DOCSLIB.ORG

1 How Is Wishful Seeing Like Wishful Thinking? Susanna Siegel * Draft For

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1 How Is Wishful Seeing Like Wishful Thinking? Susanna Siegel * Draft For How is wishful seeing like wishful thinking? Susanna Siegel * draft for Rutgers Epistemology Conference REC readers: If this paper is too long for you, you can shorten the journey in any of these ways: - skip sections 3-5 on responsive dispositions (pp. 9-15) - skip Part II (pp. 15-29) - skip all Part III (pp. 29-end) A Simple Argument It is a commonplace that beliefs can be epistemically appropriate or epistemically inappropriate. Suppose Frank wishfully believes that today, all his best features are evident even to the most casual observation. Passers-by who greet him with neutral expressions are holding back their appreciation of him, because they’re embarrassed to show it. Anyone who seems displeased with him is feeling inadequate in the face of his many assets. These interpretations make sense to Frank given his original wishful belief, but they are unreasonable, and that belief is the source of their unreasonableness. Can a perceptual experience ever be a source of unreasonableness, because of its dependence on a desire? Could wishful seeing compromise the rational support offered by experience, just as wishful thinking compromises the rational support offered by Frank’s wishful belief? Here is a simple argument that it could. Premise: Beliefs can be ill-founded by wishful thinking. Premise: Wishful seeing is possible. Conclusion. Experiences can be ill-founded by wishful seeing. What kinds of considerations could possibly support such a conclusion? The argument’s conceit is that wishful seeing and wishful thinking are sufficiently analogous that they both have ill-founding effects. There are many places to probe the argument, starting with whether the idea of wishful seeing makes sense to begin with. Even if it does make sense, one might strongly suspect that equivocation on “ill-foundedness” between the premise and conclusion is unavoidable because beliefs are ill-founded if they are formed or maintained epistemically inappropriately, but experiences are not governed by epistemic norms. And even if equivocation on “ill-founded” can be avoided, nothing in the argument explains why the fact that wishful thinking can ill-found beliefs should tell us anything about what wishful seeing can do to the epistemic status of experiences. This is a major gap in the argument. Perhaps wishful seeing and wishful thinking are psychologically similar phenomena, but their epistemic effects differ: wishful seeing does not compromise the rational powers of experience at all. But if wishful seeing does compromise the rational powers of experience, then a major consequence follows. Experiences are not uniformly receptive. They are not a 1 landing pad for information (or misinformation) that tumbles in along a-rational channels, naively open to the objects, properties, and events that are there for us to perceive. Experiences can fail to be receptive in these ways, not because they are off the grid of rational assessment, as an undirected ‘raw feel’ would be, but because the grid has a place for experiences that arise in some of the same ways as irrational beliefs do. And that opens the possibility that the notion of ill-foundedness that we use to convict some beliefs might convict some experiences as well. Let me lay some cards on the table, though they are probably showing already. The Simple Argument leaves much to be explained, but it helps us see what additional factors would be needed to clarify the premises and help them support the conclusion. I think those factors can be provided. My aim here is to provide them, by clarifying and defending the premises and giving them the help they need to produce the conclusion. Wishful seeing is clearly coherent. Just imagine that Jill wants Jack to be happy, and as a result, she is subject to an illusion when she looks at him: he looks happy when she sees him – even though you would see his neutral expression for what it is, as would most anyone else who wasn’t subject to any similar distortion. Or imagine that as a result of wanting him to be happy, Jill fails to see his furrowed brow and slumped shoulders, focusing instead on his bouncy step and unfrowning mouth. For all she sees, it seems reasonable to conclude that he is happy. In both cases, Jill ends up with a visual experience of Jack as happy, with her desire for him to be happy playing a key role in producing the experience. What about ill-founding: is the Simple Argument bound to equivocate in applying this notion to both beliefs and experiences? What would it be for an experience to be formed or maintained epistemically inappropriately? At a minimum, factors that explain why the subject has the experience would prevent it from providing any rational support for believing (at least some of) its contents, or from providing as much rational support as an experience could otherwise provide. Ill-founded beliefs have this feature as well: the rational support (propositional justification) they can offer to subsequent beliefs is reduced or eliminated. Beyond this shared core feature, the only leftover thing missing from ill-foundedness of beliefs is their being epistemically inappropriate or doxastically unjustified.1 It seems a potentially merely verbal issue whether we extend this language to experience or not. It’s not in dispute that experiences can have the core feature of ill-foundedness. 1 I’ll use “doxastically unjustified” to mean, formed or maintained epistemically inappropriately. On this usage it is a substantive question whether a belief’s being formed and maintained in proper response to one’s evidence suffices to make it doxastically justified. 