Knowledge, perception, and the art of camouflage

Jerome Dokic

pp. 1531-1539

in: Julien Dutant, Davide Fassio, Anne Meylan (eds), Truth & epistemic norms, Synthese 194 (5), 2017.

Abstract

I present a novel argument against the epistemic conception of perception (ECP) according to which perception either is a form of knowledge or puts the subject in a position to gain knowledge about what is perceived. ECP closes the gap between a perceptual experience that veridically presents a given state of affairs and an experience capable of yielding the knowledge that the state of affairs obtains. Against ECP, I describe a particular case of perceptual experience in which the following triad of claims is true: (i) The experience presents a given state of affairs (it has propositional content); (ii) The experience is veridical; (iii) The experience cannot yield the knowledge that the state of affairs obtains (even in the absence of relevant defeaters). This case involves an empirically well-studied phenomenon, namely perceptual hysteresis, which involves the maintenance of a perceptual experience with a relatively stable content over progressively degrading sensory stimulations.