Perceptual Knowledge and the Primacy of Judgment

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARRY STROUD
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
The World

ABSTRACT:Rather than asking how what we are aware of in perceptual experience can give us knowledge of the independent world, this paper asks what conditions we as knowers must fulfill, what capacities we must have, and what the ‘objects of perception’ must be in the competent exercise those capacities, if we are to have any such knowledge. It is argued that we must be capable of perceiving that such-and-such is so and thereby knowing by perception alone what is so in the world as it is independently of us.

Scepticism and the Senses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sceptical Argument ◽  
Philosophical Scepticism

This chapter considers some lessons that can be learned from philosophical scepticism and some strategies to be pursued in understanding human knowledge in the right way. It examines the conception of perceptual experience and what is needed for a more accurate—and hence more trouble-free—account of what we can and do in fact perceive. It also discusses René Descartes’s sceptical argument and his notion of perceptual knowledge before concluding with an explanation of what it calls propositional perception to account for knowledge of the world. It argues that we can perceive particular objects without believing or knowing anything about them. It is only with such ‘propositional’ objects of perception that direct perceptual knowledge of the world is possible, since knowledge is knowledge of what is so.

Numerical symbols as explanations of human perceptual experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The World ◽  
Symbolic Systems ◽  
Perceptual Systems

Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.

Explaining Perceptual Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
External World ◽  
Satisfactory Explanation ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
The Way

This chapter offers a response to Quassim Cassam’s ‘Seeing and Knowing’, which challenges some of the conditions Cassam thinks the author has imposed on a satisfactory explanation of our knowledge of the external world. According to Cassam, the conditions he specifies can be fulfilled in ways that explain how the knowledge is possible. What is at stake in this argument between Cassam and the author is the conception of what is perceived to be so that is needed to account for the kind of perceptual knowledge we all know we have. That is what must be in question in any promising move away from the overly restrictive conception of perceptual experience that gives rise to the hopelessness of the traditional epistemological problem. The author suggests that we should explore the conditions of successful ‘propositional’ perception of the way things are and emphasizes the promise of such a strategy.

scholarly journals Extending the extended consciousness debate: perception, imagination, and the common kind assumption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Deery
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
The World ◽  
Predictive Approach ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

AbstractFor some, the states and processes involved in the realisation of phenomenal consciousness are not confined to within the organismic boundaries of the experiencing subject. Instead, the sub-personal basis of perceptual experience can, and does, extend beyond the brain and body to implicate environmental elements through one’s interaction with the world. These claims are met by proponents of predictive processing, who propose that perception and imagination should be understood as a product of the same internal mechanisms. On this view, as visually imagining is not considered to be world-involving, it is assumed that world-involvement must not be essential for perception, and thus internalism about the sub-personal basis is true. However, the argument for internalism from the unity of perception and imagination relies for its strength on a questionable conception of the relationship between the two experiential states. I argue that proponents of the predictive approach are guilty of harbouring an implicit commitment to the common kind assumption which does not follow trivially from their framework. That is, the assumption that perception and imagination are of the same fundamental kind of mental event. I will argue that there are plausible alternative ways of conceiving of this relationship without drawing internalist metaphysical conclusions from their psychological theory. Thus, the internalist owes the debate clarification of this relationship and further argumentation to secure their position.

Perception and Primary Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-69
Author(s):  
Michael Ayers
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Decisive Reason ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

A phenomenological analysis of perceptual experience, conducted with an eye on experimental psychology, addresses a series of questions. What is phenomenology? What makes perception of one’s environment as one’s environment? Does the phenomenal integration of the senses give decisive reason for ‘direct realism’? Do we perceive causal relations, or only infer them? Are we perceptually aware of acting? Are we perceptually aware of the causality of perception itself, and if so, in some cases or in all? It is argued that perceiving is not only direct cognitive contact with reality, but that the perceptual relation is itself an object of perceptual awareness. Accordingly, conscious perceptual knowledge comes with knowledge that and of how one has it. Other forms of knowledge (e.g. a priori knowledge) are analogous. A distinction is drawn between primary and secondary knowledge, such that that there could be no secondary knowledge without some primary knowledge.

Perceptual knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 279-308
Author(s):  
Georges Dicker
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Sensitive Knowledge ◽  
Rule Out

This chapter critically analyzes Locke’s views on “sensitive knowledge.” Its main theses are: (1) Locke sometimes confuses the legitimate question (Q1), “When we perceive a body, how can we know that we aren’t hallucinating instead?” with the faulty “veil-of-perception” question, (Q2) “How do we know bodies exist, since we can’t perceive them?” (2) When Locke does mention (Q1), he sometimes just dismisses it, because he holds that simple ideas of sensation are by definition produced by bodies. (3) At other times, Locke humors the skeptic, and offers a defense of the senses, in the form of an inference to the best explanation. (4) It’s doubtful that he could successfully rule out other possible explanations of our perceptual experience, like Descartes’s deceiver scenario and its contemporary variants. (5) There are reasons for this weakness, and they carry over to any attempt to defeat skepticism by an inference to the best explanation.

