Includes a summary of my book *The Rationality of Perception* (Oxford, 2017) and replies to commentaries on it by Endre Begby, Harmen Ghijsen, and Katia Samoilova. These commentaries and my summary and replies will be published soon in Analysis Reviews. Begby focuses on my analysis of the epistemic features of the interface between individual minds and their cultural milieu (discussed in chapter 10 of *The Rationality of Perception*), Ghijsen focuses on the notion of inference and reliabilism (...) (chapters 5 and 6), and Samoilova focuses on the relationship between epistemic charge (chapter 3) and shifts in the amount of justification needed for knowledge. (shrink)

My replies to Errol Lord, Adam Pautz, and Peter Railton's commentaries on The Rationality of Perception (2017).

Preface to The Rationality of Perception.

This paper examines an ancient debate over the rationality of perception. What leads the Stoics to affirm, and the Epicureans to deny, that to form a sense-impression is an activity of reason? The answer, we argue, lies in a disagreement over what is required for epistemic success. For the Stoics, epistemic success consists in believing the right propositions, and only rational states, in virtue of their predicational structure, put us in touch with propositions. Since they identify some sense-impressions (...) as criteria of truth and thus as the basis for epistemic success, the Stoics maintain that sense-impressions must be rational. The Epicureans agree with the Stoics that sense-impressions function as criteria of truth, and also agree broadly on what it means for a state to be rational, but deny that sense-impressions are rational because (1) they think that epistemic success must be supported by a state that is necessarily error-free and (2) accept that rational states can be false. In reconstructing this debate, we refine the standard interpretation of the fundamental difference between Epicurean and Stoic epistemology and also develop parallels with epistemological debates today. One upshot is a more nuanced appreciation of the merits of Epicurean epistemology vis-à-vis the Stoics. (shrink)

How do mushroom foragers make safe and efficient decisions under high degrees of uncertainty, or deal with the genuine risks of misidentification and poisoning? This article is an inquiry into ecological rationality, heuristics, perception, and decision-making in mushroom foraging. By surveying 894 Finnish mushroom foragers with a total of 22,304 years of foraging experience, this article illustrates how socially learned rules of thumb and heuristics are used in mushroom foraging. It illustrates how traditional foraging cultures have evolved precautionary (...) principles to deal with uncertainties and poisonous species, and how foragers leverage both simple heuristics and complex cognitive strategies in their search for, and identification of, mushrooms. Foragers also develop selective attention through experience. The results invite us to consider whether other human foraging cultures might use heuristics similarly, how and why such traditions have culturally evolved, and whether early hunter-gatherers might have used fast and frugal heuristics to deal with uncertainty. (shrink)

An overview of the epistemology of perception, covering the nature of justification, immediate justification, the relationship between the metaphysics of perceptual experience and its rational role, the rational role of attention, and cognitive penetrability. The published version will contain a smaller bibliography, due to space constraints in the volume.

Several philosophers think there are important analogies between emotions and perceptual states. Furthermore, considerations about the rational assessibility of emotions have led philosophers—in some cases, the very same philosophers—to think that the content of emotions must be propositional content. If one finds it plausible that perceptual states have propositional contents, then there is no obvious tension between these views. However, this view of perception has recently been attacked by philosophers who hold that the content of perception is object-like. (...) I shall argue for a view about the content of emotions and perceptual states which will enable us to hold both that emotional content is analogous to perceptual content and that both emotions and perceptual states can have propositional contents. This will involve arguing for a pluralist view of perceptual content, on which perceptual states can have both contents which are proposition-like and contents which are object-like. I shall also address two significant objections to the claim that emotions can have proposition-like contents. Meeting one of these objections will involve taking on a further commitment: the pluralist account of perceptual content will have to be one on which the contents of perception can be non-conceptual. (shrink)

Plato’s Theory of Perception This research deals with Plato's perceptual theory, as the perceptual theory in Plato's philosophy represents one of the steps of the Plato’s epistemology. Plato divided knowledge into four categories: Sensory knowledge, presumptive knowledge, mathematical knowledge, and rational knowledge. The theory of sensory perception is in the first place, so this research focuses on the statements, the meaning of perception, the senses, the difference between sensation and mind, the topics of sensory perception, and (...) the nature of the work of sensory perception. (shrink)

