Perception and Knowledge, Misc

After discussing the manifest inconveniences of Galilean physicalism for both science and common sense, I propose an alternate, Aristotelian ontology of material things and show how it solves the epistemological problems engendered by the New Science. Read at the annual POH Symposium in Lake Wenatchee, WA, May 2011.

In this paper, I assess John McDowell's paper "Avoiding the Myth of the Given" (2009) (AMG) and its theory of epistemological openness to the world. I trace its motivations back to Kantian, Sellarsian and Aristotelean roots. I argue that McDowell subscribes to a kind of Holistic Theory of Rationality (HTR). To explain the HTR, I will analyze the Sellarsian notions of the "Manifest Image," the "Myth of the Given" and the "logical space of reasons." I argue that the holistic nature (...) of McDowell's theory gives it particular properties that put it in need of conservatism, because all the elements of the theory "hang together" - i.e. cohere - in a dangerous fashion. I argue that McDowell cannot afford big changes without upsetting the apple-cart. With this in mind, I shall assess the merits and demerits of AMG, and its modified theory of perceptual content, as an attempted conservative reform of HTR. I want to argue that, taken independently, AMG is a good and important change, but taken holistically it is non-conservative, and disruptive, of the McDowellian picture. Thus, if we wish to proceed with the McDowellian path, we are led to a choice between rejecting the local reform (and retreating back to an earlier version) or demanding further explanations of its global implications. (shrink)

This essay examines how realist painting operates in the Post-Certainty Era, a moment shaped by accelerated information systems, automated processes, and the collapse of stable origin online. I position Structural Omission as an epistemic framework that exposes the points where meaning refuses to stabilize and where representation breaks down at the limits of knowing. Drawing on the conditions of algorithmic recursion, the loss of authorship on the contemporary web, and the embodied act of painting, the essay argues that realism now (...) functions as a record of perception rather than an attempt at resolution. The essay proposes that in the Post-Certainty condition, the role of realism shifts from rendering the seen to revealing where perception cannot complete the image. Structural Omission maps where perception holds and where it gives way, offering a structural approach to understanding realism when certainty no longer governs the image. (shrink)

Structural Omission is a framework for realist painting developed for the post-certainty era of generative AI, when images can be produced at scale with a surface of total certainty. This essay argues that realism remains viable only by abandoning completion as its premise. Traditional realism, even at its best, carried an old promise: that completion was available in principle, and that the artist could deliver wholeness if they chose. Generative AI systems now manufacture that kind of closure faster, cheaper, and (...) more convincingly than any human hand. Structural Omission rebuilds realism on a different ground rooted in perception itself: perceptual limits are not an error in representation. They are the condition of representation. The framework formalizes planned, load-bearing incompleteness through three criteria—Ground (perceptual limits), Structure (structural incompleteness), and Consequence (narrative without resolution). Completion-biased image systems can imitate the look of omissions, but they usually treat gaps as a visual effect rather than structural absence. Rather than competing with algorithmic finish, Structural Omission treats partial visibility as the architecture holding the painting together. The result is realism that is accountable to human perception. (shrink)

The article argues that our concepts are deeply rooted in the architecture of visual processing. The argument is based on evidence provided by two seemingly very distant theories of mind together with two sorts of corresponding visions: Freud’s theory of dreams, which suggests oneiric visions represent our thoughts and the mechanical model of the mind developed in the context of computer science. As will be argued, Freud’s findings are in fact supported by advances in this field, in particular by deep (...) convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) which mirror the activity of visual cortex, producing visions strikingly similar to dreams. An in-depth analysis of such images, supported by insights from empiricism and conceptual metaphor theory, reveals that they represent visual universals, as well as more fragmentary notions pertaining to features, and complete abstractions, such as those found in language and in mathematics. This finding points towards a more comprehensive thesis about the links of vision to reflection: the crucial insight that will be developed and defended in this article is that the architecture of visual processing is the basis of the conceptual structures that underpin cognition. (shrink)

