opposite directions, with the former implying that one’s confidence in the belief should increase, and the latter implying that it should decrease. Thus, predictive coding fails to approximately implement Bayesian inference across the interface between belief and perception. (shrink)

This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The fifteen essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links which can be made between the two. The first (...) section of the book argues the point that knowledge consists of beliefs with the right objective connection to facts; two essays discuss this conception of knowledge's implications for naturalism. The next section articulates a view of perception, attempting to distinguish conceptual states from phenomenal states. A naturalized philosophy of mind, and thus a naturalized epistemology, is articulated in the third section. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students, and will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of biology. (shrink)

I argue that sentences ascribing beliefs to non-human animals have the same logical form as sentences of the "perceives that" variety. Pace D.M. Armstrong, I argue that animal belief sentences can be referentially opaque, just as perception sentences containing a propositional clause are. In both cases, referential opacity requires our assuming that the animal believer and the human perceiver has each identified the object of the belief or perception.

Donald Davidson famously held that only beliefs provide reasons for belief. Perceptual experiences, he held, are not even propositional attitudes, and thus doubly disqualified from being reason providers. John McDowell and others have tried to restore the intuitive reason-providing role of experience by suggesting that experiences do have contents. However, on McDowell’s account, experiences provide ‘reasons’ in a sense very different from the Davidsonian. In this paper, I argue that there is a better way of rescuing the reason-providing role (...) of experience: Construed as a (special) kind of belief, experience provides reasons for belief in precisely the Davidsonian sense. Moreover, the doxastic account of experience I suggest integrates naturally both with the Davidsonian picture of content determination and, consequently, with Davidsonian anti-skepticism. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

A conception of the relation between reasons for belief, justified belief, and knowledge is outlined on which a belief is justified, in the sense of being well‐founded, only if there is an adequate reason to believe it, reasons to believe something are constituted by truths, and a reason to believe something justifies one in believing it only if it is constituted by a truth or truths that one knows. It is argued that, contrary to initial appearances, perceptual (...) justification does not pose a problem for this view. The discussion touches upon the relation between believing for reasons and reflective knowledge. (shrink)

I give a brief precis of Lyons' book. I discuss the problem of delineating basic from non-basic beliefs. I argue that one of Lyons' possible solutions doesn't work - his definition of a perceptual module does not allow us to decide which beliefs are basic. And I argue that another possible solution undermines some of Lyons' motivation. The intuitive understanding of belief may not generate the Clairvoyancy troubles he fears.

Part of a book symposium with Terry Horgan, Alvin Goldman, and Peter Graham.

Why should we believe that perceptions justify beliefs? One argument starts with the premise that sentences of the form “a looks F” may be used to justify conclusions of the form “a is F”. I will argue that this argument for the claim that perceptions justify beliefs founders on the following dilemma: Either “a looks F” does not report the content of a perception or, if it does, then it does not justify the conclusion “a is F”.

This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in (...) which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike. (shrink)

