Abstract:   In this paper I present a transcendental argument based on the findings of cognitive psychology and neurophysiology which invites two conclusions: First and foremost, that a pre-condition of visual perception itself is precisely what the Aristotelian and other commonsense realists maintain, namely, the independent existence of a featured, or pre-packaged world; second, this finding, combined with other reflections, suggests that, contra McDowell and other neo-Kantians, human beings have access to things as they are in the world via non-projective perception. These two conclusions taken together form the basis of Aristotelian metaphysical realism and a refutation of the neo-Kantian two-factor approach to perception

Abstract: Realism concerning a given domain of things is the view that the things in that domain exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone’s thought or experience of them. The realism which I am concerned with here is empirical realism, that is, realism concerning empirical things, which are the ordinary persisting things presented to us in our perception of the world around us. Empirical realism is thus the doctrine that the tables, tress, people and other animals, which we see, feel, hear, and so on, exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone’s thought or experience of them. My question is which account of the nature of perceptual experience is most conducive to this commonsense realist world-view

Abstract: The naive realist takes a veridical visual experience to be an immediate relation to external entities. Is this how such an experience is phenomenally, by its phenomenal character? Only if there can be phenomenal error, since a hallucinatory experience phenomenally matching such a veridical experience would then be phenomenally but not in fact such a relation. Fortunately, such phenomenal error can be avoided: the phenomenal character of a visual experience involves immediate awareness of a sort of picture of external entities, as on a representative theory of perception. The attraction of naive realism results from an erroneous projection of the immediacy of the subject's awareness of this picture onto the external entities pictured

Abstract: Phenomenal Naivete is a sort of marriage of a pair of doctrines which have lately received extensive attention separately in the literature in philosophy of mind and epistemology: representationalism and attitude externalism, respectively. (Central discussions of these doctrines are Siewert 1998 and Williamson 2000.) Roughly and briefly: representationalism is the doctrine that phenomenal characters (various types of consciousness) are belief-like properties, in that they involve commitments to theses about how the world is—in particular, the environment of the subject, furnished with its tables and chairs. And attitude externalism is the doctrine that factive, or knowledge-like properties can be mental: while the instantiation of such a property may metaphysically necessitate some non-mental fact, it still marks out a purely mental natural kind

Abstract: My aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the distinction between direct realism and representationalism by offering a critical analysis of Steven Nadler’s account in Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. I argue contrary to Nadler that Descartes and Arnauld are representationalists, and I also argue that Aquinas is a representationalist

Abstract: Since the demise of the Sense-Datum independent objects or events to be objects Theory and Phenomenalism in the last cenof perception; however, unlike Direct Retury, Direct Realism in the philosophy of alists, Indirect Realists take this percepperception has enjoyed a resurgence of tion to be indirect by involving a prior popularity.1 Curiously, however, although awareness of some tertium quid between there have been attempts in the literature the mind and external objects or events.3 to refute some of the arguments against Idealists and Phenomenalists agree with Direct Realism, there has been, as of yet, the Indirect Realists’ denial that percepno systematic treatment of all eight of the tion is an immediate or direct awareness main arguments against it.2 The aim of this of mind-independent physical objects or paper is to fill this lacuna in the literature events in the external world; but they go by discussing all eight of these arguments further in denying altogether the existence against Direct Realism and the argumenof mind-independent objects or events. For tative strategies Direct Realists may deploy Idealists and Phenomenalists, perception to counter them. is an awareness of mind-dependent objects Direct Realists hold that perception is an or events.4 Idealists take perceived objects immediate or direct awareness of mind-into be ontologically dependent on being dependent physical objects or events in the perceived (esse est percipi). Phenomenalexternal world; in taking this awareness to ists take perceived objects to be ontologibe immediate or direct, Direct Realists deny cally dependent on the possibility of being that the perception of these physical objects perceived (esse est posse percipi).5 or events requires a prior awareness of some Since Direct Realism is logically incom- tertium quid (e.g., a reified appearance, patible with Indirect Realism or with Idesense-datum, sensum, idea, quality-inalism and Phenomenalism, defeating stance, species) mediating between the mind Direct Realism is necessary for mounting and external physical objects or events..

Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate the structure of Sellars' critical direct realism in the philosophy of perception. This position is original because it attempts to balance two claims that many have thought to be incompatible: (1) that perceptual knowledge is direct, i.e., not inferential, and (2) that perceptual knowledge is irreducibly conceptual. Even though perceptual episodes are not the result of inferences, they must still stand within the space of reasons if they are to be counted not only as knowledge, but also as thoughts directed at the world. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how Sellars elaborates and defends this position

Abstract: McDowell has argued that external world scepticism is a pressing problem only in so far as we accept, on the basis of the argument from illusion, the claim that perceiving that p and hallucinating that p involve a highest common factor¾something which functions, in the manner of the classical ‘veil of ideas’, as a perceptual intermediary. McDowell traces the power of this argument to disput- able Cartesian assumptions about the transparency of subjectivity to itself. I argue, contra McDowell, that the reflections to be found in, paradigmatically, Descartes’s First Meditation are better interpreted as offering a causal argument for scepticism that depends upon a naturalistic conception of sense experience. This is more powerful than the argument from illusion, since it requires no commitment to a highest common factor in perception, nor to the transparency of the mental. The availability of this alternative route to scepticism raises serious problems for McDowell’s quietism, which aims to earn the right to avoid, rather than answer, the sceptic. Since the appeal to externalism about content cannot settle the matter, I conclude that there is, at present, an unsatisfactory stand-off between the sceptic and McDowell’s position

Abstract: In his Dewey Lectures,1 Hilary Putnam argues that contemporary philosophy cannot solve nor see its way past the traditional problem of how language or thought hooks on to

Abstract: Paul Pietroski, McGill University The general topic of_ Mind and World_, the written version of John McDowell's 1991 John Locke Lectures, is how `concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world'. And one of the main aims is `to suggest that Kant should still have a central place in our discussion of the way thought bears on reality' (1).1 In particular, McDowell urges us to adopt a thesis that he finds in Kant, or perhaps in Strawson's Kant: the content of experience is conceptualized; _what_ we experience is always the kind of thing that we could also believe. When an agent has a veridical experience, she `takes in, for instance sees, _that things are thus and so_' (9). McDowell's argument for this thesis is indirect, but potentially powerful. He discusses a tension concerning the roles of experience and conceptual capacities in thought, and he claims that the only adequate resolution involves granting that experiences have conceptualized content. The tension, elaborated below, can be expressed roughly as follows: judgments must be somehow constrained by features of the external environment, else judgments would be utterly divorced from the world they purport to be about; yet our judgments must be somehow free of external control, else we could give no sense to the idea that we are responsible for our judgments

Abstract: In _The Problem of Perception_, A.D. Smith’s central aim is to defend the view that we can directly_ _perceive ordinary objects, such as cups, keys and the like.¹ The book is organized around the two arguments that Smith considers to be serious threats to the possibility of direct perception: the argument from illusion, and the argument from hallucination. The argument from illusion threatens this possibility because it concludes that indirect realism is true. Indirect realism is the view that we perceive mind-independent ordinary objects, but can only do so indirectly, by perceiving mind-dependent objects: objects whose existence depends on being perceived or thought about. The argument from hallucination draws a similar conclusion: if we perceive mind- independent ordinary objects at all, then our perception of them is indirect in the same way

Abstract: In this paper I argue for a theory of perception distinct both from classical sense-datum theories and from intentionalist theories, that is theories according to which one perceives external objects by dint of a relation with a propositional content. The alternative I propose completely rejects any representational element in perception. When one sees that an object has a property, the situation or state of affairs of its having that property is one's perception, so that the object and property are literally part of one's mind. The most obvious objection to this view is that it embodies a rampant form of idealism. It is argued to the contrary, via consideration of the metaphysics of situations, that the theory is entirely consistent with a robustly realist view of the world