Abstract: Since the most promising path to a solution to the problem of skepticism regarding perceptual knowledge seems to rest on a sharp distinction between perceiving and inferring, I begin by clarifying and defending that distinction. Next, I discuss the chief obstacle to success by this path, the difficulty in making the required distinction between merely logical possibilities that one is mistaken and the real (Austin) or relevant (Dretske) possibilities which would exclude knowledge. I argue that this distinction cannot be drawn in the ways Austin and Dretske suggest without begging the questions at issue. Finally, I sketch and defend a more radical way of identifying relevant possibilities that is inspired by Austin's controversial suggestion of a parallel between saying I know and saying I promise: a claim of knowledge of some particular matter is relative to a context in which questions about the matter have been raised

Abstract: The question I am interested in is this. What exactly is the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of knowledge on the basis of perception? The problem here, as I see it, is to solve simultaneously for the nature of this experience, and its role in acquiring and sustaining the relevant beliefs, in such a away as to vindicate what I regard as an undeniable datum, that perception is a basic source of knowledge about the mind- independent world, in a sense of basic which is also to be elucidated. I shall sketch the way in which I think that this should be done. In section I, I argue that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs. In section II, I explain how they do so. My thesis is that a correct account of the sense in which perceptual experiences are experiences of mind-independent things is itself an account of the way in which they provide peculiarly basic reasons for beliefs about the world around the perceiver

Abstract: 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

Abstract: What is the role of conscious perceptual experience in making thought about the mind- independent empirical world possible? What is the role of such experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge, about the way things are in that world? What is the relation between these two roles? My central argument is intended to establish that a proper account of the way in which perceptual experience is essential to our grasp of determinate thoughts about particular things in the world around us will at the same time yield a full explanation of the fundamental role which such experience plays in the acquisition of empirical knowledge, by providing us with reasons, which we recognize as such, to endorse the most basic thoughts about mind-independent things in belief

Abstract: The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called entitlement, that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti-individualism, a thesis about the nature of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states-hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined

Abstract: One of the most important and perennially debated philosophical questions is whether we can have knowledge of the external world. Butchvarov here considers whether and how skepticism with regard to such knowledge can be refuted or at least answered. He argues that only a direct realist view of perception has any hope of providing a compelling response to the skeptic and introduces the radical innovation that the direct object of perceptual, and even dreaming and hallucinatory, experience is always a material object, but not necessarily one that actually exists. This leads him to a metaphysics in which reality is ultimately constructed by human decisions out of objects that are ontologically more basic but which cannot be said in themselves to be either real or unreal

Abstract: We have justified beliefs about the external world, and some of these are formed directly on the basis of perception. I may justifiably believe that a certain dog is in certain manger, and I may have this belief because I can see that the dog is in the manger. So far, so good

Abstract: It is often thought that epistemic relations between experience and belief make it possible for our beliefs to be about or "directed towards" the empirical world. I focus on an influential attempt by John McDowell to defend a view along these lines. According to McDowell, unless experiences are the sorts of things that can be our reasons for holding beliefs, our beliefs would not be "answerable" to the facts they purportedly represent, and so would lack all empirical content. I argue that there is no intelligible conception of what it is for beliefs to be answerable to the facts that supports McDowell's claim that our empirical beliefs must be justified by experience

Abstract: According to Conceptualists like John McDowell and Bill Brewer, the representational content of perceptual experiences is wholly conceptual. One of the main!and only!arguments they advance for this claim has to do with the epistemological role of perceptual experiences. I focus on Bill Brewers "1999# version of the argument. I show why Brewer fails to satisfactorily motivate the premises of his argument, and suggest that opponents of Conceptualism could accept these premises without thereby endorsing the conclusion. Finally, I consider whether the conclusion really supports Conceptualism

Abstract: This volume presents articles on epistemology and the theory of perception and introduces readers to the various problems that face a successful theory of perceptual knowledge. The contributors include Robert Nozick, Alvin Goldman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Frank Jackson, David Armstrong, Fred Dretske, Roderick Firth, Wilfred Sellars, Paul Snowdon, and John McDowell

Abstract: This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form (experience) for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theory of meaning (or belief content) by viewing meaning as a certain kind of information-carrying role

Abstract: Any adequate account of perceptual experience has to provide answers to the following questions: What kind, and form of, content do experiences have? What kind of mental states are they? Many, if not most philosophers of perception today agree that experiences have representational contents of the form x is F, where x ranges over material objects and F over sensible properties. I argue that such a "naive semantics" for experiences has to give the wrong answer to the second question. Because of their justificatory role for, and inferential integration into, a subject's belief system, experiences themselves have to be construed as a kind of belief. I also sketch a semantics that allows experiences to be beliefs.

Abstract: A major theme in rap lyrics is that the only way to survive is to use your head, be aware, know whats going on around you. That simple idea packs a lot of background. The most obvious ideas about knowledge turn out if you look at them close up to be pretty questionable. For example: How do we get knowledge about the world? A natural and ancient answer to this question is that much if not all of our knowledge comes from our senses. So for example the nose gives us knowledge of what things smell like, and if all goes well, also indicates whether the thing were smelling is healthy, tasty, or noxious. Likewise, the eyes tell us the color and shape of things, and thereby give us information about whether those things are useful, dangerous, and so on. Like everybody else, rappers know all this. Or do they? Maybe some rappers know that this isnt really so

Abstract: This book offers a novel account of the relationship of experience to knowledge. The account builds on the intuitive idea that our ordinary perceptual judgments are not autonomous, that an interdependence obtains between our view of the world and our perceptual judgments. Anil Gupta shows in this important study that this interdependence is the key to a satisfactory account of experience. He uses tools from logic and the philosophy of language to argue that his account of experience makes available an attractive and feasible empiricism

Abstract: The modern causal theory of perception—the theory defended by Grice and Strawson—differs from the classical theory advanced by Descartes and Locke in two ways. First, the modern theory is an exercise in conceptual analysis. Secondly, it is a version of what is sometimes called direct realism. I shall comment on these points in turn

Abstract: When philosophers speak of direct perceptual knowledge, they obviously mean to suggest that such knowledge is unmediated ? but unmediated by what? This is where we find evidence of violent disagreement. To clarify matters, I want to identify and briefly describe several important senses of "direct" that have helped shape our understanding of perceptual knowledge. They are (1) "Direct" as Non-Inferential Perception; (2) "Direct" as Unmediating by Objects of Perception; (3) "Direct" as Conceptually Unmediated Perception; (4) "Direct" as Independent Verification of Perceptual Beliefs; and (5) "Direct" as Perception of What is Epistemically Prior

Abstract: Reissue from the classic Muirhead Library of Philosophy series (originally published between 1890s - 1970s).

Abstract: When philosophers speak of direct perceptual knowledge, they obviously mean to suggest that such knowledge is unmediated ? but unmediated by what? This is where we find evidence of violent disagreement. To clarify matters, I want to identify and briefly describe several important senses of "direct" that have helped shape our understanding of perceptual knowledge. They are (1) "Direct" as Non-Inferential Perception; (2) "Direct" as Unmediating by Objects of Perception; (3) "Direct" as Conceptually Unmediated Perception; (4) "Direct" as Independent Verification of Perceptual Beliefs; and (5) "Direct" as Perception of What is Epistemically Prior

Abstract: material that was later incorporated into The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and into a paper of the same title in The Challenge of Externalism, ed. R. Schantz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004)

Abstract: Imagine yourself sitting on your front porch, sipping your morning coffee and admiring the scene before you. You see trees, houses, people, automobiles; you see a cat running across the road, and a bee buzzing among the flowers. You see that the flowers are yellow, and blowing in the wind. You see that the people are moving about, many of them on bicycles. You see that the houses are painted different colors, mostly earth tones, and most are one-story but a few are two-story. It is a beautiful morning. Thus the world interfaces with your mind through your senses. There is a strong intuition that we are not disconnected from the world. We and the other things we see around us are part of a continuous whole, and we have direct access to them through vision, touch, etc. However, the philosophical tradition tries to drive a wedge between us and the world by insisting that the information we get from perception is the result of inference from indirect evidence that is about how things look and feel to us. The philosophical problem of perception is then to explain what justifies these inferences. We will focus on visual perception. Figure one presents a crude diagram of the cognitive system of an agent capable of forming beliefs on the basis of visual perception. Cognition begins with the stimulation of the rods and cones on the retina. From that physical input, some kind of visual processing produces an introspectible visual image. In response to the production of the visual image, the cognizer forms beliefs about his or her surroundings. Some beliefs the perceptual beliefs are formed as direct responses to the visual input, and other beliefs are inferred from the perceptual beliefs. The perceptual beliefs are, at the very least, caused or causally influenced by having the image. This is signified by the dashed arrow marked with a large question mark. We will refer to this as the mystery link. Figure one makes it apparent that in order to fully understand how knowledge is based on perception, we need three different theories..