Event concepts are unstructured atomic concepts that apply to event types. A paradigm example of such an event type would be that of diaper changing, and so a putative example of an atomic event concept would be DADDY'S-CHANGING-MY-DIAPER.1 I will defend two claims about such concepts. First, the conceptual claim that it is in principle possible to possess a concept such as DADDY'S-CHANGING-MY-DIAPER without possessing the concept DIAPER. Second, the empirical claim that we actually possess such concepts and that they (...) play an important role in our cognitive lives. The argument for the empirical claim has the form of an inference to the best explanation and is aimed at those who are already willing to attribute concepts and beliefs to infants and nonhuman animals. Many animals and prelinguistic infants seem capable of re-identifying event-types in the world, and they seem to store information about things happening at particular times and places. My account offers a plausible model of how such organisms are able to do this without attributing linguistically structured mental states to them. And although language allows adults to form linguistically structured mental representations of the world, there is no good reason to think that such structured representations necessarily replace the unstructured ones. There is also no good reason for a philosopher who is willing to explain the behavior of an organism by appealing to atomic concepts of individuals or kinds to not use a similar form of explanation when explaining the organism's capacity to recognize events. -/- We can form empirical concepts of individuals, kinds, properties, event-types, and states of affairs, among other things, and I assume that such concepts function like what François Recanati calls ‘mental files’ or what Ruth Millikan calls ‘substance concepts’ (Recanati 2012; Millikan 1999, 2000, 2017). To possess such a concept one must have a reliable capacity to re-identify the object in question, but this capacity of re-identification does not fix the reference of the concept. Such concepts allow us to collect and utilize useful information about things that we re-encounter in our environment. We can distinguish between a perception-action system and a perception-belief system, and I will argue that empirical concepts, including atomic event concepts, can play a role in both systems. The perception-action system involves the application of concepts in the service of (often skilled) action. We can think of the concept as a mental file containing motor-plans that can be activated once the individual recognizes that they are in a certain situation. In this way, recognizing something (whether an object or an event) as a token of a type, plays a role in guiding immediate action. The perception-belief system, in contrast, allows for the formation of beliefs that can play a role in deliberation and planning and in the formation of expectations. I distinguish between two particular types of belief which I call where-beliefs and when-beliefs, and I argue that we can model the formation of such perceptual beliefs in nonlinguistic animals and human infants in terms of the formation of a link between an empirical concept and a position on a cognitive map. According to the account offered, seemingly complex beliefs, such as a baby's belief that Daddy changed her diaper in the kitchen earlier, will not be linguistically structured. If we think that prelinguistic infants possess such concepts and are able to form such beliefs, it is likely that adults do too. The ability to form such beliefs does not require the capacity for public language, and we can model them in nonlinguistic terms; thus, we have no good reason to think of such beliefs as propositional attitudes. Of course, we can use sentences to refer to such beliefs, and thus it is possible to think of such beliefs as somehow relations to propositions. But it is not clear to me what is gained by this as we have a perfectly good way to think about the structure of such beliefs that does not involve any appeal to language. (shrink)

Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

When we see an object, we also represent those parts of it that are not visible. The question is how we represent them: this is the problem of amodal perception. I will consider three possible accounts: (a) we see them, (b) we have non-perceptual beliefs about them and (c) we have immediate perceptual access to them, and point out that all of these views face both empirical and conceptual objections. I suggest and defend a fourth account, according to which (...) we represent the occluded parts of perceived objects by means of mental imagery. This conclusion could be thought of as a (weak) version of the Strawsonian dictum, according to which “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself”. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs—that much seems obvious. As Brewer puts it, “sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs” (this volume, xx). In Mind and World McDowell argues that we can get from this apparent platitude to the controversial claim that perceptual experiences have conceptual content: [W]e can coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgement and belief, but only if we take it that spontaneity is already implicated in receptivity; that is, only if we take it that experiences (...) have conceptual content. (1994, 162) Brewer agrees. Their view is sometimes called conceptualism; nonconceptualism is the rival position, that experiences have nonconceptual content. One initial obstacle is understanding what the issue is. What is conceptual content, and how is it different from nonconceptual content? Section 1 of this paper explains two versions of each of the rival positions: state (non)conceptualism and content (non)conceptualism; the latter pair is the locus of the relevant dispute. Two prominent arguments for content nonconceptualism—the richness argument and the continuity argument—both fail (section 2). McDowell’s and Brewer’s epistemological defenses of content conceptualism are also faulty (section 3). Section 4 gives a more simple-minded case for conceptualism; finally, some reasons are given for rejecting the claim—on one natural interpretation—that experiences justify beliefs. (shrink)

One very popular framework in contemporary epistemology is Bayesian. The central epistemic state is subjective confidence, or credence. Traditional epistemic states like belief and knowledge tend to be sidelined, or even dispensed with entirely. Credences are often introduced as familiar mental states, merely in need of a special label for the purposes of epistemology. But whether they are implicitly recognized by the folk or posits of a sophisticated scientific psychology, they do not appear to fit well with perception, (...) as is often noted. -/- This paper investigates the tension between probabilistic cognition and non-probabilistic perception. The tension is real, and the solution—to adapt a phrase from Quine and Goodman—is to renounce credences altogether. (shrink)

