Soteriou - Disjunctivism

DISJUNCTIVISM

It is commonly held that the experiences involved in cases of perception, illusion and hallucination all have the same nature. Disjunctivists deny this. They maintain that the kind of experience you have when you perceive the world isnt one you could be having if you were hallucinating. A number of important debates in the philosophy of mind and epistemology turn on the question of whether this disjunctivist view is tenable.

This is the first book-length introduction to this contested issue. Matthew Soteriou explains the accounts of perception that disjunctivists seek to defend, such as nave realism, and the accounts to which they are opposed, such as sense-datum theories and representationalist theories. He goes on to introduce and assess key questions that arise in these debates:

Is disjunctivism consistent with what has been established by the science of perception?

Does introspective reflection support nave realism?

Can disjunctivism be motivated by appeal to the role that perception plays in enabling us to think demonstratively about mind-independent objects and qualities in our environment?

Does disjunctivism offer the best account of perceptual knowledge?

What can disjunctivists say about the nature of hallucination and illusion?

Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone studying disjunctivism for the first time, as well as for more advanced students and researchers.

Matthew Soteriou is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of The Minds Construction: The Ontology of Mind and Mental Action (2013), and co-editor (with Lucy OBrien) of Mental Actions (2009).

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DISJUNCTIVISM

Matthew Soteriou

First published 2016
by Routledge
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2016 Matthew Soteriou

The right of Matthew Soteriou to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sherman, Jon Foley, 1972
A strange proximity : stage presence, failure, and the ethics of attention /Jon Foley Sherman.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-138-90776-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-138-90777-5 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-315-69490-0 (ebook) 1. ActingPsychological aspects. 2. Stage presence. I. Title.
PN2058.S53 2016
792.028019dc23
2015036214

ISBN13: 978-0-415-68621-1(hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-68622-8(pbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-315-63683-2(ebk)

Typeset in Joanna
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

I owe thanks to colleagues and students at the Philosophy Department at Warwick University for helpful discussions of this work. To Hemdat Lerman and Guy Longworth I owe special thanks for providing me with extremely useful written comments on a draft of the book. I am grateful to Tony Bruce and Adam Johnson of Routledge for their encouragement and patience, and I thank Susanna Siegel and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and advice.

My deepest thanks go to my wife, Sandra, who has helped me in more ways than I could ever hope to express, and to whom I dedicate this book with all my love.

Perceptual experiences are often divided into three broad categories: veridical perceptions, illusions, and hallucinations. A common way of distinguishing these three categories is as follows. In the case of a veridical perception you perceive an object in your environment as it really is for example, you see a red object in your environment and you really do see its red colour. In the case of an illusion, you succeed in perceiving some object in your environment, but the object you perceive isnt the way it perceptually seems to you to be for example, you see a green object in your environment, but the object looks red to you. And in the case of hallucination, you fail to perceive any object in your environment for example, you have an experience as of a red object, but you fail to perceive any object in your environment. Many maintain that the same account should be given of the nature of the conscious experience that occurs in each of these three cases. Those who hold a disjunctive theory of perception deny this. And they reject the claim that the same kind of experience is common to all three cases because they hold views about the nature of veridical perception that are inconsistent with it.