There are various philosophical doctrines on sense perception; including that of Mulla Sadra which is a marked one. Prior to expounding this doctrine, we should get acquainted with its foundations.Though not a sensationalist, Mulla Sadra accepts direct involvement of sense in human knowledge. He regards "attention" and "awareness" as two important constituents of perception and believes that they are immaterial and included among the faculties of the soul. According to Mulla Sadra the Knowledge is essentially the presence of the object (...) for the mind. The senses project the form of the object on the nerves and material organs of body; immaterial soul, however, perceives it directly and then saves it in its own memory, called imagination. It will be saved there until the man attains acquired knowledge.The other important issue, interjected by Mulla Sadra is evolution of this perception into imaginary and, then intelligible, perceptions. It is in this point where he proves that there should be an existential union between "the perceiver and the perceived", or as he puts it, between "the intelligent and the intelligence" or "the sensor and the sensed". While discussing these issues the author has tried to prove the correspondence between the mind and the external world. (shrink)

This essay offers a contrast between theories of perception that endorse, explicitly or implicitly, what we call ‘better grip’ views, and an account of perception in which resting content with unclarity is a feature of perceptual experience. The better grip views reflect the tendency of most theorizing about perception to take it to be concerned with the veridical uptake of objects in the environment, where a drive to optimality, and thus a turning away from unclarity, is always operative. Through descriptions (...) and analyses of non-visual, multimodal, and holistic perceptions, we identify the presence of unclarity in the regular workings of perception. This examination of cases that reveal the positive role of unclarity leads to a normative contribution: that resting content with unclarity is essential to perception as continuous engagement with the world, a world of ever-renewing possibilities. (shrink)

This article argues that Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of perception enables a form of infallibilism that remains compatible with human fallibility. Since Sartre conceives perception as a non-representational relation of presence to the real, perceptual episodes can—under favourable conditions—yield knowledge directly, without requiring knowledge-that-one-knows. For Sartre, knowledge is factive, yet fallibility arises not from its structure but from the situated and projective nature of the pour-soi. This offers a new angle on the epistemological debate between John McDowell and Charles Travis. Whereas (...) McDowell defends a representational disjunctivism and Travis a non-representational naïve realism, Sartre provides a third option: perception presents the real itself, while the pour-soi determines which error possibilities are relevant in a given situation. Sartre thus yields a form of “situated infallibilism” that preserves factivity without collapsing into skepticism. (shrink)

How can we acquire knowledge of grounding facts? In this paper, I explore a possible partial answer to this question: in certain cases, namely, in cases of singular descriptive grounding facts about the concrete realm, knowledge of grounding is possible via direct observation. You can have sensory experiences of grounding; to put it simply, sometimes you can just see (hear, smell, touch, etc.) a fact grounding another fact. We can call this view grounding empiricism. To motivate this view, I begin (...) by rebutting an inconclusive argument against it, modelled on an analogous Hume-inspired argument against the direct observability of causation. Next, I offer an argument from phenomenal contrast, modelled on a similar line of reasoning for the observability of causation by Susanna Siegel, in defense of grounding empiricism. Finally, I consider several objections to the view: objections from evolutionary debunking, objections to the view’s failure to generalize to the abstract realm, and objections to the view’s failure to generalize to quantified and normative grounding facts. Finally, I explain why grounding empiricism is an interesting thesis, despite its limited scope, and what role it can play in a general theory of grounding. (shrink)

Is it possible to hear God, feel God act, or see that God is doing something in the world? Of course, if God does not exist, no such reports could be true. But some philosophers have argued that even if God exists, it is not possible for such reports to be true since God is supposed to be a maximally perfect immaterial spirit. Here I explore the issue by framing discussion in terms of three kinds of perceptual reports. After clarifying (...) the relation between them, I consider arguments that even if God exists, it is not possible for there to be true perceptual reports about God of any of the three kinds. I argue that, for the most part, these arguments fail. If God exists, it is possible to hear God, feel God act, or see that God was doing something in the world. (shrink)

Ordinary thought recognizes many ways of knowing. Not all are epistemologically fundamental. Nevertheless, it is standard to think there is more than one fundamental way—call this view access pluralism. Access monism opposes access pluralism. This paper defends a version of access monism I call presentationalist monism (§1), on which the sole fundamental way of knowing is presentation. I defend presentationalist monism in three stages. Firstly (§2), I suggest that it is compelling about four central ways of knowing—viz., perceiving, episodically remembering, (...) introspecting, and intuiting. Then (§3) I argue that presentationalist monism also explains ostensibly less straightforward cases, including inference, testimony, semantic memory, and practical knowledge. After working through cases in this way, I show how this enumerative argument can be secured by understanding the view as a kind of formal foundationalism about ways of knowing. I conclude by addressing an objection (§4) and considering whether presentationalism about ways of knowing supports a presentational account of knowledge, cautioning against this inference (§5). (shrink)

Yale Gallery Talk, Language Perception and Representation Tanya Kelley and James Prosek Linguist and artist Tanya Kelley, Ph.D., and artist, writer, and naturalist James Prosek, B.A. 1997, discuss color manuals used by artist-naturalists and biologists and lead visitors in close looking and drawing. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition James Prosek: Art, Artifact, Artifice. Space is limited. Open to: General Public .