This book focuses on the social psychology of belief systems and how they influence perceptions of reality. These belief systems, from politics to religion to science, shape one¿s thoughts and views, but also can be the cause of conflict and disagreement over values, particularly when they are enacted in political policies. ¿ In¿Belief Systems and the Perceptions of Reality, editors Bastiaan Rutjens and Mark Brandt examine the social psychological effects at the heart of the conflict, by bringing (...) together contributions under five themes: Motivated Reasoning; Inequality; Threat; Scientists Interpreting Science; and People Interpreting Science. This book aims to create a more integrated understanding of reality perception and its connection with belief systems, viewed through the lens of social psychology. ¿ The synthesis of expert contributors as well as the literature around social psychology and belief systems makes this a unique resource for students, researchers and academics in behavioural and social sciences, as well as activists and journalists working in this political field. (shrink)

Predictive approaches to the mind claim that perception, cognition, and action can be understood in terms of a single framework: a hierarchy of Bayesian models employing the computational strategy of predictive coding. Proponents of this view disagree, however, over the extent to which perception is direct on the predictive approach. I argue that we can resolve these disagreements by identifying three distinct notions of perceptual directness: psychological, metaphysical, and epistemological. I propose that perception is plausibly construed as (...) psychologically indirect on the predictive approach, in the sense of being constructivist or inferential. It would be wrong to conclude from this, however, that perception is therefore indirect in a metaphysical or epistemological sense on the predictive approach. In the metaphysical case, claims about the inferential properties of constructivist perceptual mechanisms are consistent with both direct and indirect solutions to the metaphysical problem of perception (e.g. naïve realism, representationalism, sense datum theory). In the epistemological case, claims about the inferential properties of constructivist perceptual mechanisms are consistent with both direct and indirect approaches to the justification of perceptual belief. In this paper, I demonstrate how proponents of the predictive approach have conflated these distinct notions of perceptual directness and indirectness, and I propose alternative strategies for developing the philosophical consequences of the approach. (shrink)

This paper explores how consumers perceive retailer ethics. Based on a review of the marketing and consumer research literature, we conceptualize consumer perceptions of the ethics of retailers as a multidimensional construct and propose that its effects on consumer purchase behavior and word-of-mouth communication are more salient when consumers have strong rather than weak ethical beliefs. The model was validated using a random sample of 399 respondents in a collectivist society. The results of structural equation modeling confirmed that CPER is (...) a second-order construct comprising product fairness, price fairness, non-deception, fair trade, and green products. CPER positively predicted consumer purchase behavior and word-of-mouth communication. Moreover, ethical beliefs moderated the positive relationship between CPER and the word-of-mouth communication of consumers with strong ethical beliefs but did not moderate the relationship between CPER and purchase behavior. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

[A]ny theory of practical rationality must explain— or explain away—the following: Rational: In many cases, what it is rational (in some sense) for one to do or intend to do depends on what one desires. [...] I argue that in order to capture the rational significance of desire, we need to consider both its content and its force, on analogy to the rational significance of both the force and content of beliefs and perceptual experiences. This will open up a new (...) and more elegant way of explaining Rational, while also allowing us to understand how our desires provide us with a basic form of normative experience. Thus, in the end, this will provide the basis for a novel defense of the ancient thesis that desire, in some sense, presents its object under the “guise of the good.”. (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.

