Perception As A Capacity For Knowledge

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 idea of reparation OCo of amends owed for wrongs and wrongful harms OCo is ancient, universal, and a basic intuition of justice. Yet despite its ancient and distinguished lineage in Western philosophy, its familiar role in legal remedies for unjust losses and takings, and its increasing application to victims of political violence and repression, reparative justice has not received the wide consideration and sustained debate in contemporary thought that distributive and retributive justice have enjoyed.A fully developed conception of reparative justice would answer at least the following questions. Which injuries or harms trigger obligations of reparation? What kind of responsibility or relation to wrongs and harms entail obligations to make reparations? Who in relation to a wrong or harm has the standing to receive reparations? What vehicles (acts and goods offered) are capable of conveying appropriate and effective reparations? What is the measure of just reparations? What aim or end is sought, and what value or concern is at stake, in doing reparative justice?In this book, I make a start on the last three questions concerning the means, the ends, and the measure of reparative justice. I defend two fundamental and somewhat revisionary ideas about the nature of reparations and so about the kind of justice they represent. The first is that, despite its strong association with material restitution or money payments, reparations are inherently a communicative transaction. Reparative gestures and offers must bear a certain set of meanings that are communicated between those who make amends and those who receive them. The second idea explains the first: despite the association of reparative justice with wrongful loss and a remedy for it, and hence with restitution or compensation, the more fundamental issue in reparations, I argue, is the moral vulnerability of victims of serious wrongs. Specifically, it is vulnerability to being ignored, erased, or held in contempt when one lacks the standing to call others to an accounting of their responsibilities where one is unjustly treated. Reparative justice requires that moral vulnerability be confronted and that the standing of injured parties to call others to responsibility be affirmed. Moral vulnerability explains why material tenders or transfers are often but not always necessary, and why they do not alone suffice for reparations.CULLED FROM THE AUTHORS INTRODUCTION"

How does perceptual experience make us knowledgeable about the world? In this book Nadja El Kassar argues that an informed answer requires a novel theory of perception: perceptual experience involves conceptual capacities and consists in a relation between a perceiver and the world. Contemporary theories of perception disagree about the role of content and conceptual capacities in perceptual experience. In her analysis El Kassar scrutinizes the arguments of conceptualist and relationist theories, thereby exposing their limitations for explaining the epistemic role of perceptual experience. Against this background she develops her novel theory of epistemically significant perception. Her theory improves on current accounts by encompassing both the epistemic role of perceptual experiences and its perceptual character. Central claims of her theory receive additional support from work in vision science, making this book an original contribution to the philosophy of perception.

This volume presents articles on epistemology and the theory of perception and introduces readers to the various problems that face a successful theory of perceptual knowledge. The contributors include Robert Nozick, Alvin Goldman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Frank Jackson, David Armstrong, Fred Dretske, Roderick Firth, Wilfred Sellars, Paul Snowdon, and John McDowell.

Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer undoubtedly belong among the most important representatives of twentieth-century phenomenological hermeneutics, which represents, in turn, one of the major traditions within so-called continental philosophy. Respectively teacher and pupil, during their long and philosophically intense lives and careers Heidegger and Gadamer greatly contributed to the development of philosophical thought in our age, providing significant and often decisive contributions in various fields of philosophical inquiry. Their main works, Being and Time (1927) and Truth and Method (1960), respectively amount to the great “classics” of contemporary philosophy, both being extraordinarily influential books without which the history of twentieth- and also twenty-first century philosophy as we know it would not be conceivable. This book addresses a number of problems concerning aesthetics, metaphysics, language and philosophical anthropology, by focusing on Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s specific contributions in these fields, and by establishing fruitful and original comparisons between their views and those of other relevant thinkers of our time, such as Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty and John McDowell. The book adopts a comparative approach that portrays the complex philosophical problems and concepts at the core of this investigation from various points of view, thus broadening the philosophical horizon, generating a more comprehensive perspective, and underlining the compatibility of different philosophical views.

How can human beings, who are liable to error, possess knowledge, since the grounds on which we believe do not rule out that we are wrong? Andrea Kern argues that we can disarm this skeptical doubt by conceiving knowledge as an act of a rational capacity. In this book, she develops a metaphysics of the mind as existing through knowledge of itself.

This volume addresses key questions related to how content in thought is derived from perceptual experience. It includes chapters that focus on single issues on perception and cognition, as well as others that relate these issues to an important social construct that involves both perceptual experience and cognitive activities: aesthetics. While the volume includes many diverse views, several prominent themes unite the individual essays: a challenge to the notion of the discreet, and non-temporal, unit of perception, a challenge to the traditional divide between perception and cognition, and a challenge to the traditional divide between unconscious and conscious intentionality. Additionally, the chapters discuss the content of perceptual experience, the value of traditional notions of content, disjunctivism, adverbialism, and phenomenal experience. The final section of essays dealing with perception and cognition in aesthetics features work in experimental aesthetics and unique perspectives from artists and gallerists working outside of philosophy. Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics is a timely volume that offers a range of unique perspectives on debates in philosophy of mind surrounding perception and cognition. It will also appeal to scholars working in aesthetics and art theory who are interested in the ways these debates influence our understanding of art.

Thomas Kjeller Johansen presents a new account of Aristotle's major work on psychology, the De Anima. He argues that Aristotle explains a variety of psychological phenomena by reference to the soul's capacities, and considers how Aristotle adopts and adapts this theory in his later works.