Philosophy of Perception

Fall 2007

Course: PHIL 662

Time: Weds 4:30-6:30

Location: Goldwin Smith 144

Instructor: Nico Silins

Office: 219 Goldwin Smith Hall

Office Hours: Wednesdays 10:00-11:30 or (easily) by appointment

Email: ns338@cornell.edu

Course Description

A selective survey of recent work on the metaphysics and epistemology of visual experience. Our main questions will be: (1) what are visual experiences? and (2) how do visual experiences justify beliefs?

Texts

There are no required books, but I recommend buying Michael Tye’s Consciousness, Color, and Content, as well as Tamar Gendler and John Hawthorne’s Perceptual Experience. Both are available at amazon.com and elsewhere.

Requirements

• A short critical paper of 7-10 pages, due in the middle of the semester.

• A rough draft and final version of a 15-20 page term paper, due at the end of the semester.

• Three 500 word responses, emailed to me on the day before class, about papers by guests.

Tentative Schedule

Please note: I’ll be highlighting readings to focus on as the semester proceeds

8/29: Course Introduction, Sense-Data

9/5: Adverbial Theories

Guest: Wylie Breckenridge, Cornell University

F. Jackson, “On the Adverbial Analysis of Visual Experience”

W. Breckenridge, “The Nature of Visual Experience”

9/12: Intentionalism and “the transparency of experience”

M. Tye, “Representationalism and the Transparency of Experience”

D. Stoljar, ”The Argument from Diaphanousness”

C. Siewart, “Is Experience Transparent?”

9/19: Intentionalism and Externalism

A. Pautz, “Sensory Awareness is not a Wide Sensory Relation”

M. Tye and A. Byrne, “Qualia ain’t in the Head”

9/26: Non-Standard Intentionalism I: Shoemaker

S. Shoemaker, “Content, Character, and Color”

S. Shoemaker, “On the Ways Things Appear”

M. Tye, Consciousness, Color, and Content, selection

A. Egan, “Appearance Properties?”

B. Thompson, “Shoemaker on Phenomenal Content”

10/3: Non-Standard Intentionalism II: Chalmers

D. Chalmers, “The Representational Character of Experience”

D. Chalmers, “Perception and the Garden of Eden”, selection

10/5: Short paper due

10/10: Disjunctivism I

M. Martin, “On Being Alienated”, selection

S. Siegel, “Indiscriminability and the Phenomenal”

A. Byrne and H. Logue, “Disjunctivism for Dummies”

J. Hawthorne and K. Kovakovich, “Disjunctivism”

10/17: Disjunctivism II

Guest: Benj Hellie, University of Toronto

B. Hellie, “Factive Phenomenal Characters”

10/24: Epistemology of perception I

J. Pryor, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”

C. Wright, “The Perils of Dogmatism”

10/31: Epistemology of perception II

M. Martin, “Particular Thoughts and Singular Thought”

B. Brewer, Perception and Reason, selection

11/7: Epistemology of perception III

M. Johnston, “Better than Mere Knowledge: the Function of Sensory Awareness”

J. McDowell, “Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge”

J. McDowell, “Knowledge and the Internal”

11/14: Epistemology of perception IV

T. Burge, “Perceptual Entitlement”

C. Peacocke, The Realm of Reason, selection

11/26: Draft of term paper due

11/28: Do visual experiences have propositional contents?

Guest: Susanna Siegel, Harvard University

S. Siegel, The Contents of Visual Experience, selection

12/14: Final version of term paper due