I argue that perception of absence presents a top-down effect from expectations on perception, but then show that this cognitive effect is atypical and indirect. This calls into question usefulness of some of the existing notions of cognitive penetrability of perception and generates new questions about indirect cognitive influences on perception.

Perception purports to help you gain knowledge of the world even if the world is not the way you expected it to be. Perception also purports to be an independent tribunal against which you can test your beliefs. It is natural to think that in order to serve these and other central functions, perceptual representations must not causally depend on your prior beliefs and expectations. In this paper, I clarify and then argue against the natural thought above. All perceptual systems (...) must solve an under-determination problem: the sensory data they receive could be caused by indefinitely many arrangements of distal objects and properties. Using a Bayesian approach to perceptual processing, I argue that in order to solve the under-determination problem, perceptual capacities must rely on prior beliefs or expectations of some kind. I then argue that perceptual states or processes can help ground knowledge of the world whether the ‘beliefs’ necessary for perceptual processing are encoded as sub-personal states within a perceptual system or cognitive states, such as person-level beliefs. My argument has two main parts. First, I give a preliminary argument that cognitive influence on perception can be appropriate, and I respond to three lines of objection. Second, I argue that cognitively influenced perceptual states can be instances of seeing that p, which makes the relevant states well suited to help ground knowledge that p. I conclude that a cognitively penetrated perceptual state or process can help ground knowledge under some circumstances. (shrink)

The goal of perceptual systems is to allow organisms to adaptively respond to ecologically relevant stimuli. Because all perceptual inputs are ambiguous, perception needs to rely on prior knowledge accumulated over evolutionary and developmental time to turn sensory energy into information useful for guiding behavior. It remains controversial whether the guidance of perception extends to cognitive states or is locked up in a “cognitively impenetrable” part of perception. I argue that expectations, knowledge, and task demands can shape perception at multiple (...) levels, leaving no part untouched. The position advocated here is broadly consistent with the notion that perceptual systems strive to minimize prediction error en route to globally optimal solutions :181–204, 2013). On this view, penetrability should be expected whenever constraining lower-level processes by higher level knowledge is minimizes global prediction error. Just as Fodor feared cognitive penetration of perception threatens theory-neutral observation and the distinction between observation and inference. However, because theories themselves are constrained by the task of minimizing prediction error, theory-laden observation turns out to be superior to theory-free observation in turning sensory energy into useful information. (shrink)

Adams & Kveraga argue that social visual perception is cognitively penetrable by extending a top-down model for visual object recognition to visual perception of social cues. Here I suggest that, in their view, a clear link between the top-down contextual influences that modulate social visual perception and the perceptual experience of a subject is missing. Without such a link their proposal is consistent with explanations that need not involve cognitive penetration of perceptual experience but only modifications of perceptual judgments formed (...) on the basis of that experience. I review two experiments that may provide initial evidence for the link and discuss why we can best explain the results with cognitive penetration, compared to modification of judgment. Finally, I show that the compound social-cue integration theory A. & K. propose fits naturally with the cases I discuss. (shrink)

In ‘Knowing What Things Look Like,’ I argued against the immediacy of visual objectual knowledge, i.e. visual knowledge that a thing is F, for an object category F, such as avocado, tree, desk, etc. Joseph Shieber proposes a challenging dilemma in reply. Either knowing what Fs look like requires having concepts such as looks or it doesn’t. Either way my argument fails. If knowing what Fs look like doesn’t require having such concepts, then he claims we can give an immediacy-friendly (...) anti-intellectualist account of knowing what Fs look like, one that I neglected. If it does require having such concepts, then knowledge of what Fs look like plays no important role in ordinary cases of knowing things to be F by their looks. I argue for several claims. First, Shieber's anti-intellectualist proposal fails for independent reasons. Second, I give reasons for thinking that knowing what Fs look like doesn't require having a general concept of looks, which lessens worries about nonhuman animals having such knowledge. Finally, I consider the possibility, important to Shieber's argument, that nonhuman animals are simply incapable of knowing what Fs look like. I argue the implications for human knowledge are far from clear. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism as developed by some philosophers faces a previously unnoticed problem. The problem stems from the fact that, as some develop the view, phenomenal conservatism holds that seemings alone justify—sensations have no justificatory impact. Given this, phenomenal conservatism faces a problem analogous to the isolation objection to coherentism. As foundationalists, supporters of phenomenal conservatism will want to allow that the isolation objection is effective against coherentism, and yet claim that a similar objection is not effective against their view. Unfortunately, (...) it appears that on most understandings of the nature of seemings phenomenal conservatism can only avoid its version of the isolation objection by sacrificing its internalist character. (shrink)