Let us call ‘veridicalism’ the view that perceptual beliefs and observational reports are largely truthful. This paper aims to make a case for veridicalism by, among other things, examining in detail and ultimately deflating in import what many consider to be the view’s greatest threat, the so-called ‘theory-ladenness’ of perception and/or observation. In what follows, it is argued that to the extent that theoretical factors influence the formation of perceptual beliefs and observational reports, as theory-ladenness demands, that influence is (...) typically not detrimental to their veridicality or at least not irreversibly so. Central to the defence of veridicalism are two principles: that of internal similarities and that of internal dissimilarities. (shrink)

Thomas Reid argues that both perception and memory involve a conception of an object and usually cause a corresponding belief. According to defenders of the constitutive interpretation, such as Rebecca Copenhaver, the belief is constitutive of acts of perception and memory. I instead argue for a causal interpretation: although in normal circumstances perceiving and remembering cause a corresponding belief, the belief is not constitutive of perception or memory. Copenhaver's strongest argument for the constitutive (...) interpretation is that perception essentially represents objects as present, while memory essentially represents objects as past; since such tense markers can only occur within the beliefs, the beliefs must be an essential aspect of perception and memory. I argue, in contrast, that temporal markers are contained in our conceptions of objects, so beliefs do not play an essential role in distinguishing between perception and memory. Such a reading presupposes a “thick” interpretation of what Reid means by a conception, according to which a Reidian conception is a mode of presentation of the object apprehended. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It is (...) then argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truth- fulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It is (...) then argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truthfulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)

Our visual experience of the world is one of diverse objects and events, each with particular colors, shapes, and motions. This experience is so coherent, so immediate, and so effortless that it seems to result from a single system that lets us experience everything in our field of view. But however appealing, this belief is mistaken: there are severe limits on what can be visually experienced. -/- For example, in a display for air-traffic control it is important to track (...) all moving items. For a single item, this can be done without problem. Three or four can also be tracked, although some degree of effort may be needed. As the number is increased further, accurate tracking becomes more and more difficult—and eventually, impossible. Performance is evidently affected by a factor within the observer which enables certain kinds of perception to occur, but is limited in some way. This factor is generally referred to as attention. -/- At various times, attention has been associated with clarity of perception, intensity of perception, consciousness, selection, or the allocation of a limited “resource” enabling various operations (see Hatfield, 1998). During the past several decades, considerable progress has been achieved by focusing on the idea of selection (Broadbent, 1982). In particular, attention can be productively viewed as contingently selective processing. This can be embodied in various ways by various processes—there need not be a single quantity identified with all forms of attention, or a single site where it operates (Allport, 1993; Tsotsos, 2011). Although “paying attention” is often considered to be a unitary operation, it may simply refer to the control of one or more selective processes, ideally in a co-ordinated way. While this view has some cost in terms of conceptual simplicity, it can help make sense of a large set of phenomena. -/- This article surveys several of the major issues in our understanding of attention and how it relates to perception. It focuses on vision, since many—if not all—considerations are similar for all sensory modalities, and the level of understanding achieved in this domain is currently the most advanced. (shrink)

COVID-19 severity and mortality risk are greater for older adults whereas economic impact is deeper for younger adults. Using the Health Belief Model as a framework, this study used a web-based survey to examine how perceived COVID-19 susceptibility and severity and perceived efficacy of recommended health behaviors varied by age group and were related to the adoption of health behaviors. Proportional odds logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between age group and perceived COVID-19 susceptibility, severity, impact, and (...) health behavior efficacy and adoption. Structural equation modeling based on HBM constructs examined the relationships between health beliefs and behaviors. Data from 820 participants were analyzed. Middle-aged and older adults reported greater concerns about the personal risk of hospitalization and mortality, economic impact, and social impact of COVID-19 than young adults. Middle-aged adults also reported greatest concern for other age groups. Adoption and perceived efficacy of health behaviors was similar across age groups with few exceptions. Both middle-aged and older-adults were more likely to perceive their own and each other's age groups as responding adequately to COVID-19 compared to young adults. Structural equation modeling indicated perceived benefits of health behaviors were the primary driver of behavior uptake, with socioeconomic factors and perceived severity and susceptibility indirectly associated with uptake through their influence on perceived benefits. Overall, these results suggest adoption of health behaviors is very high with few differences between age groups, despite differences in perceived impact of COVID-19. Public health communications should focus on the benefits of health behaviors to drive adoption. (shrink)

This book deserves kudos. It presents one of the more novel versions of reliabilism to appear in recent years. The style is fast-paced and energetic, with no sacrifice in philosophical precision. It applies original interpretations of perceptual science to central issues in traditional epistemology, and should thereby earn itself a prominent place in the naturalistic epistemology literature. Finally, the book is more comprehensive than its title suggests. It illuminates a great many issues of traditional epistemology beyond perception, providing an (...) up-to-date and thorough-going basic epistemology. (shrink)

As a result of the devastating health effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, the lockdown has been considered a safety measure in many countries. In Pakistan, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in February 2020. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate people’s risk perception and protective behavior during the lockdown. Twenty-two (22) participants from eight big cities across Pakistan were interviewed. A six-step reflective thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The study focused on risk (...) class='Hi'>perception and protective behaviors. Our main analytical goal was to understand how risk perception shapes human behavior in the context of lockdown, pandemic-related information flow, and corresponding meaning-making. The study revealed that people influenced by information and advice campaigns form a perception of risk that has shaped their protective behavior. They used familiar means of coping with distress, including the search for strength through religious belief practices and following the precautions recommended by health professionals through the media. (shrink)

Husserl's theory of perception is remarkable in several respects. For one thing, Husserl rigorously distinguishes the parts and properties of the act of consciousness - its content -from the parts and properties of the object perceived. Second, Husserl's repeated insistence that perceptual consciousness places its subject in touch with the perceived object itself, rather than some representation that does duty for it, vindicates the commonsensical and phenomenologically grounded belief that when a thing appears to us, it is precisely (...) that thing, rather than some other thing (its 'appearance'), that we perceive. Third, his distinction between empty and intuitive acts, and his descriptions of their complex interplay in perceptual consciousness, provides a way of making sense of the fact that an object can be perceived even when some of its parts and properties are not. Finally, his theory of perceptual acts as constituents of higher-order acts of fulfilment provides one of the few detailed accounts in the philosophical literature of how a perceptual experience can transform a mere thought into knowledge, despite the fact that the relation between perception and belief is not a logical or inferential one. Because Husserl's theory of perception is a serious candidate for truth, it is also a serious candidate for philosophical criticism. As such, in what follows I will treat it as a live force to be reckoned with rather than a historical curiosity. (shrink)

Given a traditional intuitionist moral epistemology, it is notoriously difficult for moral realists to explain the reliability of our moral beliefs. This has led some to go looking for an alternative to intuitionism. Perception is an obvious contender. I previously argued that this is a dead end, that all moral perception is dependent on a priori moral knowledge. This suggests that perceptualism merely moves the bump in the rug where the reliability challenge is concerned. Preston Werner responds that (...) my account rests on an overly intellectualized model of perception. In this paper, I argue that though Werner may well be correct, my arguments, properly extended, still suggest that perceptualism leaves realists in no better position than intuitionism when it comes to the reliability challenge. (shrink)

Publicity may be considered “covert marketing” when the audience believes the message was created by an independent source rather than the product marketer. We focus on one form of publicity—video news releases —which are packaged video segments created and provided for free by a third party to the news organization. VNRs are usually shown without source disclosure. In study one, viewers’ beliefs about and perceptions of credibility in a news story are altered when they acquire persuasion knowledge about VNRs and (...) learn that the source of the story was an unedited VNR. Study two results show similar patterns despite the fact that source disclosure of the story was provided on screen. Importantly, the perceived ethics of VNRs impact perceptions of credibility. (shrink)

In the debate over the existence of composite objects, it is sometimes suggested that perceptual evidence justifies belief in composite objects. But it is almost never suggested that we are perceptually justified in believing in composite objects on the basis of the fact that the phenomenology of our perceptual experiences enables us to discriminate between situations where there are composite objects and situations where there are merely simples arranged composite object-wise. But while the thought that the phenomenology of our (...) perceptual experiences cannot enable us to discriminate between situations where there are composite objects and situations where there are merely simples arranged composite object-wise is commonly taken for granted, it requires some defence, both in light of its importance in shaping the debate and in light of its recently coming under attack by a prominent philosopher of perception. In this paper, I offer such a defence. (shrink)