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between perceptual knowledge and discrimination in the light of the so-called 'relevant alternatives' intuition. It begins by outlining an intuitive relevant alternatives account of perceptual knowledge which incorporates the insight that there is a close connection between perceptual knowledge and the possession of relevant discriminatory abilities. It is argued, however, that in order to resolve certain problems that face this view, it is essential to recognise an important distinction between favouring and discriminating epistemic support that is often overlooked in the literature. This distinction complicates the story regarding how an alternative becomes relevant, and in doing so weakens the connection between perceptual knowledge and discrimination. The theory that results, however—what I term a 'two-tiered' relevant alternatives theory of perceptual knowledge—accommodates many of our intuitions about perceptual knowledge and so avoids the revisionism of some recent proposals in the epistemological literature

Abstract: Commonsense epistemology regards perceptual experience as a distinctive source of knowledge of the world around us, unavailable in ‘blindsight’. This is often interpreted in terms of the idea that perceptual experience, through its representational content, provides us with justifying reasons for beliefs about the world around us. I argue that this analysis distorts the explanatory link between perceptual experience and knowledge, as we ordinarily conceive it. I propose an alternative analysis, on which representational content plays no explanatory role: we make perceptual knowledge intelligible by appeal to experienced objects and features. I also present an account of how the commonsense scheme, thus interpreted, is to be defended: not by tracing the role of experience to its contribution in meeting some general condition on propositional knowledge (such as justification), but by subverting the assumption that it has to be possible to make the role of experience intelligible in terms of some such contribution. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Abstract: The focus of this paper will be on the problem of perceptual presence and on a solution to this problem pioneered by Kant [1781; 1783] and refined by Sellars [Sellars, 1978] and Strawson [Strawson, 1971]. The problem of perceptual presence is that of explaining how our perceptual experience of the world gives us a robust sense of the presence of objects in perception over and above those sensory aspects of the object given in perception. Objects possess other properties which are, one might say, phenomenologically present even though they are admittedly sensorily absent. The general form of the solution to this problem that Kant developed seems to me to be a neglected resource in contemporary work on perceptual consciousness. Kant solves the problem of perceptual presence by appealing to that which he called the productive use of the imagination. This faculty of mind supplies schematic representations of the object of perception that explains a phenomenological sense of perceptual presence even of those features that are not, in a sense to be further clarified,

Abstract: If a sensory field exists as a pure natural sign open to all kinds of interpretation as _evidence_ (see 'Sensing as non-epistemic'), what is it that does the interpreting? Borrowing from the old Gestalt psychologists, I have proposed a gestalt module that picks out wholes from the turmoil, it being the process of _noticing_ or _attending to_ , but the important difference from Koffka and Khler (Koffka, 1935; Khler, 1940), the originators of the term 'gestalt' in the psychology of perception ( is that the emphasis is upon the gestalt projection as motivated . Gestalt-attention of this kind is usually enforced in the first instance by pain or pleasure, and the resulting projections are placed in memory tabbed with fear or desire, such that if such a pattern recurs in the sensory field, fear or desire are triggered. In advanced animals the ability to play with the gestalt module has been evolved, because experimenting in curiosity has proved adaptive, as the exploratory behaviour in the Rat, the Raven, the Apes and _Homo sapiens_ bears out

Abstract: In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions.

