Perception: A Blind Spot in Brandom’s Normative Pragmatics
Abstract
Brandom explains perceptual knowledge as the product of two distinguishable sorts of capacities: (i) the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli; and (ii) the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlement of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this is a blind spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects and to explain how we can justify the attributions of reliability to observers that make observation reports.
References
Aguilera, Mariela (2013). “Pensamiento de primer orden”. Crítica 45, 133, pp. 55–81.
Ahmed, Arif (2017). “Wittgenstein on Seeing Aspects”. In A Companion to Wittgenstein, edited by Hans J. Glock and John Hyman, pp. 517–532. Pondicherry, India: Wiley Blackwell. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118884607.ch33
Alston, William (1983). “What’s Wrong with Immediate Knowledge”. Synthese 55, no. 1, pp. 73–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485374
Baz, Avner (2000). “What’s the Point of Seeing Aspects?“ Philosophical Investigations, 23, 2, pp. 97–121. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9205.00116
Brandom, Robert (1994). Making It Explicit [MIE]. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (1997). “Study Guide”. In Sellars, Wilfrid. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (1998). “Perception and Rational Constraint”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 58, pp. 369–374. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2653516
Brandom, Robert (2000). Articulating Reasons. Cambridge. MA.: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (2002a). “Non–inferential knowledge, perceptual experience, and secondary qualities: placing McDowell’s empiricism”. In Reading McDowell. On Mind and World, ed. Nicholas Smith, pp. 92–105. London: Routledge.
Brandom, Robert (2002b). Tales of the Mighty Dead. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (2010). “Reply to John McDowell’s ‘Brandom on Observation'”. In Reading Brandom On Making it Explicit, ed. Bernhard Weiss & Jeremy Wandered, pp. 320–326. New York: Routledge.
Brewer, Bill (2006). “Perception and Content”. European Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 2, pp. 165–181. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2006.00220.x
Brewer, Bill (2011). Perception and Its Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199260256.001.0001
Burge, Tyler (2010). Origins of Objectivity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199581405.001.0001
Camp, Elisabeth (2009). “Putting Concepts to Work: Sistematicity, and Stimulus–Independence”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78, no. 2, pp. 275–311. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2009.00245.x
Campbell, John (2002). Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/0199243816.001.0001
Carruthers, Peter (2009). “Invertebrate Concepts Confront the Generality Constraint (and Win) “. In The Philosophy of Animal Minds, ed. Robert Lurz, pp. 89–107. Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819001.006
Chalmers, David (2006). “Perception and the Fall from Eden”. In Perceptual Experience, ed. by Tamar Szabó Gendler & John Hawthorne, pp. 49–125. Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199289769.003.0003
Danón, Laura (2013). “Conceptos de sustancia y conceptos de propiedades en animales no humanos”. Crítica, 45, no. 133, pp. 27–54.
Davidson, Donald (2001). Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
De Vries, Willem (2000). Knowledge, Mind, and the Given. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Fish, William (2009). Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381344.001.0001
Ginsborg, Hanna (2008). “Was Kant a Non–conceptualist?”, Philosophical Studies 137, no. 1, pp. 65–77. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9163-3
Glock, Hans-Johann (1996). A Wittgenstein Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631185376.1996.x
Glock, Hans-Johann (2010). “Can Animal Judge?”, Dialéctica 64, no. 1, pp. 11–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2010.01227.x.
Glock, Hans-Johann (2016). “Aspect–Perception, Perception, and Animals: Wittgenstein and Beyond”. In Wollheim, Wittgenstein, and Pictorial Representation, ed. Kemp, Gary and Mras Gabriele M, pp. 77–100. London: Routledge. doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315640983-4
Hanna, Robert (2005). “Kant and Nonconceptual Content”. European Journal of Philosophy, 13, no. 2, pp. 247–290. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0966-8373.2005.00229.x
Hanna, Robert (2015). Cognition, Content, and the A Priori. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716297.001.0001
Hutto, Daniel (2015). “Contentless Perceiving: The Very Idea”. In Wittgenstein and Perception, edited by Michael Campbell & Michael O’Sullivan, pp. 63–83. New York: Routledge.
Kalpokas, Daniel (2012). “Two Dogmas of Coherentism”. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 85, pp. 213–236.
Kalpokas, Daniel (2014). “The Experience Not Well Lost”. Contemporary Pragmatism, 11, no. 1, pp. 43–56. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-90000275.
Kalpokas, Daniel (2015). “Perceptual Experience and Seeing–As”, Nordic Wittgenstein Review, 4, (1), pp. 123–144. http://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/view/3296/pdf.
Kalpokas, Daniel (2017). “Sellars on Perceptual Knowledge”. The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 53, no. 3, pp. 425–446. doi: https://doi.org/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.53.3.04
Kalpokas, Daniel (2018). “Percepción y mentes animales”. Revista de Filosofía. 43, no. 2, pp. 201-221. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/RESF.62027 .
McDowell, John (1996). Mind and World. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
McDowell, John (2009). Having the World in View. Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press.
McDowell, John (2010). “Brandom on Observation”. In Reading Brandom On Making it Explicit, ed. by Bernhard Weiss & Jeremy Wanderer, 129–144. New York: Routledge.
McGinn, Marie (2015). “Two senses of “see”“. In Wittgenstein and Perception, ed. Michael Campbell & Michael O’Sullivan, pp. 33–44. New York: Routledge.
Morales Ladrón de Guevara, Jorge (2009). “Racionalidad animal”, In La mente animal, ed. L. X. López–Farjeat, pp. 103–123. México: Los Libros de Homero.
Nagel, Thomas (1974). “What Is It Like to Be a Bat? “, Philosophical Review, 83, no. 4, pp. 435–450. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914
Rorty, Richard (1998). Truth and Progress. Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625404
Sellars, Wilfrid (1967). Science and Metaphysics. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Sellars, Wilfrid (1997). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind [EPM]. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Shoemaker, Sidney (1994a). “Self–Knowledge and ‘Inner Sense’: Lecture III: The Phenomenal Character of Experience”. Philosophy and the Phenomenological Research, 54, no. 2, pp. 291–314. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2108490
Shoemaker, Sidney (1994b). “Phenomenal Character”, Nous, 28, no. 1, pp. 21–38. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2215918
Strawson, Peter (1974). “Imagination and Perception”. In Strawson, Peter. Freedom and Resentment, pp. 50–72. London: Methuen.
Travis, Charles (2015). “Suffering Intentionally?”. In Wittgenstein and Perception, ed. Michael Campbell & Michael O’Sullivan, pp. 45–62. New York: Routledge.
Tye, Michael (2000). Consciousness, Color, and Content. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2110.001.0001
Williams, Michael (2009). “The Tortoise and the Serpent: Sellars on the Structure of Empirical Knowledge”. In Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism, ed. Willem de Vries, pp. 147–186. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573301.003.0007
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (2009). Philosophical Investigations [IP]. Singapore: Wiley–Blackwell. [Trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Revised fourth edition by P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte].
Copyright (c) 2019 Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
