After summarizing the essential details of Anil Gupta’s account of perceptual justification in his book _Empiricism and Experience_, I argue for three claims: (1) Gupta’s proposal is closer to rationalism than advertised; (2) there is a major lacuna in Gupta’s account of how convergence in light of experience yields absolute entitlements to form beliefs; and (3) Gupta has not adequately explained how ordinary courses of experience can lead to convergence on a commonsense view of the world.

My aim in this paper is to assess the viability of a perceptual epistemology based on what Anil Gupta calls the “hypothetical given”. On this account, experience alone yields no unconditional entitlement to perceptual beliefs. Experience functions instead to establish relations of rational support between what Gupta calls “views” and perceptual beliefs. I argue that the hypothetical given is a genuine alternative to the prevailing theories of perceptual justification but that the account faces a dilemma: on a natural assumption about (...) the epistemic significance of support relations, any perceptual epistemology based on the hypothetical given results in either rationalism or skepticism. I conclude by examining the prospects for avoiding the dilemma. One option is to combine the hypothetical given with a form of holism. Another is to combine the view with a form of hinge epistemology. But neither offers a simple fix. (shrink)

I want to thank my critics not only for their attention to my book but also for their hospitality in Valencia, where they first presented me with their stimulating and wide‐ranging criticisms. 1 Th...

I respond to six objections, raised by Selim Berker and Karl Schafer, against the theory offered in my Empiricism and Experience: (1) that the theory needs a problematic notion of subjective character of experience; (2) that the transition from the hypothetical to the categorical fails because of a logical difficulty; (3) that the constraints imposed on admissible views are too weak; (4) that the theory does not deserve the label 'empiricism'; (5) that the motivations provided for the Reliability constraint are (...) insufficient; and (6) that convergence is bound to fail since epistemic entitlements are permissions. (shrink)

In these comments I briefly discuss three aspects of the empiricist account of the epistemic role of experience that Anil Gupta develops in his Empiricism and Experience. First, I discuss the motivations Gupta offers for the claim that the given in experience should be regarded as reliable. Second, I discuss two different ways of conceiving of the epistemic significance of the phenomenology of experience. And third, I discuss whether Gupta's account is able to deliver the anti-skeptical results he intends it (...) to. I close by suggesting that, once fully fleshed out, Gupta's account is best understood in terms of the fusion of certain core ideas within both the empiricist and the rationalist traditions. (shrink)

(2009). On the Epistemic Authority of Experience. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 307-314. doi: 10.1080/09672550902796822.