Perceptual learning and reasons‐responsiveness

Noûs 57 (2):481-508 (2022)
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Abstract

Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified.

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Zoe Jenkin
Rutgers - New Brunswick

Citations of this work

The Epistemic Role of Core Cognition.Zoe Jenkin - 2020 - Philosophical Review 129 (2):251-298.
Perceptual learning.Zoe Jenkin - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (6):e12932.
The Justificatory Power of Memory Experience.Lu Teng - 2024 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 5.
Internalizing rules.Spencer Paulson - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
The function of perceptual learning.Zoe Jenkin - 2023 - Philosophical Perspectives 37 (1):172-186.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
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The moral problem.Michael Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
Origins of Objectivity.Tyler Burge - 2010 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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