The theory-ladenness of perception argument is not an argument at all. It is two clusters of arguments. The first cluster is empirical. These arguments typically begin with a discussion of one or more of the following psychological phenomena: (a) the conceptual penetrability of the visual system, (b) voluntary perceptual reversal of ambiguous figures, (c) adaptation to distorting lenses, or (d) expectation effects. From this evidence, proponents of theory-ladenness typically conclude that perception is in some sense "laden" with theory. (...) The second cluster attempts to extract deep epistemological lessons from this putative fact. Some philosophers conclude that science is not (in any traditional sense) a rational activity, while others conclude that we must radically reconceptualize what scientific rationality involves. Once we understand the structure of these arguments, much conventional wisdom about the significance of the psychological data turns out to be false. (shrink)

The present paper investigates the first step of rational belief acquisition. It, thus, focuses on justificatory relations between perceptual experiences and perceptual beliefs, and between their contents, respectively. In particular, the paper aims at outlining how it is possible to reason from the content of perceptual experiences to the content of perceptual beliefs. The paper thereby approaches this aim by combining a formal epistemology perspective with an eye towards recent advances in philosophy of cognition. Furthermore the paper restricts its focus, (...) it concentrates on the case of color perception and perceptual beliefs about color. (shrink)

Abstract: According to a rationalist theory of introspection, rational agents have a capacity to believe they are in conscious states when they are in them, much as they have the capacity, for example, to avoid obvious contradictions in their beliefs. For the agent to know or believe by introspection, on this view, is for them to exercise that capacity. According to an acquaintance theory of introspection, by contrast, whenever an agent is in a conscious state, the agent is aware of (...) or is acquainted with being in the state, where the background notion of acquaintance is understood to be distinct from sense perception, on the one hand, and belief or knowledge, or the other. For the agent to know or believe by introspection, on this view, is for them to take advantage of the epistemic position they occupy in virtue of being acquainted in this way. These theories are not in conflict; it is possible to hold both an acquaintance theory and a rationalist theory. This paper, however, sets out and recommends a different possibility, namely, that of holding a rationalist theory while rejecting any acquaintance theory. (shrink)

Disjunctivist views in the theory of perception hold that genuine perceptions differ in some relevant kind from misperceptions, such as illusions and hallucinations. In recent papers, Tyler Burge has argued that such views conflict with the basic tenets of perceptual psychology. According to him, perceptual psychology is committed to the view that genuine perceptions and misperceptions produced by the same proximal stimuli must be or involve perceptual states of the same kind. This, he argues, conflicts with disjunctivism. In this (...) paper, I defend epistemological disjunctivism from Burge’s inconsistency charge. To this end, I survey the perceptual psychological literature, and reveal that the perceptual kinds they tend to employ differ from and imply nothing about the kinds at issue for the epistemological disjunctivist. I then argue that Burge’s concerns with epistemological disjunctivism are best interpreted as motivated not by his commitment to empirical science, but instead by his views in epistemology and about human rationality. (shrink)

Although the fact that Merleau-Ponty has a dialectical approach in Phenomenology of Perception has been discussed in recent Anglophone readings, there has not been an explicit clarification as to how his varying usages of the term hang together. Given his repeated references to Hegel and to dialectics, coupled with the fact that dialectics are not part of the Husserlian phenomenology or Heideggerean existentialism from which Merleau-Ponty draws so much, the question of just what he does with the idea of (...) dialectics presents itself. In this paper I argue that, in Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau- Ponty saw Hegel as providing a model for the conception of rationality and meaning that must underpin the existentialist response to the problems bequeathed him by Husserlian phenomenology: namely, the problems of embodiment, perception and the constitution of the world. In connection with this, I suggest an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s “existential dialectics” that focuses on his three principal uses of the term: 1) a “dialectic of objective thought,” 2) a set of existential-dialectical categories intended to capture the ontological structure of the “body-subject” as “being-in-the-world,” and 3) a dialectic at the cultural level concerning others and history. (shrink)

A summary of The Rationality of Perception, and my replies to symposium papers on it by Andy Clark and Christopher Peacocke.

The demands of rationality are linked both to our subjective normative perspective (given that rationality is a person-level concept) and to objective reasons or favoring relations (given that rationality is non-contingently authoritative for us). In this paper, I propose a new way of reconciling the tension between these two aspects: roughly, what rationality requires of us is having the attitudes that correspond to our take on reasons in the light of our evidence, but only if it (...) is competent. I show how this view can account for structural rationality on the assumption that intentions and beliefs as such involve competent perceptions of downstream reasons, and explore various implications of the account. (shrink)

In book 10 of the Republic we find a new argument for the division of the soul. The argument’s structure is similar to the arguments in book 4 but, unlike those arguments, it centres on a purely cognitive conflict: believing and disbelieving the same thing, at the same time. The argument presents two interpretive difficulties. First, it assumes that a conflict between a belief and an appearance—e.g. disbelieving that a stick partially immersed in water is, as it appears, bent—entails a (...) conflict between beliefs. Prima facie, there is only one belief, the belief that contradicts the appearance. Second, it is unclear what parts of the soul Plato intends to divide between: some argue that it is, as in book 4, a partition between a rational and a non-rational part; others argue that it is a new partition between a higher and a lower subdivision of the rational part. This paper offers solutions to both difficulties through an analysis of what Plato means by φαινόμενα, ‘appearances’, and δόξαι, ‘beliefs’. It is argued, first, that the relevant appearances are entirely sensory but nonetheless sufficiently belief-like to (a) warrant being called δόξαι and (b) oppose, by themselves, our beliefs; there is no need for a third mental state, a belief that assents to the appearance. A second claim concerns a central line in the argument, 602e4–6, that has served as the primary evidence that the partition is within the rational part of the soul. Those who wish to avoid this conclusion generally resort to alternative, and less natural, translations of 602e4–6. It is argued that this is unnecessary: once we have correctly understood sensory appearances, we see that the standard translation of 602e4–6 in fact entails a division between a rational and a non-rational part of the soul. (shrink)

Resource rationality may explain suboptimal patterns of reasoning; but what of “anti-Bayesian” effects where the mind updates in a direction opposite the one it should? We present two phenomena — belief polarization and the size-weight illusion — that are not obviously explained by performance- or resource-based constraints, nor by the authors’ brief discussion of reference repulsion. Can resource rationality accommodate them?

Leibniz is unclear about the nature of pleasure. In some texts, he describes pleasure as a perception of perfection, while in other texts he describes pleasure as being caused by a perception of perfection. In this article, I disambiguate two senses of “perception of perfection”, which clarifies Leibniz’s considered position. I argue that pleasure is a perception of an increase in a substance’s power which is caused by a substance’s knowledge of a perfection of the universe (...) or God. This reading helps clarify the nature of Leibnizian happiness. Happiness is a cognitive process (akin to a mood), constituted fundamentally out of pleasure, which is grounded in increases in a substance’s power. A rational substance will sustain its happiness so long as it is more powerful than it is weak, and it is engaging in activities that increase its power. (shrink)

This volume focuses on philosophical problems concerning sense perception in the history of philosophy. It consists of thirteen essays that analyse the philosophical tradition originating in Aristotle’s writings. Each essay tackles a particular problem that tests the limits of Aristotle’s theory of perception and develops it in new directions. The problems discussed range from simultaneous perception to causality in perception, from the representational nature of sense-objects to the role of conscious attention, and from the physical/mental divide (...) to perception as quasi-rational judgement. -/- The volume gives an equal footing to Greek, Arabic, and Latin philosophical traditions. It makes a substantial contribution not just to the study of the Aristotelian analysis of sense perception, but to its reception in the commentary tradition and beyond. Thus, the papers address developments in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Avicenna, John of Jandun, Nicole Oresme, and Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, among others. The result of this is a coherent collection that attacks a well-defined topic from a wide range of perspectives and across philosophical traditions. (shrink)

The recent debate on cognitive phenomenology has largely focused on phenomenal aspects connected to the content of thoughts. By contrasts, aspects pertaining to their attitude have often been neglected, despite the fact that they are distinctive of the mental kind of thought concerned and, moreover, also present in experiences and thus less contentious than purely cognitive aspects. My main goal is to identify two central and closely related aspects of attitude that are phenomenologically salient and shared by thoughts with experiences, (...) namely the rational role that they play in our mental lives and their determination by factors external to them, such as external objects or reasons. In particular, I aim to defend Phenomenal Rationalism about judgemental thoughts and perceptual experiences: the view that their phenomenal character reflects their rational role, that is, their capacity to provide and/or respond to reasons. I conclude with some remarks about how this view may be extended to other kinds of th... (shrink)

