Illusory appearances : why we should not be representationalists and why it matters

Abstract

It is quite natural to think of perception as providing us with inner representations of the world - in cognitive science, namely, talk of representations and computation of representations in agents often goes without further reflection. Yet according to many philosophers such representationalism proves to be quite an untenable philosophical view of perception (Byrne & Logue 2009). Although in 20th century analytic philosophy an antirepresentationalist approach to perception can be retraced to people such as L.Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein 1953) and J. L. Austin (Austin 1962) the issue has become central in analytic philosophy in the last fifteen to twenty years, through the works of influential philosophers such as John McDowell and M. G. F. Martin, under the name of 'disjunctivism'. In this talk I will consider disjunctivism from a historical point of view: more specifically I want to make clear why McDowell’s 1982 article Criteria, Defeasability and Knowledge (McDowell 1982), which prima facie deals with epistemological issues regarding evidence in the context of the problem of other minds, should be regarded as a 'founding text' of disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception