Perceptual justification in the Bayesian brain: a foundherentist account

In this paper, I use the predictive processing (PP) theory of perception to tackle the question of how perceptual states can be rationally involved in cognition by justifying other mental states. I put forward two claims regarding the epistemological implications of PP. First, perceptual states can confer justification on other mental states because the perceptual states are themselves rationally acquired. Second, despite being inferentially justified rather than epistemically basic, perceptual states can still be epistemically responsive to the mind-independent world. My main goal is to elucidate the epistemology of perception already implicit in PP. But I also hope to show how it is possible to peacefully combine central tenets of foundationalist and coherentist accounts of the rational powers of perception while avoiding the well-recognized pitfalls of either.

Basic Perceptual Reasons

Chapter 3 takes up the first obstacle to the idea that reasons come first among normative concepts in epistemology: the problem of unjustified belief. It does so by introducing the issues that arise in the epistemology of perception when we ask what reason or evidence you acquire for ordinary conclusions about the external world in virtue of having perceptual experiences. The resulting space of possible answers is explored, including the natural ways in which it leads to skepticism, rationalism, coherentism, dogmatism, pure externalism, and disjunctivism. These views are contrasted with answers that allow reasons to be false, and by doing so avoid all of the distinctive commitments of each of these alternatives.

Did God Answer That Prayer?

In his recent book Petitionary Prayer, Scott Davison presents an epistemological challenge to petitionary prayer. He asks: If S prays for God to bring about event E, and E in fact occurs, how could one be justified in believing that E was an answer to S’s prayer? Apart from direct revelation in which God explicitly provides reasons for believing that E was an answer to prayer, Davison argues, S could not know that S’s prayer had been answered by God. Thus, the person praying should remain agnostic about answered prayers. I argue that in failing to attend to two theological resources available in the Christian tradition—the concept of spiritual senses and teachings about the relational nature of prayer—Davison’s conclusion is premature. Drawing upon recent literature on the epistemology of perception and the theology of prayer, I argue that one can be confident that God has answered one’s prayers.

Sensory Interactions and the Epistemology of Haptic Touch

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.

Perceptual Justification and the Cartesian Theater

According to a traditional Cartesian epistemology of perception, perception does not provide one with direct knowledge of the external world. Instead, your immediate perceptual evidence is limited to facts about your own visual experience, from which conclusions about the external world must be inferred. Cartesianism faces well-known skeptical challenges. But this chapter argues that any anti-Cartesian view strong enough to avoid these challenges must license a way of updating one’s beliefs in response to anticipated experiences that seems diachronically irrational. To avoid this result, the anti-Cartesian must either license an unacceptable epistemic chauvinism, or else claim that merely reflecting on one’s experiences defeats perceptual justification. This leaves us with a puzzle: Although Cartesianism faces problems, avoiding them brings a new set of problems.

Sensory Disclosure

This chapter presents a general theory of color perception that focuses on something close to what Wilfred Sellars called “the sensory core”, something well-described in a passage from H. H. Price’s Perception. It develops the implications of that theory for (i) the distinctive epistemology of perception, which in the best case involves something better than mere knowledge, (ii) the nature of ganzfelds, film color, highlights, lightened and darkened color, auras, after-images, color hallucinations and the like, (iii) the account of when things are predicatively colored, and (iv) the nature of the category of quality. The chapter argues that as a consequence of understanding the sensory core we should reject the two most influential views in the philosophical theory of perception. Our most basic perceptual experiences are not adequately modeled as attitudes directed upon propositions. Nor are they adequately modeled as directed upon facts, understood as items in our perceived environment.

Are Perceptual Reasons the Objects of Perception?

This paper begins with a Davidsonian puzzle in the epistemology of perception and introduces two solutions to that puzzle: the Truth-Maker View (TMV) and the Content Model. The paper goes on to elaborate TMV, elements of which can be found in the work of Kalderon (2011) and Brewer (2011). The central tenant of TMV is the claim that one’s reason for one’s perceptual belief should, in all cases, be identified with some item one perceives which makes the proposition believed true. I defend an argument against TMV which appeals to (a) the claim that the reason for which one believes should always to be identified with the explanans of the rationalizing explanation to which one’s belief is subject and (b) the claim that the explanantia of rationalizing explanations must be identified with truths. I finish by replying to two objections to the argument.

Reasons and Perception

This chapter is organized around four central questions about the role of reasons in the epistemology of perception. (1) The “whether?” question: does perception provide us with reasons for belief about the external world? (2) The “how?” question: how does perception provide us with reasons for belief about the external world? (3) The “when?” question: when does perception provide us with reasons for belief about the external world? (4) The “what?” question: what are the reasons that perception provides us with for belief about the external world?