I offer a novel interpretation of Aristotle's psychology and notion of rationality, which draws the line between animal and specifically human cognition. Aristotle distinguishes belief (doxa), a form of rational cognition, from imagining (phantasia), which is shared with non-rational animals. We are, he says, “immediately affected” by beliefs, but respond to imagining “as if we were looking at a picture.” Aristotle's argument has been misunderstood; my interpretation explains and motivates it. Rationality includes a filter that interrupts the pathways between cognition (...) and behavior. This prevents the subject from responding to certain representations. Stress and damage compromise the filter, making the subject respond indiscriminately, as non-rational animals do. Beliefs are representations that have made it past the filter, which is why they can “affect [us] immediately.” Aristotle's claims express ceteris paribus generalizations, subject to exceptions. No list of provisos could turn them into non-vacuous universal claims, but this does not rob them of their explanatory power. Aristotle's cognitive science resolves a tension we grapple with today: it accounts for the specialness of human action and thinking within a strictly naturalistic framework. The theory is striking in its insight and explanatory power, instructive in its methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga theorizes the existence of a sensus divinitatis – a special cognitive faulty or mechanism dedicated to the production and non-inferential justification of theistic belief. Following Chris Tucker, we offer an evidentialist-friendly model of the sensus divinitatis whereon it produces theistic seemings that non-inferentially justify theistic belief. We suggest that the sensus divinitatis produces these seemings by tacitly grasping support relations between the content of ordinary experiences (in conjunction with our background evidence) and propositions about God. Our model offers (...) advantages such as eliminating the need for a sui generis religious faculty, harmonizing the sensus divinitatis with prominent theories in the cognitive science of religion, and providing a superior account of natural revelation. (shrink)

Some theorists hold that the human perceptual system has a component that receives input only from units lower in the perceptual hierarchy. This thesis, that we shall here refer to as the encapsulation thesis, has been at the center of a continuing debate for the past few decades. Those who deny the encapsulation thesis often rely on the large body of psychological findings that allegedly suggest that perception is influenced by factors such as the beliefs, desires, goals, and the expectations (...) of the perceiver. Proponents of the encapsulation thesis, however, often argue that, when correctly interpreted, these psychological findings are compatible with the thesis. In our view, the debate over the significance and the correct interpretation of these psychological findings has reached an impasse. We hold that this impasse is due to the methodological limitations over psychophysical experiments, and it is very unlikely that such experiments, on their own, could yield results that would settle the debate. After defending this claim, we argue that integrating data from cognitive neuroscience resolves the debate in favor of those who deny the encapsulation thesis. (shrink)

: In this article I discuss Athanasios Raftopoulos’ view on the epistemic role of attention and early vision, as outlined in his most recent book. I start by examining his view on attention, which he illustrates during his discussion of structured cognitive contents and their interactions with perceptual contents, as well as during his discussion of selection effects. According to Raftopoulos, attention not only operates pre-perceptual input selection, but also influences perceptual processing during late vision biasing the sampling of the (...) iconic image for perceptual hypotheses-testing. Afterwards, I critically assess Raftopoulos’ conclusions about the epistemic role of early vision, which are based on his view about the role of attention. From this assessment, I raise a potential concern for his proposal in the form of a new problem of selection: the interesting epistemic consequences of cognitive penetrability either follow or do not follow from selection effects, depending on how these selection effects are construed, but regardless of the stage of visual processing in which they take place. Keywords: Cognitive Penetration; Attention; Constructivism; Selection Effects; Perceptual Epistemology Il ruolo epistemico della visione primaria: penetrazione cognitiva e selezione attentiva Riassunto: In questo articolo discuto la proposta di Athanasios Raftopoulos riguardo al ruolo epistemico dell’attenzione e della early vision, contenuta nella sua recente monografia. La mia discussione comincia da un esame delle sue idee riguardo all’attenzione, che illustra sia durante la sua discussione dei contenuti cognitivi strutturati e delle loro interazioni con i contenuti percettivi, sia durante la sua discussione degli effetti di selezione. Secondo Raftopoulos, l’attenzione non opera solamente una selezione pre-percettiva degli input, ma influenza anche i processi percettivi di late vision orientando il processo di valutazione delle ipotesi percettive sulla base dell’immagine iconica. Successivamente, valuto criticamente le conclusioni di Raftopoulos’ riguardo al ruolo epistemico di early vision, fondate sulla sua concezione del ruolo dell’attenzione. Da questo esame, evidenzio una potenziale criticità nella sua proposta costituita da un nuovo problema della selezione: le conseguenze epistemiche della penetrabilità cognitiva seguono o non seguono dai processi di selezione, a seconda di come tali effetti sono concepiti, ma indipendentemente dal livello nella serie dei processi visivi nel quale si verificano. Parole chiave: Penetrabilità cognitiva; Attenzione; Costruttivismo; Effetti di Selezione; Epistemologia percettiva. (shrink)