Abstract: What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements

Abstract: Consider the skeptic about the external world. Let’s straightaway concede to such a skeptic that perception gives us no conclusive or certain knowledge about our surroundings. Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible—there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs. Let’s also concede to the skeptic that it’s metaphysically possible for us to have all the experiences we’re now having while all those experiences are false. Some philosophers dispute this, but I do not. The skeptic I want to consider goes beyond these familiar points to the much more radical conclusion that our perceptual experiences can’t give us any knowledge or even justification for believing that our surroundings are one way rather than another

Abstract: It is sometimes said that in depression, everything looks grey. If this is true, then mood can influence the character of perceptual experience: depending only on whether a viewer is depressed or not, how a scene looks to that viewer can differ even if all other conditions stay the same. This would be an example of cognitive penetrability of visual experience by other mental states. Here the influential cognitive state is a mood. Other putative examples of cognitive penetrability involve beliefs: to the reader of Russian, the sheet of Cyrillic script looks different than it looked to her before she could read it. When you know that bananas are yellow, this knowledge affects what color you see bananas to be (an achromatic banana will [2] appear yellowish). To the vain performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to pleased, but remarkably no one ever looks disapproving. To the underconfident performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to displeased, but remarkably no one ever looks approving. And in cases of suggestibility, the mere salience of a hypothesis seems to have an effect on how a given stimulus is experienced. Potential cognitive penetrators thus include moods, beliefs, hypotheses, knowledge, desires, and traits. In some cases, cognitively penetration can be epistemically beneficial. If an x ray looks different to a radiologist from the way it looks to someone lacking radiological expertise, then the radiologist gets more information about the world from her experience (such as whether there’s a tumor) than the non expert does from looking at the same x ray. If Iris Murdoch and John McDowell are right that having the right sort of character lets you see more moral facts than someone lacking that character sees when faced with the same situation, then there too your perceptual experience becomes epistemically better thanks to its being penetrated by your [3] character. In other cases, however, cognitive penetration seems to make experience epistemically worse..

Abstract: Some propose that the question of how you know that James is angry can be adequately answered with the claim that you see that James is angry. Call this the Perceptual Hypothesis. Here, I examine that hypothesis.

I argue that there are two different ways in which the Perceptual Hypothesis could be made true. You might see that James is angry by seeing his bodily features. Alternatively, you might see that James is angry by seeing his anger. If you see that James is angry in the first way, your knowledge is inferential. If you see that James is angry in the second way, your knowledge is not inferential. These are different ways of knowing that James is angry. So the Perceptual Hypothesis alone does not adequately answer the question of how you know that fact. To ascertain how you know it, we need to decide whether or not you saw his anger.

This is an epistemological argument. But it has consequences for a theory of perception. It implies that there is a determinate fact about which features of an object you see. This fact is made true independently of what you come to know by seeing.

In the final section of the paper, I seek to undermine various ways in which the claim that you see James’ anger may be thought implausible.

Abstract: This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage in a doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how this premise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise in question. Without this premise, Alston’s main argument fails.

Abstract: Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of uebersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the uebersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and the ambiguity of reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of uebersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage.
The book is distributed by Ideabooks, Amsterdam. Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6

Abstract: A sensory receptor, in any organism anywhere, is sensitive through time to some distribution - energy, motion, molecular shape - indeed, anything that can produce an effect. The sensitivity is rarely direct: for example, it may track changes in relative variation rather than the absolute change of state (as when the skin responds to colder and hotter instead of to cold and hot as such); it may track differing variations under different conditions (the eyes' dark-adaptation; adaptation to sound frequencies can lower the difference threshold; the kinesthetic sense will shut down if a limb is held in a stationary position too long - the limb 'going to sleep'); it may be subject to distortion of the input from overloading (dazzle producing strong-after-images); it may not be confined to one channel of sensitivity (the retina is sensitive to pressure; the hands can feel some strong sound-vibrations, the tympanum of the ear records touch). Strictly speaking there is no limit as to what intensities and what ranges receptors could be sensitive. Sharks are sensitive to electrostatic fields, homing pigeons to magnetic fields; snakes to infra-red rays; bacteria to acid concentrations; perhaps there has even been a mutant organism sensitive to the passage of cosmic rays, even though that would hardly have bestowed any conceivable survival value. What is irrefutable is that individual receptors differ markedly from organism to organism, between different members of the species (one dog being better at tracing smells than another; one person being able to sense light-waves of 375 nanometres, another not; children able to hear 20,000 Hz, older persons not), and between receptors of the same kind within one organism (one eye being sensitive to 765 nm and the other not; one ear deaf to 15,000 Hz and over, the other not). There are also just-noticeable-differences (JND's), in that one person can see two shades of a colour where another sees only one; similarly with sounds

