Expert Knowledge by Perception

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Does the scope of beliefs that people can form on the basis of perception remain fixed, or can it be amplified with learning? The answer to this question is important for our understanding of why and when we ought to trust experts, and also for assessing the plausibility of epistemic foundationalism. The empirical study of perceptual expertise suggests that experts can indeed enrich their perceptual experiences through learning. Yet this does not settle the epistemic status of their beliefs. One might hold that the background knowledge of experts is the cause of their enriched perceptual experience – what is known as cognitive permeation – and so their subsequent beliefs are only mediately justified because they are epistemically dependent on this background knowledge. I argue against this view. Perceptual expertise is not the result of cognitive permeation but is rather the result of perceptual learning, and perceptual learning does not involve cognition in a way that entails cognitive permeation. Perceptual expertise thus provides a means of widening the scope of the immediately justified beliefs that experts can form.</jats:p>

Aesthetic perception and the puzzle of training

“…Moreover, this accelerated pace of learning is not plausibly explained by positing that beliefs permeate perceptual experience. Here I endorse and briefly summarize the arguments of (Ransom, 2020c) in considering what would occur in the case where a person's arthistorical beliefs are false. Suppose these beliefs are false in that they guide the person's attention to properties that are not in fact diagnostic of any actual (or potential) categorythere is no perceptible pattern to be learned across the set of exemplars.…”

Perceptual learning

“…Even Fodor allows that perceptual systems can be slowly and gradually influenced by environmental stimuli or by the agent's background beliefs, albeit in a limited way (Fodor, 1984). 15 While some forms of perceptual learning involve responses to information stored in cognition, perceptual learning is typically not classified as a form of cognitive penetration because it occurs diachronically rather than synchronically (Fodor, 1983; Ransom, 2020a). 16 In contrast, some philosophers have argued that perceptual learning should be understood as form of cognitive penetration (thus impugning modularity), because perceptual learning shows that perception and cognition do not have truly independent information stores (e.g.…”

“…Perceptual learning jeopardizes the role of perception as an unjustified justifier and raises the possibility that the scope of epistemic justification may extend into perception (cf. Ransom, 2020a). 27…”

Perceptual learning and reasons‐responsiveness

“…Consider a speaker of only English and a speaker of only Croatian who are each asked to remember the following string of letters: RAZMIJENTIMUKTRPANMEDVJED 9 Some types of perceptual learning are also partly due to maturation (e.g., Smith, 2009). 10 For recent philosophical discussions of perceptual learning, see Cecchi (2014), Arstilla (2016, Connolly (2019), Prettyman (2019), Ransom (2020), Landers (2021), Chudnoff (2021), and Stokes (2021).…”