Dogmatism and the Epistemology of Covert Selection

Abstract

Perceptual dogmatism is a prominent theory in epistemology concerning the relationship between perceptual experience and reasonable belief. It holds that, in the absence of counterevidence, it is reasonable to believe what one’s perceptual experience tells one. Thus, if one is not aware of an experience’s causal history, then it doesn’t matter. Critics object that the causal history does matter: When a perceptual experience is caused in certain ways, it is unreasonable to trust what it tells you. These objections regularly appeal to cognitive penetration and biased searches for evidence. Given the myriad accounts of what covert attention is, one wonders if biased patterns of covert attention could raise a new objection to dogmatism. The author argues that, while covert selection might raise various problems for dogmatism, none of them are new. This is good news for dogmatism because the fewer distinct problems it faces, the more likely it can resolve them all.