Seeing, Knowing, and Doing: A Perceptualist Account [Paperback]

This book provides an overall theory of perception and much of a theory of knowledge. It explains how we can have justified beliefs and knowledge concerning the physical world, the abstract realm, and the normative domain of right and wrong.Perception is basic for human knowledge and a major concern of both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. The scholarship in this area, however, has left two important aspects of perception underexplored: its relevance to understandinga prioriknowledge--traditionally conceived as independent of perception--and its role in human action. This book provides a full-scale account of perception, a theory of thea priori, and an account of how perception guides action. In exploring perception and action, it clarifies the relation between action and practical reasoning, the notion of rational action, and the relation between knowledge of the practical (of how things are done) and practical knowledge (knowing how to do things).In the first part of the book, Robert Audi lays out a theory of perception as experiential, representational, and causally connected with its objects. He argues that perception is a discriminative response to its objects; it embodies phenomenally distinctive elements; and it yields rich information that underlies human knowledge. Part Two presents a theory of self-evidence and thea priori. Audi's theory is perceptualist in that it explicates the apprehension ofa prioritruths by articulating its parallels to perception. The theory also unifies empirical anda prioriknowledge by clarifying their reliable causal connections with their objects--connections many have thought impossible fora prioriknowledge. The final part explores how perception guides action, the role of propositional knowledge in our abilities to do what we know how to do, the nature of reasons for action, the role of inference in determining it, and the overall conditions for its rationality. Addrl“4