Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings

✍ Scribed by Alex Byrne, Heather Logue

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 365
• Series: MIT Readers in Contemporary Philosophy
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Winning entry, Professional Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2009 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston. A central debate in contemporary philosophy of perception concerns the disjunctive theory of perceptual experience. Until the 1960s, philosophers of perception generally assumed that a veridical perception (a perceptual experience that presents the world as it really is) and a subjectively similar hallucination must have significant mental commonalities. Disjunctivists challenge this assumption, contending that the veridical perception and the corresponding hallucination share no mental core. Suppose that while you are looking at a lemon, God suddenly removes it, while keeping your brain activity constant. Although you notice no change, disjunctivists argue that the preremoval and postremoval experiences are radically different. Disjunctivism has gained prominent supporters in recent years, as well as attracting much criticism. This reader collects for the first time in one volume classic texts that define and react to disjunctivism. These include an excerpt from a book by the late J. M. Hinton, who was the first to propose an explicitly disjunctivist position, and essays stating a number of important objections. Contributors : Alex Byrne, Jonathan Dancy, J. M. Hinton, Mark Johnston, Harold Langsam, Heather Logue, M. G. F. Martin, John McDowell, Alan Millar, Howard Robinson, A. D. Smith, Paul Snowdon MIT Readers in Contemporary Philosophy

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Introduction......Page 8
1 Visual Experiences......Page 32
2 Selections from Experiences......Page 44
3 Perception, Vision, and Causation......Page 64
4 The Objects of Perceptual Experience......Page 80
5 Selections from ‘‘Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge’’......Page 106
6 The Reality of Appearances......Page 122
7 Arguments from Illusion......Page 148
8 The Idea of Experience......Page 168
9 Selections from Perception......Page 184
10 Selections from The Problem of Perception......Page 198
11 The Theory of Appearing Defended......Page 212
12 The Obscure Object of Hallucination......Page 238
13 The Limits of Self-Awareness......Page 302
Bibliography......Page 350
Contributors......Page 358
Index......Page 360