Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Debunking Rationalist Defenses of Common-Sense Ontology: An Empirical Approach

  • Published:
Review of Philosophy and Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Debunking arguments typically attempt to show that a set of beliefs or other intensional mental states (e.g., intuitions) bear no appropriate explanatory connection to the facts they purport to be about. That is, a debunking argument will attempt to show that beliefs about p are not held because of the facts about p. Such beliefs, if true, would then only be accidentally so. Thus, their causal origins constitute an undermining defeater. Debunking arguments arise in various philosophical domains, targeting beliefs about morality, the existence of God, logic, and others. They have also arisen in material-object metaphysics, often aimed at debunking common-sense ontology. And while most of these arguments feature appeals to ‘biological and cultural contingencies’ that are ostensibly responsible for our beliefs about which kinds of objects exist, few (if any) of them take a serious look at what those contingencies might actually be. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to remedy this by providing empirical substantiation for a key premise in these debunking arguments by examining data from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that support a ‘debunking explanation’ of our common-sense beliefs and intuitions about which objects exist. Second, to argue that such data also undermines a particular kind of rationalist defense of common-sense ontology, sometimes employed as a response to the debunking threat.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. When I refer to ‘common sense’, I will mean to refer to the common-sense beliefs and intuitions that accord with our ordinary conception of the world. Some common-sense ontologists would likely prefer to talk about only beliefs, or only intuitions, but I will be concerned with both here.

  2. Debunking arguments—and associated “reliability challenges”—arise in various philosophical domains, targeting beliefs about morality, the existence of God, logic, math and others. For example, see Clarke-Doane (2012), Bedke (2009), Street (2006, 2011), Joyce (2000, 2006), and Harman (1977) on ethics; Mason (2010), Rea (2002), and Plantinga (1994) on religion; Schechter (2010, 2013) on logic; and Clarke-Doane (2012), Field (1989: 25–30), and Benacerraf (1973) on math. See White (2010) for a general discussion of the epistemology of debunking. For discussions of evolutionary debunking, see Street (2006, 2011), Kahane (2011), Clarke-Doane (2012), and Vavova (forthcoming). Some of the authors cited here would characterize the issues and arguments somewhat differently, e.g., Schechter conceives of the arguments as “reliability challenges” rather than explanatory challenges.

  3. This is one way of characterizing the nature of a debunking argument, but it is not the only way. Some conceive of debunking arguments in terms of a sensitivity requirement, rather than an explanatory requirement (e.g., see Clarke-Doane 2012 and Bedke 2009). One might think that such requirements rise or fall together. However, for the purposes of this paper, I will utilize and focus on the explanatory version.

  4. Heller (1990: 44). For other arguments and considerations in the same general vicinity, see Benovsky (2013: §2), Moyer (2006: 408), Hawthorne (2006: 109), Nolan (2005: 35), Merricks (2001: 72–76), Sider 2001 (156–157), Yablo (1987: 307), van Inwagen (1981: 127), and James (1890: 285).

  5. Leslie (2013: 1); italics original.

  6. E.g., evolutionary debunking arguments appeal to evolutionary influences on our beliefs. For example, see Street (2006) and Kahane (2011).

  7. See Hawthorne (2006: 109).

  8. Daniel Z. Korman understands some debunking arguments as one premise arguments, though sometimes he adds an additional, intermediate premise (e.g., see Korman 2014: 3). Guy Kahane (2011: 106) suggests a general, 2-premise schema for debunking arguments, in which there is a “causal premise” and an “epistemic premise.” For the purposes of this paper, the exact logical structure of the debunking arguments is not vital.

  9. Korman refers to this, where the facts about some subject matter explain our beliefs about that subject matter, as an “alethic explanation.” See Korman (2014: 2–3) for his discussion.

  10. This, I think, is a reasonable presupposition. Causal-mechanistic accounts of explanation are quite popular (see, for example, Woodward 2003 and Salmon 1998). In any event, it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue directly for a causal account of explanation.

  11. See Korman (2014: 12–13) for a helpful discussion of deviant causation. I pull from his own discussion here.

  12. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this point.