How can we investigate the foundations of consciousness? In addressing this question, we will focus on the two main strategies that authors have adopted so far. On the one hand, there is research aimed at characterizing a specific content, which should account for conscious states. We may call this the content approach. On the other hand, one finds the processing approach, which proposes to look for a particular way of processing to account for consciousness.. Our aim, in this paper, is (...) to develop arguments for the latter approach. We focus on a criticism of Jesse Prinz’s AIR theory of consciousness. We have chosen Prinz’s theory because it incorporates features of both the content and processing approaches, and discussing it will therefore allow us to compare the advantages and downsides of both. Our argument will focus in particular on the notion of intermediate-level. We will discuss how Prinz characterizes the intermediate-level according to a content approach, and argue that such a characterization is inadequate. Finally, we will argue in favor of processing approach to the problem of consciousness, which also accounts for the massive interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes in the brain. Even though consciousness remains an unsolved riddle, we claim that this is the best path towards a solution. (shrink)

Perceptual processes, in particular modular processes, have long been understood as being mandatory. But exactly what mandatoriness amounts to is left to intuition. This paper identifies a crucial ambiguity in the notion of mandatoriness. Discussions of mandatory processes have run together notions of automaticity and ballisticity. Teasing apart these notions creates an important tool for the modularist's toolbox. Different putatively modular processes appear to differ in their kinds of mandatoriness. Separating out the automatic from the ballistic can help the modularist (...) diagnose and explain away some putative counterexamples to multimodal and central modules, thereby helping us to better evaluate the evidentiary status of modularity theory. (shrink)

How do cognition and affect interact to produce action? Research in intergroup psychology illuminates this question by investigating the relationship between stereotypes and prejudices about social groups. Yet it is now clear that many social attitudes are implicit. This raises the question: how does the distinction between cognition and affect apply to implicit mental states? An influential view—roughly analogous to a Humean theory of action—is that “implicit stereotypes” and “implicit prejudices” constitute two separate constructs, reflecting different mental processes and neural (...) systems. On this basis, some have also argued that interventions to reduce discrimination should combat implicit stereotypes and prejudices separately. We propose an alternative framework. We argue that all putative implicit stereotypes are affect-laden and all putative implicit prejudices are “semantic,” that is, they stand in co-activating associations with concepts and beliefs. Implicit biases, therefore, consist in “clusters” of semantic-affective associations, which differ in degree, rather than kind. This framework captures the psychological structure of implicit bias, promises to improve the power of indirect measures to predict behavior, and points toward the design of more effective interventions to combat discrimination. (shrink)

Raftopoulos’s most recent book argues, among other things, for the cognitive impenetrability of early vision. Before we can assess any such claims, we need to know what’s meant by “early vision” and by “cognitive penetration”. In this contribution to this book symposium, I explore several different things that one might mean – indeed, that Raftopoulos might mean – by these terms. I argue that whatever criterion we choose for delineating early vision, we need a single criterion, not a mishmash of (...) distinct criteria. And I argue against defining cognitive penetration in partly epistemological terms, although it is fine to offer epistemological considerations in defending some definitions as capturing something of independent interest. Finally, I raise some questions about how we are to understand the “directness” of certain putative cognitive influences on perception and about whether there’s a decent rationale for restricting directness in the way that Raftopoulos apparently does. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception is the idea that what we see is influenced by such states as beliefs, expectations, and so on. A perceptual belief that results from cognitive penetration may be less justified than a nonpenetrated one. Inferentialism is a kind of internalist view that tries to account for this by claiming that some experiences are epistemically evaluable, on the basis of why the perceiver has that experience, and the familiar canons of good inference provide the appropriate standards by (...) which experiences are evaluated. I examine recent defenses of inferentialism by Susanna Siegel, Peter Markie, and Matthew McGrath and argue that the prospects for inferentialism are dim. (shrink)

