Perception and reason
By: Bill Brewer
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 281
Subjects: Perception (Philosophy)
Description: Bill Brewer sets out an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. Most epistemology of perception takes a person's possession of beliefs about the mind-independent world for granted and goes on to ask what further conditions these beliefs must meet if they are to be cases of knowledge. Brewer argues that this approach is completely mistaken. Perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world.

The crucial epistemological role of experience lies in its essential contribution to the subject's understanding of certain perceptual demonstrative contents, simply grasping which provides him with a reason to endorse them in belief. Brewer explains in detail how this is so, defends his position against a wide range of objections, and compares and contrasts it with a number of influential alternative views in the area.
Notes: Originally published: New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-276) and index.