Liberalism and Conservatism in the Epistemology of Perceptual Belief

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4):685-705 (2010)
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Abstract

Liberals claim that some perceptual experiences give us immediate justification for certain perceptual beliefs. Conservatives claim that the justification that perceptual experiences give us for those perceptual beliefs is mediated by our background beliefs. In his recent paper ?Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic?, Nico Silins successfully argues for a non-Moorean version of Liberalism. But Silins's defence of non-Moorean Liberalism leaves us with a puzzle: why is it that a necessary condition for our perceptual experiences to justify us in holding certain perceptual beliefs is that we have some independent justification for disbelieving various sceptical hypotheses? I argue that the best answer to this question involves commitment to Crispin Wright's version of Conservatism. In short, Wright's Conservatism is consistent with Silins's Liberalism, and the latter helps to give us grounds for accepting the former

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Ram Neta
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Citations of this work

The epistemic insignificance of phenomenal force.Lu Teng - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1):55-76.
The epistemology of perception.Susanna Siegel & Nicholas Silins - 2015 - In Mohan Matthen, The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception. New York, NY: Oxford University Press UK.
Basic knowledge and the normativity of knowledge: The awareness‐first solution.Paul Silva - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (3):564-586.
How to Use Cognitive Faculties You Never Knew You Had.Andrew Moon - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (S1):251-275.

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References found in this work

The skeptic and the dogmatist.James Pryor - 2000 - Noûs 34 (4):517–549.
Content preservation.Tyler Burge - 1993 - Philosophical Review 102 (4):457-488.
Warrant for nothing (and foundations for free)?Crispin Wright - 2004 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78 (1):167–212.
How to be a fallibilist.Stewart Cohen - 1988 - Philosophical Perspectives 2:91-123.
The realm of reason.Christopher Peacocke - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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