Abstract: This paper concerns various competing views on the nature of perceptual justification. Various thought experiments that motivate various views are discussed. Once reliabilism is rejected and some form of internalism is instead embraced, the following issue arises: must an internalist nevertheless require that perceptual justification involve the possession of evidence for the reliability of our perceptual processes? Matthias Steup answers in the affirmative, espousing what he calls internalist reliabilism. Some problems are raised for this form of internalism

Abstract: The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called "entitlement", that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti-individualism, a thesis about the nature of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states–hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined.

Abstract:   Whether empirical givenness has the reliability that foundationalists expect is a point about which some philosophers are highly skeptical. Sellars took the doctrine of givenness as a “myth,” denying the existence of immediate perceptual experience. The arguments in contemporary Western epistemology are concentrated on whether sensory experience has conceptual contents, and whether there is any logical relationship between perceptions and beliefs. In fact, once the elements of words and conceptions in empirical perception are affirmed, the logical relationship between perceptual experience and empirical belief is also affirmed. This relationship takes place through perceptual experience acting as evidence for beliefs. The real problem lies in how one should distinguish between the different relationships with perception of singular beliefs and of universal beliefs, and in how singular beliefs can provide justification for universal beliefs

Abstract: I argue that one reason for being a disjunctivist advanced by McDowell (having to do with the indefeasibility of perceptual knowledge) fails because it ignores the distinction between justification and warrant.

Abstract: 1. Introduction When it comes to perception, representationalism is all the rage. Representationalism is a claim about the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences: According to representationalism, phenomenal character is fully determined by the representational content of perceptual experiences (cf. Tye 2002, 45). In other words, phenomenal character, what it is like, for instance, to have an experience as of something red, is either supervenient upon or identical with that experience

Abstract:  I argue that our justification for beliefs about the external physical world need not be constituted by any justified beliefs about perceptual experiences. In this way our justification for beliefs about the physical world may be nondoxastic and this differentiates my proposal from traditional foundationalist theories such as those defended by Laurence BonJour, Richard Fumerton, and Timothy McGrew. On the other hand, it differs from certain non-traditional foundationalist theories such as that defended by James Pryor according to which perceptual experience is sufficient to justify beliefs about the external world. I propose that justification for propositions describing our perceptual experiences partially constitutes any justification we may possess for beliefs concerning the external world. In this way, our justification for beliefs about the physical world may only be inferential since it is grounded in any justification we have for at least one other proposition. This theory occupies an intermediate position between the two aforementioned foundationalist accounts, which allows it to sidestep problems that confront each of them

Abstract: Can anything other than a belief confer epistemic justification on a belief? In particular, can nondoxastic experiential states do so? According to the standard taxonomy, _doxasticism _is the view that only beliefs can justify beliefs; _nondoxasticism _is simply the denial of this. The distinction between doxastic and nondoxastic theories is central to epistemology, but much of the debate surrounding it has been marred by an unnoticed ambiguity concerning the key concept of justification. Sorting out the ambiguity reveals an important division between externalist and internalist varieties of nondoxasticism and points the way toward a new argument for nondoxasticism of the externalist sort

Abstract: The Sellarsian dilemma is a famous argument that attempts to show that nondoxastic experiential states cannot confer justification on basic beliefs. The usual conclusion of the Sellarsian dilemma is a coherentist epistemology, and the usual response to the dilemma is to find it quite unconvincing. By distinguishing between two importantly different justification relations (evidential and nonevidential), I hope to show that the Sellarsian dilemma, or something like it, does offer a powerful argument against standard nondoxastic foundationalist theories. But this reconceived version of the argument does not support coherentism. Instead, I use it to argue for a strongly externalist epistemology

Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?

