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Two Worlds, One Mind: The Divide between Perception and Belief.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Two Worlds, One Mind: The Divide between Perception and Belief./
Author:	Helton, Grace.
Published:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2015,
Description:	139 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 77-03, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International77-03A.
Subject:	Philosophy of Science. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3716531
ISBN:	9781321954197

Two Worlds, One Mind: The Divide between Perception and Belief.
Helton, Grace.

Two Worlds, One Mind: The Divide between Perception and Belief. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2015 - 139 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 77-03, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2015.

This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

On one traditional view, perception and belief are distinguished by their rational roles. On this view, belief is characteristically formed by and revised in accordance with available evidence, whereas perception is formed and extinguished exclusively in response to modality-specific sensory inputs. Both aspects of this view face serious challenges from recent empirical and conceptual developments. On the belief side of things, there is now evidence that many judgments are formed quickly, automatically, and heuristically, and not obviously in response to evidence. There is also evidence that some judgments persevere despite evidence against them, for instance, when their subject is motivated to maintain those judgments. In my dissertation, I argue for a particular strategy of distinguishing belief and perception by their respective rational roles. In particular, I claim that all beliefs, insofar as they are beliefs, have a nomic capacity to be rationally revised in response to any bit of available, sufficiently strong evidence that conflicts with them. In contrast, at least some perceptual experiences lack a nomic capacity to be rationally revised in response to any bit of relevant evidence. I further argue that the proposed recasting of the belief-perception divide can help settle a currently disputed issue in the philosophy of perception, that of which kinds of features we can perceive. The dissertation is structured as a series of thematically connected but self-standing essays. In the first essay, 'The Revisability View of Belief,' I argue for the view that all beliefs are nomically capable of being rationally revised in response to any bit of sufficiently strong evidence that conflicts with them. I claim that this view follows from the conjunction of two independently plausible principles: first, that subjects who enjoy some belief at the same time that they enjoy sufficiently strong evidence that conflicts with that belief are prima facie rationally required to revise that belief. Second, that if some subject is prima facie rationally required to revise some mental state, then that subject is nomically, and more particularly, psychologically capable of revising that mental state. In the second essay, 'How Not to Argue for High-level Perception,' I transition to the issue of what kinds of features we can perceive. On one view, we can only perceive so-called low-level features; with respect to visual experience, paradigmatic low-level features are shape, color, and movement. On another view, we can additionally perceive a range of high-level features, such as artifactual features, causal features, and social features. I consider and reject three extant strategies of arguing in favor of the view that we perceive high-level features: introspective arguments, veridicality arguments, and phenomenal contrast argu-ments. In the third and final essay, 'Visually Perceiving the Intentions of Others,' I put the view of belief developed in Essay 1 to work as part of an argument that we can visually perceive at least some kinds of high-level features. In particular, we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. I begin by considering the mental state of the typical subject viewing an animation of two shapes moving away from a third shape, in an apparent fleeing motion. This mental state represents the shapes as fleeing, and we know that this experience is: reliably elicitable in most subjects, cross-culturally stable, and diachronically stable. Nevertheless, most subjects know that the shapes aren't really fleeing; since they know the shapes to be inanimate entities that can neither self-propel nor act on a proximal intention of evasion, both of which are required for fleeing. On the best explanation, the reason subjects' mental state as of the shapes fleeing persists despite the evidence against it is that the mental state lacks a nomic capacity to be rationally revised. If we accept the view that all beliefs must be nomically capable of being rationally revised, the mental state as of fleeing cannot be a belief. On the next best explanation, that mental state is a visual experience. Thus, just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the right, so too can we see someone as intending to evade someone else. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).

ISBN: 9781321954197Subjects--Topical Terms:

894954
Philosophy of Science.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Belief

Two Worlds, One Mind: The Divide between Perception and Belief.
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