Plantinga, Alvin John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
Print publication date: 1993 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-507864-0







doi:10.1093/0195078640.003.0005

Alvin Plantinga
Abstract: In this chapter, I point out a few salient features of my account of warrant as it applies to perception and perceptual warrant. On my account, a perceptual judgment of mine (or yours) constitutes knowledge if and only if (roughly speaking) that judgment is true, sufficiently strong, and produced by cognitive faculties that are successfully aimed at truth and functioning properly in an epistemic environment that is right for human perceptual powers. After a brief discussion of perceptual experience, I argue that ordinary perceptual beliefs are basic: they are not formed on the evidential basis of other beliefs I hold (e.g., beliefs about my experience). While perceptual judgments are not formed on the basis of beliefs about my experience, they are, nonetheless, formed on the basis of experience, and so I take a quick look at that claim. In the final section of the chapter, I briefly take up questions about learning to perceive, and entertain the position that many perceptual judgments are only partially basic: not formed solely on the evidential basis of other beliefs, but formed partly on the basis of present perception and partly on the basis of beliefs about what things (say, trees, or automobiles, or whatever it is that one is perceiving) look like.

Keywords: knowledge, perception, perceptual experience, perceptual judgment, warrant,

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