I defend J. L. Austin's direct realism against the colour delusion argument by employing epistemic logic to demonstrate that perceiving colours does not necessitate an intermediary such as sense-data, thus preserving the directness of perception.

This paper controverts the ability of intentionalism about perception to account for unique epistemic significance of phenomenal consciousness. More specifically, the intentionalist cannot explain the latter without denying two well-founded claims: the transparency of experience, and the possibility of unconscious perception. If they are true, intentionality of perception entails that phenomenal consciousness has no special epistemic role to play. Although some intentionalists are ready to bite this bullet, by doing so they effectively undermine one of the standard motivations of their (...) view, i.e. the claim that perceptual experiences justify beliefs. Consequently, whatever reason might there be to think that phenomenal consciousness has unique epistemic import, it is also a reason to reject intentionalism. I recommend replacing the latter with an unorthodox formulation of relationalism about perception. (shrink)

A Social Enactive Theory of Perception offers a unified study, in the enactivist tradition, of perception and its connection to sociality. Alejandro Arango looks for perception in the middle of everyday life and finds that perception is at home in perceptual practices, socially structured ways of relating to the perceptible world. These practices are attuned to different dimensions of human life, such as the cultural worlds of customs that play a role in our lives' unique character, aesthetic experience, interpersonal relations, (...) and even social interactions that can be labeled welcoming and accepting, or racist and xenophobic. The book argues that although the perceiver is situated in relation to the world in many ways that influence perception, this does not entail a radical subjectivism. Rather, it shows that the world appears to perceivers in different ways or aspects since we relate differently to the same world The framework of perceptual practices can also be applied to our understanding of others, and the book argues that we understand others in part through perception. This framework allows us to understand others as bearers of social identities. -/- Bringing social philosophy together with philosophy of mind and taking the next step in enactivist philosophy, this theory accounts for the fundamental role of perception in the social aspect of everyday experience. With influences from Wittgensteinian pragmatism, phenomenology, and analytic philosophy of perception, as well as engagement with social psychology, social cognition studies, and work in neuroscience, the book synthesizes different layers at work in perception, paying important attention to the non-visual senses. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many philosophers have found it plausible that sense experience affords a species of nonpropositional awareness and knowledge, what Russell termed “knowledge by acquaintance.” At the same time, a prominent strand in epistemology maintains that knowledge has a distinctive normative profile: it is embedded in justificatory relations, serves as a standard of success for underlying attitudes, grounds regulative norms, and qualifies as a cognitive achievement. Yet it remains unclear how a nonpropositional state of acquaintance, formed without evidential basis and beyond (...) rational control, could fit within this normative structure. I trace the connections between different formulations of what I call “the normativity objection” to Russell's view and offer a unified response. The objection, I argue, rests on an overly passive conception of acquaintance. Once acquaintance is seen as partly constituted by attention—a subject‐level, reasons‐responsive activity—it can satisfy knowledge's normative role by serving as the success condition of a norm‐governed performance. This not only strengthens the Russellian program but also reveals a striking convergence between the structure of consciousness and the structure of epistemic normativity. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a puzzle about perceptual knowledge. It is based on an example in which you perceptually experience a rich array of objects and properties in a crowded restaurant. The puzzle takes the form of an inconsistent triad of claims about this example: First, you know certain highly specific, fine-grained details of your surroundings. Second, you do not have beliefs concerning all of these details. Third, knowledge requires belief. These claims are all plausible, but they are inconsistent, so they (...) cannot all be true. One of them must be rejected. This chapter argues that the best option is to reject the third claim—that is, that knowledge requires belief. It argues that some knowledge is constituted not by beliefs in propositions but by conscious awareness of properties and objects. (shrink)

