Abstract
In this first chapter, I briefly introduce the three main theories of perceptual justification to be discussed in the following chapters: experientialism, epistemological disjunctivism, and process reliabilism. In Sect. 1.2, I start by considering our ordinary take on perception as one of our fundamental sources of justification, and the way this ordinary conception is challenged by the possibility of illusion and hallucination. I then discuss how experience might be taken to provide a response to this challenge according to sense-datum theorists, evidentialists, and dogmatists about perception. Although the sense-datum theory of perception is by now deemed highly problematic by most philosophers, some aspect of it, i.e., the special epistemic status of experience, is retained in experientialist theories of perceptual justification.
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- 1.
Note that this reasoning makes use of the idea that two experiences can be the same. If we think of experiences as unrepeatable events, tied to a specific subject at a specific place and time, then this should be explained more fully. What I will mean by saying that two experiences are the same is that they have the same phenomenal character, where the phenomenal character is understood as what it is like to have the experience (Nagel 1974). As Williamson puts it: “[phenomenal] characters stand to experiences as types of tokens, with respect to a certain mode of classification” (Williamson 2013, p. 49).
- 2.
Note that Price would not put his point in this way himself, given that he is more concerned with the qualitative indistinguishability of the objects of experiences, i.e., sense-data.
- 3.
- 4.
Note that metaphysical disjunctivists have different ideas about the category to which illusions belong.
- 5.
But note that Fish himself is unsure whether this motivation actually works.
- 6.
Note that I will discuss Comesaña’s evidentialist reliabilism in more detail at the end of Chap. 2.
- 7.
This definition goes back to ideas presented in Williamson (1990).
- 8.
Note that there are also externalists about knowledge who claim that the notion of justification should be construed along internalist lines, but who deny that this type of justification is a necessary condition for knowledge (Kornblith 2008).
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Ghijsen, H. (2016). Perception, Hallucination and Justification. In: The Puzzle of Perceptual Justification. Synthese Library, vol 377. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30500-4_1
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