2 On behalf of the Simple Argument, the charge of equivocation could be answered by insisting at the outset that there’s no bar to considering experiences epistemically inappropriate or doxastically unjustified. That answer is a bit jarring. Two less jarring answers are available. First, the equivocation on “ill-foundedness” is avoidable, by scaling back to the common status that ill-founded beliefs can share with experiences: an experience or belief provides less rational support for subsequent beliefs, as a result of ill-founding factors, than it could without those factors. Second, the equivocation is harmless, because it doesn’t matter whether wishful seeing produces in experiences the “extra” aspect of ill-foundedness that uncontroversially applies to beliefs – namely, epistemic inappropriateness.2 In any case, any residual discomfort produced by applying even the scaled-back notion of ill-foundedness to experiences could be avoided, by reformulating the conclusion of the Simple Argument in terms of belief. A belief that P is formed by endorsing an experience, if the belief is formed on the basis of an experience that includes P in its content. The conclusion could then be reformulated like this: Conclusion*. Beliefs formed by endorsing experiences are ill-founded when those experiences are ill-founded by wishful seeing. The two conclusions are not equivalent, because the reformulated one limits the beliefs that can be ill-founded in the relevant way to beliefs formed by endorsing experiences. In contrast, the original conclusion allows that any beliefs formed primarily on the basis of experience to be ill-founded, if the experience is itself ill-founded by wishful seeing.3 Although the major gap in the Simple Argument is a defense of the idea that experiences and beliefs are symmetrically vulnerable to ill-founding by desires, trying to close the gap might seem premature, so long as a different pre-emptive worry is unaddressed. What if in wishful seeing, wishful experiences depend on desires in ways that are completely different from the ways in which beliefs depend on desires, when desires ill-found beliefs? If desires ill-found beliefs by controlling them in ways that can have no analog for experiences, then the basic reasoning behind the Simple Argument can’t get off the ground. In contrast, if beliefs and experiences can depend on desires in analogous ways, then we can go on to ask whether those analogous modes of dependence have similar epistemic effects on beliefs and experiences. If desires can in 2 It would be useful to have a word that isolates the core feature of ill-foundedness. I call experiences with this feature “epistemically downgraded” in Siegel (2013). 3 Both the original conclusion and the reformulated ones fail to specify that the ill- foundedness of an experience (its downgrade) may be specific only to some contents, such as those specifying shape but not those specifying color. We’ll see examples later. Self-ascriptions of ill-founded experiences may not themselves be ill-founded, even if beliefs formed by endorsing the experiences are, when the contents of the belief are the contents relative to which the experience is downgraded. 3 principle influence experience in the same way as it influences and ill-founds beliefs, then the Analogy thesis is true: Analogy thesis: It is possible in principle for an experience to depend on a desire, in ways that are structurally analogous to modes in which a belief that P depends on a desire, where that mode of dependence makes the belief ill-founded. Is the Analogy thesis true? If ill-founded wishful thinking were simply a matter of a belief causally depending on desire, then the question would reduce to whether experiences can causally depend on desires. But many beliefs that are not ill-founded causally depend on a desire (even a desire with the same content as the belief). You might hope that a hypothesis P is true, and for that reason be motivated to investigate whether it is true, and then end up believing P on the basis of the strong evidence that you find for it once you look into the matter.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rational Wishful Thinking
    Rational self-deception Eli Spiegelman a Jan 31, 2018 a CEREN, EA 7477, Burgundy School of Business - Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 29 rue Sambin, Dijon 21000, France. [email protected] Keywords: Wishful thinking; self-deception; beliefs; choice theory; experiment; regret theory; ambiguity JEL D8, D9 Funding This research benefitted from funding from LESSAC, Burgundy School of Business. Abstract This note presents a model of wishful thinking as manipulation of prior beliefs, and a novel experimental test. The theoretical context is a three-period model, in which the agent is faced with a state-contingent optimal action, in which one state yields a higher payoff. In period 0 she observes the objective prior probability that each state will occur, but may alter her beliefs about these probabilities (self-deceive). The beliefs she chooses in period 0 determine her action in period 1 as a standard maximization procedure. In period 2, a signal yields information about the state of the world. A key assumption is that this signal may not be perfectly revealing. It is shown that the objective prior is optimal if and only if the signal in period 2 is perfectly revealing. Predictions of the theory are tested in a bet-choice experiment. I then present an experimental test designed to investigate the model’s predictions. Subjects choose to play a bet or pass it up for another, and the experimental control varies whether learn about the second bet upon taking the first. The results of the experiment are also compared to the literature on regret theory and ambiguity aversion.
    [Show full text]
  • Nicholas Silins
    NICHOLAS SILINS Cornell University Sage School of Philosophy 218 Goldwin Smith Hall Ithaca, 18543, USA [email protected] AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind AREAS OF COMPETENCE Metaphysics, Aesthetics, Classical Asian Philosophy EDUCATION Oxford University, D.Phil in Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation: Reasons and Armchair Knowledge Supervisor: Timothy Williamson Oxford University, B.Phil in Philosophy, 2001 Thesis: Content and Self-Knowledge Supervisor: Timothy Williamson Princeton University, B.A. in Comparative Literature, magna cum laude, 1999 APPOINTMENTS Field Member of Cognitive Science, Cornell University, 2018-present Associate Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University, 2012-present Associate Professor of Philosophy, Yale-NUS College, 2013-2016 Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University, 2006-2012 Research Fellow, Australian National University, RSSS, Centre for Consciousness, Jan-July 2007, Jan-July 2009 Bersoff Fellow, New York University, 2004-2006 1 of 6 PUBLICATIONS 2019 “Attention and Perceptual Justification”, with Susanna Siegel, for A. Pautz and D. Stoljar (eds.) Themes From Ned Block (MIT) 2018 "The Evil Demon Inside", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Early View Online “The Structure of Episodic Memory: Ganeri’s ‘Mental time travel and attention’”, with Susanna Siegel, Australasian Philosophical Review 4: 374-394 2016 “Cognitive Penetration and the Epistemology of Perception”, Blackwell Compass 11: 24-42 2015 “Perceptual Experience and Perceptual Justification”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “The Epistemology of Perception”, with Susanna Siegel, in (ed.) M. Matthen, The Oxford Handbook of Perception (OUP) 2014 “The Agony of Defeat?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88: 505-532. “Experience Does Justify Belief”, in R. Neta (ed.) Current Controversies in Epistemology (Routledge) “Consciousness, Attention, and Justification”, with Susanna Siegel, in D.
    [Show full text]
  • Phil. 270/570: Epistemology Fall 2021 Prof. Keith Derose Tu, Th 9:00-10:15Am
    Phil. 270/570: Epistemology Fall 2021 Prof. Keith DeRose Tu, Th 9:00-10:15am; room TBA KDR office hour: Th (on which classes meet) 10:30-11:30 CT Hall, room 410 The course web page will be at: http://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/epistemology-f21/ Reading for the First Meeting: If possible, read items 1-2 from the list of readings (on p. 4 of this syllabus). They are both quite short. Please note: The final exam for this class will be at the last exam period on Yale’s schedule (Wed., Dec. 22, 2:00-5:00 pm), and I won’t be able to schedule an alternative early exam, so please verify that that time will fit your travel and other plans before taking this course. Phil. 270 Course Description. This is the basic course in epistemology, so the plan is to discuss at least many of the main topics and issues important to epistemology. However, we won’t be having assigned readings about all of these topics. Rather, we will read papers and portions of books that focus on just a five of them (our “focus topics”), but will use these as jumping off points for discussing other issues. I have not chosen the focus topics described briefly below because they are the five most important topics to epistemology today. Rather, given how they fit together with one another and how they naturally give rise to other important issues, at least as I approach them, they seem to be five topics around which we can build a course in which you encounter interesting philosophical work and also learn about the field of epistemology, encountering, even if not focusing upon, many important topics.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophers' Brief