This chapter argues that “strong acquaintance” exists. One is strongly acquainted with something just in case one is consciously aware of it, and one’s conscious awareness of it is not mediated by awareness of any other thing, nor by inference, judgment, conceptualization, causal processes, or any other knowledge. To make his case for the existence of strong acquaintance, the author draws on and develops the implications of a very old notion: skeptical doubt. He argues that, in some cases, we cannot (...) doubt that our experiences exist, and that from this we can infer that we are strongly acquainted with them. The author then extends his argument to show that even stronger forms of acquaintance exist, including a form of acquaintance (“phenomenal acquaintance”) that delivers complete immunity to skeptical doubt. (shrink)

This chapter addresses a very old question: Is there a special connection between a person’s moral character and their epistemic character—between how good they are and what they are in a position to know? Focusing specifically on knowledge by acquaintance, the author argues that one’s moral character affects what one is acquainted with and vice versa, so they are indeed interdependent in some very important ways. He argues that one’s moral character affects what one is acquainted with because it affects (...) both what one attends to and how one attends to it. He argues that what one is acquainted with affects one’s moral character because it affects the extent and manner in which one knows and appreciates the moral significance of certain things, and because it motivates one in a unique way to do morally good things. In these ways, acquaintance has unique moral significance. (shrink)

This chapter argues that “weak acquaintance” exists. One is weakly acquainted with something just in case one is consciously aware of it and one’s conscious awareness of it is not mediated by awareness of any other thing. The author argues that if weak acquaintance does not exist, then whenever one is aware of anything, one is aware of infinitely many things. Since no one is aware of infinitely many things—not ever, let alone every time one is aware of anything—it follows (...) that weak acquaintance exists. After defending his argument, the author considers two challenges: one based on a perceived tension between the existence of weak acquaintance and non-relational theories of experience, and another based on a concern that weak acquaintance is a trivial notion. He argues that the tension with non-relational theories doesn’t exist, and that weak acquaintance is far from trivial. (shrink)

This chapter gives an account of “knowledge of things.” Knowledge of things is a genus with two species: Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance is constituted by direct conscious awareness of properties and objects. Knowledge by description is constituted by conscious awareness of properties and objects as falling under a concept. After saying more about the constituent relation (i.e., awareness) and content (i.e., properties and objects) of knowledge of things, the author considers whether there are further (...) conditions on it parallel to conditions on propositional knowledge (e.g., truth, justification). He suggests that there are. The author calls them “veridicality” and “well-foundedness” conditions, and he spells out different ways to understand them. He concludes this chapter by discussing some ways knowledge of things relates to other forms of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter further develops the author’s case for the claim that some knowledge is constituted, not by beliefs in propositions, but by conscious awareness of properties and objects. He starts by considering how best to approach the debate over this claim. He adopts an approach that focuses on certain philosophical roles that are played by, and standardly attributed to, knowledge. He argues that conscious perceptual and introspective awareness sometimes plays those roles and, for that reason, should be considered a distinctive (...) type of knowledge. After going through several examples, the author focuses especially on the roles that knowledge plays in guiding behavior and as the basis of knowledge-conferring reasoning. He argues that conscious awareness sometimes plays these roles and that it therefore should be considered knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter argues that acquaintance has unique emotional significance because of how it relates to certain moral emotions—such as empathy, compassion, and what the author calls “The Feeling.” The author starts by introducing a series of examples of the Feeling. Then he highlights certain key features of the Feeling and considers what type of feeling it might be. He considers whether it is empathy, pity, or a certain kind of attitude or perception. Ultimately, the author argues that the Feeling is (...) a form of love—what he calls “Mister Rogers love”—and he suggests that it allows us to more-or-less literally see the value of people around us. Then he argues that acquaintance with this and other emotions is what enables this unique way of perceiving others’ value. Finally, he argues that the Feeling is important partly because it motivates us in a unique way to help those around us. (shrink)

This chapter argues that acquaintance has further epistemic significance beyond what the author attributed to it in previous chapters. The author argues that acquaintance not only has epistemic significance in itself, simply in virtue of being knowledge, but also in virtue of justifying beliefs—both immediately and inferentially. He then uses these results to defend various forms of epistemic foundationalism. Ultimately, the author argues that acquaintance is the foundation for all empirical knowledge. That is, he argues that all knowledge that depends (...) for its justification on perceptual or introspective experience depends on acquaintance for its justification. He considers whether some of these results can be gotten without acquaintance—that is, by appealing to experience in more neutral terms, without positing an acquaintance relation. He argues that they cannot—that acquaintance plays a central, ineliminable role in the epistemology of experience. (shrink)

