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Perception :: Perception and the mind :: Perception and knowledge

• Bill Brewer (1998). Experience and reason in perception.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The question I am interested in is this. What exactly is the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of knowledge on the basis of perception? The problem here, as I see it, is to solve simultaneously for the nature of this experience, and its role in acquiring and sustaining the relevant beliefs, in such a away as to vindicate what I regard as an undeniable datum, that perception is a basic source of knowledge about the mind- independent world, in a sense of ‘basic’ which is also to be elucidated. I shall sketch the way in which I think that this should be done. In section I, I argue that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs. In section II, I explain how they do so. My thesis is that a correct account of the sense in which perceptual experiences are experiences of mind-independent things is itself an account of the way in which they provide peculiarly basic reasons for beliefs about the world around the perceiver
• Bill Brewer (2001). Precis of Perception and Reason.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What is the role of conscious perceptual experience in making thought about the mind- independent empirical world possible? What is the role of such experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge, about the way things are in that world? What is the relation between these two roles? My central argument is intended to establish that a proper account of the way in which perceptual experience is essential to our grasp of determinate thoughts about particular things in the world around us will at the same time yield a full explanation of the fundamental role which such experience plays in the acquisition of empirical knowledge, by providing us with reasons, which we recognize as such, to endorse the most basic thoughts about mind-independent things in belief
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(200109)63:2<405:POPAR>2.0.CO;2-R
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00113.x
  
• Alex Byrne (1996). Spin control: Comment on McDowell's Mind and World.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We have justified beliefs about the “external” world, and some of these are formed directly on the basis of perception. I may justifiably believe that a certain dog is in certain manger, and I may have this belief because I can see that the dog is in the manger. So far, so good
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/spincontrol.html
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1996)7<261:SCCOJM>2.0.CO;2-1
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1996)7<261:SCCOJM>2.0.CO;2-1
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1522911.pdf
  
• Philippe Chuard (ms). Perceptual reasons.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to Conceptualists like John McDowell and Bill Brewer, the representational content of perceptual experiences is wholly conceptual. One of the main!and only!arguments they advance for this claim has to do with the epistemological role of perceptual experiences. I focus on Bill Brewer’s "1999# version of the argument. I show why Brewer fails to satisfactorily motivate the premises of his argument, and suggest that opponents of Conceptualism could accept these premises without thereby endorsing the conclusion. Finally, I consider whether the conclusion really supports Conceptualism
• Kathrin Glüer-Pagin (online). Perception and justification.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Any adequate account of perceptual experience has to provide answers to the following questions: What kind, and form of, content do experiences have? What kind of mental states are they? Many, if not most philosophers of perception today agree that experiences have representational contents of the form x is F, where x ranges over material objects and F over sensible properties. I argue that such a ‘naive semantics’ for experiences has to give the wrong answer to the second question. Because of their justificatory role for, and inferential integration into, a subject’s belief system, experiences themselves have to be construed as a kind of belief. I also sketch a semantics that allows experiences to be beliefs. Pdf
• Mitchell Green (2005). "You perceive with your mind": Knowledge and perception.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A major theme in rap lyrics is that the only way to survive is to use your head, be aware, know what’s going on around you. That simple idea packs a lot of background. The most obvious ideas about knowledge turn out if you look at them close up to be pretty questionable. For example: How do we get knowledge about the world? A natural and ancient answer to this question is that much if not all of our knowledge comes from our senses. So for example the nose gives us knowledge of what things smell like, and if all goes well, also indicates whether the thing we’re smelling is healthy, tasty, or noxious. Likewise, the eyes tell us the color and shape of things, and thereby give us information about whether those things are useful, dangerous, and so on. Like everybody else, rappers know all this. Or do they? Maybe some rappers know that this isn’t really so
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.people.virginia.edu/~msg6m/MGreenonhiphop.pdf
  
• Susan Hurley (2001). Overintellectualizing the mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00115.x
  
• Pierre Jacob (online). Seeing, perceiving, and knowing.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/34/00/HTML/
  
• Daniel Laurier (2004). Reasons, contents, and experiences.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://disputatio.com/articles/017-4.pdf
  
