THE ONTOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF BEING A PERCEPTUAL ATTITUDE (FORTHCOMING) (original) (raw)

The Ontological Importance of Being a Perceptual Attitude

Organon F

Current philosophical debates about perception have largely ignored questions concerning the ontological structure of perceptual experience, so as to focus on its intentional and phenomenological character. To illustrate and put pressure on this tendency, I revisit the controversy between doxastic views of perception and Gareth Evans's objection from over-intellectualization. I suggest that classic versions of the doxastic view are to a good extent driven by an ontological characterization of perceptual attitudes as nonfactive states or dispositions, not by a cognitively complex picture of perceptual content. Conceived along these lines, the doxastic view unveils an ontologically significant story of perceptual experience for at least two reasons: on the one hand, that characterization avoids the line of reasoning leading up to sense-datum theories of perception; and, on the other, it bears on recent discussions about the temporal structure of perceptual experience. Although I do not endorse the doxastic view, my goal is to highlight the importance of the relatively neglected ontological motivations thus driving that kind of account.

The ontology of perception: bipolarity and content

Erkenntnis, 1998

The notion of perceptual content is commonly introduced in the analysis of perception. It stems from an analogy between perception and propositional attitudes. Both kinds of mental states, it is thought, have conditions of satisfaction. I try to show that on the most plausible account of perceptual content, it does not determine the conditions under which perceptual experience is veridical. Moreover, perceptual content must be bipolar (capable of being correct and capable of being incorrect), whereas perception as a mental state is not (if it is veridical, it is essentially so). This has profound consequences for the epistemological view that perception is a source of knowledge. I sktech a two-level epistemology which is consistent with this view. I conclude that the analogy between perception and propositional attitudes, from which the notion of perceptual content is born, may be more misleading than it is usually thought.

Perceptual Knowledge and the Metaphysics of Experience

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2008

There is a long-standing tradition in philosophy that certain metaphysical theories of perceptual experience, if true, would lead to scepticism about the external world, whereas other theories, if true, would develop a non-sceptical epistemology. I investigate these claims in the context of current metaphysical theories of sense-perception and argue that choice of perceptual ontology is of very limited help in developing a non-sceptical epistemology. Theorists who hold that perception is an intentional state have some advantage in explaining how perceptual experiences serve as justifying reasons for empirical beliefs. Alston and others have argued that a successful defence of a contemporary version of naïve realism would secure further epistemological advantages. I argue that this is not the case. A complete explanation of experience's reason-giving power involves factors beyond the metaphysical nature of experience.

PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE AND ASPECT

Acta Analytica, 2018

A number of contemporary philosophers of mind have brought considerations from the study of aspect to bear on the ontological question how perceptual experiences persist over time. But, apart from rare exceptions, relatively little attention has been devoted to assess whether the way we talk about perceptual occurrences is of any relevance for discussions of ontological matters in general, let alone discussions about the ontological nature of perception. This piece examines whether considerations derived from the study of lexical aspect have a significant bearing on what ontological views of perception we should endorse: I shall argue that such aspectual considerations are in fact of very little use for settling the relevant ontological issue.

Reflections on the Possibility of Perceptualism

The Incarnate Word, 2019

The following is a paper presented for the Course Rahner and Lonergan at the University of Toronto (Winter, 2014), revised and edited Winter, 2018. Our purpose is to defend the possibility of “perceptualism,” that is to say, the position maintaining that the intelligible content of consciousness is given in perception and not posited by the activity of the subject. Assisted by the insights of Cornelio Fabro, this defense contrasts perceptualism with Bernard Lonergan’s “critical realism”. This paper focuses on the notion of experience, seemingly the basis of the opposition between perceptualism and critical realism.

Apperception and Experience. Some Ontological Perspectives

2017

The modern era is profoundly marked by the idea of a subjective consciousness. This idea remains fundamental, not only in Descartes, but in all currents of thought using the distinction between the subjective and the objective-even if it is not always recognized as such. There is, however, a difference between perception and apperception which remained unclear in the Cartesian conception of consciousness, but which was articulated by Leibniz and became a major theme of philosophical psychology in the 18th and 19th century. From the beginning of the 19th century the discussion was also complicated by the concept of the unconscious, which in a way means a rediscovery of the Aristotelian psyche. What should we understand by apperception: a self-consciousness, a consciousness of second degree, a retroactive awareness or reflection, a stream of consciousness or perhaps something rather like insight? Which is the relation between sensation, perception and apperception and in which sense are these irreducibly psychic functions? The article suggests some possibilities for describing the ontological status of experience.

The Epistemology of Perception

1 We focus on the visual case, leaving it to the reader to consider how the discussion generalizes to other modalities. 2 concerned how the transition from introspective beliefs to external--world beliefs could be rational. 2 In this entry, we assume without argument these positions are mistaken. We begin from the assumption that experiences (such as the one you have when you see the mustard) can justify external world beliefs about the things you see, such as beliefs that the mustard jar is in the fridge, and that the justification experience provides does not have to rely on justification for introspective beliefs. From now on, we often let it remain implicit that we are talking about external world beliefs, when we talk about the kind of beliefs that experiences justify. 3 Our main question is this: what features of experiences explain how they justify external world beliefs? The grammar of the question might suggest that experiences suffice all by themselves to provide justification for external world beliefs. But don't read this into the grammar of the phrase "experiences justify beliefs". We can distinguish between the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P, and the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P without help from other features it only contingently has. We clarify our question further in Part I, where we explain why we have chosen this point of departure, and highlight a range of theses about the role of experience in providing different types of justification. In Parts II and III, we consider the role of features of experience falling into two broad categories: constitutive features of experience, including its phenomenal character, its contents, its status as attentive or inattentive (sections 3--7); and causal features of experience such as its reliability, and the impact of other mental states on its formation (sections 8--10). Along the way, we discuss the relationships between visual experience and seeing (sections 1 and 8), and we contrast perceptual justification and perceptual knowledge (section 9).

[Synthese 2015] The Given in Perceptual Experience

How are we to account for the epistemic contribution of our perceptual experiences to the reasonableness of our perceptual beliefs? It is well known that a conception heavily influenced by Cartesian thinking has it that experiences do not enable the experiencing subject to have direct epistemic contact with the external world; rather, they are regarded as openness to a kind of private inner realm that is interposed between the subject and the world. It turns out that if one wants to insist that perceptual experiences provide epistemic reasons for perceptual beliefs about the external world as we pre-reflectively take it to be, then one should find a way of avoiding Cartesianism. Here are the two main aims of this paper: firstly, identify the premise that is doing the heavy-lifting work in the Cartesian thinking; and, secondly, formulate an adequate way of denying that premise. The adequacy I claim for my formulation of a way of denying the premise will roughly amount to this: the way I offer is not as susceptible to Cartesian traps as other apparently available ways of denying the premise are.