  13. See BonJour (1980).

  14. See Carnap (1950).

  15. Thanks to a referee for suggesting this discussion of Carnap’s distinction.

  16. See §5 in Korman (2009) for a discussion of the relevance of intuition in particular.

  17. Specifically, see pages 321, 323, and 327–329 in Korman (2008) for his discussions of the relevance of intuitions to the challenge for universalism.

  18. The same citation (Markosian 2014) applies for all quotes in this paragraph. Page numbers are in reference to the penultimate online version of the paper.

  19. While Korman self-identifies as a ‘rationalist’, I do not know if Markosian would accept the label. However, he openly holds the view that common-sense intuition is relevant to determining an acceptable answer to the Special Composition Question, which qualifies him as a ‘rationalist’ for the purposes of this paper. Of course, the rationalist/empiricist divide is classically determined by views about the possibility of synthetic a priori intuitive knowledge, where rationalists hold that such knowledge is indeed possible. But this is not the sense of ‘rationalist’ I will intend here.

  20. However, it is important to note that such debunking arguments are typically aimed at realist common-sense ontologies, rather than, say, conventionalist views. The same goes for the argument in this paper: it is intended to challenge realists, since conventionalists have a relatively easy way out. See, for example, Sidelle (1989, 2002).

  21. For other defenders of versions of common-sense or ‘folk’ ontology who take common-sense or intuitions to be relevant to ontological questions in one way or another, see Elder (2011, 2004), Koslicki (2008), Kelly (2008), Thomasson (2007), and Hirsch (2002, 2005).

  22. For his brief discussion of the rationalist response, see Korman (2014: 18).

  23. See Marr (1982) for one of the seminal discussions of the cognitive science of vision.

  24. This, for example, is why even if mereological universalism were true, and any two or more non-overlapping xs composed a further y, we would still not be able to cognitively represent that state of affairs, because there would be too many relations in the environment to represent at any given time.

  25. For discussions of cognitive capacity limits, see Buschman et al. (2011), Marois and Ivanoff (2005), and Cowan (2001).

  26. See Freeman (1994) for a discussion of the Generic Viewpoint assumption in visual perception.

  27. See Marr and Hildreth (1980) for a discussion of the theory of edge detection in vision.

  28. The thesis that perceptual (in this case, visual) experiences have ‘contents’—known as the Content View—is somewhat controversial, but I will assume it here. For a discussion and defense of the (Rich) Content View, see Siegel (2010); in particular, see chapter 6 for a discussion of the role of objects in visual experience. See also Siegel (2012) for a relevant discussion of cognitive penetration in visual experience and perceptual justification.

  29. See Alvarez and Scholl (2005) for a discussion of attention and selection in object perception. See also Oliva et al. (2003).

  30. For example, see Nilsson (2009; pgs. 2833, 2838) for a discussion of some such tasks.

  31. See Kim and Biederman (2011) and Alvarez (2011) for similar findings and related discussions. For other discussions and studies on object perception, segregation, and recognition, see Hochberg and Peterson (1987), Peterson and Gibson (1994), Peterson (1994), Oliva and Torralba (2007), Spelke (1990), Needham & Baillargeon (1997, 1998), Spelke, et al. (1995, ch. 10), Needham (2001), and DiCarlo et al. (2012). See Peterson (1999) for a partly historical discussion of object segregation and recognition in the context of Gestalt psychology.

  32. This is very much in line with the core idea from Gestalt psychology that the mind uses holistic principles of unity and organization to represent objects as wholes that are in some sense “over and above” or “prior” to their parts.

  33. For more on perceptual grouping, see Treisman (1982), Selinger and Nelson (1999), Bravo and Blake (1990), and Watt and Phillips (2000).

  34. Taraborelli (2002: 2).

  35. For other studies on binding, see Wheeler and Treisman (2002), Treisman (1998), Hummel and Biederman (1992), and Hummel (2001). For a study on the role of neural synchrony in perceptual binding, see Blake and Yang (1997). See also Roskies (1999) for a brief but comprehensive overview discussion of “the binding problem.”

  36. See Goldman (1987) for a relevant discussion of Gestalt psychology and “unity principles.”

  37. That is, unless one adopts an anti-realist (e.g., conventionalist) view according to which the objects that exist are dependent upon our beliefs and practices. However, such views are not at issue here.

