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Perception and Inference Perception and Inference by Thomas J. Breed B.A., Philosophy, University of Warwick, 2010 M.A., Language and Cognition, King's College London, 2013 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2020 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Thomas J. Breed It was defended on July 28th 2020 and approved by John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy Robert Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Anil Gupta, Alan Ross Anderson Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Wayne Wu, Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Dissertation Director: John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy ii Copyright c by Thomas J. Breed 2020 iii Perception and Inference Thomas J. Breed, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2020 This project explores the connections between normativity, perception, and conceptual content, and develops a view on which perception has inferentially-articulated conceptual content that is grounded in the way perceptual experiences alter the normative statuses of perceivers. In chapter two I address a criticism developed by Tyler Burge, who argues that views that require perceivers to have sophisticated capacities, such as conceptual or inferential capacities, in order to have representationally contentful perceptual states conflict with our best understanding of vision science. I argue that even if, as Burge claims, non-rational creatures have representational perceptual states that do not depend in any way on such ca- pacities, nonetheless the perceptual states of rational creatures must be integrated with their conceptually contentful mental states and must be capable of serving as reasons for belief, given the role these states must play in the explanation of the representational perspectives of rational creatures. In chapter three I develop and defend a specific version of conceptualism on which the conceptual content of perception is grounded in its normative significance. Specifically, I claim, by analogy with inferentialist metasemantic accounts of meaning, that perception has conceptual content by virtue of the way that it warrants perceivers in applying concepts and entitles them to claims. I also argue, against Robert Brandom, that giving perception this kind of role is required in order to give an adequate semantics for natural languages. I then apply this view to provide an explanation of the object-directedness of perception. iv In chapter four I pair this inferentialist account of perceptual content with a relationalist approach to the metaphysics and phenomenology of perception. Most relationalists argue that their view is incompatible with the claim that perception has content, but I argue that the way the inferentialist account grounds the content of perception in normative features of experience makes it more compatible with relationalist approaches than many other similar views. I then respond to a specific problem raised for the content view by Charles Travis, and provide an explanation of the relationship between the phenomenology and content of perception on the basis of my response to this problem. v Table of Contents Preface ...........................................x 1.0 Introduction .....................................1 1.1 Chapter Two: Tyler Burge on Objectivity . .2 1.2 Chapter Three: Inference and Perception . .6 1.3 Chapter Four: The Relational Aspect of Perception . 10 2.0 Objectivity and Rational Perception ...................... 14 2.1 Introduction . 14 2.2 Tyler Burge on Objectivity . 18 2.2.1 Second-Family Individual Representationalism . 18 2.2.2 Objectivity and Objectification . 24 2.2.3 Transformative Conceptions of Rationality . 28 2.2.4 Burge's Blind-Spot . 32 2.3 Perception and Explanation . 38 2.3.1 Burge's Two Arguments . 38 2.3.2 Burge's Transformative Conception of Objectivity . 42 2.4 Perception and Rationality . 46 2.4.1 Individuals, Persons, and Reasons . 46 2.4.2 Rational Perspectives and Rational Perception . 50 2.4.3 Some Responses . 54 2.5 Conclusion . 60 3.0 An Inferentialist Account of Perception .................... 64 vi 3.1 Introduction . 64 3.2 Inferentialism . 68 3.2.1 Inferentialist Semantics . 68 3.2.2 What Are Premises and Conclusions, Anyway? . 76 3.3 From Language to Perception . 80 3.3.1 Brandomian Inferentialism is a Hyperinferentialism . 80 3.3.2 Strong Inferentialism and the Space of Reasons . 84 3.4 A Foundational Inferentialist Account of Perceptual Content . 86 3.4.1 Inferentialist Metasemantics . 86 3.4.2 A Foundational Account of Perceptual Content . 91 3.5 Givenness and the Inferentialist View of Perception . 102 3.5.1 Object-Awareness and The Myth of the Given . 102 3.5.2 Intentionality and Inference . 104 3.5.3 Perception and Objects in Language Acquisition . 110 3.6 Conclusion . 116 4.0 Perception as a Normatively Significant Relation to Mind-Independent Objects ........................................ 