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Is Seeing Believing?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

David Hilbert
David Hilbert*
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
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Extract

The precise nature of the connection between perceptual experience and empirical knowledge is one of the traditional problems of philosophy. That much of our knowledge is somehow based on our perceptual experience has been a common element of many otherwise disparate views as to how beliefs about empirical matters are justified. Although this relationship is now often conceived to be causal rather than logical, it is still rarely doubted that there is some kind of intimate connection between experience and justified belief. Any view of this kind leads quite naturally to the idea that the function of perceptual experience in our epistemic economy is to lead to knowledge of those matters of fact that cause or are represented by that experience. Although I do not wish to deny that this is one epistemic role that experience can play, I will argue below that there are others as well.

Type
Part XI. Philosophy of Psychology and Perception
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 446 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was read to the Philosophy Department of UC-Riverside and I am grateful for their comments. I would also like to thank Frank Arntzenius, Alex Byrne, Fiona Cowie, Carl Hoefer, Marc Lange, Nigel Thomas, and Jim Woodward for helpful comments and conversations.

References

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