Abstract: In at least some cases of justified perceptual belief, our perceptual experience itself, as opposed to beliefs about it, evidences and thereby justifies our belief. While the phenomenon is common, it is also mysterious. There are good reasons to think that perceptions cannot justify beliefs directly, and there is a significant challenge in explaining how they do. After explaining just how direct perceptual justification is mysterious, I considerMichael Huemers (Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, 2001) and Bill Brewers (Perception and Reason, 1999) recent, but radically different, attempts to eliminate it. I argue that both are unsuccessful, though a consideration of their mistakes deepens our appreciation of the mystery

Abstract: What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements

Abstract: Anil Gupta's Empiricism and Experience is a stylish and stimulating contribution to our subject. My expectation is that those who disagree with some of its central theses will, like me, learn greatly from thinking through where and why they part company with Gupta's lucidly presented position. For the purposes of a Symposium, I select three points of disagreement. Each point in one way or another concerns the epistemic role of the content of experience

Abstract:   The author argues that coherence views of justification, in spite of their crucial insight into the interpenetration of our beliefs, neglect a key constraint on justification: they are unable to accommodate the epistemic significance of experience. Epistemic justification is not just a function of our beliefs and their interrelations. Both, beliefs and experiences, are relevant to the justification of an empirical belief. Experience is not itself a form of belief or disposition to believe; it cannot be analyzed in doxastic terms. And, yet, nondoxastic experiences play a justificatory role, not merely a causal role. The positive epistemic status of a perceptual belief depends upon being appeared to in appropriate ways. It is important that, for an ordinary perceptual belief to be justified, one does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, the ways of being appeared to, not our beliefs about them, that are required for justification

Abstract: Some contemporary theologically inclined epistemologists, the reformed epistemologists, have attempted to show that belief in God is rational by appealing directly to a special kind of experience. To strengthen the appeal to this particular, and admittedly peculiar, type of experience these venture to draw a parallel between such experiences and normal perceptual experiences in order to show that, by parity of reasoning, if beliefs formed on the basis of the later are taken to be justified and rational to hold, then beliefs formed on the basis of the former should also be regarded as justified and rational to hold. Such appeals to religious experience have been discussed and/or made by Robert Pargetter, Alvin Plantinga and William Alston and they claim that they provide sufficient warrant for religious beliefs, specifically for the belief that God exists. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of this notion of religious experience itself and whether such appeals to religious experience really provide justification for belief in the existence of God.

Abstract: ome recent work by philosophers of mathematics has been aimed at showing that our knowledge of the existence of at least some mathematical objects and/or sets can be epistemically grounded by appealing to perceptual experience. The sensory capacity that they refer to in doing so is the ability to perceive numbers, mathematical properties and/or sets. The chief defense of this view as it applies to the perception of sets is found in Penelope Maddy’s Realism in Mathematics, but a number of other philosophers have made similar, if more simple, appeals of this sort. For example, Jaegwon Kim (1981, 1982), John Bigelow (1988, 1990), and John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter (1990) have all defended such views. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of the notions of set perception and mathematical perception, and whether appeals to such perceptual faculties can really provide any justification for or explanation of belief in the existence of sets, mathematical properties and/or numbers.

Abstract: It is sometimes said that in depression, everything looks grey. If this is true, then mood can influence the character of perceptual experience: depending only on whether a viewer is depressed or not, how a scene looks to that viewer can differ even if all other conditions stay the same. This would be an example of cognitive penetrability of visual experience by other mental states. Here the influential cognitive state is a mood. Other putative examples of cognitive penetrability involve beliefs: to the reader of Russian, the sheet of Cyrillic script looks different than it looked to her before she could read it. When you know that bananas are yellow, this knowledge affects what color you see bananas to be (an achromatic banana will [2] appear yellowish). To the vain performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to pleased, but remarkably no one ever looks disapproving. To the underconfident performer, the faces in the audience range in their expression from neutral to displeased, but remarkably no one ever looks approving. And in cases of suggestibility, the mere salience of a hypothesis seems to have an effect on how a given stimulus is experienced. Potential cognitive penetrators thus include moods, beliefs, hypotheses, knowledge, desires, and traits. In some cases, cognitively penetration can be epistemically beneficial. If an x ray looks different to a radiologist from the way it looks to someone lacking radiological expertise, then the radiologist gets more information about the world from her experience (such as whether there’s a tumor) than the non expert does from looking at the same x ray. If Iris Murdoch and John McDowell are right that having the right sort of character lets you see more moral facts than someone lacking that character sees when faced with the same situation, then there too your perceptual experience becomes epistemically better thanks to its being penetrated by your [3] character. In other cases, however, cognitive penetration seems to make experience epistemically worse..