  38. However, the common-sense ontologist could plausibly object here that some of the factors that affect our ability to perceive and recognize objects—like proximity and spatial continuity—do seem relevant to the issue of which objects exist, i.e., when composition occurs. I will address this objection in section 4.1.

  39. Nilsson (2009; pg. 2833, 2838).

  40. Similarly, G. A. Horridge (1987) holds that visual mechanisms evolved based partly on their ability to discern and separate stationary objects in the environment.

  41. See Treisman (2003). See also Singh and Hoffman (2013) for a discussion of the role of shape perception in natural selection, and Mark et al. (2010) for a discussion of veridical perceptions in natural selection.

  42. It’s relatively easy to see how a debunking argument based on a sensitivity principle (see fn. 3) might fit in here. Such an argument would point out that, for various reasons, we still would have believed in the kinds of objects that we do even if those objects didn’t exist. Thus, the methods by which those beliefs were formed are unreliable, or the beliefs unjustified, etc. But as I have said, this is an alternative approach to the one I am using here.

  43. For the chess example, see Chase and Simon (1973). For the bird example, see Marr (1982, ch. 1). See Gobet et al. (2001) for a general discussion of chunking in the context of human learning.

  44. See also Alvarez (2011) for a related discussion on representing objects as an “ensemble.”

  45. Leslie (2013, pg. 2). Page numbers are in reference to the penultimate online version of the paper.

  46. See Gelman and Coley (1990). See also Soja et al. (1991).

  47. This hypothesis is more commonly known as psychological essentialism, and is well-confirmed. For a thorough review of the data on the topic up to 2003, see Gelman (2003).

  48. See, for example, Spelke (1990), Needham and Baillargeon (1997, 1998), Baillargeon et al. (1992), Needham (2001), and Spelke et al. (1995).

  49. Much of this relates back to my earlier discussion of object segregation and recognition, and the papers cited there.

  50. See Leslie (2013) for a discussion of this and related issues.

  51. This kind of response is suggested in Scholl (2007) in a discussion of the psychology and philosophy of object persistence. Scholl argues that metaphysical intuitions regarding object persistence may be based on psychological mechanisms that allow for the experience of object persistence, and which are based on the same factors, like spatiotemporal continuity. He suggests that this connection could vindicate the reliability of such intuitions. If so, the metaphysician could embrace the data regarding the origins of the relevant intuitions. However, I am far from convinced that such an inference is justified, whether in Scholl’s case or the case at issue in this paper.

  52. Again, see Marr and Hildreth (1980) for a discussion of the theory of edge detection in vision.

  53. Although, even if this were true, it wouldn’t explain why seemingly irrelevant factors like familiarity and functional relationships make a difference to object perception and cognition as well.

  54. See Merricks (2001: 8–9, 88) on this point.

  55. Goldman (2010: 14).

  56. Ibid.

  57. To be fair, Bengson (forthcoming) attempts to develop an account of how such thing might work—how we might “grasp the third realm,” as it were—though his account his more general, and he is not concerned specifically with grasping facts about mereological composition.

  58. E.g., perhaps it is an analytic truth. For this view about ordinary objects, see Thomasson (2007).

  59. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.

  60. Again, see Merricks (2001: 8–9, 88) on this point.

References

  • Alvarez, George. 2011. Representing multiple objects as an ensemble enhances visual cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15(3): 122–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alvarez, George, and Brian Scholl. 2005. How does attention select and track spatially extended objects?: new effects of attentional concentration and amplification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 134(4): 461–476.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baillargeon, Renée, Amy Needham, and Julie Devos. 1992. The development of young infants’ intuitions about support. Early Development and Parenting 1(2): 69–78.

  • Beck, Jacob. 1966. Effect of orientatoin and of shape similarity on perceptual grouping. Perception and Psychophysics 1(9): 300–302.

  • Bedke, Matthew. 2009. Intuitive non-naturalism meets cosmic coincidence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90: 188–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benacerraf, Paul. 1973. Mathematical truth. The Journal of Philosophy 70: 661–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bengson, John. (Forthcoming) .Grasping the third realm. Oxford Studies in Epistemology 5.

