Phenomenal Conservatism

Abstract

Phenomenal conservatism is the view according to which, roughly, the way things seem or appear to be is a source of epistemic justification. According to phenomenal conservatism, for instance, one can have some justification for believing that the cat is on the mat simply because it seems visually to one that the cat is on the mat. 3 The central intuition of the phenomenal conservative is that one should grant that things are the way they appear to be unless one has reasons for doubting it. Phenomenal conservatism is internalist in character at least because it takes the seeming-based justification of one's beliefs to depend entirely on one's mental states (cf. Huemer 2006, 2011, 2014). 4 Phenomenal conservatism is customarily associated with Michael Huemer's work. Huemer defines phenomenal conservatism as follows: (PC) If it seems to [a subject] S that P, then, in absence of defeaters S thereby has some degree of justification for believing that P. (2007: 30) 5 Although (PC) is about S's propositional justification, there is a corresponding version of it about S's doxastic justification: 6 1 Thanks to Tommaso Piazza and Chris Tucker for helpful comments on drafts of this paper. I'm grateful to the Von Humboldt Foundation for financial support through a Visiting Fellowship at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. 2 For a general introduction to phenomenal conservatism and cognate views see Tucker (2013b). A more elementary introduction is Huemer (2014). A rich anthology of phenomenal conservatism and related views is Tucker (2013a). 3 Phenomenal conservatism must not be confused with doxastic conservatism, which says that one's mere believing that P gives one some justification for P provided that one has no reason for doubting that belief (cf. Huemer 2014: §1d.

Inferential seemings and the problem of reflective awareness

“…PC has been targeted by various arguments but it is dubious it has been lethally struck. For objections and responses see Tucker (2013), Moretti (2015) and Huemer (2018). 6.…”

How to Solve Hume's Problem of Induction

“…27 Phenomenal conservatism is defended by Huemer (2001Huemer ( , 2007, amongst others. Tucker (2013b) and Moretti (2015) review recent work on the topic; Tucker (2013a) contains many useful papers. 28 Analysing seemings as representations with FORs attached earns its keep here.…”

Do looks constitute our perceptual evidence?

“…According to these views, the belief that there is now a laptop in front of me is, at least in part, justified in virtue of my perceptual experience of that laptop. Such “experientialist” views of perceptual justification have been defended in different forms: either perceptual experience itself constitutes the perceptual evidence required for perceptual justification (Berghofer, 2020; Chudnoff, 2018; Conee & Feldman, 2004; Huemer, 2001; Moretti, 2015); or perceptual experience gives rise to distinct perceptual seemings, which then constitute the required perceptual evidence (Brogaard, 2013, 2018; Pace, 2017; Reiland, 2015; Tucker, 2010); or perceptual experience immediately justifies propositions about perceptual looks, which then constitute our perceptual evidence (McGrath, 2017, 2018). All of these views take perceptual experience to be an important and sometimes even crucial nexus in the transitioning from perceptual input to perceptual belief, and, because of this, all of these views grant perceptual experience an important role in providing perceptual justification.…”