Précis of perception and knowledge

A phenomenological account

Walter Hopp

pp. 29-32

in: Husserl Studies 29 (1), 2013.

Abstract

Apart from a few notable exceptions, philosophers, and just about anyone else who reflects on the matter, rightly agree that perceptual experiences can and do provide justification for many of our beliefs about the physical world. Perceiving that things are a certain way typically provides one with an excellent reason for believing that they are that way. There is, however, very little consensus concerning how or why experiences are capable of doing that. Many epistemologists maintain that reason-giving or warrant-conferring relations can hold only among mental states whose intentional contents are conceptual or propositional, since only contents of that sort can bear logical relations to one another. If these epistemologists are right, then the contents of perceptual states must be conceptual. There are, however, several good reasons for thinking that perceptual experiences have a fundamentally different sort of content from beliefs—nonconceptual content.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund