The Epistemic Role of Simple Seeing Event

 

Mainstream epistemologists haven’t fully come to terms with these suggestions, which have been critically evaluated mainly by fellow travelers in the narrower UK-based perception literature. To a traditional epistemologist, the suggestion is reminiscent—as Mark Johnston noted in defending a related view—of a familiar Russellian foundationalism on which a kind of pre-conceptual acquaintance with constituents of propositions provides the foundation of propositional knowledge about the world. In close parallel to Russell vis-à-vis acquaintance, proponents of this view all seem to agree that object seeing is metaphysically prior to objective conceptual thought and knowledge, and that this fact partly explains how it can play a foundational epistemic role. This workshop will be dedicated to the question whether—despite its externalist character—similar worries to the ones that undermined Russellian foundationalism might undermine this view, and to the more general question of how the epistemic role of object seeing ought to be understood. Under these headings, the conference will investigate the following more specific questions:

•  Is object seeing metaphysically prior to seeing (and therein knowing) that p?
•  If so, can it provide a foundation for propositional knowledge about the external world? If it cannot provide a foundation, what is its epistemic role?
•  If not, can it play any of the important roles that have been assigned to it?

 

Schedule

9:15 – Tea/Coffee

9:30 – 11:00: Kurt Sylvan – ‘On the Epistemic Role of Simple Seeing’

11:05 - 12:35. Johannes Roessler – ‘The Manifest Image of Perceptual Knowledge’

12:35 - 1:50 – Lunch at The Crown

1:55 – 3:25: Lisa Miracchi – ‘Perception First’

3:30 – 5:00: Imogen Dickie – ‘Object Seeing, Knowing-Which, and Knowing-That’

5:15 – Dinner at Mango

 

Funding

This event is generously sponsored by a Minor Conference Grant from the Mind Association and a Small Award from the Faculty of Humanities.