Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

In this exciting and original introduction to epistemology, Michael Williams explains and criticizes traditional philosophical theories of the nature, limits, methods, possibility, and value of knowing. All the main contemporary perspectives are explored and questioned, and the author's own theories put forward, making this new book essential reading for anyone, beginner or specialist, concerned with the philosophy of knowledge.

1. I am going to work with an idea from Sellars, that knowledge—at least as enjoyed by rational animals—is a certain sort of standing in the space of reasons. My concern is a familiar philosophical dialectic, which I shall approach in terms of what happens to the Sellarsian idea when the image of standings in the space of reasons undergoes a certain deformation. That it is a deformation is something we can learn from how unsatisfactory the familiar dialectic is.

The work of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars continues to have a significant impact on the contemporary philosophical scene. His writings have influenced major thinkers such as Rorty, McDowell, Brandom, and Dennett, and many of Sellars basic conceptions, such as the logical space of reasons, the myth of the given, and the manifest and scientific images, have become standard philosophical terms. Often, however, recent uses of these terms do not reflect the richness or the true sense of Sellars original ideas. (...) This book gets to the heart of Sellars philosophy and provides students with a comprehensive critical introduction to his lifes work. The book is structured around what Sellars himself regarded as the philosophers overarching task: to achieve a coherent vision of reality that will finally overcome the continuing clashes between the world as common sense takes it to be and the world as science reveals it to be. It provides a clear analysis of Sellars groundbreaking philosophy of mind, his novel theory of consciousness, his defense of scientific realism, and his thoroughgoing naturalism with a normative turn. Providing a lively examination of Sellars work through the central problem of what it means to be a human being in a scientific world, this book will be a valuable resource for all students of philosophy. (shrink)

1. The lever in question is, of course, that with which, provided that an appropriate fulcrum could be found, Archimedes could move the world. In the analogy I have in mind, the fulcrum is the given, by virtue of which the mind gets leverage on the world of knowledge.

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes References.

Asks how exactly perceptual experiences do provide reasons for empirical beliefs. My answer is that they furnish the subject with certain essentially experiential demonstrative contents—‘that is thus’ —his grasp of which provides him with a reason to endorse them in belief. For a person's grasp of such contents, as referring to the mind‐independent objects that they do, and predicating the mind‐independent properties that they do, essentially involves his appreciation of them as the joint upshot of the way things are anyway, (...) in the mind‐independent world around him, and his current point of view upon them and other relevant circumstances of perception. That is to say, he necessarily understands that his current apprehension that things are thus is in part due to the very fact that they are. He therefore recognizes the relevant content ashis apprehension of the facts, his epistemic opennessto the way things mind‐independently are out there. (shrink)

This book is an important study in the philosophy of the mind; drawing on the work of philosopher Wilfrid Sellars and the theory of critical realism to develop a novel argument for understanding perception and metaphysics.

Davidson claims that nothing can count as a reason for a belief except another belief. This claim is challenged by McDowell, who holds that perceptual experiences can count as reasons for beliefs. I argue that McDowell fails to take account of a distinction between two different senses in which something can count as a reason for belief. While a non-doxastic experience can count as a reason for belief in one of the two senses, this is not the sense which is (...) presupposed in Davidson's claim. While I focus on McDowell's view, the argument generalizes to other views which take experiences as reasons for belief. (shrink)

1. The lever in question is, of course, that with which, provided that an appropriate fulcrum could be found, Archimedes could move the world. In the analogy I have in mind, the fulcrum is the given, by virtue of which the mind gets leverage on the world of knowledge.

In “Knowledge and the Social Articulation of the Space of Reasons,” Robert Brandom reads my “Knowledge and the Internal” as sketching a position that, when properly elaborated, opens into his own social-perspectival conception of knowledge . But this depends on taking me to hold that there cannot be justification for a belief sufficient to exclude the possibility that the belief is false. And that is exactly what I argued against in “Knowledge and the Internal.” Seeing that P constitutes falsehood-excluding justification (...) for believing that P. That should seem common sense, but it is made unavailable by the inferentialist conception of justification that Brandom takes for granted. So far from realizing my aims, Brandom’s social-perspectival conception of knowledge is squarely in the target area of my argument in “Knowledge and the Internal,” which I restate here so as to bring that out. (shrink)

Studies in Wilfrid Sellars' philosophy: Aune, B. Sellars on practical reason.--Castañeda, H.-N. Some reflections on Wilfrid Sellars' theory of intentions.--Donagan, A. Determinism and freedom: Sellars and the reconciliationist thesis.--Robinson, W. S. The legend of the given.--Clark, R. The sensuous content of perception.--Grossmann, R. Perceptual objects, elementary particles, and emergent properties.--Rosenberg, J. F. The elusiveness of categories, the Archimedean dilemma, and the nature of man: a study in Sellarsian metaphysics.--Turnbull, R. G. Things, natures, and properties.--Wells, R. The indispensable word "now."--Van Fraassen, (...) B. C. Theories and counterfactuals.--Harman, G. H. Wilfrid Sellars' Theory of induction.--Sellarsiana: Sellars, W. Autobiographical reflections.--Sellars, W. The structure of knowledge. Lecture I, perception. Lecture II, minds. Lecture III, epistemic principles.--Wilfrid Sellars' Philosophical bibliography. (p. 349-353). (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)

Was heisst es, dass sich unsere geistigen Zustande auf eine Welt beziehen, deren Teil wir sind? Eine Analyse dieser Intentionalitat unserer geistigen Zustande muss sowohl die Rolle ihrer begrifflich-abstrakten als auch ihrer qualitativ-sinnlichen Aspekte genau bestimmen. In dieser Abhandlung wird der Versuch unternommen, eine Analyse des Verhaltnisses begrifflicher und nicht-begrifflicher Elemente im intentionalen Gegenstandsbezug durchzufuhren, und zwar auf der Basis einer systematischen Untersuchung von Kants Unterscheidung zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Verstand. Als Leitfaden dient die Auseinandersetzung, die Wilfrid Sellars uber einen langen (...) Zeitraum mit der theoretischen Philosophie Kants gefuhrt hat. Das hat zwei Grunde: Zum einen hat Sellars sich im Rahmen dieser Auseinandersetzung intensiv mit der kantischen Konzeption des Verhaltnisses von nicht-begrifflichen und begrifflichen Elementen in unserem intentionalen Weltbezug beschaftigt. Zum anderen war Kants Theorie fur Sellars keineswegs bloss von historischem Interesse, sondern hatte fur ihn bleibende systematische Bedeutung, da sein eigenes philosophisches System im Kern durch und durch kantisch ist. Sellars' Interpretation ist deshalb dazu geeignet, zwischen der exegetischen und der systematischen Perspektive zu vermitteln, deren Verbindung fur die Methodologie der vorliegenden Untersuchung charakteristisch ist.Die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen beiden Autoren soll dazu beitragen, die Frage nach der Beziehung von begrifflichen und sinnlichen Aspekten unserer Erfahrung zu klaren. Fur beide betrifft diese Frage den Kern der Problematik unseres Verhaltnisses zu einer unabhangig von uns existierenden Wirklichkeit. Ihre Beantwortung ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil fur das Verstandnis unseres intentionalen Bezugs auf eine Welt, deren Teil wir sind. Dass eine kantische Konzeption des Verhaltnisses von Sinnlichkeit und Verstand eine systematisch uberzeugende Antwort auf diese Frage liefern kann, soll in dieser Untersuchung gezeigt werden. (shrink)

How am I to account for this difficulty? I would like to be able to say that Cornman has simply misconstrued the appearances he is seeking to save, and that his subtle hypothetical-deductive theorizing rests on faulty "observation." Yet although I do think that he has misconstrued the views he is seeking to explain, and shall argue this in detail, I have come to see that I must bear a substantial part of the responsibility. He may have missed some clues (...) that were in front of his eyes, but often the passages with which he had to cope were unclear and indistinct. Relatively small errors of interpretation at the beginning of a commentary can snowball into major misunderstandings. This tendency is present in Cornman's essay; but his grasp of the general trend of my thinking has provided a constant corrective, and kept his hypotheses as close as they are to the truth. And, indeed, if I am disturbed at the difficulty he has found in reconstructing my thought, I derive some measure of encouragement from the fact that in the closing stages of his argument he is so close to formulating the position I have sought to defend, that had he been able to put his apparatus aside and take a fresh look at the evidence, he must have seen that some, at least, of the questions he pursues did not arise. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Willem A. deVries Hans Fink Christoph Halbig Stephen Houlgate Sabina Lovibond Kenneth R. Westphal Michael Williams Charles Travis.

It is often thought that epistemic relations between experience and belief make it possible for our beliefs to be about or "directed towards" the empirical world. I focus on an influential attempt by John McDowell to defend a view along these lines. According to McDowell, unless experiences are the sorts of things that can be our reasons for holding beliefs, our beliefs would not be "answerable" to the facts they purportedly represent, and so would lack all empirical content. I argue (...) that there is no intelligible conception of what it is for beliefs to be answerable to the facts that supports McDowell's claim that our empirical beliefs must be justified by experience. (shrink)

In his book Mind and World, John McDowell grapples with the problem that the world must and yet seemingly cannot constrain our empirical thought. I first argue that McDowell’s proposed solution to the problem throws him onto the horns of his own, intractable dilemma, and thus fails to solve the problem of rational constraint by the world. Next, I will argue that Wilfrid Sellars, in a series of articles written in the 1950s and 1960s, provides the tools to solve the (...) dilemma McDowell sets before us. We will see how, borrowing from Sellars and certain neo-Sellarsians, we can solve the problem of rational constraint by perception without resorting to a McDowellian quasi-enchantment of the world. (shrink)

an examination of Wilfrid Sellars position of the mental capacities of non-human animals.

In “Knowledge and the Internal” John McDowell presents a deep and interesting argument. I think everything he says is true and important. Still, there are a number of points that bear expanding on in order to be properly understood. So I want to say something about his point of departure: the idea of standings in the space of reasons. And I want to fill in further the picture at which he finally arrives, by saying how I think we ought to (...) understand knowledge as a standing in the space of reasons, once we have freed ourselves from a prevalent deformed conception of that space. McDowell’s strategy is to show that that conception of the space of reasons is inadequate—that it deserves to be called a ‘deformation’—by showing that it leaves no room for anything recognizable as knowledge. I’ll try to reconstruct that argument by showing what it looks like in the context of a crucial dimension of the space of reasons that McDowell never mentions: its essentially social articulation. The effect of this supplementation, I think, is not to turn a bad argument into a good one, but to turn what is already a good argument into one that further illuminates the phenomena with which it deals. (shrink)