Abstract: As I use the term, ‘entitlement’ is any warrant one has by default—i.e. without acquiring it. Some philosophers not only affirm the existence of entitlement, but also give it a crucial role in the justification of our perceptual beliefs. These philosophers affirm the Entitlement Thesis: An essential part of what makes our perceptual beliefs justified is our entitlement to the proposition that I am not a brain-in-a-vat. Crispin Wright, Stewart Cohen, and Roger White are among those who endorse this controversial claim. In this paper, I argue that the Entitlement Thesis is false.

Abstract: This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage in a doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how this premise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise in question. Without this premise, Alston’s main argument fails.

Abstract: It is not difficult to make sense of the idea that beliefs may derive their justification from other beliefs. Difficulties surface when, as in certain epistemological theories, one appeals to sensory experiences to give an account of the structure of justification. This gives rise to the so-called problem of ‘nondoxastic justification’, namely, the problem of seeing how sensory experiences can confer justification on the beliefs they give rise to. In this paper, I begin by criticizing a number of theories that are currently on offer. Finding them all wanting, I shall then offer a diagnosis of why they fail while gesturing towards a promising way of resolving the dispute. It will be argued that what makes the problem of nondoxastic justification a hard one is the difficulty of striking the right balance between a notion of normative justification that is content-sensitive and truth conducive and the possibility of error while acknowledging the fact that our experiences can justify our beliefs in cases we are hallucinating

Abstract: In specifying the sensory evidence for perceptual belief, thinkers have either chosen a common perceptual idiom or have invented one of their own as a starting-point for their enquiries. It is becoming clearer that the choice harbours crucial, often disputable, assumptions. I compare two sorts of constructions, a variety of propositional ones and an objectual one, and I argue that the objectual idiom is indispensable in order to explain how a perceptual belief can arise out of what is not already a belief. This has implications not only for the question of how belief is generated from perceptual evidence, but also for various other controversies. I discuss two of these implications: the character of inferences from evidence, and basic belief

Abstract: Intuitively, it seems that some belief-forming practices have the following three properties: 1. They are rational practices, and the beliefs that we form by means of these practices are themselves rational or justified beliefs. 2. Even if in most cases these practices reliably lead to correct beliefs (i.e., beliefs in true propositions), they are not infallible: it is possible for beliefs that are formed by means of these practices to be incorrect (i.e., to be beliefs in false propositions). 3. The rationality of these practices is basic or primitive. That is, the rationality of these practices is not due simply to the availability, by means of some process of reasoning that relies purely on other practices, of a rational or justified belief in the reliability of these practices. How can there be such practices? This paper offers an answer to that question.

Abstract: Ethology brought some crucial insights and perspectives to the study of behavior, in particular the idea that behavior can be studied within a comparative-evolutionary framework by means of homologizing components of behavioral patterns and by causal analysis of behavior components and their integration. Early ethology is well-known for its extensive use of qualitative observations of animals under their natural conditions. These observations are combined with experiments that try to analyze behavioral patterns and establish specific claims about animal behavior. Nowadays, there is still disagreement about the significance of observation and experiments and their relation

Abstract: Kant argued that we have no knowledge of things in themselves, no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of things, a thesis that is not idealism but epistemic humility. David Lewis agrees (in 'Ramseyan Humility'), but for Ramseyan reasons rather than Kantian. I compare the doctrines of Ramseyan and Kantian humility, and argue that Lewis's contextualist strategy for rescuing knowledge from the sceptic (proposed elsewhere) should also rescue knowledge of things in themselves. The rescue would not be complete: for knowledge of things in themselves would remain elusive

Abstract: Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?