Present to the Mind is about acquaintance. Acquaintance is the relation of awareness that we bear to the things we experience most directly, such as colors, shapes, smells, tastes, pains, itches, and maybe also things like beauty and goodness. In this book, the author defends three claims about acquaintance: (i) it exists, (ii) it is knowledge, and (iii) it matters. In the first section, the author describes what acquaintance is and argues that several different forms of it exist. In the (...) second section, he argues that acquaintance is itself a kind of knowledge that is distinct from other kinds of knowledge. In the third section, he argues that acquaintance has unique epistemic, aesthetic, emotional, and moral significance. (shrink)

This chapter argues that acquaintance has unique aesthetic significance because much (if not all) aesthetic knowledge and appreciation requires acquaintance. Aesthetic knowledge is knowledge of a thing’s aesthetic properties, like its beauty, unity, or balance. Aesthetic appreciation is a certain positive response to those properties based on aesthetic knowledge of them. The author argues that much of this knowledge and appreciation could not be gained in any other way—that is, without acquaintance—and that acquaintance is therefore required for it. Then he (...) argues that acquaintance is the foundation for all aesthetic appreciation because, even if some aesthetic appreciation does not require acquaintance with the object of appreciation, it does require acquaintance with something aesthetically relevant to it. Finally, the author argues that acquaintance is essential to what makes some instances of aesthetic appreciation more successful than others. (shrink)

This chapter describes what acquaintance is and situates it within contemporary philosophical views, not just about acquaintance, but about knowledge, justification, perception, the metaphysics of experience, and more. The author starts with a brief historical overview of the notion of acquaintance, focusing primarily on the work of Bertrand Russell. Then he describes contemporary acquaintance theories and the debates about perception and introspection that they feature in. Finally, the author defines a core notion of acquaintance—that is, direct conscious awareness of properties (...) and objects—and addresses some lingering questions about it. Along the way, the author distinguishes between two, more specific forms of acquaintance—“weak acquaintance” and “strong acquaintance”—that correspond to how strictly ‘direct’ is understood. The author also argues that the existence of these forms of acquaintance is consistent with all major theories of the metaphysics of experience. (shrink)

On the basis of textual scrutiny and intertextual comparisons, this study highlights that Vādidevasūri’s attribution of a quotation to the Cārvāka/Lokāyata philosopher Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa in the Syādvādaratnākara is, in fact, part of a broader passage sourced from Arcaṭa’s Hetubinduṭīkā and, consequently, its expungement from the corpus of source material attributed to the Cārvāka/Lokāyata authors is suggested.

The various themes explored in this superb collection of essays are organised around one thinker, John McDowell, and one central idea.

