Brandom on Perceptual Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kalpokas
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge

Abstract According to Brandom, perceptual knowledge is the product of two distinguishable capacities: (i) the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli, and (ii) the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlements and commitments of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this is a blind spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects.

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.

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.

The Metaphysics of Memory

Memory ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 32-56
Author(s):  
Jordi Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Functional Role ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Cognitive Economy ◽  
Proposal A ◽  
The Subject ◽  
In Virtue Of

Chapter 2 offers a proposal about the facts in virtue of which a mental state qualifies as a memory. According to this proposal, a mental state qualifies as a memory in virtue of the functional role that it plays within the cognitive economy of the subject. The chapter outlines two alternative proposals about the nature of memory. According to the causal theory of memory, a mental state is a memory in virtue of the fact that it has been caused by a perceptual experience of some fact. According to the narrative theory of memory, a mental state is a memory in virtue of the fact that the subject is using the mental state to construct a story of their life. It is argued that the functionalist proposal enjoys the virtues of each of the two theories, and it avoids the difficulties which threaten the two theories as well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Perceptual Capacities, Knowledge, and Gettier Cases

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Schellenberg
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Common Element ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Good Case ◽  
Externalist View

I will exploit the basic commitments of capacitivism to develop a distinctive externalist view of perceptual knowledge. The basic idea of capacitivism is that perception is constitutively a matter of employing perceptual capacities that function to discriminate and single out particulars in our environment. It is because a given subject is employing perceptual capacities with a certain function that her mental states have epistemic force. Employing such perceptual capacities constitutes a mental state that provides us with phenomenal evidence, and employing such capacities in the good case also provides us with knowledge-worthy factive evidence. Capacitivism is an externalist view that does not invoke reliability, remains steadfastly naturalistic, and by recognizing a metaphysically substantive common element between perception and hallucination avoids any commitment to disjunctivism.

Dimensions of Perceptual Content

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Causal Theory Of Perception ◽  
The Right

This chapter presents a causal theory of perception according to which perceiving something is, in outline, equivalent to its producing or sustaining, in the right way, a phenomenal representation of it. Commonly, the perceived object plays this causal role reliably enough to yield perceptual knowledge, provided we form perceptual beliefs that appropriately correspond to what we see. But the theory does not imply that seeing is conceptual, entails believing, or has propositional perceptual content. The notion of content is clarified, and several types are described, including a hallucinatory kind. This causal representational view also accommodates “inner perception” of elements, such as images—as is appropriate to the breadth of “perception.” But the most important point here is that explaining the causal character of the perceptual relation partly on the basis of information represented in the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience does not entail the perceiver’s acquiring beliefs that propositionalize that information.

Tasting Flavors

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Barry C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Taste And Smell

Perceptual experience enables us to know features of objects in our environment. But what does the experience of tasting enable us to know? By tasting we discover the tastes of foods or liquids; but what are tastes? An objectivist sees tastes as properties of foods and drinks, which are there anyway, independent of how we experience them. On this view, tasting provides us with perceptual knowledge of real features of foods and liquids. By contrast, a subjectivist sees tastes as just features of our own experience: sensations on the tongue answerable to nothing other than themselves. Tastes, on this view, are not in the foods; rather foods give rise to tastes in us. A metaphysics of tastes that sees them not as properties of foods but as parts of our experience makes the epistemology of tasting an aspect of self-knowledge. Knowing how something tastes is being immediately aware of a certain sort of experience that occurs when we are eating or drinking. On this view, we can know all about tastes so long as we know all about our experience. However, this simple subjectivist story fails to do justice to the epistemology of tasting. The experiences generated when tasting are not unisensory but multisensory, though unified. They are perceptions of flavor and due to touch, taste, and smell. A satisfactory metaphysics and epistemology of flavor leaves room for flavors as configurations of sapid, odorous, and tactile properties of the food and liquids we consume.

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