Perception, Perspectivism, Falsification

Abstract

Nietzsche claims that all conscious experience, whether perceptual or interoceptive, affective or cognitive, is constrained by ineliminable limits imposed by the finite reach of our sensory organs and by the nature of subconscious cortical processing that precedes conscious experience. Characterizing these limits is the topic of Section I. That all conscious experience is limited suggests to him that the contents of even basic kinds of conscious experience, such as sensory perception and interoception, are perspectival. Perspectivism is not a single thesis but a set of claims, some of them having to do with causal or genetic issues, some of them having to do with justificatory issues, some of them having to do with issues surrounding truth. In Section II, we show that the causal genetic doctrine of perspectivism is grounded in, but not exhausted by, his reflections on perception and interoception. In addition to genetic perspectivism he also offers an epistemological version of perspectivism, according to which all knowledge claims, whether about basic kinds of conscious experience, reflection, or sophisticated abstract thought, are perspectival. And on the basis of these epistemological claims he argues that the philosophical ambition of achieving unbiased, objectively true beliefs is in vain. In Section III, we argue that one of his most infamous claims, viz., that all of our conscious experience is false, is not entailed by genetic perspectivism. However, even if not entailed, the falsification view is not far away from genetic perspectivism, and only two additional premises are needed to infer falsification from it.