The paper offers a solution to the generality problem for a reliabilist epistemology, by developing an “algorithm and parameters” scheme for type-individuating cognitive processes. Algorithms are detailed procedures for mapping inputs to outputs. Parameters are psychological variables that systematically affect processing. The relevant process type for a given token is given by the complete algorithmic characterization of the token, along with the values of all the causally relevant parameters. The typing that results is far removed from the typings of folk (...) psychology, and from much of the epistemology literature. But it is principled and empirically grounded, and shows good prospects for yielding the desired epistemological verdicts. The paper articulates and elaborates the theory, drawing out some of its consequences. Toward the end, the fleshed-out theory is applied to two important case studies: hallucination and cognitive penetration of perception. (shrink)

People believe that perception is reliable and that what they perceive reflects objective reality. On this view, we perceive a red circle because there is something out there that is a red circle. It is also commonly believed that perceptual reliability is threatened if what we see is allowed to be influenced by what we know or expect. I argue that although human perception is often highly consistent and stable, it is difficult to evaluate its reliability because when it comes (...) to perception, it is unclear how one could establish a fact of the matter. An alternative to thinking of perception as being in the business of truth, is thinking of it as being in the business of transducing sensory energy into a form useful for guiding adaptive behavior. On this position, perception ought to be richly influenced by some types of knowledge insofar as this knowledge can aid in the construction of useful representations from sensory input. (shrink)

The problem of the cognitive penetrability of perception pertains to whether perceptual processing may be impacted by higher-order cognitive processes. It may be understood in a twofold sense: 1) whether what a perceptual system computes may be altered in a way that is semantically coherent to one’s cognitive states; 2) whether perceptual experience may be influenced by cognitive processes. It has been argued that the cognitive penetrability problem is not scientifically tractable since we have no direct access to other persons’ (...) subjective experiences and, therefore, we have to rely on their reports, which are mediated by higher-order processes (e.g., judgments). In this paper, I analyze the scope of methods harnessed in contemporary work on the penetrability of perception, focusing particularly on methods from experimental psychology and neuroscience. Among them, I indicate the most promising techniques and paradigms, as well as those that are inadequate to successfully tackling the problem. I also discuss experimental results which unequivocally suggest direct influences on perception which have not been addressed to date by supporters of the view that perception is impenetrable. I also describe the predictive processing theory of cognition, focusing on how it contributes to our understanding of cognitive penetrability, and discuss scientific results validating the theory. In conclusion, converging empirical evidence seems to suggest that perception is cognitively penetrable and we seem to be at the dawn of the ultimate solution of the problem. (shrink)

Naïve realism is the view according to which perception is a non-representational relation of conscious awareness to mind-independent objects and properties. According to this approach, the phenomenal character of experience is constituted by just the objects, properties, or facts presented to the senses. In this article, I argue that such a conception of the phenomenology of experience faces a clear counter-example, i.e., the experience of seeing aspects. The discussion suggests that, to accommodating such a kind of experience, it must be (...) acknowledged that perception is, at least in part, representational. (shrink)

This article is a comparative study between predictive processing (PP, or predictive coding) and cognitive dissonance (CD) theory. The theory of CD, one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, is shown to be highly compatible with recent developments in PP. This is particularly evident in the notion that both theories deal with strategies to reduce perceived error signals. However, reasons exist to update the theory of CD to one of “predictive dissonance.” First, the hierarchical PP (...) framework can be helpful in understanding varying nested levels of CD. If dissonance arises from a cascade of downstream and lateral predictions and consequent prediction errors, dissonance can exist at a multitude of scales, all the way up from sensory perception to higher order cognitions. This helps understand the previously problematic dichotomy between “dissonant cognitive relations” and “dissonant psychological states,” which are part of the same perception-action process while still hierarchically distinct. Second, since PP is action-oriented, it can be read to support recent action-based models of CD. Third, PP can potentially help us understand the recently speculated evolutionary origins of CD. Here, the argument is that responses to CD can instill meta-learning which serves to prevent the overfitting of generative models to ephemeral local conditions. This can increase action-oriented ecological rationality and enhanced capabilities to interact with a rich landscape of affordances. The downside is that in today’s world where social institutions such as science a priori separate noise from signal, some reactions to predictive dissonance might propagate ecologically unsound (underfitted, confirmation-biased) mental models such as climate denialism. (shrink)

