Perception and Knowledge

Philosophers interested in perception don't want for reading matter these days. Nevertheless, it's worth making time for these two books. Both Walter Hopp and Charles Travis guide themselves by a star of the philosophical firmament, and both arrive at conclusions about perception that are at odds with what they take to be the dominant view: that perception involves representational or conceptual content. Hopp's book comprises a single, sustained argument to the conclusion that perception has two sorts of non-conceptual content, rather than the sort of conceptual content that many believe. The arguments and conclusion are inspired by Husserl. Having clarified and defended a Husserlian view of mental content (ch. 1), Hopp takes on arguments for ‘experiential conceptualism’, the view that perceptual experiences have conceptual content. He divides them into two classes, arguments from the phenomenology of perception and arguments concerning its epistemological role, and contends that none of these arguments succeed (chs 2 and 3). He then argues that there are decisive arguments against conceptualism: it is untenable for phenomenological reasons, and unable to explain how perception generates knowledge (ch. 4).

Argument (complex analysis) · Conceptualism · Content (measure theory) · Epistemology · Experiential learning · Perception · Phenomenology (philosophy) · Mathematics · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Philosophy, Science, and History · Psychology