Filling-in is for finding out

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 781-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Pessoa ◽  
Evan Thompson ◽  
Alva Noë
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
World Model ◽  
Perceptual Mapping ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Perceptual Completion ◽  
The World ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
The Brain

The following points are discussed in response to the commentaries: (1) A taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena should rely on both phenomenological and mechanistic criteria. (2) Certain forms of perceptual completion are caused by topographically organized neural processes – neural filling-in. (3) The bridge locus, understood as the final site of perceptual experience in the brain, should be replaced by the principle that each token percept has a neural substrate that is nomically sufficient for it, all else being equal. (4) Analytic isomorphism – the view that there must be a pictorial or spatial neural-perceptual isomorphism at the bridge locus – should be rejected. Although more abstract kinds of isomorphism are central to the neural-perceptual mapping, the perceptual cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of the neural, and therefore the explanation of perception cannot be reduced to uncovering neural-perceptual isomorphisms. (5) The task of vision is to guide action in the world, not to construct a detailed world-model in the head. (6) Neural filling-in facilitates the integration of information and thereby helps the animal find out about its environment. (7) Perceptual content needs to be understood at the level of the person or animal interacting in the world.

Easy Knowledge, Circularity, and the Puzzle of Reliability Knowledge

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-473
Author(s):  
Matthias Steup
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Animal Knowledge ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Mutual Dependence ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Temporal Priority ◽  
Vicious Circularity

AbstractAccording to externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism, it's possible to gain knowledge through a perceptual experience without being in a position to know that the experience is reliable. As a result, both of these views face the problem of making knowledge of perceptual reliability too easy, for they permit deducing perceptual reliability from particular perceptual experience without already knowing that these experiences are trustworthy. Ernest Sosa advocates a two-stage solution to the problem. At the first stage, a rich body of perceptual animal knowledge is acquired. At the second stage, perceptual knowledge becomes reflective after deducing perceptual reliability from the initial body of perceptual animal knowledge. I defend the alternative approach of rejecting both externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism. According to the alternative view, perceptual knowledge and knowledge of perceptual reliability require each other. Such a cognitive structure seems viciously circular. I propose that the appearance of vicious circularity dissipates when the relationship in question is viewed, not as one of temporal priority, but instead as synchronic mutual dependence. At a given time, one cannot have perceptual knowledge without knowledge of perceptual reliability, and vice versa. Such mutual dependence, I argue, is benign.

Empiricism, Perception and Conceptual Change

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
World Line ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Level Of Experience ◽  
Conceptual Revolution

In recent times it has become fashionable to emphasize the role of conceptual change in the (philosopher's) history of science. To judge from recent writers (Feyerabend 5-9, Kuhn 18), every significant theoretical change in science is first and foremost a revolution in scientific concepts—a conceptual revolution. According to this view, every level of experience is affected by each fundamental theoretical change: physical theory, experimental practice and even perceptual experience. The Aristotelian patrician who watched the sun sink beneath the horizon not only had different beliefs (theory) about the phenomenon but actually saw something different from the Newtonian gentleman who saw the horizon rise above his eye-sun line, and the Einsteinian professional who saw the sun's varying geometrical relations to the world light-geodesics on which successive temporal stages of his eye world-line lay. Moreover, such is the completeness of the conceptual-experiential shifts undergone in a fundamental scientific change that it is impossible to meaningfully discuss the one theory within the confines of the other or, indeed, to provide any systematic, cumulative comparison of successive theories.

The Vault of Perception: Are Straight Lines Seen as Curved?

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Tyler
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Linear Perspective ◽  
Wide Field ◽  
Perspective Geometry ◽  
3D Space ◽  
Geometric Approximation ◽  
The World ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Straight Lines ◽  
Valid Form

There is a widespread belief in art praxis that linear perspective is only a geometric approximation to the ‘true’ properties of perspective as experienced in the perception of the world, which are thought to involve some form of curvilinear perspective. The origins of that belief are examined from Roman times to the present, with a focus on the generation of perspective curvature by the active viewer as a means of elucidating the underlying perceptual principles involved. It is concluded that the only valid form of perspective for the flat canvas is linear perspective, and that it is valid only for a viewing location at the geometric center of projection for which the picture was constructed. Viewing from any other location (particularly in the case of wide-field images viewed from greater than the required distance) generates perceived distortions that have often been misinterpreted to imply that linear perspective geometry is inadequate and that some form of curvilinear perspective would be more representative. However, as long as it is viewed with one eye from the center of projection, the perceptual experience of accurate linear perspective is of a full, explorable 3D space, in contrast to any other form of perspective convention.

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