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? (...) Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

One might think that its seeming to you that p makes you justified in believing that p. After all, when you have no defeating beliefs, it would be irrational to have it seem to you that p but not believe it. That view is plausible for perceptual justification, problematic in the case of memory, and clearly wrong for inferential justification. I propose a view of rationality and justified belief that deals happily with inference and memory. Appearances are to be evaluated (...) as ‘sound’ or ‘unsound.’ Only a sound appearance can give rise to a justified belief, yet even an unsound appearance can ‘rationally require’ the subject to form the belief. Some of our intuitions mistake that rational requirement for the belief’s being justified. The resulting picture makes it plausible that there are also unsound perceptual appearances. I suggest that to have a sound perceptually basic appearance that p, one must see that p. (shrink)

Epistemologists spend a great deal of time thinking about how we should respond to our evidence. They spend far less time thinking about the ways that evidence can be acquired in the first place. This is an oversight. Some ways of acquiring evidence are better than others. Many normative epistemologies struggle to accommodate this fact. In this article I develop one that can and does. I identify a phenomenon – epistemic feedback loops – in which evidence acquisition has gone awry, (...) with the result that even beliefs based on the evidence are irrational. Examples include evidence acquired under the influence of confirmation bias and evidence acquired under the influence of cognitively penetrated experiences caused by implicit bias. I then develop a theoretical framework which enables us to understand why beliefs that are the outputs of epistemic feedback loops are irrational. Finally, I argue that many popular approaches to epistemic normativity may need to be abandoned on the grounds that they cannot comfortably explain feedback loops. The scope of this last claim is broad: it includes almost all contemporary theories of justified/rational belief and of the epistemology of cognitive penetration. (shrink)

Proceedings of the annual congress of the Finnish Philosophical Association in 2013. Theme: memory.

It is highly consensual that we can perceive so-called low-level properties such as shape, color, motion, spatial location, and illumination through vision. But it’s more controversial whether the contents of visual perception can reach beyond the limits of weakness and involve high-level properties as well. By high-level property, it’s meant properties such as natural/artificial/functional kind, causality, dispositional properties, gender, roughness, aesthetic properties, bodily sensations, states of mind, agency features, action features, and moral properties. In this dissertation, setting Susanna Siegel's rich (...) content thesis as a framework and relying on her method of phenomenal contrast as a way of discovering the contents, I am intending to assess an account of perceiving moral properties. I will impose two objections against this model: The first one invokes the ignored role of imagination and recollection in the method and generally targets the method of contrast. The second one invokes the thesis of phenomenal holism and targets specifically the machinery of drawing contrast in the proposed moral pair. Finally, I’ll conclude that this account of moral perception, as well as other phenomenal-contrast-based accounts, is not tenable. -/- . (shrink)

This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information. They consider what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. They consider how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be useful. (...) They consider the extent to which the senses act in concert, rather than as discrete modalities, and whether this influence is epistemically pernicious, neutral, or beneficial. They explore both the familiar five sense modalities and other candidate sense modalities, including a sense for flavour, inner senses (e.g., a sense for pain), and various senses that may result from using sensory substitution devices. Contributors often represent competing views, and the methods they deploy sometimes differ from one essay to the next—with some drawing upon the sciences and engineering and others relying upon conceptual analysis. All contributors agree, nonetheless, that traditional theorizing about the senses is hampered by a neglect of the senses other than vision, and by the misconception that vision is a passive receptacle for an image thrown by a lens. And many contributors believe that it is unduly restrictive to think of perception as a collation of contents provided by individual sense modalities; they think that to understand perception properly, we need to build into our accounts the idea that the senses work together. The ambition of the volume is to begin to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses, and thereby to move toward a better understanding of perception. (shrink)