The perennial question of the nature of natural-language understanding has received renewed attention in recent years. Two kinds of natural-language understanding, in particular, have captivated the interest of philosophers: linguistic understanding and utterance understanding. While the literature is rife with discussions of linguistic understanding and utterance understanding, the question of how the two types of understanding explanatorily depend on each other has received relatively scant attention. Exceptions include the linguistic ability/know-how views of linguistic understanding proposed by Dean Pettit and Brendan (...) Balcerak Jackson. On these views, to tacitly linguistically understand a sentence just is to possess the linguistic ability/knowledge-how needed to derive/infer what is said by different utterances of the sentence. Despite their focus on linguistic understanding, both views can straightforwardly explain utterance understanding as the output of a derivation/inference from a representation of the sentence uttered. Here, I take issue with these approaches to utterance understanding and then develop an alternative. More specifically, I distinguish two kinds of utterance understanding, experiential and doxastic, and then argue that experiences of what is said by utterances play distinct rational roles in the two kinds of utterance understanding. I conclude by addressing a recent challenge to my proposal. (shrink)

My dissertation addresses the question "do desires provide reasons?" I present two independent lines of argument in support of the conclusion that they do not. The first line of argument emerges from the way I circumscribe the concept of a desire. Complications aside, I conceive of a desire as a member of a family of attitudes that have imperative content, understood as content that displays doability-conditions rather than truth-conditions. Moreover, I hold that an attitude may provide reasons only if it (...) has truth-evaluable content. Insofar as desires lack truth-evaluable content, I hold that the content of a desire has the wrong kind of logical structure to provide reasons. My second line of argument claims that even if a desire did have truth-evaluable content, it would not follow that desires provide reasons. This is because a desire has no more rational significance than a guess or coin-flip. My argument relies on what I call the non-substitutability principle, the thesis that (all things being equal) one cannot substitute something that lacks rational significance, relative to some attitude, A, for something that has rational significance, relative to A, and leave the rational standing of A unchanged. For example, one cannot substitute the guess that P (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the belief that P) for the perception that P (i.e., something that is rationally significant relative to the belief that P) without altering the rational standing of the belief. I argue that when the non-substitutability principle is applied to a desire that gives rise to an intention, it turns out that one can always substitute a guess or coin-flip (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the intention) for the desire, without altering the rational standing of the intention. I take this to show that desires are not rationally significant relative to the intentions to which they give. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a version of the Total Evidence view according to which the rational response to disagreement depends upon one's total evidence. I argue that perceptual evidence of a certain kind is significantly weightier than many other types of evidence, including testimonial. Furthermore, what is generally called "The Uniqueness Thesis" is actually a conflation of two distinct principles that I dub "Evidential Uniqueness" and "Rationality Uniqueness." The former principle is likely true but the latter almost (...) certainly false. Seeing why the Rationality Uniqueness fails opens the door to seeing how mutual reasonable disagreement is possible even among those who share the same evidence. (shrink)

This chapter is organized around four central questions about the role of reasons in the epistemology of perception. The 'whether?' question: does perception provide us with reasons for belief about the external world? The 'how?' question: how does perception provide us with reasons for belief about the external world? The 'when?' question: when does perception provide us with reasons for belief about the external world? The 'what?' question: what are the reasons that perception provides us (...) with for belief about the external world? (shrink)

In his initial lecture course at the Collège de France, Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new analysis of rational thought in order to clarify its link with corporeal-perceptive life. The formulation of thought in language as the most elaborate human activity of expression explicitly takes over what we already observe in perception as the implicit and mutual reference between the perceiving subject and that which is perceived.The article reconstructs Merleau-Ponty’s argumentation, based on his preparatory notes for the lectures, and (...) provides an interpretation of the key concepts of “expression” and “body schema”. [In Czech Language]. (shrink)

This paper presents a new solution to the problem of peer disagreement that distinguishes two principles of rational belief, here called probability and autonomy. When we discover that we disagree with peers, there is one sense in which we rationally ought to suspend belief, and another in which we rationally ought to retain our original belief. In the first sense, we aim to believe what is most probably true according to our total evidence, including testimony from peers and authorities. In (...) the second, we aim to base our beliefs only on objective evidence and argumentation, even if that lowers the probability of their being true. The first principle of rational belief tends to serve the short-term epistemic interests of individuals, while the second tends to serve the long-term epistemic interests of both individuals and groups. The best way to reconcile these principles in cases of peer disagreement is to associate them with two corresponding species of belief, here called perception and opinion. (shrink)