The idea of believing for a good reason has both normative and psychological content. How are these related? Recently, a number of authors have defended a ‘disjunctivist’ view of rationalisation, on which a good reason can make a subject’s responses to it intelligible in a way that mere ‘apparent reasons’ cannot. However, little has been said about the possible epistemological significance of this view or its relationship to more familiar forms of disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception. This paper examines (...) the relationship between epistemological disjunctivism and disjunctivism about rationalisation, arguing that the latter provides an attractive articulation of certain elements of the former. The specific claim is that disjunctivism about rationalisation enables the proponent of epistemological disjunctivism to explain why beliefs that are based on conclusive normative reasons provided by perception are susceptible to a certain kind of undercutting defeat. On the way to motivating this claim, the paper considers possible ways of articulating epistemological disjunctivism in terms of reasons, distinguishes different forms of disjunctivism about reasons for belief and clarifies the relationships between them. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that the a priori/a posteriori distinction is a legitimate distinction but does not carve at the epistemological joints and is theoretically unimportant. In this paper, I do two main things. First, I respond to the most prominent recent challenge to the significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction – the central argument in Williamson (2013). Second, I discuss the question of what the theoretical significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction is. -/- I (...) first present the a priori/a posteriori distinction as it is typically developed. I then turn to Williamson’s challenge to the significance of the distinction. Williamson points out that we often use the same cognitive mechanisms in coming to have a priori and a posteriori knowledge. So how could it be, asks Williamson, that there is a “deep epistemological difference” between the two? In response to this challenge, I argue that there is an important disanalogy between Williamson’s central example of a case of a priori knowledge and his central example of a case of a posteriori knowledge. Although the beliefs in the two cases are formed in similar ways, the ways in which their justification can be defeated are different. This suggests that there is an important epistemological difference between the two cases, one that cannot be captured in terms of the cognitive mechanisms used to form the beliefs. -/- Although Williamson’s argument is unsuccessful, there remains the question of just what the theoretical significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction is. I argue that the point of the distinction is not to enable us to represent some joint in nature, but rather to help us to identify epistemological problem cases. We understand – more-or-less – the epistemology of simple perceptual knowledge. The epistemology of non-perceptual knowledge is far less clear. The purpose of labeling a case of knowledge as a priori is to claim that its epistemology should not be assimilated to the epistemology of perception. Instead, it is something of a puzzle case. -/- This proposal has an important implication. There are several ways in which a case of knowledge can be different from a simple case of perceptual knowledge. Two differences are perhaps the most important: (i) the justification of the belief does not involve phenomenality, and (ii) the belief does not stand in a causal relation to what the belief is about. When beliefs about some subject matter fit either (i) or (ii), an epistemological puzzle arises. So there is more than one kind of epistemological puzzle to solve. This suggests that there is an important theoretical role for (at least) two distinctions in the ballpark of the traditional a priori/a posteriori distinction. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide new foundations for experientialism about perceptual knowledge, the view that all perceptual knowledge derives from experience. §1 introduces the basic template for experientialism about perceptual knowledge and considers how recent work on perceptual justification encourages giving special attention to less intuitive ways of filling in the template. §2 and §3 draw attention to ways of filling in the template that are more compelling, including versions from the history of epistemology that are still taken seriously elsewhere (...) (e.g., in philosophy of mind and cognitive science). §4 spotlights one neglected kind of approach—anti-Humean experientialism—and highlights some of its attractive features. §5 concludes by noting how anti-Humean experientialism dissolves an influential problem for experientialism that originates in Sellars (1956). (shrink)

How can we come to know, be justified in believing, or understand, that something is necessary, possible, contingent, essential, or accidental? This is the central question in the epistemology of modality. After some short remarks on the importance of this question for philosophy and for our everyday life, this chapter briefly summarizes Kripke’s seminal contribution to the field, discusses two different skeptical challenges in the epistemology of modality and briefly surveys some of the most discussed contemporary accounts and answers to (...) the central question. (shrink)

Some parts of Bence Nanay's view of the relationship between mental imagery and perception appear iconoclastic. Other parts appear traditionalist. This commentary on his recent book Mental imagery poses three questions that put pressure on the idea that the iconoclastic parts and the traditionalist parts can coexist harmoniously.

According to the sensitivity account of knowledge, S knows that p only if S’s belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. The sensitivity condition is usually relativized to belief-formation methods to avoid putative counterexamples. A remaining issue for the account is where methods should be mentioned in sensitivity subjunctives. In this paper, I argue that if methods are mentioned in the antecedent, then the account is too strong to (...) accommodate inductive knowledge; if methods are mentioned in the consequent, then the account is too weak to eliminate some luckily true beliefs from the realm of knowledge. Therefore, the strategy to relativize the sensitivity condition is undermined by inductive knowledge and some luckily true beliefs. (shrink)

The kind of empathy that is communicated through expressions like “I feel your pain” or “I share your sadness” is important, but peculiar. For it seems to require something perplexing and elusive: sharing another’s experience. It’s not clear how this is possible. We each experience the world from our own point of view, which no one else occupies. It’s also unclear exactly why it is so important that we share others' pains. If you are in pain, then why should it (...) matter, and be a good thing, that I am also in the same pain? Our goal in this paper is to address these questions. Specifically, our goal is to clarify how empathy, in the regimented sense of sharing another’s pain, is possible and why it is important. Central to our account is the concept of being acquainted with—that is, directly aware of—pain. When I feel my own pain, and am acquainted with it, I want the pain to stop, and I’m moved—sometimes compelled—to stop it. My acquaintance with the pain is what reveals that it is no good, to be gotten rid of, and to be avoided in the future. Acquaintance also appears to be implicated in our understanding of, and motivation to relieve, others’ pains. When I say “I feel your pain” I express an awareness of your pain, a direct appreciation of its noxious qualities, and, as with my own pain, an understanding of why it ought to be eased. Explaining how empathy is both possible and important therefore involves clarifying the nature of acquaintance: its limits, epistemic role, and motivational significance. What our analysis reveals is that agents have both epistemic and moral reasons to share other people’s pain because pain-sharing is the source of a species of character-building knowledge that we have no other way of accessing except through direct acquaintance with pain. (shrink)