The distinction between top-down and bottom-up effects is widely relied on in experimental psychology. However, there is an important problem with the way it is normally defined. Top-down effects are effects of previously-stored information on processing the current input. But on the face of it that includes the information that is implicit in the operation of any psychological process – in its dispositions to transition from some types of representational state to others. This paper suggests a way to distinguish information (...) stored in that way from the kind of influence of prior information that psychologists are concerned to classify as a top-down effect. So-drawn, the distinction is not just of service to theoretical psychology. Asking about the extent of top-down processing is one way to pose some of the questions at issue in philosophical debates about cognitive penetrability – about the extent of the influence of cognitive states on perception. The existence of a theoretically-useful perception-cognition distinction has come under pressure, but even if it has to be abandoned, some of the concerns addressed in the cognitive penetrability literature can be recaptured by asking about the extent of top-down influences on any given psychological process. That formulation is more general, since it can be applied to any psychological process, not just those that are paradigmatically perceptual. (shrink)

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have begun to correct this ‘tunnel vision’ by considering other modalities. Nevertheless, relatively little has been written about the chemical senses—olfaction and gustation. The focus of this paper is olfaction. In light of new physiological and psychophysical research on olfaction, I consider whether olfactory experience is object-based. In particular, I explore the claim that “odor objects” constitute sensory individuals. It isn’t obvious—at least at the outset—whether they (...) meet the widely accepted principles of object individuation and recognition at work in the visual and auditory cases. Among the general issues I consider, then, is whether these traditional principles form necessary, or simply sufficient, conditions on object perception. As we see, at the very least, considering the object-recognition model of olfaction challenges us to look more closely at well-entrenched models of object perception. But the payoff of doing so is high. We not only learn something about a modality that philosophers have historically neglected; by asking new questions and challenging old assumptions, we also further our understanding of perception in general. (shrink)

We perceive in many ways. But several dubious presuppositions about the senses mask this diversity of perception. Philosophers, scientists, and engineers alike too often presuppose that the senses (vision, audition, etc.) are independent sources of information, perception being a sum of these independent contributions. We too often presuppose that we can generalize from vision to other senses. We too often presuppose that vision itself is best understood as a passive receptacle for an image thrown by a lens. In this essay (...) we illustrate how reflection on results from the cognitive sciences undermine these (and many other) traditional presuppositions. Our illustration situates the remaining essays in the volume, Perception and its Modalities, which further extend the case against various traditional presuppositions, and offer alternatives ways to understand the senses and their role in perception. While many of the essays in this volume represent competing views and draw on different fields, from conceptual analysis to engineering, most contributors believe that to understand perception properly, we need to treat as foundational the idea that the senses work together. From that agreement, new paradigms for theorizing about perception begin to emerge. (shrink)

The concept of modularity has loomed large in philosophy of psychology since the early 1980s, following the publication of Fodor’s landmark book The Modularity of Mind (1983). In the decades since the term ‘module’ and its cognates first entered the lexicon of cognitive science, the conceptual and theoretical landscape in this area has changed dramatically. Especially noteworthy in this respect has been the development of evolutionary psychology, whose proponents adopt a less stringent conception of modularity than the one advanced by (...) Fodor, and who argue that the architecture of the mind is more pervasively modular than Fodor claimed. Where Fodor (1983, 2000) draws the line of modularity at the relatively low-level systems underlying perception and language, post-Fodorian theorists such as Sperber (2002) and Carruthers (2006) contend that the mind is modular through and through, up to and including the high-level systems responsible for reasoning, planning, decision making, and the like. The concept of modularity has also figured in recent debates in philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of language—further evidence of its utility as a tool for theorizing about mental architecture. (shrink)

“Implicit bias” is a term of art referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment and social behavior. While psychologists in the field of “implicit social cognition” study “implicit attitudes” toward consumer products, self-esteem, food, alcohol, political values, and more, the most striking and well-known research has focused on implicit attitudes toward members of socially stigmatized groups, such as African-Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community.[1] For example, imagine Frank, who explicitly believes that women and men are equally (...) suited for careers outside the home. Despite his explicitly egalitarian belief, Frank might nevertheless implicitly associate women with the home, and this implicit association might lead him to behave in any number of biased ways, from trusting feedback from female co-workers less to hiring equally qualified men over women. Psychological research on implicit bias is relatively recent (§1), but a host of metaphysical (§2), epistemological (§3), and ethical questions (§4) about implicit bias are pressing.[2]. (shrink)

