Perception and Reason

Abstract

Discusses the role of conscious experiences in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. Most epistemology of perception takes a person's possession of beliefs about the mind‐independent world for granted and goes on to ask what further conditions these beliefs must meet if they are to be cases of knowledge. I argue that this approach is completely mistaken. Perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs about particular objects in the world at all. So there are epistemic requirements upon the very possibility of empirical belief. The crucial epistemological role of experience lies in its essential contribution to the subject's understanding of certain perceptual demonstrative contents, simply grasping which provides him with a reason to endorse them in belief. I explain in detail how this is so; defend my position against a wide range of objections; compare and contrast it with a number of influential alternative views in the area; and bring out its connection with Russell's Principle of Acquaintance, and its consequences for the compatibility of content externalism with an adequate account of self‐knowledge.

Reasons for Belief and Normativity

“…Many have held that perception provides its subjects with reasons for belief (cf. McDowell 1994, Brewer 1999 it entails that to heed the call of experience is to move in a circle. Not a hint of circularity infects such a transition" (Turri 2009, 498).…”

Moore's Paradox and Epistemic Norms

“…To say that beliefs aim at X seems to carry with it the commitment to the further claim that any belief that doesn't fulfil this aim isn't as it ought to be. 7 Suppose that belief really does aim at truth (Velleman [2000]; 4 See Brewer [1999], Littlejohn [forthcoming a], and Sutton [2007] for three different externalist responses to the objection that intuition shows that the falsity of a belief is no obstacle to its justification. In this paper, I am concerned with the showing that the truth account is preferable to the knowledge account.…”

Against an inferentialist dogma

“…that only something with propositional content can rationally justify a propositional attitude, for only something with propositional content can stand in inferential/logical/rational relations to other propositional contents. As well as Davidson, other prominent advocates of something like this line of thought include: Popper (1959Popper ( [1935), Sellars (1956Sellars ( , 1975, Unger (1975), Rorty (1981), Bonjour (1985), McDowell (1994), Brewer (1999), Williamson (2000), Huemer (2001), Thau (2002), Rosenberg (2002), Lyons (2008), Ginsborg (2011) 4 .…”

“…McDowell 1994, Brewer 1999 have wielded the inferentialist idea against non-conceptual theorists as being unable to provide an account of the justificatory role of experience. In response, advocates of nonconceptual content for experience (Byrne 1996, Peacocke 2001, Heck 2000, Vision 2009), rather than questioning the inferential view of justification, have tended to insist that non-conceptual contents can after all play the role of premises in inferences, by standing in deductive or probabilising relations to the contents of beliefs.…”