Comments on: short note on dancy

By: good news « The Excluded Middle

good news « The Excluded Middle — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:52:23 +0000

[...] Good news. The note on Dancy I posted a link to here, entitled ‘Dancy on Acting for the Right Reason,’ has been accepted by the Journal of [...]

By: Clayton

Clayton — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:32:51 +0000

Hey Errol,
Yes, it would be the content of the experience. It’s part of Millar’s view that we can learn more (non-inferentially) than what is strictly present in experience. Now, you might be able to say that there’s some disposition or other to believe the thing that the subject does not believe (e.g., that something has the look of the orange, which serves as the basis of the belief that it is an orange).

By: Errol Lord

Errol Lord — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:29:10 +0000

Clayton,

I don’t see how that is a counterexample because it’s not clear what the p is that A is basing her belief that q on. The content of the experience?

In any case, wouldn’t Belief* get around this problem all together:

belief*: Necessarily, if A bases her belief in q on p, then A either believes p or is disposed to believe p.

Certainly one is disposed in believing that that’s an object that instantiates the distinctive profile of a tomato.

By: Clayton

Clayton — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:59:07 +0000

belief: Necessarily, if A bases her belief in q on p, then A believes p.

I’m not sure that’s right. Suppose experiences have contents and that the scope of non-inferential perceptual knowledge is not limited to the contents of those experiences. You could have a belief that, say, that’s a tomato that is not based on inference but based directly on experience without first forming the belief that, say, that’s an object that instantiates the distinctive profile of a tomato.

Anyway, see Alan Millar’s “The Scope of Perceptual Knowledge”.