Visualizing and mental imagery are thought to be cognitive states by all sides of the imagery debate. Yet the phenomenology of those states has distinctly visual ingredients. This has potential consequences for the hypothesis that vision is cognitively impenetrable, the ability of visual processes to ground perceptual warrant and justification, and the distinction between cognitive and perceptual phenomenology. I explore those consequences by describing two forms of visual ambiguity that involve visualizing: the ability to visually experience a picture surface as (...) flat after it has caused volumetric nonconceptual contents, and the ability to use a surface initially perceived as flat to visualize three-dimensional scenes. In both cases, the visual processes which extract viewer-centered volumetric shapes have to rely solely on monocular depth cues in the absence of parallax and stereopsis. Those processes can be cognitively penetrated by acts of visualizing, including ones that draw on conceptual information about kinds. However, the penetrability of the visual processes does not weaken their ability to provide perceptual warrant and justification for beliefs. The reason is that picture perceptions—whether they are stimulus -driven or based on acts of visualizing—are different to object perceptions both phenomenologically and in terms of their functional roles as states. Thus, although the penetrability of the visual processes does mean that subjects can have visual experiences with contradictory contents, perceptual belief is adopted at most towards one set of contents, and questions of warrant and justification are raised only for those contents. A rule-proving exception is provided by trompe-l’oeils. (shrink)

The epistemological problem of the external world asks: (1) “How is knowledge of the external world possible given certain obstacles which make it look impossible?” This is a “how-possible?” question: it asks how something is possible given certain obstacles which make it look impossible (cf. Cassam 2007; Nozick 1981; Stroud 1984). Now consider the following question, which asks: (2) “How is a philosophically satisfying answer to (1) possible?” Skepticism is the thesis that knowledge of the external world is impossible. It (...) therefore represents a negative answer to the first question. Meta-epistemological skepticism is the thesis that a satisfying philosophical explanation of how our knowledge of the external world is possible is itself impossible. It therefore represents a negative answer to the second question. In this thesis, I explore the prospects of meta-epistemological skepticism. In particular, I structure the thesis around two master arguments from for meta-epistemological skepticism. The first argument is that skepticism represents a kind of paradox which requires dispensing with a plausible principle or belief, or even 'platitude', which means that there's no philosophically satisfying response to the paradox (see, e.g., Stroud 1984), and the second argument is “Stroud’s dilemma” (cf. Cassam 2009), that either we explain how external world knowledge is possible by reference to what external world knowledge we have, thereby failing to answer the philosophical question adequately, or else we don't, but then we succumb to first-order skepticism. I argue that the first argument fails to provide adequate support for meta-epistemological skepticism. However, the second argument, Stroud’s dilemma, is plausible and withstands serious objections (e.g., from Sosa 1994, Williams 1996, and Cassam 2009). In short, while the worry emerging out of the 'skeptical paradox' view fails to adequately support meta-epistemological skepticism, Stroud’s dilemma succeeds. Fortunately, it doesn't show that we lack external world knowledge; we rather just can't explain, philosophically, how it's possible. We may have first-order knowledge without understanding how it's possible. This thesis therefore represents a partial defense of meta-epistemological skepticism. Meta-epistemological skepticism is a live option in epistemology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that action-guiding vision is not cognitively impenetrable and arguments that suggest otherwise rely on an unjustified identification between actionguiding vision and dorsal vision – a functional and an anatomical way of describing the mind. The examination of these arguments show the importance of making a distinction between the functional and the anatomical level when addressing the problem of cognitive penetrability.

The Linda paradox is a key topic in current debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. We present a novel analysis of this paradox, based on the notion of verisimilitude as studied in the philosophy of science. The comparison with an alternative analysis based on probabilistic confirmation suggests how to overcome some problems of our account by introducing an adequately defined notion of verisimilitudinarian confirmation.