Andrea Kern’s Identity Account is motivated by the virtuous desire to understand perceptual knowledge as a perfect feat of reason, one which is not only conclusively successful, but also known to be so. I worry, however, that the account ends up depicting acts of acquiring perceptual knowledge as necessarily reckless. Here, I explain why I have this worry, and why I think Kern has not yet fully addressed it.

Andrea Kern contends that perceptual experience is perceptual knowledge if our self-consciously held capacity for perceptual knowledge is “perfectly” actualized. I argue that this view requires further justification. First, Kern is unable to support her claim that an awareness of our self-conscious capacity for perceptual knowledge is “contained” in all our perceptions. Second, Kern’s claim that perception includes the idea of the conditions of perception is potentially inconsistent with her denial that perceptual experience enables perceptual knowledge.

Is knowledge a uniform kind? If not, what relation do the different kinds of knowledge bear to one another? Is there a central notion of knowledge which other kinds of knowledge must be understood in terms of? In this paper, I use Aristotle’s theory of homonyms as a framework to make progress on these questions. I argue that knowledge is not a uniform kind but rather a core-dependent homonym. To demonstrate this, I focus on knowledge by acquaintance. I argue that (...) the principles that govern propositional knowledge cannot govern knowledge by acquaintance. I then develop analogue principles for knowledge by acquaintance and show why, despite their different modal profiles, knowledge by acquaintance is nevertheless a form of knowledge. I then show that the analysis of propositional knowledge fundamentally depends on knowledge by acquaintance. (shrink)

Gupta develops a highly original and comprehensive account of the epistemic role of perceptual experience in his recent book. Among other things, Gupta holds that although we can attribute propositional content to experience, this alleged content has no crucial role to play in perceptual epistemology. He also adds that the view that experience justifies belief in its propositional content results in the view that experience grounds direct knowledge only of objects that are both metaphysically and logically distinct from ordinary external (...) objects, a view that he calls Cartesianism. Here, I pose two challenges to Gupta’s rejection of the epistemic significance of content and his contention that the propositional given view results in a form of Cartesianism. (shrink)

This paper concerns the Russian émigrée translator and philosopher Natalie Duddington (1886–1972). By establishing Duddington’s dependence on Nicholas Lossky (1870–1965), the paper argues that Duddington formed a unique synthesis of Russian intuitivism and British realism in her essay ‘Our Knowledge of Other Minds’. Despite the historical significance of Duddington’s work, it will be concluded that her synthesis succumbs to the most recent criticism which has been posed against perceptualists such as Fred Dretske (1932–2013). Russian ‘intuitivism’ is understood here as the (...) school of thought that was first developed by Lossky and subsequently inherited by Duddington. ‘Perceptualism’ will be understood as the broad claim that we perceive the contents of another mind in an immediate way rather than infer them. (shrink)

What sorts of properties we perceive matters for understanding the nature of perception and the scope of perceptual justification. One way of arguing for the view that we can represent ‘high-level’ properties such as natural and artificial kinds is to appeal to Susanna Siegel’s method of phenomenal contrast, which contrasts the phenomenology of experts and novices. This argument can be strengthened by appealing to empirical work on perceptual learning and expertise that suggests the world really does look different to experts (...) after training. Moreover, this appeal can diffuse several lines of objection to Siegel’s argument. Here I discuss two recent cases: Fred Dretske’s Goldilocks test, and Kevin Connolly’s attention shift argument. In both cases, a proper understanding of perceptual learning, and the role attention plays in such learning, explains how high-level properties can come to be represented in perceptual experience. Learned attentional patterns are themselves partially constitutive of representing high-level properties in perceptual experience. (shrink)

