Truth, success, and epistemology: A response to Stokes's Thinking and Perceiving

Versions

PDF

Keywords

Cognitive penetration
Epistemology
Perception

How to Cite

Truth, success, and epistemology: A response to Stokes’s Thinking and Perceiving. (2023). Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 4. https://doi.org/10.33735/phimisci.2023.10250

Abstract

In Thinking and Perceiving, Stokes challenges “the pernicious cognitive effects assumption”: the assumption that it would be epistemically problematic if our thoughts were to directly influence our perceptual experience. In doing so, Stokes takes himself to be supplementing the epistemological claims of philosophers like Siegel and Lyons with descriptive claims about human psychology. I argue that his conclusions are more radical than they first appear, to the extent that Stokes’s project is at odds with the standard epistemological discussions of cognitive penetration.

 

PDF

References

N. Chater, T. Felin, D. Funder, G. Gigerenzer, J. Koenderink, J. Krueger, D. Noble, S. Nordli, M. Oaksford, B. Schwartz, K. Stanovich, & P. Todd (2018). Mind, rationality, and cognition: An interdisciplinary debate. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (Vol. 25, pp. 793–826). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1333-5

Clark, A. (2001). Reasons, robots and the extended mind. Mind and Language, 16(2), 121–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0017.00162

Dennett, D. C. (1987). The intentional stance. MIT Press.

Fodor, J. A. (2008). Lot 2: The language of thought revisited. Oxford University Press.

Goldman, A. I. (1995). Social epistemology, interests, and truth. Philosophical Topics, 23(1), 171–187. https://philpapers.org/rec/GOLSEI

Greco, J. (2002). Virtues in epistemology. In P. K. Moser (Ed.), The oxford handbook of epistemology (pp. 287–312). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0195130057.003.0010

Lyons, J. (2011). Circularity, reliability, and the cognitive penetrability of perception. Philosophical Issues, 21(1), 289–311. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41329425

Siegel, S. (2017). The rationality of perception. Cambridge University Press.

Sosa, E. (1991). Knowledge in perspective: Selected essays in epistemology. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625299

Stokes, D. (2021). Thinking and perceiving: On the malleability of the mind. Routledge.

Vance, J. (2015). Cognitive penetration and the tribunal of experience (Vol. 6, pp. 641–663). https://philpapers.org/rec/MICCPA-4

Zagzebski, L. T. (1996). Virtues of the mind: An inquiry into the nature of virtue and the ethical foundations of knowledge. Cambridge University Press.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2023 Zoe Drayson