• Jack Lyons (online). Experience, evidence, and externalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Can anything other than a belief confer epistemic justification on a belief? In particular, can nondoxastic experiential states do so? According to the standard taxonomy, _doxasticism _is the view that only beliefs can justify beliefs; _nondoxasticism _is simply the denial of this. The distinction between doxastic and nondoxastic theories is central to epistemology, but much of the debate surrounding it has been marred by an unnoticed ambiguity concerning the key concept of justification. Sorting out the ambiguity reveals an important division between externalist and internalist varieties of nondoxasticism and points the way toward a new argument for nondoxasticism of the externalist sort
• Christopher Peacocke (ms). Explaining perceptual entitlement.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: material that was later incorporated into The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and into a paper of the same title in The ‘Challenge’ of Externalism, ed. R. Schantz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JWw1wGFt8KUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA441&dq=Explaining+perceptual+entitlement+Peacocke&ots=MX8t3dwnkq&sig=xihg1Atq1tPr21t9LncrYzhMRgk
  
• John Pollock & Iris Oved (2005). Vision, knowledge, and the mystery link.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Imagine yourself sitting on your front porch, sipping your morning coffee and admiring the scene before you. You see trees, houses, people, automobiles; you see a cat running across the road, and a bee buzzing among the flowers. You see that the flowers are yellow, and blowing in the wind. You see that the people are moving about, many of them on bicycles. You see that the houses are painted different colors, mostly earth tones, and most are one-story but a few are two-story. It is a beautiful morning. Thus the world interfaces with your mind through your senses. There is a strong intuition that we are not disconnected from the world. We and the other things we see around us are part of a continuous whole, and we have direct access to them through vision, touch, etc. However, the philosophical tradition tries to drive a wedge between us and the world by insisting that the information we get from perception is the result of inference from indirect evidence that is about how things look and feel to us. The philosophical problem of perception is then to explain what justifies these inferences. We will focus on visual perception. Figure one presents a crude diagram of the cognitive system of an agent capable of forming beliefs on the basis of visual perception. Cognition begins with the stimulation of the rods and cones on the retina. From that physical input, some kind of visual processing produces an introspectible visual image. In response to the production of the visual image, the cognizer forms beliefs about his or her surroundings. Some beliefs — the perceptual beliefs — are formed as direct responses to the visual input, and other beliefs are inferred from the perceptual beliefs. The perceptual beliefs are, at the very least, caused or causally influenced by having the image. This is signified by the dashed arrow marked with a large question mark. We will refer to this as the mystery link. Figure one makes it apparent that in order to fully understand how knowledge is based on perception, we need three different theories..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://oscarhome.soc-sci.arizona.edu/ftp/PAPERS/Perceptual-Representation.pdf
  http://oscarhome.soc-sci.arizona.edu/ftp/PAPERS/Mystery Link.pdf
  http://www.sambabike.org/ftp/PAPERS/Perceptual-Rep-short.pdf
  http://oscarhome.soc-sci.arizona.edu/ftp/PAPERS/Perceptual-representation.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2005.00064.x
  http://oscarhome.soc-sci.arizona.edu/ftp/PAPERS/Mystery%20Link.pdf
  
• Jonathan Schaffer (2003). Perceptual knowledge derailed.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The tracking theory treats knowledge as counterfactual covariation of belief and truth through a sphere of possibilities. I argue that the tracking theory cannot respect perceptual knowledge, because perceptual belief covaries with truth through a discontinuous scatter of possibilities. Perceptual knowledge is subject to inner derailing: there is an inner hollow of perceptual incompetence through which the differences are too small to track. Perceptual knowledge is subject to outer derailing: there are outlying islands of perceptual competence that extend well past skeptical sinkholes
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/Q686364578143R31.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5107445&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/q686364578143r31/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2003/00000112/00000001/05107445
  
• Edmond Leo Wright (ms). Perception as epistemic.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: If a sensory field exists as a pure natural sign open to all kinds of interpretation as _evidence_ (see 'Sensing as non-epistemic'), what is it that does the interpreting? Borrowing from the old Gestalt psychologists, I have proposed a gestalt module that picks out wholes from the turmoil, it being the process of _noticing_ or _attending to_ , but the important difference from Koffka and Köhler (Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1940), the originators of the term 'gestalt' in the psychology of perception ( is that the emphasis is upon the gestalt projection as motivated . Gestalt-attention of this kind is usually enforced in the first instance by pain or pleasure, and the resulting projections are placed in memory tabbed with fear or desire, such that if such a pattern recurs in the sensory field, fear or desire are triggered. In advanced animals the ability to play with the gestalt module has been evolved, because experimenting in curiosity has proved adaptive, as the exploratory behaviour in the Rat, the Raven, the Apes and _Homo sapiens_ bears out

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