  • Benovsky, Jiri. 2013. From Experience to Metaphysics: On Experience-based Intuitions and their Role in Metaphysics. Noûs, 0: 1–14.

  • Biederman, Irving. 1987. Recognition-by-components: a theory of human image understanding. Psychological Review 94(2): 115–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blake, Randolph, and Yuede Yang. 1997. Spatial and temporal coherence in perceptual binding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 94(13): 7115–7119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • BonJour, Laurence. 1980. Externalist theories of empirical knowledge. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5(1): 53–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bravo, Mary, and Randolph Blake. 1990. Preattentive vision and perceptual groups. Perception 19(4): 515–522.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buschman, Timothy J., Markus Siegel, Jefferson E. Roy, and Earl K. Miller. 2011. Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(27): 11252–11255.

  • Carnap, Rudolf. 1950. Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4: 20–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase, William G., and Herbert A. Simon. 1973. Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology 4(1): 55–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke-Doane, Justin. 2012. Morality and mathematics: the evolutionary challenge. Ethics 122: 313–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cowan, Nelson. 2001. Metatheory of storage capacity limits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(1): 154–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiCarlo, James J., Davide Zoccolan, and Nicole C. Rust. 2012. How does the brain solve visual object recognition? Neuron 73: 415–434.

  • Elder, Crawford L. 2011. Familiar objects and their shadows. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Elder, Crawford L. 2004. Real Natures and Familiar Objects. MIT Press.

  • Field, Hartry. 1989. Realism, mathematics, and modality. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, William. 1994. The generic viewpoint assumption in a framework for visual perception. Nature 368: 542–545.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gelman, S.A. 2003. The essential child: origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gelman, S.A., and J.D. Coley. 1990. The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird: categories and inferences in 2-year-old children. Developmental Psychology 26: 796–804.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gobet, Fernand, Peter C. R. Lane, Steve Croker, et al. 2001. Chunking mechanisms in human learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5(6): 236–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, Alvin. 1987. Cognitive science and metaphysics. The Journal of Philosophy 84(10): 537–544.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, Alvin. 2010. Philosophical naturalism and intuitional methodology.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association: 115–150.

  • Graham, Peter. 2012. Epistemic entitlement. Noûs 46(3): 449–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green, Collin, and John Hummel. 2006. Familiar interacting object pairs are perceptually grouped. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 32(5): 1107–1119.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harman, Gilbert. 1977. The nature of morality: an introduction to ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawthorne, John. 2006. Metaphysical essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Heller, Mark. 1990. The ontology of physical objects: four-dimensional hunks of matter. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Eli. 2002. Against revisionary ontology. Philosophical Topics 30(1): 103–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Eli. 2005. Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes, and common sense. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70(1): 67–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hochberg, Julian, and Mary Peterson. 1987. Piecemeal organization and cognitive components in object perception: perceptually coupled responses to moving objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 116(4): 370–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, Donald D. 2009. The interface theory of perception: natural selection drives true perception to swift extinction. In Object categorization: computer and human vision perspectives, ed. S. Dickinson, M. Tarr, A. Leonardis, and B. Schiele, 148–165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Horridge, G.A. 1987. The evolution of visual processing and the construction of seeing systems. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 230(1260): 279–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hummel, John. 2001. Complementary solutions to the binding problem in vision: implications for shape perception and object recognition. Visual Cognition 8(3–5): 489–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hummel, John, and Irving Biederman. 1992. Dynamic binding in a neural network for shape recognition. Psychological Review 99(3): 480–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • James, William. 1890. The principles of psychology. New York: Henry Holt.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, Richard. 2000. Darwinian ethics and error. Biology and Philosophy 15: 713–732.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, Richard. 2006. Metaethics and the empirical sciences. Philosophical Explorations 9: 133–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kahane, Guy. 2011. Evolutionary debunking arguments. Noûs 45(1): 103–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, Thomas. 2008. Common sense as evidence: against revisionary ontology and skepticism. Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXII: 53–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, Jiye, and Irving Biederman. 2011. Where Do objects become scenes? Cerebral Cortex 21(8): 1738–1746.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korman, Daniel Z. 2008. Unrestricted composition and restricted quantification. Philosophical Studies 140: 319–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korman, Daniel Z. 2009. Eliminativism and the challenge from folk belief. Noûs 43(2): 242–264.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korman, Daniel Z. 2010. Strange kinds, familiar kinds, and the charge of arbitrariness. In Metaphysics: An Anthology, Second Edition. Edited by Jaegwon Kim, Daniel Z. Korman and Ernest Sosa. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012.

