Perception, Knowledge and Belief

Perception, Knowledge and Belief
Author: Fred I. Dretske
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2000-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521777421

Part I. Knowledge: 1. Conclusive reasons 2. Epistemic operators 3. The pragmatic dimension of knowledge 4. The epistemology of belief 5. Two conceptions of knowledge: rational vs. reliable belief Part II. Perception and Experience: 6. Simple seeing 7. Conscious experience 8. Differences that make no difference 9. The mind's awareness of itself 10. What good is consciousness Part III. Thought and Intentionality: 11. Putting information to work 12. If you can't make one, you don't know how it works 13. The nature of thought 14. Norms and the constitution of the mental 15. Minds, machines, and money: what really explains behavior.

Perception, Knowledge and Belief

Perception, Knowledge and Belief
Author: Fred Dretske
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2000-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521771818

This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links that can be made between the two. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students, and will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of biology.

Perception and Knowledge

Perception and Knowledge
Author: Walter Hopp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2011-04-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139502794

This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike.

Russell's Theory of Perception

Russell's Theory of Perception
Author: Sajahan Miah
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2006-05-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1847142842

In Russell's Theory of Perception, Sajahan Miah re-examines and evaluates the development of Russell's concept of perception and the relation of perception to our knowledge of the external world. With the introduction of logical construction (in which physical objects are constructed from actual and possible sense-data) Russell's theory of perception seems to become a causal theory with phenomenalist overtones. The book argues that there is a consistency of purpose and direction which motivated Russell to introduce logical construction. The purpose was to strike a compromise between his empiricism and his realism and to establish a bridge between the objects of perception and the objects of physics and common sense.

Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge

Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge
Author: John Henry McDowell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Knowledge, Theory of
ISBN: 9780874621792

This is the 2011 Aquinas Lecture delivered by John McDowell on February 27, 2011 at Marquette University. A central theme in much of Professor McDowell's work is the harmful effect, in modern philosophy and in the modern reception of pre-modern philosophy, of a conception of nature that reflects an understanding, in itself perfectly correct, of the proper goals of the natural sciences. He has argued that we can free ourselves from the characteristic sorts of philosophical anxiety by recalling the possibility of a less restrictive conception of what it takes for something to be natural.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception
Author: Mohan Matthen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 945
Release: 2015
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199600473

The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception is a survey by leading philosophical thinkers of contemporary issues and new thinking in philosophy of perception. It includes sections on the history of the subject, introductions to contemporary issues in the epistemology, ontology and aesthetics of perception, treatments of the individual sense modalities and of the things we perceive by means of them, and a consideration of how perceptual information is integrated and consolidated. New analytic tools and applications to other areas of philosophy are discussed in depth. Each of the forty-five entries is written by a leading expert, some collaborating with younger figures; each seeks to introduce the reader to a broad range of issues. All contain new ideas on the topics covered; together they demonstrate the vigour and innovative zeal of a young field. The book is accessible to anybody who has an intellectual interest in issues concerning perception.

Knowledge and the Flow of Information

Knowledge and the Flow of Information
Author: Fred I. Dretske
Publisher: Mit Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1983
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262540384

What distinguishes clever computers from stupid people (besides their components)? The author of Seeing and Knowing presents in his new book a beautifully and persuasively written interdisciplinary approach to traditional problems--a clearsighted interpretation of information theory.Psychologists, biologists, computer scientists, and those seeking a general unified picture of perceptual-cognitive activity will find this provocative reading.The problems Dretske addresses in Knowledge and the Flow of Information--What is knowledge? How are the sensory and cognitive processes related? What makes mental activities mental?--appeal to a wide audience. The conceptual tools used to deal with these questions (information, noise, analog versus digital coding, etc.) are designed to make contact with, and exploit the findings of, empirical work in the cognitive sciences. A concept of information is developed, one deriving from (but not identical with) the Shannon idea familiar to communication theorists, in terms of which the analyses of knowledge, perception, learning, and meaning are expressed.The book is materialistic in spirit--that is, spiritedly materialistic--devoted to the view that mental states and processes are merely special ways physical systems have of processing, coding, and using information.

The Opacity of Mind

The Opacity of Mind
Author: Peter Carruthers
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2013-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199685142

Do we have introspective access to our own thoughts? Peter Carruthers challenges the consensus that we do: he argues that access to our own thoughts is always interpretive, grounded in perceptual awareness and sensory imagery. He proposes a bold new theory of self-knowledge, with radical implications for understanding of consciousness and agency.

Moral Perception

Moral Perception
Author: Robert Audi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2013-02-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691156484

We can see a theft, hear a lie, and feel a stabbing. These are morally important perceptions. But are they also moral perceptions--distinctively moral responses? In this book, Robert Audi develops an original account of moral perceptions, shows how they figure in human experience, and argues that they provide moral knowledge. He offers a theory of perception as an informative representational relation to objects and events. He describes the experiential elements in perception, illustrates moral perception in relation to everyday observations, and explains how moral perception justifies moral judgments and contributes to objectivity in ethics. Moral perception does not occur in isolation. Intuition and emotion may facilitate it, influence it, and be elicited by it. Audi explores the nature and variety of intuitions and their relation to both moral perception and emotion, providing the broadest and most refined statement to date of his widely discussed intuitionist view in ethics. He also distinguishes several kinds of moral disagreement and assesses the challenge it poses for ethical objectivism. Philosophically argued but interdisciplinary in scope and interest, Moral Perception advances our understanding of central problems in ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and the theory of the emotions.