In this response piece, I criticize Andrea Kern’s argument against a version of what she calls the Two-Capacity View (TCV). TCV is the view that generally, perception is a capacity that enables subjects to gain perceptual knowledge, and that this capacity involves two sub-capacities: one for perception and one for judgment. In this piece, I provide reasons to doubt the second step of her three-step argument and show a way in which defenders of TCV can resist its third step, while (...) rejecting Kern’s notion of what we should take paradigmatic exercises of reason to be. (shrink)

Some core knowledge may be rooted in – or even identical to – well-characterized mechanisms of mid-level visual perception and attention. In the decades since it was first proposed, this possibility has inspired (and has been supported by) several discoveries in both infant cognition and adult perception, but it also faces several challenges. To what degree does What Babies Know reflect how babies see and attend?

The sensitivity account of knowledge is a modal epistemology, according to which S knows that p only if S's belief in p is sensitive in the sense that S would not believe that p if p were false. There are different ways to state the sensitivity condition by means of a possible worlds heuristic. The sensitivity account is thus rendered into different versions. This paper examines cases of knowledge and cases of luckily true beliefs (e.g., the Gettier cases) and argues (...) that no version of the sensitivity account accommodates all cases. Therefore, the account is unsuccessful as an account of knowledge. (shrink)

You can demonstrate a subjective quality like redness is different from red light. If you add a device that converts a red signal into a green one, between the retina and the optic nerve, the strawberry will seem green. It’s not about light hitting the retina, it’s about how the signal is processed. In this case, the greenness must be a quality of our conscious knowledge of the strawberry, not of the red light landing on the retina. If you use (...) sufficient, well defined terminology, you can objectively communicate the nature of subjective qualities. For example, even though you know what it is like to see something that is red you cannot know that what happens inside my brain is the same as yours. It may be that “My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red.” The properties of the red light are the same, but the experience the light produces could be different. What we lack is a universal dictionary to define what “redness” is, and how it differs from “red”. This is because physicists can’t yet answer: “Which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain, including possible descriptions of yet unknown processes, is a description of redness?” Consciousness isn’t a ‘hard problem’ it is a color problem. Because if you understand color, that model of computation can extend to the rest of consciousness. (shrink)

Abstract:It has convincingly been asserted that only what is conceptually formed can enter the space of reasons, and that only within the latter can we properly speak of knowledge in a way that is specific of human nature. The author purports to show (1) that, even if true, this does not mean that only what is intrinsically conceptual can have epistemic efficacy, (2) that we are able rationally to see nonconceptual contents, and (3) that the "vision" of nonconceptual content plays (...) an essentially role within the realm of epistemic rationality. Nonconceptual content is, indeed, given, and its resistance plays a fundamental role to allow us to know that we are in touch with the world. (shrink)

Cognitive states, such as beliefs, desires and intentions, may influence how we perceive people and objects. If this is the case, are those influences worse when they occur implicitly rather than explicitly? Here we show that cognitive penetration in perception generally involves an implicit component. First, the process of influence is implicit, making us unaware that our perception is misrepresenting the world. This lack of awareness is the source of the epistemic threat raised by cognitive penetration. Second, the influencing state (...) can be implicit, though it can also be or become explicit. Being unaware of the content of the influencing state, we argue, does not make as much difference to the epistemic threat as it does to the epistemic responsibility of the agent. Implicit influencers cannot be examined for their accuracy and justification, and cannot be voluntarily accepted by the perceiver. Conscious awareness, however, is not sufficient for attributing blame to the agent. An equally important condition is the degree of control that they can exercise to change the contents that influence perception or stop their influence. Here we suggest that such control can also result from social influence, and that cognitive penetrability of perception is therefore also a social issue. (shrink)

Bayesianism can be characterized as the following twofold position: (i) rational credences obey the probability calculus; (ii) rational learning, i.e., the updating of credences, is regulated by some form of conditionalization. While the formal aspect of various forms of conditionalization has been explored in detail, the philosophical application to learning from experience is still deeply problematic. Some philosophers have proposed to revise the epistemology of perception; others have provided new formal accounts of conditionalization that are more in line with how (...) we learn from perceptual experience. The current investigation argues that Bayesian epistemology is still incomplete; the epistemology of perception and the epistemology of rational reasoning have not been reconciled. (shrink)