Abstract
In this final chapter, I shall consider color skepticism to be an established view and shall proceed to discuss some of the epistemological questions it raises. Ancient and modern skeptics have frequently pointed out that our senses are deceptive; failures of veridicality occur that lead us to adopt beliefs that are false. Their arguments are occasionally based on pointing out certain examples of deception such as the straight stick that looks bent in water or the round plate that looks elliptical, and so forth. Texts on the psychology of perception are filled with examples of illusions and hallucinations of one kind or another. But such examples fail to support the case that our senses are radically deceptive.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind ( London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1949 ), pp. 27–35.
A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge ( New York: Penguin Books, 1984 ), p. 16.
Ibid. p. 17.
Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge, an Evolutionary Approach ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973 ), p. 163.
Louis Pojman objects as follows: “Being able to recall the propositions in question seems a necessary condition for knowledge.” It seems to me, however, that a weaker condition is called for, namely, that one must recall where one has stored the information that one is claiming as knowledge and that one must have access to the place of storage. Perhaps my account, influenced by Popper, constitutes a revision or extension of our original concept of knowledge that is justified by the invention of ways of storing information outside the brain.
This is a variation upon an example provided by Bertrand Russell in The Problems of Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 131–132.
Edmund L. Genier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” reprinted in A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Knowledge and Belief ( London: Oxford University Press, 1967 ), pp. 144–146.
Ibid.,p. 145.
Ibid.
I employed this notion of full justification in my text Philosophy: An Introduction to the Central Issues (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), pp. 208–210. For much the same reasons, Keith Lehrer uses the notion of complete justification in his Theory of Knowledge (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990), p. 12.
William James, “The Will to Believe,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1919 ), pp. 1–31.
Ibid., p. 11.
John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding,IV, xix, 1.
Ibid.,IV, xix, 14.
Ibid.,IV, xix, 13.
David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983 ), p. 15.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 30.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Landesman, C. (1993). Knowledge and Perception. In: The Eye and the Mind. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3317-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3317-5_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4343-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3317-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive