Perception, Thought, and Reality

Abstract

In (Daniels, 1976) I sketched out a problem that not only continues to puzzle me, but has since led me to this study. It is often thought there is such a thing as purely perceptual knowledge or belief, knowledge or belief that is not infected by inference or memory. Suppose so. Suppose I know that my coffee is both black and tepid. Can I know this on a purely perceptual basis? I think not. Leaving aside the matter of how I know that what I'm sensing is coffee, let me just consider my knowledge that at least something here is black and tepid. While I may know that something here's black by my sense of sight alone, I do not know that something here's both black and tepid by my sense of sight alone because I do not know that something here is tepid by my sense of sight alone. Also, of course, while I may know that something here is tepid by my sense of touch alone, I do not know that something here is both black and tepid by my sense of touch alone because I do not know that something here is black by my sense of touch alone. Grant, for the moment, that I can know that something here is black by my sense of sight alone and that I can know that something here is tepid by my sense of touch alone. That something here's black and something here's tepid doesn't entail that something here's black and tepid. To know the thing that's black is the thing that's tepid I cannot do by sight, alone or touch alone, or just by sight and touch actingjointly, since the case in which the thing that's black is not the thing that's tepid is perceptually indistinguishable from the case in which it is. I make this claim because of the possibility, albeit a weak conceptual possibility, that the body with which I see may be in a different region of space from the body with which I feel. I claim fur-