scholarly journals Plenty of room left for the Dogmatist

Analysis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Raleigh
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Justification ◽  
Log Odds

Abstract Barnett (2019) provides an interesting new challenge for Dogmatist accounts of perceptual justification. The challenge is that such accounts, by accepting that a perceptual experience can provide a distinctive kind of boost to one’s credences, would lead to a form of diachronic irrationality in cases where one has already learnt in advance that one will have such an experience. I show that this challenge rests on a misleading feature of using the 0–1 interval to express probabilities and show that if we switch to using Odds or (better) Log-Odds, the misleading appearance that there is only ‘a little room’ for one’s credences to increase evaporates. Moreover, there are familiar, independent reasons for taking the Log-Odds scale to provide a clearer picture of the confirmatory effect of evidence. Thus the Dogmatist can after all escape the charge of diachronic irrationality.

Knowing by Perceiving

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Millar
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Perceptual Justification ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
The Real ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Key Concepts

Epistemological discussions of perception usually focus on something other than knowledge. They consider how beliefs arising from perception can be justified. With the retreat from knowledge to justified belief there is a retreat from perception to the sensory experiences implicated by perception. On the most widely held approach, perception drops out of the picture other than as the usual means by which we are furnished with the experiences that are supposed to be the real source of justification—experiences that are conceived to be no different in kind from those we could have had if we had been perfectly hallucinating. In this book an alternative perspective is developed that explicates perceptual knowledge in terms of recognitional abilities, and perceptual justification in terms of perceptually known truths as to what we perceive to be so. Justified belief is regarded as belief founded on known truths. The treatment of perceptual knowledge is situated within a broader conception of epistemology and philosophical method. Attention is paid to contested conceptions of perceptual experience, to knowledge from perceived indicators, and to the standing of background presuppositions that inform our thinking. Throughout, the discussion is sensitive to ways in which key concepts figure in ordinary thinking, while being resolutely focused on what knowledge is, not just on how we think of it.

Skepticism and the Liberal/Conservative Conceptions of Perceptual Justification

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Hamid Vahid
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Perceptual Justification ◽  
Recent Debate

Although it is widely recognized that perceptual experience confers justification on the beliefs it gives rise to, it is unclear how its epistemic value should be properly characterized. Liberals hold, and conservatives deny, that the justification conditions of perceptual beliefs merely involve experiences with the same content. The recent debate on this question has, however, seen further fragmentations of the positions involved with the disputants seeking to identify intermediate positions between liberalism and conservatism. In this paper, I suggest a framework to account for the differences and similarities of the positions within the liberalism/conservatism debate. More importantly, I suggest that, instead of focusing on one particular species of conservatism, we should recognize varieties of conservatism. My conclusion is that no theory of justification need be conservative or liberal tout court. Whether a theory of justification is liberal or conservative depends on which dimension of evaluation is taken to be salient. The implications of this finding for the liberalism/conservatism debate are then investigated.

Sensory Interactions and the Epistemology of Haptic Touch

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-76
Author(s):  
Matthew Fulkerson
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
External World ◽  
Perceptual Justification ◽  
Sensory Interaction ◽  
Bodily Awareness ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Sensory Interactions ◽  
Epistemology Of Perception

This chapter addresses the issue of perceptual justification from the perspective of haptic touch. Touch raises a number of difficulties for traditional accounts of perceptual epistemology, since it involves a heterogenous collection of distinct sensory subsystems that must coordinate their activities and it essentially involves forms of emotional and bodily awareness that only derivatively provide information about features of the external world. These features suggest an epistemically interesting layer of sensory interaction that should be included in any plausible account of the justifying role of perceptual experience. The chapter argues that this layer of interaction, while perhaps more readily apparent in touch than in vision, is in fact ubiquitous in perception generally, and should be taken seriously by everyone working on the epistemology of perception.

The Evidence of the Senses is no Evidence from the Senses

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-191
Author(s):  
Tommaso Piazza
Keyword(s):  
Logical Investigation ◽  
Perceptual Justification ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Recent Interpretation

In the first part of this paper I suggest that Dogmatism about perceptual justification – the view that in the most basic cases, perceptual justification is immediate – commits to rejecting Evidentialism, as it commits, specifically, to accounting for the mechanics of perceptual justification otherwise than by maintaining that perceptual experiences justify by providing evidence. In the second part of the paper, by following W. Hopp’s recent interpretation of Husserl’s Sixth Logical Investigation, I suggest that Husserl’s theory of fulfilment provides the basis of the non-evidential account of the mechanics of perceptual justification needed to vindicate Dogmatism.

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.

Getting Outside of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McCarroll
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sources Of Information

This chapter provides an account of the spatial perspectival characteristics and the self-presence of remembering from-the-outside. The chapter develops the Constructive Encoding approach, according to which the context of encoding may play a role in the construction of observer perspectives. The Constructive Encoding approach recognizes the multiple and multiperspectival sources of information available during perception, and suggests that observer perspectives may be constructed from non-egocentric information available during perceptual experience. This chapter provides a way of understanding the idea that one need not see oneself from-the-outside in order to have a memory that is recalled from-the-outside. This chapter not only provides a better understanding of observer perspectives but also sheds light on the perspectival mind.

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