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Epistemological Disjunctivism and the Value of Presence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2020

David de Bruijn Open the ORCID record for David de Bruijn [Opens in a new window]
David de Bruijn*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
*
Email: dmd55@pitt.edu
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Abstract

Epistemological disjunctivists make two strong claims about perceptual experience's epistemic value: (1) experience guarantees the knowledgeable character of perceptual beliefs; (2) experience's epistemic value is “reflectively accessible”. In this paper I develop a form of disjunctivism grounded in a presentational view of experience, on which the epistemic benefits of experience consist in the way perception presents the subject with aspects of her environment. I show that presentational disjunctivism has both dialectical and philosophically fundamental advantages over more traditional expositions. Dialectically, presentational disjunctivism resolves a puzzle disjunctivists face in their posture vis-à-vis skeptical scenarios. More systematically, presentational disjunctivism provides an especially compelling view of disjunctivism as an internalist view of perceptual consciousness by explaining the way perceptual presence manifests the subject's rationality in a distinct way.

Keywords

perceptual warrantepistemological disjunctivismindefeasible justificationperceptual presence
Type
Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 319 - 336
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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