Perception, Causation, and Objectivity

To be a 'commonsense realist' is to hold that perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like. Over the past few centuries this view has faced formidable challenges from epistemology, metaphysics, and, more recently, cognitive science. However, in recent years there has been renewed interest in it, due to new work on perceptual consciousness, objectivity, and causal understanding. This volume collects nineteen original essays by leading philosophers and psychologists on these topics. Questions addressed include: What are the commitments of commonsense realism? Does it entail any particular view of the nature of perceptual experience, or any particular view of the epistemology of perceptual knowledge? Should we think of commonsense realism as a view held by some philosophers, or is there a sense in which we are pre-theoretically committed to commonsense realism in virtue of the experience we enjoy or the concepts we use or the explanations we give? Is commonsense realism defensible, and if so how, in the face of the formidable criticism it faces? Specific issues addressed in the philosophical essays include the status of causal requirements on perception, the causal role of perceptual experience, and the relation between objective perception and causal thinking. The scientific essays present a range of perspectives on the development, phylogenetic and ontogenetic, of the human adult conception of perception.

Johannes Roessler is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is co-editor of Agency and Self-Awareness (OUP), and Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds (OUP), and the author of papers in the philosophy of mind and action. Hemdat Lerman was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Philosophy Department at the University of Warwick and is currently an Associate Fellow of the Consciousness & Self-Consciousness Research Centre at the Philosophy Department at the University of Warwick. She is currently working on a monograph, entitled Experience, Concepts and World. Naomi Eilan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and Director of the Consciousness and Self-Consciousness Research Centre. She is co-editor of Spatial Representation (OUP), The Body and the Self (MIT), Agency and Self Awareness (OUP), Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds (OUP), and the author of papers in the philosophy of mind.

- 1: Johannes Roessler: Introduction - 2: Quassim Cassam: Tackling Berkeley's Puzzle - 3: John Campbell: Relational vs Kantian Responses to Berkeley's Puzzle - 4: Naomi Eilan: Experiential Objectivity - 5: Bill Brewer: Realism and Explanation in Perception - 6: James Van Cleve: Epistemic Humility and Causal Structuralism - 7: Barry Stroud: Seeing What is So - 8: Johannes Roessler: Causation in Commonsense Realism - 9: Paul Snowdon: Perceptual Concepts as Non-causal Concepts - 10: Helen Steward: Perception and the Ontology of Causation - 11: William Child: Vision and Causal Understanding - 12: Matthew Soteriou: The Perception of Absence, Space, and Time - 13: Christoph Hoerl: Perception, Causal Understanding, and Locality - 14: James Woodward: Causal Perception and Causal Cognition - 15: Matthew Nudds: Children's understanding of perceptual appearances - 16: Henrike Moll and Andrew N. Meltzoff: Perspective-Taking and its Foundation in Joint Attention - 17: Martin Doherty: A Two-Systems Theory of Social Cognition: Engagement and Theory of Mind - 18: Elizabeth Robinson: Development of understanding of the causal connection between perceptual access and knowledge state - 19: Jennifer Vonk and Daniel J. Povinelli: Social and Physical Reasoning in Human-reared Chimpanzees: Preliminary Studies