Perception, Causation, and Objectivity (Consciousness & Self-consciousness Series)

✍ Scribed by Johannes Roessler, Hemdat Lerman, Naomi Eilan (editors)

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 381
• Series: Consciousness & Self-consciousness Series
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

To be a 'commonsense realist' is to hold that perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like. Over the past few centuries this view has faced formidable challenges from epistemology, metaphysics, and, more recently, cognitive science. However, in recent years there has been renewed interest in it, due to new work on perceptual consciousness, objectivity, and causal understanding. This volume collects nineteen original essays by leading philosophers and psychologists on these topics. Questions addressed include: What are the commitments of commonsense realism? Does it entail any particular view of the nature of perceptual experience, or any particular view of the epistemology of perceptual knowledge? Should we think of commonsense realism as a view held by some philosophers, or is there a sense in which we are pre-theoretically committed to commonsense realism in virtue of the experience we enjoy or the concepts we use or the explanations we give? Is commonsense realism defensible, and if so how, in the face of the formidable criticism it faces? Specific issues addressed in the philosophical essays include the status of causal requirements on perception, the causal role of perceptual experience, and the relation between objective perception and causal thinking. The scientific essays present a range of perspectives on the development, phylogenetic and ontogenetic, of the human adult conception of perception.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
List of Contributors......Page 8
1. Introduction: Perception, Causation, and Objectivity......Page 10
2. Tackling Berkeley’s Puzzle......Page 27
3. Relational vs Kantian Responses to Berkeley’s Puzzle......Page 44
4. Experiential Objectivity......Page 60
5. Realism and Explanation in Perception......Page 77
6. Epistemic Humility and Causal Structuralism......Page 91
7. Seeing What Is So......Page 101
8. Causation in Commonsense Realism......Page 112
9. Perceptual Concepts as Non-causal Concepts......Page 130
10. Perception and the Ontology of Causation......Page 148
11. Vision and Causal Understanding......Page 170
12. The Perception of Absence, Space, and Time......Page 190
13. Perception, Causal Understanding, and Locality......Page 216
14. Causal Perception and Causal Cognition......Page 238
15. Children’s Understanding of Perceptual Appearances......Page 273
16. Perspective-Taking and its Foundation in Joint Attention......Page 295
17. A Two-Systems Theory of Social Cognition: Engagement and Theory of Mind......Page 314
18. Development of Understanding of the Causal Connection between Perceptual Access and Knowledge State......Page 333
19. Social and Physical Reasoning in Human-reared Chimpanzees: Preliminary Studies......Page 351
C......Page 378
N......Page 379
S......Page 380
W......Page 381