The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception

Abstract

Abstract Most of the research on the epistemology of perception has focused on visual perception. This is hardly surprising given that most of our knowledge about the world is attributable to our visual experiences. This edited volume is the first to instead focus on the epistemology of non-visual perception—hearing, touch, taste, and cross-sensory experiences. Drawing on recent empirical studies of emotion, perception, and decision-making, it breaks new ground on discussions of whether perceptual experience can yield justified beliefs and how to characterize those beliefs. The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception explores questions not only related to traditional sensory perception, but also to proprioceptive, interoceptive, multisensory, and event perception, expanding traditional notions of the influence that conscious non-visual experience has on human behavior and rationality. Contributors investigate the role that emotions play in decision-making and agential perception and what this means for justifications of belief and knowledge. They analyze the notion that some sensory experiences, such as touch, have epistemic privilege over others, as well as perception’s relationship to introspection, and the relationship between action, perception, and belief. They engage with topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, exploring the role that artworks can play in providing us with perceptional knowledge of emotions. The essays collected here, written by top researchers in their respective fields, offer perspectives from a wide range of philosophical disciplines and will appeal to scholars interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophical psychology, among other topics.