Brewer, Bill St Catherine's College, Oxford
Print publication date: 2002 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-925045-5







doi:10.1093/0199250456.003.0007

Bill Brewer
Abstract: Aims to clarify the epistemological outlook that arises from my positive elucidation of the truth of (R), and also to offer further defence against a number of key objections. Firstly, I explain the position of my own views in the context of the standard opposition between foundationalist and coherentist theories of perceptual knowledge. This brings out precisely the sense in which I succeed in capturing the ‘undeniable datum’ with which I begin Ch. 2, that perception is a basicsource of knowledge about the mind-independent spatial world. Secondly, I go on to consider two broadly sceptical objections, firstly, from the possibility of perceptual imagination, and secondly, from the possibility of perceptual error. Thirdly, I consider whether my own position is in any way susceptible to objections parallel to those that I myself direct at its classical foundationalist opponents. Fourthly, and finally, I discuss the way in which I am able to capture the intuitive phenomenon of a foreground and background in perceptual consciousness: surely far more is, in some sense ‘experienced’ by a person in perception that is the subject matter of any (conceptual) perceptual demonstrative content that is in the market to be endorsed by him in belief.

Keywords: background and foreground, coherentism, foundationalism, perceptual consciousness, scepticism,

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I Perceptual Experiences Provide Reasons
II The Rational Role of Perceptual Experiences