Table Of ContentOUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/10/2018, SPi
In the Light of Experience
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MIND ASSOCIATION OCCASIONAL SERIES
This series consists of carefully selected volumes of significant original papers
on predefined themes, normally growing out of a conference supported by a Mind
Association Major Conference Grant. The Association nominates an editor or editors
for each collection, and may cooperate with other bodies in promoting conferences
or other scholarly activities in connection with the preparation of particular volumes.
Director, Mind Association: Julian Dodd
Publications Officer: Sarah Sawyer
Recently published in the series
Perceptual Ephemera
Edited by Thomas Crowther and Clare Mac Cumhaill
Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
Edited by C. B. Bow
Art and Belief
Edited by Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley, and Paul Noordhof
The Actual and the Possible
Edited by Mark Sinclair
Thinking about the Emotions
Edited by Alix Cohen and Robert Stern
Art, Mind, and Narrative
Edited by Julian Dodd
The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft
Edited by Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee
The Epistemic Life of Groups
Edited by Michael S. Brady and Miranda Fricker
Reality Making
Edited by Mark Jago
The Metaphysics of Relations
Edited by Anna Marmodoro and David Yates
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In the Light of
Experience
New Essays on Perception
and Reasons
edited by
Johan Gersel, Rasmus Thybo Jensen,
Morten S. Thaning, and Søren Overgaard
1
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3
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Johan Gersel and Rasmus Thybo Jensen
The Travis–McDowell Debate 15
Johan Gersel
Part I. The Myth of the Given
1. Travis on Frege, Kant, and the Given: Comments on
‘Unlocking the Outer World’ 23
John McDowell
2. The Move, the Divide, the Myth, and its Dogma 36
Charles Travis
3. What is the Myth of the Given? 77
Johan Gersel
4. Empiricism and Normative Constraint 101
Hannah Ginsborg
Part II. The Epistemology of Empirical Knowledge
5. Do Perceptions Justify Beliefs? The Argument from “Looks” Talk 141
Christopher Gauker
6. Fallibility for Infallibilists 161
Jason Leddington
Part III. The Nature of Experience
7. Perception and the Vagaries of Experience 189
Alan Millar
8. World in Mind: Extending Phenomenal Character
and Resisting Skepticism 213
Heather Logue
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vi c ontents
Part IV. The Object of Experience
9. Objects and the Explanation of Perception 237
Bill Brewer
10. Are Perceptual Reasons the Objects of Perception? 256
J.J. Cunningham
Index 281
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Acknowledgements
The papers you find in this anthology grew out of a workshop that was held in
Copenhagen, October 2013. Our goal was to create a philosophical atmosphere that
was focused on jointly getting to the bottom of a series of shared questions, rather than
providing a stage from which to present individual views. This means that we spent
more time discussing than listening, and that questions skipped, backtracked, and
otherwise jumped back and forth between the issues that were discussed over the
two days. To our joy, we found that our contributors even kept their individual discus-
sions going long after the workshop was over. This anthology is truly a joint effort,
as there is hardly a paper that hasn’t been altered and improved due to the helpful
comments from other participants. We owe an enormous thanks to all of our contribu-
tors for their willingness to contribute in this way, in spite of the time-consuming
nature of the approach. We think it tremendously improved the papers in the anthol-
ogy and that it exemplifies the essence of philosophical collaboration.
We owe further thanks to every participant at the workshop itself. You all contrib-
uted significantly to the spirit of the workshop and the content of the debate. We would
especially like to thank Hagit Benbaji, Susanna Siegel, and Rowland Stout who acted
as respondents at the workshop. We also owe Susanna Siegel and Rowland Stout, as
well as Sebastian Rödl, thanks for giving talks at the public conference “Reasons
and Experience” that we held in combination with the workshop.
Organizing a workshop, a conference and an anthology takes a serious amount of
work behind the scenes. If it hadn’t been for the organizational skills of Signe Bang
Holm, the end result would have been considerably more chaotic. Likewise, none of
this would have been possible without the funding we received from The Danish
Research Council, The Mind Association, University of Copenhagen, and Copenhagen
Business School. Two anonymous Oxford University Press referees have also been
working hard behind the scenes. We would like to express our gratitude for the enor-
mous amount of work you put into reviewing the book manuscript and for providing
such helpful critical comments and valuable suggestions.
Lastly, we would like to thank the readers of this book for giving us your time and
attention. We hope you learn as much from reading the anthology as we have done
from editing it.
The Editors
Copenhagen,
October 2016
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Contributors
Bill Brewer, King’s College London
J.J. Cunningham, Oxford University
Christopher Gauker, University of Salzburg
Johan Gersel, University of Vienna
Hannah Ginsborg, University of California, Berkeley
Jason Leddington, Bucknell University
Heather Logue, University of Leeds
John McDowell, University of Pittsburgh
Alan Millar, University of Stirling
Charles Travis, King’s College London/University of Porto
