Perception and Content

Brewer, Bill

doi:10.1111/j.1468-0378.2006.00220.x

Cited by 175 publications

(152 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…3 2 This view has been argued for by quite a number of people in a variety of ways recently, for instance Byrne 2009, Pautz 2009, Siegel 2010, Siegel 2011, Schellenberg 2011, and Glüer 2014. It has been argued against, too, for instance by Martin 2002, Travis 2004, Brewer 2006 It is, of course, a substantive and extremely interesting question what it precisely takes for a mental state to be a state having propositional content. But that experience qualifies is assumed, not argued for, in this paper.…”

Section: The Defeasibility Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intentionalism, defeasibility, and justification

Glüer

2015

Philos Stud

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Section: The Defeasibility Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 Notable exceptions are John McDowell (1982;1994), Bill Brewer (1999), and Tyler Burge(2003). Recently,…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intentionalism, defeasibility, and justification

Glüer

2015

Philos Stud

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“…For instance, Martin (2004) proposes an epistemic conception of hallucination on which there is no more fundamental 20 This view is sometimes called "naïve realism". Proponents include Campbell 2002, Martin 2004, Brewer 2006, and Fish 2008. One can deny that phenomenal character is intrinsic without endorsing the relational view of experience, but this would not be sufficient to block the argument.…”

Section: Against Phenomenal Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Perception and the external world

Smithies

2015

Philos Stud

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Declan SmithiesThis paper begins from the assumption that perception plays an epistemic role in justifying beliefs about the external world. The aim of the paper is to explain how perception succeeds in playing this epistemic role. What is it about perception in virtue of which it justifies beliefs about the external world?The debate between internalism and externalism in the epistemology of perception can be defined in many different ways, but one key point of contention is the epistemic role of phenomenal character. This is my main focus here. So for the purposes of this paper, internalism is the thesis that perception justifies belief solely in virtue of its phenomenal character, while externalism is the thesis that perception justifies belief at least partly in virtue of externalist facts about perception that are distinct from its phenomenal character. Proponents of internalism and externalism, so defined, can agree that perception justifies beliefs about the external world, but they disagree about how it does so. This paper represents something of a change in view. Although I have defended internalism in previous work, this paper makes a modest concession to externalism. 1 At the same time, my goal is argue that externalism can depart from the letter of internalism while retaining much of its spirit. To this end, I propose a moderate version of externalism on which externalist facts play a justifying role, but only insofar as they impact on the representational content of perception. This is to be contrasted with more radical versions of externalism on which externalist facts about perception play a justifying role that need not be reflected in its representational content. The main goal of the paper is to explain why a modest concession to externalism need not open the floodgates to more radical versions of 1 In Smithies 2006 and 2014, I defend an internalist theory on which justification depends upon phenomenal character alone. To avoid false advertising, I should note that the proposal defended in this paper qualifies as internalism by many familiar definitions, including mentalism and access internalism. 2 externalism. More specifically, I argue that epistemic level--bridging principles provide a principled rationale for keeping the floodgates closed.The first four sections of the paper examine the connection between the phenomenal character of perception and its justifying role. Section one argues that phenomenal character is a necessary condition for perception to justify belief.Section two argues that phenomenal character is a difference--maker for perceptual justification in the sense that any difference in the phenomenal character of perception makes for some corresponding difference in its justifying role. Section three argues that phenomenal character is not the only difference--maker for perceptual justification, since its justifying role can differ with no corresponding difference in its phenomenal character. Section four presents a moderate version of externalism on which phenomenal character...

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“…By contrast austere relationalists characterize hallucinations in terms of a deficiency of an accurate perceptual experience and argue that perceptions and hallucinations do not share a common element (c.f. Campbell 2002;Martin 2002;Brewer 2006). This approach is analogous to the view that mere belief is to be analyzed as deficient of, but subjectively indiscriminable from knowledge.…”

Section: Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

The epistemic force of perceptual experience

Schellenberg

2013

Philos Stud

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What is the metaphysical nature of perceptual experience? What evidence does experience provide us with? These questions are typically addressed in isolation. In order to make progress in answering both questions, perceptual experience needs to be studied in an integrated manner. I develop a unified account of the phenomenological and epistemological role of perceptual experience, by arguing that sensory states provide perceptual evidence due to their metaphysical structure. More specifically, I argue that sensory states are individuated by the perceptual capacities employed and that there is an asymmetric dependence between their employment in perception and their employment in hallucination and illusion. Due to this asymmetric dependence, sensory states provide us with evidence.Perceptual experience plays at least three different roles in our lives. It justifies our beliefs about our environment. It brings about conscious mental states. It converts informational input, such as light and sound waves, into representations of features that we attribute to the world. Corresponding to these three roles, there are at least three fundamental questions that have motivated the study of perceptual experience.Epistemology-question: How does perceptual experience justify our beliefs and yield knowledge of our environment given that perceptual experience can be misleading (we may be subject to illusion or hallucination)? Mind-question: How does perceptual experience bring about conscious mental states in which our environment appears or seems a certain way to us (irrespective of the way our environment actually is)?

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Perception and Content

Cited by 175 publications

References 14 publications

Intentionalism, defeasibility, and justification

Intentionalism, defeasibility, and justification

Perception and the external world

The epistemic force of perceptual experience

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