Seemings, truth-makers, and epistemic justification

Abstract

The notion of presentational phenomenology has powerful epistemological implications. According to Elijah Chudnoff, an experience has presentational phenomenology with respect to p insofar as that experience (i) makes it seem to you that p, and (ii) makes it seem as if you are aware of a truth-maker for p. Chudnoff argues that only experiences that have presentational phenomenology with respect to p provide immediate prima facie justification to the belief that p. That is, my visual experience of the orange provides me with defeasible justificatory grounds for believing that there is an orange by virtue of that experience possessing presentational phenomenology. Call this epistemological thesis presentationalism. The central purpose of this paper is to provide a novel analysis of presentational phenomenology, and determine whether it is capable of delivering the epistemic yield detailed above. Here, I endeavour to show the following: (a) presentational phenomenology is neither sufficient nor necessary for immediate prima facie justification, and (b) ambiguity in Chudnoff’s analysis of presentational phenomenology leads the account to a troubling dilemma. Seemings and seeming awareness of truth-makers are not plausible candidates for justification-conferring states.