The growth of knowledge has always included opposing worldviews and clashes of distinct interests. This includes different rationalities which either have served or disserved the State. A Copernican world defied the Catholic Church. Cartesian philosophy and Newtonian physics incited a major split between an allegedly knowing subject and external realities. As an outcome, many dualisms emerged: subjectivity/objectivity, particular/universal, etc. Hegelian dialectics elaborated such approach to its most extreme. The pretension of social science to be value-free assumed a neutral observer collating (...) external facts. Yet both Hume and Adam Smith challenged Descartes cogito as banal, stressing that it is not because we think that we are but rather than how we think is who we have become through the values, dispositions and beliefs that we have consciously or less than consciously acquired from life experience, and that no perception is neutral. Hume anticipated Bourclieu both on habItus and also on reflexivity in his concept of the reflexive mind" yet this then was lost by the presumption, such as by Bertrand Russell, that Hume was a "mere empiricist". Logical positivism then claimed that an appeal to 'facts' could dismiss metaphysics, invoking the logical atomism of Russell and the early Wittgenstein. But which Wittgenstein transcended not in the sense of transcendental metaphysics, though he was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer, but - after a road to Damascus encounter with Sraffa - coming to realise that meanings depend on context and that their context needs to be understood. Which we suggest in this paper is that these issues are highly relevant to the troubled relationship between rationality - or rationalities - and the State. (shrink)

This opinion revolves around the discussion of matters that are beyond the realm of space-time. For instance, it discusses parallel universes, wormholes, and extrasensory perception or psi. Rationality is operationally defined. The opinion throws light on the manner in which the lines of rationality become unclear when it takes into consideration extrasensory phenomena. In addition, it contends that psychiatric disorders such as Schizophrenia are the result of contact from different parallel universes. Hence, Schizophrenia according to this paper (...) is not a disorder by itself but rather just a communication of messages from an alternate reality. Also, another psychological disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder is also the result of different souls in one person or communication from different souls from parallel universes. Whether atoms are conscious or not is debatable but can be a possibility due to their eerie and unpredictable nature. The concept of parallel universes introduces a paradoxical manner of thinking, which is dealt with in the paper. The paper concerns itself with issues in quantum physics, clubbed with extrasensory perception in parapsychology. It subtly emphasizes rational thinking in the debate about space-time and beyond. Rationality as a concept is dealt with from different angles. Finally, quantum cognition is used to explain an all too familiar, pervasive yet inexplicable domain of knowledge, which is human behaviour. (shrink)

The outcome of criticism is a perception. Does this mean that criticism cannot count as a rational process? For it to do so, it seems it would have to be possible for there to be an argument for a perception. Yet perceptions do not seem to be the right sort of item to serve as the conclusions of arguments. Is this appearance borne out? I examine why perceptions might not be able to play that role, and explore what (...) would have to be true of critical discourse for those obstacles to be circumvented. (shrink)

I discuss Alston's theory of religious experience and maintain that his argument to the effect that it is rational to suppose that the 'mystical doxastic practice' is epistemically reliable does not stand up to scrutiny. While Alston's transitions from practical to epistemic rationality don't work here, his arguments may be taken to show that, under certain conditions, it is not epistemically irresponsible to trust one's religious experiences.

In this paper, I defend an account of how perceptual experience can bear rational relation to our empirical thought. In the first part, I elaborate two claims that are central for the justificational role of perceptual experience, namely, the claim that perception and belief share the same kind of content, and the claim that perception is independent from belief. At first sight, these claims seem not to be compatible, since the first one seems to require the truth of (...) content conceptualism, while the second one seems to require its falsity. In the second part, based on Alva Noë's actionist theory of perception, I argue in favor of a less intellectualist interpretation of the first claim, uncommitted to content conceptualism, and then I show how it can be reconciled with the second claim. Finally, I explain how perception holds rational relationships with our empirical thought through the exercise of observational concepts. These concepts link what I propose to call 'space of actions' to the logical space of reasons. (shrink)

Despite the diversity of perceptions of what postmodernity is, there is a point of convergence between a significant part of the scholars of the theme, which is characterizing this period as a period of bankruptcy and disbelief in totalizing ideas. Through the eyes of Emil Cioran, we see the great ideologies and metanarratives as desired eschatologies, defined by the author as utopias, in which, not only is a possibility of a rationalized end composed, but also an adequate form of end. (...) In this work, we intend to extract concepts for what modernity and post-modernity become, to present characteristics of the conception of this and how these same characteristics are present in the writings of Emil Cioran, specifically in his essays “Genealogy of fanaticism” and “Mechanism of utopia”. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I reaffirm one aspect of the traditional divide between perception and belief, by arguing that perception and belief can can be distinguished by their rational roles. Partly relying on this proposed rational difference between perception and belief, I reject a different aspect of the traditional picture, on which perception cannot represent conceptually sophisticated features. Focusing on the visual modality, I argue that visual experience can represent at least some features other than shape, color, (...) and movement. More particularly: I consider and criticize some extant arguments for high-level perception, including an argument from introspection and an argument from agnosia. I develop a new reason to think that beliefs are necessarily rationally revisable in a certain way, and I ultimately argue that in some cases, we have literal visual experiences as of others' mental states, such as their proximal intentions. (shrink)

A simple reductive view of intuition holds that intuition is a type of belief. That an agent who intuits that p sometimes believes that p is false is often thought to demonstrate that the simple reductive view is false. I show that this argument is inconclusive, but also that an argument for the same conclusion can be rebuilt using the notion of rational criticisability. I then use that notion to argue that perception is also not reducible to belief, and (...) that neither intuition nor perception is reducible to credence. (shrink)

There is much to admire in John Pittard’s recent book on the epistemology of disagreement. But here we develop one concern about the role that rational insight plays in his project. Pittard develops and defends a view on which a party to peer disagreement can show substantial partiality to his own view, so long as he enjoys even moderate rational insight into the truth of his view or the cogency of his reasoning for his view. Pittard argues that this may (...) happen in ordinary cases of religious disagreement—cases in which it’s a live skeptical possibility that one is misdescribing his insight, or not having insight at all—and therefore one need not be strongly conciliatory even in the face of peer disagreement. Yet Pittard agrees that one should be strongly conciliatory in cases of disagreement involving, e.g., visual perception and dim rational insight, since the sort of fallible, corrigible evidence involved in such cases may be counterbalanced by symmetrical evidence on the part of one’s disagreeing peer. We worry that there’s an inconsistency here. If it’s unreasonable to show partiality to one’s visual experience (or dim rational insight) in cases like “Horse Race” and “Restaurant Check,” it’s likewise unreasonable to show partiality in religious disagreements to one’s moderate rational insight, fallible and corrigible as it is. (shrink)

Animals, the beautiful creatures of God in the Stoic and especially in Porphyry’s sense, need to be treated as rational. We know that the Stoics ask for justice for all rational beings, but there is no significant proclamation from their side that openly talks in favour of animal justice. They claim the rationality of animals but do not confer any rights to human beings. The later Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry magnificently deciphers this idea in his writing On Abstinence from Animal (...) Food. Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus thinks that both animals and humans are made up of the same tissues, and like a human, animals also have the same way of perception, reasoning and appetites. My next effort would be to decipher how Porphyry illustrates Theophrastus’ perspective not in the way (the technical theory of justice) the Stoics argued. Porphyry’s stance seems more humanistic that looks for the pertinent reasons for treating animal rights from the contention of justice that Aristotle, in his early writings, defied since animals can deal with reasons. The paper highlights how much we could justificatorily demand empathetic concern for animals from the outlook of the mentioned Greek thinkers and the modern animal rights thinkers as quasi-right of animals, even if my position undertakes the empathetic ground for animals in an undeserving humanitarian way. (shrink)

This handout contains my replies to comments on the Rationality of Perception by Jennifer Nagel, Adam Pautz, and Peter Railton from a symposium at the 2018 Eastern APA in Savannah.

