Visual Confidences and Direct Perceptual Justification

Abstract

What kind of content must visual states have if they are to offer direct (non-inferential) justification for our external world beliefs? How must they present that content if the degree of justification they provide is to reflect the nuance of our changing visual experiences? This paper offers an argument for the view that visual states comprise not only a content, but a confidence relation to that content. That confidence relation explains how visual states can offer direct perceptual justification of differing degrees for external world beliefs. These confidence relations allow that visual states justify beliefs in a way that is sensitive to subtle differences in the character of our visual experiences, whilst still allowing that visual states give us non-inferential access to the external world in virtue of their content.

Perceiving indeterminately

“…One important consideration here (besides the somewhat questionable reliance on introspection) is an epistemic one (see esp. Munton, 2017). Perception can justify beliefs.…”

“…And the probability distribution at the beginning of the time frame assigns a lower probability to this proposition than at the end. Jessie Munton is also very explicit that in scenarios like the one with the dress, what changes about our perceptual state is the probability distribution (Munton, 2017). Our perceptual state has the same content, but different probability assigned to this content.…”

“…In the original scarlet dress at dusk scenario, the content of the perceptual state is the same throughout, but our perceptual state attributes different probability to this content (see esp. Munton, 2017).…”

“…According to the attitude view (a good example of which would be Munton, 2017), the propositional content of the perceptual state is that x is F. But the probability assigned to this proposition is, say, 70%. According to the content view Morrison considers (and Moss explores without endorsing), the propositional content of the perceptual state is that there is a 70% chance that x is F. This is the sense in which the content is probabilistic (and in this sense, it might, as Morrison suggests, be equivalent to the claim that the attitude is probabilistic).…”

“…The question is how we can describe this change. One recent and influential response is that we should borrow the concept of confidence from the theory of probability in order to do so (Morrison, 2016, 2017, Munton, 2017, see also Denison, 2017, Block, 2018). The proposal is that just as beliefs (or partial beliefs) represent their objects with a certain confidence, perceptual states also represent their objects with a certain confidence.…”