Towards a Theory of Epistemically Significant Perception: How We Relate to the World

Description

How does perceptual experience make us knowledgeable about the world? In this book Nadja El Kassar argues that an informed answer requires a novel theory of perception: perceptual experience involves conceptual capacities and consists in a relation between a perceiver and the world. Contemporary theories of perception disagree about the role of content and conceptual capacities in perceptual experience. In her analysis El Kassar scrutinizes the arguments of conceptualist and relationist theories, thereby exposing their limitations for explaining the epistemic role of perceptual experience. Against this background she develops her novel theory of epistemically significant perception. Her theory improves on current accounts by encompassing both the epistemic role of perceptual experiences and its perceptual character. Central claims of her theory receive additional support from work in vision science, making this book an original contribution to the philosophy of perception. Contents Introduction Part I. Conceptualism 1. Introducing Conceptualism 1.1 Mind and World – the Beginnings of Conceptualism as We Know It 1.2 Details of Conceptual Capacities in Perception 1.3 Conceptualist Disjunctivism and the Capacity Approach to Perception 1.4 Two Developments of Conceptualism: Conceptual Content as Perceptual Demonstrative Content and as Enacted Content 2. Examining Non-Conceptualist Arguments against Conceptualism 2.1 A Close Reading Analysis of a Standard Non-Conceptualist Argument: the Argument from Animal Perception 2.2 Excursus: Remarks about Concepts, Conceptual Capacities, and Rationality 2.3 Reviewing the Argument from Hyper-Intellectualization 2.4 Reviewing the Argument from Concept Acquisition 2.5 Reviewing the Argument from Memory Experience 2.6 A Close Reading Analysis of the Argument from Fineness of Grain 2.7 A Close Reading Analysis of the Argument from Fallibility 2.8 First Conclusions: Conceptualism Survives the Non-Conceptualist Arguments, But Where Does It Stand? 3. Examining McDowell’s Revised Conceptualism 3.1 Avoiding the Myth of the Given, Travis’s Relationism and the Role of Intuitional Content 3.2 Does “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” Provide a Coherent Conceptualist Theory? 3.3 Is Conceptualism Just a Theory that Avoids the Myth of the Given? Part II. Relationism 4. Relationism: Perception as Conscious Acquaintance 4.1 What is Relationism? 4.2 The Object View’s Rejection of Representationalism 5. Relationism as Anti-Representationalism 5.1 Travis’s Anti-Representationalism: the Bigger Picture 5.2 Travis’s Arguments against Representationalism: the Problem of Selection, the Problem of Incoherent Content and the Problem of Attaining Generality 5.3 Non-Conceptualist Representationalism as an Incoherent Theory 5.4 Travis’s Arguments against McDowell’s Conceptualism: Perceptual Experience Does Not Have Conceptual Content 5.5 Perception as Mere Visual Awareness: Travis’s Conception of Perceptual Experience 6. Why McDowell’s Revised Conceptualism Does Not Avoid Travis’s Anti-Representationalist Criticism Part III. Relational Conceptualism 7. Relational Conceptualism: a Theory of Epistemically Significant Perception 7.1 Preliminaries 7.2 The Nature of Perceptual Experience on the Relational Conceptualist Account 7.3 Developing Relational Conceptualism 8. Possible Objections against Relational Conceptualism Part IV. Relational Conceptualism and Empirical Science 9. Broadening the Scope of Relational Conceptualism 9.1 Objections against Conceptualism from Empirical Science 9.2 Support for Conceptualism from Empirical Science 9.3 Roots and Routes for Relational Conceptualism to Trace References Author Index Subject Index