120 4.1 Introduction . 120 4.2 Na¨ıve Realism and Representationalism . 123 4.2.1 Representationalism in the Philosophy of Perception . 123 4.2.2 Inferentialism and Representationalism . 127 4.2.3 The Three Central Claims of Na¨ıve Realism . 132 4.3 Inferentialism for Relationalists . 139 4.3.1 Na¨ıve Realism and the Content View . 139 vii 4.3.2 The Argument from Normative Significance . 146 4.4 Contentful Visual Awareness . 152 4.4.1 Travis's Argument . 152 4.4.2 Visual Looks and Visual Context . 158 4.5 The Visual and the Conceptual . 164 4.5.1 Appearances and the Content of Perception . 164 4.5.2 Inferential Role and Inferential Significance . 170 4.5.3 The Inferential Content of Perception . 174 4.6 Conclusion . 178 5.0 Bibliography ..................................... 181 viii List of Figures 1 The Normative Pragmatic Inferentialist Metasemantics . 90 2 The Normative Pragmatic Account of Perceptual Content . 97 3 The Inferential Role of a Sentence . 171 4 Same Inferential Role, Different Inferential Content . 173 5 The Inferential Content of Daylight and Dive Bar . 175 ix Preface \The subject of genuine perceptual beliefs is... responding to the visible presence of red things by making a potential move in a game of giving and asking for reasons: applying a concept." |Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons, p.108 \It's all about the game and how you play it... All about your debt and if you can pay it." —Mot¨orhead,`The Game' Every dissertation is the product of the ideas, influence, and support of a huge community of people, but this is especially true of the present one. As a first-generation graduate student, a lot had to happen for me to even make it to graduate school, let alone to write a dissertation. In particular, I want to thank Rebecca Jinks, Guy Longworth, and Miguel de Beistegui, for having faith in me as a student. Without their encouragement I'm not sure I would have applied to graduate school at all. The dissertation obviously owes a great deal to my graduate committee, and especially to my advisor, John McDowell, who has often been a more persuasive expositor of the views of the people with whom I express disagreement in this dissertation than they are themselves. If I have succeeded in engaging charitably with my interlocutors at all, this is in no small part thanks to his influence. Aside from their input on the dissertation itself, many parts of this project began with the philosophy of perception class I took with Anil Gupta, and directed studies that I did with John McDowell and Bob Brandom. Much of this dissertation is in fact an attempt to frame insights I've gleaned from John and Anil using conceptual x tools made available by Bob. The result is almost certainly something that satisfies nobody except (perhaps) me, so for this I owe all three both my thanks and my apologies. My sense is that my process of writing the dissertation has been somewhat atypical. When I first arrived at Pitt and asked about how people decide what to write for their dissertation, an older student joked that the official process is to wander off into the woods for a few months until you return with a fully-formed dissertation topic, and only then should you meet regularly with your committee. My experience has been, if anything, the opposite of this: Meetings with my committee were indispensible for conceiving of the project and its basic outlines, and then I wandered off into the woods for a couple of years only to return with a fully-formed dissertation (as well as an unexpected AOC in Chinese Philosophy). One consequence of this slightly unusual writing process is that feedback that I've re- ceived from people outside of my committee has had more of an influence on the dissertation than is perhaps common. In particular, I want to thank attendees of the dissertation sem- inar and of various WiPs throughout the years, and to audiences at the CUA conference on cognition and the MLAG conference in Porto, especially Alva No¨eand Charles Travis. The semester I spent at KCL, and the discussions I had with Bill Brewer and Matt Soteriou, also had a significant impact on the dissertation, especially on chapter 4. A special mention goes to all of the attendees of the NEH-funded Summer Seminar `Responses to Empiricism in Kant, Hegel, and Sellars', and to Bill deVries and Jim O'Shea for organising the event.1 The four weeks spent at this seminar were some of the most intellectually stimulating weeks of my academic life, and affected the way I thought about this project significantly. Any hints of influence from Kant, Hegel, Sellars, and Davidson in 1I should also acknowledge here my gratitude both to the National Endowment for the Humanities for providing a stipend to cover the costs of attending this seminar, and to the Rescher Dissertation Fellowship, which provided crucial financial support during the completion of this dissertation.
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