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I endorse liberalism, the view that we can be immediately perceptually justified in believing at least some propositions about the external world. In the dissertation, I defend liberalism against several contemporary challenges.
In Chapter 1, I address the scope of immediate perceptual justification. I argue that we can be immediately perceptually justified in believing propositions that ascribe kind properties to perceived individuals, (e.g., that's an avocado), and that this justification is grounded in recognitional competence. By appeal to recognitional competence, we can defuse the threat posed by McGrath's (2017) Only-Because Argument, which if successful, would restrict the scope of immediate perceptual justification to beliefs about how objects look.
Many liberal views appeal to seemings, but there is little consensus about what seemings are. In Chapter 2, I develop what I call the epistemic feeling account of seemings. Epistemic feelings are a class of phenomenally conscious mental states that motivate epistemic performance; familiar examples include the tip of the tongue feeling, and the eureka experience or aha! moment. I highlight an epistemic feeling-called the feeling of rightness-that cognitive psychologists have used to explain when subjects are likely to simply endorse the output of some Type-1 process in judgment without engaging in Type-2 reasoning. I characterize the content, phenomenal character, and functional role of feelings of rightness and argue that they are well-suited to play the role of seemings in several central cases.
In Chapter 3, I address a third contemporary challenge for liberalism. White (2006) argues that Bayesian confirmation theory is in tension with liberalism, and since the former is such a fruitful paradigm, we have reason to reject liberalism. I consider three ways of reconstructing White's argument and argue that none succeeds. The most compelling version of the argument depends on intuitions that, in certain cases, the rational response to perceptual experience is to become more confident in skeptical hypotheses. I argue that these intuitions are driven by the presence of higher-order evidence in the cases, and that once we recognize this, the intuitions pose no threat to liberalism.
Finally, in Chapter 4, I return to considering the scope of immediate perceptual justification. On a natural view, the content of perceptual experience fully determines the scope of immediate perceptual justification. I highlight a class of cases-which I call mismatch cases-that show this natural thought to be incorrect. In mismatch cases, subjects are immediately perceptually justified in believing p, even when p is not among the contents of their perceptual experiences. After arguing that the cases should be characterized in this way, I consider the implications for liberalism. I argue that phenomenal conservativism struggles to handle mismatch cases by requiring a tight semantic connection between the content of experience and the content of beliefs that are immediately perceptually justified. Finally, I highlight two families of liberal views that can account for mismatch cases. Permissive evidentialist views handle the cases by adopting a weakened evidential support relation. Basic method views handle them by explaining immediate perceptual justification by appeal to non-inferential competences, methods, or processes. Finally, I briefly offer reasons for thinking that basic method views represent the more promising solution.

ETD_10293

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-3t32-af33

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.