Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow ‘absolute’. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain-damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give (...) us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible. (shrink)

As standardly conceived, an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception (...) is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.An apparence ymaad by som Magyk. Chaucer. (shrink)

An attempt is made to pinpoint the way in which perception is related to belief. Although, for familiar reasons, it is not true to say that we necessarily believe in the existence of the objects we perceive, nor that they actually have their ostensible characteristics, it is argued that the relation between perception and belief is more than merely contingent.There are two main issues to address. The first is that ‘collateral’ beliefs may impede perceptual belief. It is argued that this (...) still assigns an essential role to belief in perception, though the belief may be of an attenuated form. The second is Fred Dretske’s claim that even attenuated belief may be entirely absent from perception. It is argued that ‘non-epistemic’ perception can be understood only by employing the concept of ‘epistemic’ perception; that the former can occur only partially---i.e., within perceptions that are otherwise epistemic; and that by switching attention from the perception of objects to the Phenomenological tradition’s concern with the perception of world, we can see that perception must be entirely permeated with ‘doxastic’ force. (shrink)

How is knowledge of the external world possible? How is knowledge of other minds possible? How is a priori knowledge possible? These are all examples of how-possible questions in epistemology. In this highly original book Quassim Cassam explains how such questions arise and how they should be answered.

I propose a new argument showing that conscious vision sometimes depends constitutively on conscious attention. I criticise traditional arguments for this constitutive connection, on the basis that they fail adequately to dissociate evidence about visual consciousness from evidence about attention. On the same basis, I criticise Ned Block's recent counterargument that conscious vision is independent of one sort of attention (‘cognitive access'). Block appears to achieve the dissociation only because he underestimates the indeterminacy of visual consciousness. I then appeal to (...) empirical work on the interaction between visual indeterminacy and attention, to argue for the constitutive connection. (shrink)

1. The spatial perception requirementCassam surveys arguments for what he calls the ‘Spatial Perception Requirement’ . This is the following principle: " SPR: In order to perceive that something is the case and thereby to know that it is the case one must be capable of spatial perception. " A couple of preliminary glosses. By ‘spatial perception’ Cassam means either perception of location, or perception of specifically spatial properties of an object, such as its size and shape. Second, Cassam takes (...) it that there is something basic about cases in which one's perceiving that something is the case depends on perception of an object. That is, he takes it that there is something basic about such cases as that in which, for example, you perceive that the door is open by perceiving the door.On this second point, it is not quite obvious that one could not perceive that things are thus and so if one could not perceive material objects. Cannot someone lost in fog, for example, perceive that it is foggy, even if they cannot see a thing because of the fog? Moreover, suppose we have someone who cannot perceive that things are thus and so. This person has only a series of sensations. Is it obvious that this person could not come to have knowledge of their world by reasoning about the probable causes of those sensations? These points seem to me to have some interest, but I will not pursue them here. I will assume we are considering cases in which propositional knowledge is grounded in perception that such and such is the case, and that this in turn depends on perception of objects.One sort of argument you might give for SPR runs as follows. Perception of an object demands that you have perceptually differentiated the object from its …. (shrink)