Perception and reason
- Title
- Perception and reason / Bill Brewer.
- Published by
- Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Author
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Status | Format | Access | Call number | Item location |
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Status | FormatText | AccessUse in library | Call numberBD181 .B815 1999 | Item locationOff-site |
Details
- Description
- xviii, 281 pages; 23 cm
- Summary
- Bill Brewer sets out an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. Most epistemology of perception takes a person's possession of beliefs about the mind-independent world for granted and goes on to ask what further conditions these beliefs must meet if they are to be cases of knowledge. Brewer argues that this approach is completely mistaken. Perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world.
- The crucial epistemological role of experience lies in its essential contribution to the subject's understanding of certain perceptual demonstrative contents, simply grasping which provides him with a reason to endorse them in belief. Brewer explains in detail how this is so, defends his position against a wide range of objections, and compares and contrasts it with a number of influential alternative views in the area.
- Subject
- Contents
- pt. I. Perceptual Experiences Provide Reasons. 1. Historical-Epistemological Context. 2. Belief and Experience. 3. Experience and Reason. 4. Epistemological Consequences and Criticisms -- pt. II. The Rational Role of Perceptual Experiences. 5. Reasons Require Conceptual Contents. 6. The Rational Role of Perceptual Experiences. 7. The Epistemological Outlook. 8. Developments and Consequences.
- Owning institution
- Princeton University Library
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-276) and index.