Looks and Perceptual Justification

Abstract

Imagine I hold up a Granny Smith apple for all to see. You would thereby gain justified beliefs that it was green, that it was apple, and that it is a Granny Smith apple. Under classical foundationalism, such simple visual beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning your experience. Under dogmatism, some or all of these beliefs are justified immediately by your experience and not by reasons you possess. This paper argues for what I call the looks view of the justification of simple visual beliefs. According to the looks view, such beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning how the relevant things look. Unlike under classical foundationalism, under the looks view as I develop it, these reasons are public. They are public with respect to both their content and possession: with respect to content, they are not about ourselves and our experiences, and with respect to their possession, many people can have the very same looks‐related reasons.

Experience, Seemings, and Evidence

“…ExperiencesSeemingsMere SensationsSensory SeemingsPerceptual ExperiencesPerceptual Seemings 6 Let me note that in doing the above I'm not defending dogmatism, but merely trying to arrive at what I think is the best version of it. For interesting alternatives see Lyons, 2009;McGrath, 2015.…”

“…(compare Johnston, , pp. 199–201; McGrath, ) . Then we can say that individuals have particular looks etc.…”

“… Let me note that in doing the above I'm not defending dogmatism, but merely trying to arrive at what I think is the best version of it. For interesting alternatives see Lyons, ; McGrath, .…”

“…I think of dogmatism as a view about immediate prima facie justification, evidence, and reasons to believe. Matthew McGrath has recently argued that immediate justification can't be justification by evidence or reasons (McGrath, ). His argument relies crucially on the assumption that there is a ‘high bar’ on what is required for one to have the proposition that p as reason: namely, that one must at least have a justified belief that p. However, dogmatists should plausibly reject such a ‘high bar’ and claim that much less is required (for discussion of how one could explain the phenomena motivating taking there to be a ‘high bar’ without positing one see Schroeder, ).…”

Epistemic Reasons I: Normativity

“…But this isn't a complaint about non‐mentalism but rather about direct realism. Unless the view is uncharitably defined, there is no in‐principle reason why a non‐mentalist cannot see the relevant reasons as facts about one's mental life (see Millar ()) or about the public looks of things (see McGrath (forthcoming)).…”