Henry More argues that materialism cannot account for cases where a single subject or perceiver has multiple perceptions simultaneously. Since we clearly do have multiple perceptions at the same time--for example, when we see, hear, and smell simultaneously--More concludes that we are not wholly material. In response to More's argument, Margaret Cavendish adopts a two-fold strategy. First, she argues that there is no general obstacle to mental unification in her version of materialism. Second, Cavendish appeals to the mind or rational (...) matter--terms she often uses interchangeably—to explain the integration of sensory input from multiple senses. When the mind integrates perceptions across modalities, the different parts of rational matter share their knowledge so that they all come to perceive alike. When rational parts successfully communicate their knowledge, each part knows what all the others know. They pool their knowledge; they perceive alike. Thus, when someone hears, sees, and tastes, each part of her mind hears, sees, and tastes alike, in parallel and in unison. The Cavendishian mind, in short, approximates simplicity by achieving uniformity or homogeneity of perceptions across its parts. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has argued that concept acquisition cannot be a psychological or “rational-causal” process, but can only be a “brute-causal” process of acquisition. This position generates the “doorknob  DOORKNOB” problem: why are concepts typically acquired on the basis of experience with items in their extensions? I argue that Fodor’s taxonomy of causal processes needs supplementation, and characterize a third type: what I call “intelligible-causal processes.” Armed with this new category I present what I regard as a better response than (...) Fodor’s to the doorknob  DOORKNOB problem. (shrink)

Historically, the view, prevalent in contemporary economics and decision theory as well as philosophy, that rational action consists simply in satisfying one’s desires, whatever they may be, as efficiently as possible, is to be found first in Book II of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. This view has counterintuitive and self-refuting implications, in that it recognizes as rational behavior that may reveal a clear degree of irresponsibility or psychological instability. Accordingly, many Hume scholars have tried to show recently that this (...) view was not Hume’s; and that, on the contrary, Hume did supply an account of rational final ends--in his discussion of the calm passions, the “steady and general view” that corrects the biases and contingencies of an individual’s desires and perceptions, and elsewhere. But a detailed reconstruction of Hume’s views on these matters that assembles all the relevant texts does not support this thesis. Instead, it undermines it. Hence the counterintuitive and self-refuting implications of Hume’s view of rational action must be allowed to stand. (shrink)

Through the reconstruction of Leibniz's theory of the degrees of knowledge, this e-book investigates and explores the intrinsic relationship of imagination with space and time. The inquiry into this relationship defines the logic of imagination that characterizes both human and non-human animals, albeit differently, making them two different species of imaginative animals. -/- Lucia Oliveri explains how the emergence of language in human animals goes hand in hand with the emergence of thought and a different form of rationality constituted (...) by logical inferences based on identity and contradiction, principles that are out of reach of the imagination. The e-book concludes that the presence of innate principles in human animals transforms the way in which they sense-perceive the world, thereby constantly increasing the distinction between human and non-human animals. -/- Keywords: human and non-human animals, Leibniz and Locke on ideas, Leibniz on bodies, Leibniz on conceivability, Leibniz on degrees of knowledge, Leibniz on degrees of perception, Leibniz on innate ideas, Leibniz on modality, Leibniz on similarity and congruence, Leibniz on space and time, Leibniz’s philosophy of language, theory of types. (shrink)

We sought to compare the implicit and explicit views of a group of Muslim graduates on the fairness of Islamic law. In this preliminary investigation, we used the Electroencephalographic N400 Event Related Potential to detect the participant’s implicit beliefs. It was found that the majority of participants, eight out of ten, implicitly held that Islamic Law was unfair despite explicitly stating the opposite. In seeking to understand what separated these eight participants from the remaining two – the two who both (...) implicitly and explicitly held that Islamic Law was fair – only two distinguishing characteristics could be identified. Both participants had undertaken an in-depth study of a branch of Islamic law that places the spirit of the law above that of a literal interpretation. They had also attended the same seminary, exclusive to the other participants. Of the eight participants, it was discovered that, while they implicitly held Islamic law to be unfair, they also held it to be rational – in the same way they found that it was rational to push a person of a ship in order to save the remaining from drowning, yet unfair. We discuss these preliminary findings and consider theories on how an innate sense of fairness, an aspect of nativism, may come into play when it is not congruent with a participant’s own beliefs. Further, we ask, where such an inconsistency occurs, how does the mind attempt to rectify it – if at all? As a possible contribution to the discussion on theories of nativism vs. empiricism we put forward a hypothesis and methodology for investigation that may produce previously unconsidered data on human nature. (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)

