Walter Hopp, Perception and Knowledge: a Phenomenological Account

Abstract

Perception and Knowledge 1 is a book that sets out to enrich the vast field of contemporary debates about the justificatory relation between perception and thought with some of the goods phenomenology has to offer. Many major figures of Modern philosophy, such as Locke, Kant and Husserl regarded the nature of this relation as one of the greatest mysteries in philosophy. Its complexity results from the way it touches upon some of the most obscure and all-encompassing philosophical issues, such as the nature and limits of human knowledge, the inner workings of experience, and humanity’s place in reality. Especially since the works of mid twentieth century philosophers such as Quine and Sellars, who challenged the assumptions of logical positivism and empirical foundationalism, perception is usually denied the special role of offering direct insight into external reality. By contrast, it is today quite commonplace to think of beliefs as being justified by other beliefs only, as Davidson famously put it. These considerations have in turn led some of the most influential epistemologists today to think of the contents of perception as entirely conceptual. Spurred by McDowell’sMind and World (1994), they want to abide by the Sellarsian principle that nothing in our sensory experience can function like a hinge between beliefs and a lawful, external reality. Instead, what we perceive is always already a part of the ‘space of reasons’ (McDowell 1994, p. 7), both informed by and open to our network of rational capacities. Whether I look at the cup of coffee on my desk or simply use it prereflectively by drinking from it, the perception and act respectively can be ‘exploited in active thinking’ (ibid., p. 47), and to that extent their contents are said to be conceptual. The conceptualist thesis further stresses that it is our upbringing in cultural practices Phenom Cogn Sci (2015) 14:1185–1191 DOI 10.1007/s11097-014-9382-y