This thesis is set out as a collection of self-standing essays. Throughout these essays, I try to illuminate a number of controversies surrounding the way in which delusions are formed, and relatedly, their nature and epistemic standing. In Chapter 2, after an introductory chapter, I flesh out a new ‘endorsement’ approach to the Capgras delusion, the main idea being that the delusion is formed by endorsing the content of a metaphorical-perceptual state in which a loved one is represented metaphorically as (...) an imposter. In Chapter 3, I take issue with the idea, prevalent in the literature, that Bayesian accounts of inference in delusions are best characterised as versions of ‘explanationism’. Taking one such influential account as a test case, I argue that it is no more or less compatible with the endorsement alternative, which says delusions are acquired non-inferentially from experience. In Chapter 4, I examine a recent critique of predictive processing theories of delusions, according to which such theories suffer two limitations: they fail to explain why an agent believes something delusional as opposed to nothing at all or something else; they fail to explain how delusional hypotheses are generated in the first place. I suggest ways in which these concerns might be addressed. In Chapter 5, I consider how the Spinozan theory of belief fixation can improve the prospects of doxasticism about delusions. Doxasticism has been criticised on the grounds that delusions typically do not abide by rational standards which we expect beliefs to conform to. If belief fixation is Spinozan, I argue, these deviations from rationality are not just compatible with, but supportive of, their status as beliefs. In Chapter 6, I ask whether misidentification delusions formed via endorsement processes have any measure of perceptual justification. To give the best chance of getting a ‘yes’ answer, I address the question from the perspective of perceptual dogmatism, as this appears the best option if we are to grant at least defeasible justifiedness to MDs. I argue that, even so, MDs are completely unjustified. (shrink)

The idea that emotional experience is capable of lending immediate prima facie epistemic justification to evaluative belief has been amassing significant philosophical support in recent years. The proposal that it is my anger, say, that justifies my belief that I’ve been wronged putatively provides us with an intuitive and naturalised explanation as to how we receive immediate and defeasible justification for our evaluative beliefs. With many notable advocates in the literature, this justificatory thesis of emotion is fast becoming a central (...) facet in how we conceive of the emotions’ epistemic role with respect to our everyday lives. Interestingly, however, despite the fact that the justificatory thesis is fundamentally an epistemological proposal, comparatively little of the philosophical literature has been dedicated to exploring the epistemological avenues through which emotions might be capable of delivering such an epistemic yield. Accordingly, the central purpose of this thesis is to provide a novel and thorough analysis of how emotional experience might be capable of playing this justificatory role. Here, I present and evaluate three broad models of emotional justification: emotional dogmatism, emotional reliabilism, and agent-based views. Emotional dogmatist views, I argue, fail in virtue of being vulnerable to over-generalisation worries and problematic commitments to the contents of emotional awareness. Emotional reliabilism, while possessing the resources to avoid some objections, is vulnerable to worrisome clairvoyance-style challenges which establish the insufficiency of emotional reliability for epistemic justification. Finally, having learned our lessons from the shortcomings of these views, I argue that an agent-based theory grounded in the development of learned emotional competences provides the most plausible account of how emotional experience can epistemically justify evaluative belief. This discussion, I believe, will both illuminate contemporary discussions of the justificatory thesis of emotion found in the literature, and provide novel insight into the epistemic capacities of the emotions. (shrink)

Our main aims in this paper is to discuss and criticise the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified (a thesis we label Standard Phenomenal Conservatism). This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, we embed it, first, in a (...) probabilistic framework in which updating on new evidence happens by Bayesian conditionalization, and second, a framework in which updating happens by Jeffrey conditionalization. We spell out problems for both views, and then generalize some of these to non-probabilistic frameworks. The main theme of our discussion is that the epistemic import of a seeming (or experience) should depend on its content in a plethora of ways that phenomenal conservatism is insensitive to. (shrink)

While much has been written about whether visual perception is cognitively penetrable, the analogous question with respect to auditory perception has received very little attention. Here we argue that instances of top-down modulation of auditory processing, although extensive, do not constitute cases of cognitive penetration of auditory perception since the changes in the phenomenology of auditory perception caused by top-down influences cannot plausibly be attributed to the listeners’ discursive thoughts.

Many epistemologists treat rationality and justification as the same thing. Those who don’t lack detailed accounts of the difference, leading their opponents to suspect that the distinction is an ad hoc attempt to safeguard their theories of justification. In this paper, I offer a new and detailed account of the distinction. The account is inspired by no particular views in epistemology, but rather by insights from the literature on reasons and rationality outside of epistemology. Specifically, it turns on a version (...) of the familiar distinction in meta-ethics between possessing apparent normative reasons (which may be merely apparent) and possessing objective normative reasons. The paper proceeds as follows. In §1, I discuss the history of indifference to the distinction between rationality and justification in epistemology and the striking contrast with meta-ethics. I introduced the distinction between apparent reasons and possessed objective reasons in §2 and provide a deeper basis for it in §3. I explain how the ideas extend to epistemology in §4 and explore the upshots for some central issues in §5. (shrink)