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the (...) power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought. (shrink)

Early twentieth-century philosophers of perception presented their naïve realist views of perceptual experience in anti-Kantian terms. For they took naïve realism about perceptual experience to be incompatible with Kant’s claims about the way the understanding is necessarily involved in perceptual consciousness. This essay seeks to situate a naïve realist account of visual experience within a recognisably Kantian framework by arguing that a naïve realist account of visual experience is compatible with the claim that the understanding is necessarily involved in (...) the perceptual experience of those rational beings with discursive intellects. The resultant view is middle way between recent conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations of Kant, holding that the understanding is necessarily involved in the kind of perceptual consciousness that we, as rational beings, enjoy whilst allowing that the relations of apprehension which constitute perceptual consciousness are independent of acts of the understanding. (shrink)

This paper presents the main topics, arguments, and positions in the philosophy of AI at present (excluding ethics). Apart from the basic concepts of intelligence and computation, the main topics of ar-tificial cognition are perception, action, meaning, rational choice, free will, consciousness, and normativity. Through a better understanding of these topics, the philosophy of AI contributes to our understand-ing of the nature, prospects, and value of AI. Furthermore, these topics can be understood more deeply through the discussion of AI; (...) so we suggest that “AI Philosophy” provides a new method for philosophy. (shrink)

In his paper “There It Is” and his précis “There It Was,” Benj Hellie develops a sophisticated semantics for perceptual justification according to which perceptions in good cases can be explained by intentional psychology and can justify beliefs, whereas bad cases of perception are defective and so cannot justify beliefs. Importantly, Hellie also affords consciousness a central role in rationality insofar as only those good cases of perception within consciousness can play a justificatory function. In this commentary, (...) I reserve judgment regarding Hellie’s treatment of the rational difference between good and bad cases, but I argue there can be what he views as good cases of perceptual justification outside of consciousness. (shrink)

I argue that there are no irrational visual experiences, if we mean just the experiences that one is having now, but there are irrational visual experiences, if we mean also the experiences that one has had in the past. In other words, I will be arguing that perceptual irrationality is a retrospective phenomenon. So as to further support the first conjunct of my thesis, and to contextualize it among contemporary discussions, I also critique Susanna Siegel’s proposal that one could be (...) having an irrational experience, in the sense of a hijacked experience that has inherited a sub-threshold epistemic charge from a corrupt outlook. The present discussion is conducted from a Husserlian point of view, according to which perception is rational, rather than arational. I am, however, in this paper, not undertaking to defend the Husserlian view or the rationality of perception, or even to argue that the view I refer to as Husserlian is, in all aspects, the view that Edmund Husserl actually held. I aim merely to provide certain clarifications concerning the more specific topic of irrational visual experiences. (shrink)

Kant’s distinction between intuitions and concepts attracts perennial interpretive interest. To the extent that they discuss the imagination at all, most Kant scholars maintain that the imagination’s primary role is to generate intuitions. This dissertation argues that “image” (Bild, Einbildung) is an overlooked technical term in Kant’s work and that images—and not intuitions—are products of the imagination. The project explains how, for Kant, the imagination (as image-maker) and the senses (as intuition-maker) make distinct but essential contributions to cognition and (...) class='Hi'>perception. I begin by showing that “image” is a terminologically marked notion in Kant, and that the imagination is responsible for generating images (chapter 1). I call these claims the Image Thesis. I then show that for Kant, intuitions are representations that depend only on the senses for their essential features (chapter 2). I call this the Strong Independence Thesis. -/- How should we understand Kant’s ubiquitous references to the imagination, then? I argue that we should understand the imagination’s activities as image-producing activities (chapter 3). I argue that images and intuitions are fundamentally distinct representations, which I label the Distinctness Thesis. Though intuitions and images are had by both rational and non-rational beings, the capacity for consciousness or apperception found in rational beings makes a difference in the structure of images but not the structure of intuitions (chapter 4). I call this the penetration view of the imagination. With this account of images in hand, I indicate why images are a necessary ingredient in theoretical cognition for Kant (chapter 5). I call this the Image-Centric Cognition Thesis. The result is a novel account of sensibility—the counterpart of the understanding—that recognizes Kant’s systematic discussion of mental imagery. (shrink)