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Perception and Belief: A Regress Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Paul K. Moser
Paul K. Moser*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Loyola University of Chicago
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Extract

What has belief to do with perception? Some contemporary philosophers have suggested that one's perceiving an object entails one's having a particular perceptual belief, not just some belief or other, about that object. N. R. Hanson, for instance, has illustrated the present view, with respect to visual perception, as follows:

What is it to see boxes, staircases, birds, antelopes, bears, goblets, X-ray tubes? It is (at least) to have knowledge of certain sorts. … It is to see that, were certain things done to objects before our eyes, other things would result. … To see an X-ray tube is at least to see that, were it dropped on stone, it would smash. … Seeing a bird in the sky involves seeing that it will not suddenly do vertical snap rolls; and this is more than marks the retina. (Hanson 1958, pp. 20–21)

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 120 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1986

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Harry Gensler, Kevin Flannery, and two referees of Philosophy of Science for helpful comments on some earlier versions of this article.

References

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