Perceptual knowledge and the metaphysics of experience

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 58, Issue 233, 2008, Pages 642-664

  Pace, Michael ^a  

^a CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949426688     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.536.x     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. For an especially useful discussion of how the new debates about intentionality connect with the older debates about the directness of sense-perception, see M. Martin, Uncovering Appearances (forthcoming)
2. As will be made clear below, defences of this view are forced by the problem posed by hallucinations to hold a view often called 'disjunctivism' regarding the nature of sensory experiences. See J.M. Hinton, 'Visual Experiences', Mind, 76 (1967), pp. 217-27
3. W.P. Alston, 'Back to the Theory of Appearing', Philosophical Perspectives, 13 (1999), pp. 181-203
4. J. McDowell, Mind and World (Harvard UP, 1994)
5. H. Langsam, 'The Theory of Appearing Defended', Philosophical Studies, 87 (1997), pp. 33-59
6. M. Martin, 'The Transparency of Experience', Mind and Language, 17 (2002), pp. 376-425
7. See B. Brewer, Perception and Reason (Oxford UP, 1999)
8. McDowell, 'Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge', in J. Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge (Oxford UP, 1988), pp. 208-19
9. Alston, 'Perceptual Knowledge', in J. Greco and E. Sosa (eds), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology (Malden: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 223-42
10. 'Back to the Theory of Appearing', 'Chisholm on the Epistemology of Perception', in L.E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), pp. 107-25
11. and 'Sellars and the "Myth of the Given"', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65 (2002), pp. 69-86
12. Although I call this a version of foundationalism, it is consistent with one kind of coherentism. Even though many coherentists accept that only the contents of S's beliefs determine whether a proposition is justified for S, one version of coherentism allows appearances to provide partial foundational justification for beliefs, though not enough for S to be justified in the sense of 'justification' that does not admit of degrees. See J. Kvanvig and W. Riggs, 'Can a Coherence Theory Appeal to Appearance States?', Philosophical Studies, 67 (1992), pp. 197-217
13. This point is made effectively in J. Pryor, 'The Skeptic and the Dogmatist', Noûs, 34 (2000), pp. 517-49, at p. 536
14. See, e.g., Pryor, 'The Skeptic and the Dogmatist'
15. M. Huemer, Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001)
16. and 'Direct Realism and the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61 (2000), pp. 397-413. Thomas Reid was arguably an early advocate of using the non-inferential nature of perceptual beliefs as a ground for opposing scepticism
17. Though there are some idiosyncrasies in my labels for these approaches, my description of theories of sense-perception is fairly standard. See T. Crane, 'The Problem of Perception', in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2006/entries/perception- problem
18. and my 'Perception, Contemporary Views', in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2006), pp. 187-94, for more details
19. and they thus count as intentionalists on my way of defining things. F. Jackson, in his Perception: a Representative Theory (Cambridge UP, 1977), is one of the few clear examples of a subjectivist sense-datum theorist in the sense defined here
20. Intentionalism, as I am thinking of it here, is compatible with the idea that phenomenal character is not exhausted by the public features and objects represented in experience. Thus it also counts as intentionalism to hold that the phenomenal character of an experience is determined by features which the experience represents, as well as intrinsic, non-representational features of some sort. Some philosophers use the term 'intentionalism' for the more restrictive view that phenomenal character is entirely reducible to (or at any rate supervenes on) intentional content. Prominent defences of intentionalism in this more restrictive sense include M. Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness (MIT Press, 1995)
21. F.I. Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind (MIT Press, 1995)
22. G. Harman, 'The Intrinsic Quality of Experience', in N.J. Block et al. (eds), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997), pp. 663-75
23. Defences of intentionalism in the broader sense in which I use the term additionally include C. Peacocke, Sense and Content (Oxford UP, 1983)
24. T. Crane, Elements of Mind (Oxford UP, 2001)
25. See J. Foster, The Nature of Perception (Oxford UP, 2000)
26. Alston develops his 'theory of appearing' in his 'Externalist Theories of Perception', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50 (1990), pp. 73-97, 'Chisholm on the Epistemology of Sense Perception', 'Perceptual Knowledge' and 'Back to the Theory of Appearing'
27. A related view is defended by Langsam, 'The Theory of Appearing Defended'. G.E. Moore defended a theory of appearing in his 'Some Judgments of Perception', in R.J. Swartz (ed.), Perceiving, Sensing and Knowing (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 136-7, though he later gave up the view. Alston clearly defends a disjunctivist view of experiences as I have defined it here, although he does not use that label for his view. The main differences between Alston and other disjunctivists, concerning the relata of experience, do not affect the present discussion
28. Adverbialism has been developed in a way which is a version of intentionalism by M. Tye, 'The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience', Philosophical Review, 93 (1984), pp. 195-225. Alston's criticisms seem to target only subjectivist versions of adverbialism
29. This is Chisholm's strategy for defending his epistemic principles. For his defence of his 'particularist' approach, see R.M. Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion (Marquette UP, 1973)
30. R.A. Fumerton, 'Externalism and Epistemological Direct Realism', The Monist, 81 (1998), pp. 393-406
31. Cf. S. Sturgeon, Matters of Mind: Consciousness, Reason and Nature (London: Routledge, 2000)
32. T. Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits (Oxford UP, 2000), ch. 8
33. See Alston, 'Perception and Representation', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 70 (2005), pp. 263-89
34. Martin, 'The Transparency of Experience'