Abstract: Introduction -- Recognition as identification -- recognizing oneself -- Mutal recognition -- Conclusion: A review.

Abstract: How can perception yield knowledge of the world? One challenge in answering this question is that one necessarily perceives from a particular location. Thus, what is immediately perceptually available is subject to situational features, such as lighting conditions and one’s location. Nonetheless, one can perceive the shape and color of objects. My dissertation aims to provide an explanation for how this is possible. The main thesis is that giving such an explanation requires abandoning the traditional model of perception as a two-place relation between subjects and objects in favor of a model of perception as a three-place relation between subjects, objects, and situations

Abstract: In this paper I consider one of the influential challenges to the notion that perceptual experience might be completely conceptually structured, a challenge that rests on the idea that conceptual structure cannot do justice to the fineness of grain of perceptual experience. In so doing, I canvass John McDowell’s attempt to meet this challenge by appeal to the notion of demonstrative concepts and review some criticisms recently leveled at McDowell’s deployment of demonstrative concepts for this purpose by Sean D. Kelly. Finally, I suggest that, though Kelly’s criticisms might challenge McDowell’s original presentation of demonstrative concepts, a modified notion of demonstrative concept is available to the conceptualist that is proof against Kelly’s criticisms.

Abstract: It is a common tactic, going back to the beginnings of religion and philosophy, to presume that we are enveloped in a world of untruth and illusion, thereby fueling our movement toward truth. In more modern times, Descartes demonstrates this process clearly with his Meditations. This work extends the Cartesian skeptical position by challenging the concept of illusion itself, asking those who have ever called something ‘an illusion’ to question the meaning of these assertions. This broader skepticism partially annihilates itself without completely collapsing under the weight of self-contradiction.

Abstract: Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory’s: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world.

Abstract: Millar argues against the tendency in current philosophical thought to treat sensory experiences as a peculiar species of propositional attitude. While allowing that experiences may in some sense bear propositional content, he presents a view of sensory experiences as a species of psychological state. A key theme in his general approach is that justified belief results from the competent exercise of conceptual capacities, some of which involve an ability to respond appropriately to current experience. In working out this approach the author develops a view of concepts and their mastery, explores the role of groundless beliefs drawing on suggestions of Wittgenstein, illuminates aspects of the thought of Locke, Hume, Quine, and Goldman, and finally offers a response to a sophisticated variety of scepticism

Abstract: The tracking theory treats knowledge as counterfactual covariation of belief and truth through a sphere of possibilities. I argue that the tracking theory cannot respect perceptual knowledge, because perceptual belief covaries with truth through a discontinuous scatter of possibilities. Perceptual knowledge is subject to inner derailing: there is an inner hollow of perceptual incompetence through which the differences are too small to track. Perceptual knowledge is subject to outer derailing: there are outlying islands of perceptual competence that extend well past skeptical sinkholes

Abstract: There is a great divide between two approaches to epistemology over the past thirty to forty years. Some label the divide that between internalists and externalists, and that characterization may be accurate on some account of the distinction. I will pursue the divide from a different direction, in part because the literature on the distinction between internalism and externalism has become a mess, and I don’t want to clean up the mess here

Abstract: Shortly before G. E. Moore wrote down the formative for the early analytic philosophy lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910–1911), he had become acquainted with two books which influenced his thought: (1) a book by Husserl's pupil August Messer and (2) a book by the Greifswald objectivist Dimitri Michaltschew. Central to Michaltschew's book was the concept of the given. In Part I, I argue that Moore elaborated his concept of sense-data in the wake of the Greifswald concept. Carnap did the same when he wrote his Aufbau, the only difference being that he spoke not of sense-data but of Erlebnisse. This means, I argue, that both Moore's sense-data and Carnap'sErlebnisse have little to do with either British empiricists or the neo-Kantians. In Part II, I try to ascertain what made early analytic philosophy different from all those philosophical groups and movements that either exercised influence on it, or were closely related to it: phenomenologists, Greifswald objectivists, Brentanists. For this purpose, I identify the sine qua non practices of the early analytic philosophers: exactness; acceptance of the propositional turn; descriptivism; objectivism. If one of these practices was not explored by a given philosophical school or group, in all probability, it was not truly analytic