    CAPITAL CASE No. 18-6135 In the Supreme Court of the United States ________________ JAMES K. KAHLER, Petitioner, v. STATE OF KANSAS, Respondent. ________________ On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Kansas ________________ Brief of Philosophy Professors as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner ________________ EUGENE R. FIDELL (Counsel of Record) Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell LLP 1129 20th St., N.W., 4th Fl. Washington, DC 20036 (202) 256-8675 [email protected] Counsel for Amici Curiae QUESTION PRESENTED Do the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments per- mit a State to abolish the insanity defense? i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Interest of the Amici ................................................. 1 Summary of Argument ............................................. 1 Argument .................................................................. 2 I. THE MENTAL STATE ELEMENTS OF CRIMES ARE INSUFFICIENT FOR RESPONSIBILITY .............................. 2 II. SANITY IS NECESSARY FOR RESPONS- IBILITY AND SO ESSENTIAL TO BOTH THE DETERRENT AND RETRIBUTIVE AIMS OF CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT ........ 6 III.PRINCIPLES OF TOLERATION DO NOT SUPPORT DEFERENCE TO STATES THAT CHOOSE TO PUNISH THE MENTALLY ILL ......................................... 12 Conclusion ............................................................... 14 Appendix (List of Amici Curiae) ............................. 1a iii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Cases: Durham v. United States, 214 F.2d 862 (D.C. Cir. 1954) .................................................... 14 Ford v. Wainwright,
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae (Short) Alex Byrne Professor of Philosophy and Head, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT ______
    July 2020 Curriculum Vitae (short) Alex Byrne Professor of Philosophy and Head, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT ___________________________________________________________________ Contact Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy 32-D808, Cambridge MA 02139-4307, USA +1 617.258.6106 (ph); +1 617.253.5017 (fax) [email protected]; web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/; orcid: 0000-0003-3652-1492 Employment 2006- Professor of Philosophy, MIT 2002-2006 Associate Professor of Philosophy, MIT (tenured) 1999-2002 Associate Professor of Philosophy, MIT (untenured) 1995-1999 Assistant Professor of Philosophy, MIT 1994-1995 Instructor in Philosophy, MIT 1993-1994 Mellon Postdoctoral Instructor in Philosophy, Caltech Education 1994 Ph.D., Princeton University 1989 M.A., King’s College London 1988 B.A., Birkbeck College London Research Areas Primary: philosophy of mind; metaphysics and epistemology Secondary: philosophy of language; twentieth century analytic philosophy; philosophy of sex and gender; philosophical logic; ethics Publications Papers and Commentaries Forthcoming “Comment on Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne,” Narrow Content, Philosophical Studies. Forthcoming “Concepts, Belief, and Perception,” Concepts in Thought, Action, and Emotion: New Essays, ed. Christoph Demmerling and Dirk Schröder, Routledge. Forthcoming “Objectivist Reductionism” (with David Hilbert), in Fiona Macpherson & Derek Brown (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, 2 Routledge. Forthcoming “The Science of Color and Color Vision” (with David Hilbert), in Fiona Macpherson & Derek Brown (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2020 “Are Women Adult Human Females?,” Philosophical Studies. 2019 “Schellenberg’s Capacitism,” Analysis 79: 713-9. 2019 “Perception and Ordinary Objects,” The Nature of Ordinary Objects, ed. J. Cumpa and B. Brewer, Oxford.
    [Show full text]
  • The Art of Thinking Clearly
    For Sabine The Art of Thinking Clearly Rolf Dobelli www.sceptrebooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Sceptre An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company 1 Copyright © Rolf Dobelli 2013 The right of Rolf Dobelli to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. eBook ISBN 978 1 444 75955 6 Hardback ISBN 978 1 444 75954 9 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.sceptrebooks.co.uk CONTENTS Introduction 1 WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT CEMETERIES: Survivorship Bias 2 DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER?: Swimmer’s Body Illusion 3 WHY YOU SEE SHAPES IN THE CLOUDS: Clustering Illusion 4 IF 50 MILLION PEOPLE SAY SOMETHING FOOLISH, IT IS STILL FOOLISH: Social Proof 5 WHY YOU SHOULD FORGET THE PAST: Sunk Cost Fallacy 6 DON’T ACCEPT FREE DRINKS: Reciprocity 7 BEWARE THE ‘SPECIAL CASE’: Confirmation Bias (Part 1) 8 MURDER YOUR DARLINGS: Confirmation Bias (Part 2) 9 DON’T BOW TO AUTHORITY: Authority Bias 10 LEAVE YOUR SUPERMODEL FRIENDS AT HOME: Contrast Effect 11 WHY WE PREFER A WRONG MAP TO NO
    [Show full text]
  • CVII: 2 (February 2000), Pp
    TAMAR SZABÓ GENDLER July 2014 Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences · Yale University · P.O. Box 208365 · New Haven, CT 06520-8365 E-mail: [email protected] · Office telephone: 203.432.4444 ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT 2006- Yale University Academic Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy (F2012-present) Professor of Philosophy (F2006-F2012); Professor of Psychology (F2009-present); Professor of Humanities (S2007-present); Professor of Cognitive Science (F2006-present) Administrative Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Sum2014-present) Deputy Provost, Humanities and Initiatives (F2013-Sum2014) Chair, Department of Philosophy (Sum2010-Sum2013) Chair, Cognitive Science Program (F2006-Sum2010) 2003-2006 Cornell University Academic Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) (F2003-S2006) Administrative Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Philosophy (F2004-S2006) Co-Director, Program in Cognitive Studies (F2004-S2006) 1997-2003 Syracuse University Academic Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) (F2002-S2003) Assistant Professor of Philosophy (tenure-track) (F1999-S2002) Allen and Anita Sutton Distinguished Faculty Fellow (F1997-S1999) Administrative Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Philosophy (F2001-S2003) 1996-1997 Yale University Academic Lecturer (F1996-S1997) EDUCATION 1990-1996 Harvard University. PhD (Philosophy), August 1996. Dissertation title: ‘Imaginary Exceptions: On the Powers and Limits of Thought Experiment’ Advisors: Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Hilary Putnam 1989-1990 University of California
    [Show full text]
  • Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Engelmann, Jan; Lebreton, Maël; Schwardmann, Peter; van der Weele, Joël J.; Chang, Li-Ang Working Paper Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. TI 2019-042/I Provided in Cooperation with: Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam Suggested Citation: Engelmann, Jan; Lebreton, Maël; Schwardmann, Peter; van der Weele, Joël J.; Chang, Li-Ang (2019) : Anticipatory Anxiety and Wishful Thinking, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. TI 2019-042/I, Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/205332 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under
    [Show full text]
  • Wishful Thinking Final
    A Framework for Understanding Wishful Thinking Daniel J. Hicks Science and Technology Policy Fellowships American Association for the Advancement of Science [email protected] Kevin C. Elliott Department of Philosophy Michigan State University [email protected] Abstract While the science and values literature has seen recurrent concerns about wishful thinking, there have been few efforts to characterize this phenomenon. Based on a review of varieties of wishful thinking involved in climate skepticism, we argue that instances of wishful thinking can be fruitfully characterized in terms of the mechanisms that generate them and the problems associated with them. We highlight the array of mechanisms associated with wishful thinking, as well as the fact that it can be evaluated both from epistemic and ethical perspectives. We argue that it is doubtful that a single unified definition of wishful thinking can be developed. Moreover, the concept of wishful thinking can problematically focus excessive attention on individual and epistemic problems in science, to the exclusion of social and ethical problems. A Framework for Understanding Wishful Thinking 1. Introduction In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, a generation of feminist philosophers of science and epistemologists produced a series of critiques of the ideal of value-free science — the view that non-epistemic values have no legitimate role to play in evaluating scientific hypotheses. In the 1990s, a number of critics put forward countercharges, defenses of the value-free ideal. Wishful thinking and cognate concepts were prominent in these countercharges. As Elisabeth Lloyd noted at the time, "There are several interrelated pronouncements that materialize with mystifying but strict regularity whenever 'feminism' and 'science' are used in the same breath.
    [Show full text]
  • Krista Lawlor Henry Waldgrave Stuart Memorial Professor of Philosophy
    Krista Lawlor Henry Waldgrave Stuart Memorial Professor of Philosophy Stanford University [email protected] 650/723-3486 Building 90 Stanford, CA 94305 Areas of Specialization: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind Areas of Competence: Philosophy of Psychology, Philosophy of Language EDUCATION University of Michigan 1991-1999 Ph.D. Philosophy Tufts University 1989-1991 M.A. Philosophy University of New Hampshire 1984-1987 B.A. Mathematics magna cum laude PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS Stanford University 2015- Professor Stanford University 2007-2015 Associate Professor Stanford University 1999-2007 Assistant Professor University of Michigan Spring 1999 Visiting Assistant Professor HONORS & FELLOWSHIPS Donald Andrews Whittier Fellow Stanford Humanities Center 2017-2018 Nina C. Crocker Research Fellow 2007-2010 School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford American Council of Learned Societies—Ryskamp Fellow 2005-2006 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (Stanford) 2003 Pedagogy Award 1998-1999 Rackham Graduate School (University of Michigan) Rackham Pre-Doctoral Fellowship 1996-1997 Rackham Graduate School (University of Michigan) Phi Beta Kappa MONOGRAPHS New Thoughts about Old Things: Cognitive Policies as the Ground of Singular Concepts Studies in Philosophy, Robert Nozick, ed.. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, NY, 2001 Assurance: An Austinian Account of Knowledge and Knowledge Claims Oxford University Press, 2013 PAPERS “Memory, Anaphora and Content Preservation” Philosophical Studies vol.109: 97-119, 2002.* (*= peer reviewed) “Elusive Reasons: A Problem for First Person Authority” Philosophical Psychology vol. 16, no. 4, 2003.* “Confused Thought and Modes of Presentation” The Philosophical Quarterly vol. 55, no.218, 21-37, 2005.* “Living without Closure” in Epistemological Contextualism, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 69: 93-117, 2005. “Reason and the Past: The Role of Rationality in Diachronic Self-knowledge” Synthese vol.145, no.3, 467-495, 2005.* “Memory” in The Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press, 2006.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Philosophy of Perception
    OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF 1 Philosophy of Perception The New Wave Bence Nanay I Peter Strawson famously wrote more than thirty years ago that “a philoso- pher’s views on [perception] are a key to his theory of knowledge and to his metaphysics” (1979, 41). At that time, this statement probably would have been quite provocative inasmuch as it made perception sound more important than it was assumed to be. Now, thirty years later, Strawson’s claim sounds too weak. A philoso- pher’s views on perception are as important as her theory of knowledge or her metaphysics. Some may even be tempted to say that a philosopher’s views on epistemology or metaphysics are a key to her theory of percep- tion. Perception is no longer seen as an inferior subfi eld of philosophy that may or may not help us to understand the philosophical questions that are supposedly more fundamental. Perception, at present, is as central a philosophical subfi eld as it gets. This change is not only a merely quantitative one. It is true that more philosophers are working on perception and that their output is more sophisticated and nuanced than ever before, but this is not the whole story. What is more relevant, and more interesting from a philosophical point of view, is that the nature of the questions that are being asked about perception has also changed. The aim of this volume is to give a representative sample of this new wave of philosophy of perception. And the aim of this introduction is to outline the questions contemporary philosophers of perception are concerned with and how they differ from the “old” philosophical questions about perception.
    [Show full text]
  • On Perceptual Learning and Perspectival Sedimentation
    University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2020 Perceptual Characterization: On Perceptual Learning and Perspectival Sedimentation Anthony Holdier University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Cognitive Psychology Commons, and the Epistemology Commons Citation Holdier, A. (2020). Perceptual Characterization: On Perceptual Learning and Perspectival Sedimentation. Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3656 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Perceptual Characterization: On Perceptual Learning and Perspectival Sedimentation A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy by Anthony Holdier Colorado State University Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, 2009 Denver Seminary Master of Arts in Philosophy of Religion, 2012 May 2020 University of Arkansas This thesis is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ________________________ Jack Lyons, Ph.D. Thesis Director ________________________ ________________________ Amanda McMullen, Ph.D. Eric Funkhouser, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member Abstract In her analysis of perspectival effects on perception, Susanna Siegel has argued that perceptual experience is directly rationally assessable and can thereby justify perceptual beliefs, save for in cases of epistemic downgrade or perceptual hijacking; I contend that the recalcitrance of known illusions poses an insurmountable problem for Siegel‘s thesis. In its place, I argue that a model of perceptual learning informed by the dual-aspect framework of base-level cognitive architecture proposed by Elisabeth Camp successfully answers the questions motivating Siegel‘s project in a manner that avoids such issues.
    [Show full text]