  • Korman, Daniel Z. 2011. Ordinary Objects.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online entry. First published Dec. 2011. Found online at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ordinary-objects/

  • Korman, Daniel Z. 2014. Debunking Perceptual Beliefs About Ordinary Objects. Philosophers’ Imprint.

  • Korman, Daniel Z. (Forthcoming) Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary. Oxford.

  • Koslicki, Kathrin. 2008. The Structure of Objects. Oxford University Press.

  • Leslie, Sarah-Jane. 2013. Essence and Natural Kinds: When Science Meets Preschooler Intuition. Oxford Studies in Epistemology, 4. Found online at: http://www.princeton.edu/~sjleslie/Essence%20and%20Quintessence%20FINAL.pdf.

  • Mark, Justin T., Brian B. Marion, and Donald D. Hoffman. 2010. Natural selection and veridical perceptions. Journal of Theoretical Biology 266: 504–515.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markosian, Ned. 1998. Brutal composition. Philosophical Studies 92(3): 211–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markosian, Ned. 2008. Restricted composition. In Contemporary debates in metaphysics, ed. Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne, and Dean W. Zimmerman, 341–364. Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markosian, Ned. 2014. A Spatial Approach to Mereology. In Shieva Keinschmidt (ed.), Mereology and Location. Oxford: OUP. Cited version can be found online at: http://www.academia.edu/2757143/A_SPATIAL_APPROACH_TO_MEREOLOGY

  • Marois, René, and Jason Ivanoff. 2005. Capacity limits of information processing in the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(6): 296–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marr, David. 1982. Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. The MIT Press (reprinted 2010).

  • Marr, David, and Ellen Hildreth. 1980. Theory of edge detection. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 207: 187–217.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mason, Kelby. 2010. Debunking arguments and the genealogy of religion and morality. Philosophy Compass 5(9): 770–778.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merricks, Trenton. 2001. Objects and persons. Oxford: OUP.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Moyer, Mark. 2006. Statures and lumps: a strange coincidence. Synthese 148: 401–423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Needham, Amy. 2001. Object recognition and object segregation in 4.5-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 78(1): 3–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Needham, Amy, and Renée Baillargeon. 1997. Object segregation in 8-month-old infants. Cognition 62(2): 121–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Needham, Amy, and Renée Baillargeon. 1998. Effects of prior experience on 4.5-month old infants’ object segregation. Infant Behavior and Development 21(1): 1–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nilsson, Dan-Eric. 2009. The Evolution of Eyes and Visually Guided Behavior. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 364 (1531), The Evolution of Phototransduction and Eyes: 2833–2847.

  • Nolan, Daniel. 2005. David Lewis. London: Acumen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oliva, Aude, and Antonio Torralba. 2007. The role of context in object recognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11(12): 520–527.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliva, Aude, Antonio Torralba, Monica S. Castelhano, and John M. Henderson. 2003. Top-down control of visual attention in object detection. Image Processing 1: 253–256.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palmer, Stephen. 1992. Common region: a new principle of perceptual grouping. Cognitive Psychology 24(3): 436–447.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Palmer, Stephen. 1999. Vision science: from photons to phenomenology. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Mary. 1994. Object recognition processes can and do operate before figure-ground organization. Current Directions in Psychological Science 3: 105–III.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Mary. 1999. Organization, segregation and object recognition. Intellectica 1(28): 37–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Mary, and Bradley Gibson. 1994. Object recognition contributions to figure-ground organization: operations on outlines and subjective contours. Perception & Psychophysics 56(5): 551–564.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plantinga, Alvin. 1994. Naturalism Defeated. Published online at: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/naturalism_defeated.pdf.

  • Rea, Michael C. 2002. World without design: the ontological consequences of naturalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Roskies, Adina. 1999. The binding problem. Neuron 24: 7–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salmon, Wesley C. 1998. Causality and Explanation. OUP.

  • Schechter, Joshua. 2010. The reliability challenge and the epistemology of logic. Philosophical Perspectives 24(1): 437–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schechter, Joshua. 2013. Could Evolution Explain our Reliability about Logic?” In Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4. Edited by Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne.

  • Scholl, Brian J. 2007. Object persistence in philosophy and psychology. Mind & Language 22(5): 563–591.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Selinger, Andrea, and Randal Nelson. 1999. A perceptual grouping hierarchy for appearance-based 3D object recognition. Computer Vision and Image Understanding 76(1): 83–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sidelle, Alan. 1989. Necessity, essence, and individuation: a defense of conventionalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sidelle, Alan. 2002. Is there a true metaphysics of material objects? Philosophical Issues 12(1): 118–145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sider, Theodore. 2001. Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford University Press.

  • Siegel, Susanna. 2012. Cognitive penetrability and perceptual justification. Noûs 46(2): 201–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Siegel, Susanna. 2010. The Contents of Visual Experience. Oxford University Press.

  • Singh, Manish and Donald Hoffman. 2013. Natural selection and shape perception. In Shape Perception in Human and Computer Vision. Advances in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition: 171–185. Ed. S.J. Dickinson & Z. Pizlo Springer Verlag.

  • Soja, Nancy, Susan Carey, and Elizabeth S. Spelke. 1991. Ontological categories guide young children’s inductions of word meaning: object terms and substance terms. Cognition 38(2): 179–211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spelke, Elizabeth S. 1990. Principles of object perception. Cognitive Science 14(1): 29–56.

  • Spelke, Elizabeth S., Peter Vishton, and Claes Von Hofsten. 1995. Object perception, object-directed action, and physical knowledge in infancy. In The cognitive neurosciences, ed. M. Gazzaniga. Cambridge: MIT Press.

  • Stich, Stephen. 1990. The fragmentation of reason. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Street, Sharon. 2006. A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value. Philosophical Studies 127(1): 109–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Street, Sharon. 2011. Evolution and the Normativity of Epistemic Reasons. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 35, supplemental volume on Belief and Agency, ed. David Hunter: 213–248.

  • Taraborelli, Dario. 2002. Feature binding and object perception: does object awareness require feature conjunction?”. Lyon: European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomasson, Amie L. 2007. Ordinary objects. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Treisman, Anne. 1982. Perceptual grouping and attention in visual search for features and for objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 8(2): 194–214.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treisman, Anne. 1998. Feature binding, attention and object perception. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 353: 1295–1306.

  • Treisman, Anne. 2003. Consciousness and perceptual binding. In The unity of consciousness: binding, integration, and dissociation, ed. Cleeremans Axel and Frith Chris. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Inwagen, Peter. 1981. The doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62: 123–137.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vavova, Katia. (forthcoming) “Debunking Evolutionary Debunking.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics.

  • Watt, Roger, and William Phillips. 2000. The function of dynamic grouping in vision. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4(12): 447–454.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wheeler, Mary, and Anne Treisman. 2002. Binding in short-term visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 131(1): 48–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, Roger. 2010. You just believe that because…. Philosophical Perspectives 24(1): 573–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen: a Theory of Causal Explanation. OUP.

  • Yablo, Stephen. 1987. Identity, essence, and indiscernibility. The Journal of Philosophy 84: 293–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Zach Horne, Kristin Seemuth Whaley, David Mark Kovacs, John Hummel, and especially Dan Korman for discussing, reading, and/or giving comments on the paper. Thanks to everyone else with whom I have discussed the paper. Thanks also to an anonymous referee and an editor for this journal for their comments that helped me greatly in refining and improving the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northwestern University, 614 E. Colorado Ave., Apt. A, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Robert Carry Osborne

Authors
  1. Robert Carry Osborne
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert Carry Osborne.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Osborne, R.C. Debunking Rationalist Defenses of Common-Sense Ontology: An Empirical Approach. Rev.Phil.Psych. 7, 197–221 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0273-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0273-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation