•  24
    Schroeder on reasons, experience, and evidence
    Philosophical Studies 181 (2): 607-616. 2024.
  •  308
    Block on Attribution, Discrimination, and Adaptation
    with Andrew Fink, Carl Schoonover, and Mary A. Peterson
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. forthcoming.
  • Bayesian liberalism
    In Justin Vlasits & Katja Maria Vogt (eds.), Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus, Oxford University Press. 2020.
  •  81
    The generality and particularity of perception
    Mind and Language 37 (2): 235-247. 2022.
    This paper responds to critical comments by Christopher Hill, Ram Neta, and Nico Orlandi on my book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence (OUP 2018). It addresses questions about why analyzing mental states in terms of capacities is more explanatory powerful than analyzing them in terms of processes. It further develops my view of functions and their relation to mental capacities. It clarifies the internalist commitments of my externalist view of content, consciousness, and e…Read more
  •  450
    Perceptual Capacities, Knowledge, and Gettier Cases
    In Rodrigo Borges, Claudio de Almeida & Peter David Klein (eds.), Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem, Oxford University Press. pp. 74-95. 2017.
    This paper argues for a sufficient evidence condition on knowledge and I argue that there is no belief condition on knowledge.
  •  685
    Précis of The Unity of Perception
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3): 715-720. 2020.
  •  888
    Capacities First
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3): 744-757. 2020.
  •  256
    Una defensa del contenido perceptual
    In Ignacio Cervieri & Álvaro Peláez (eds.), Contenido y Fenomenología de la Percepción: Aproximaciones Filosóficas, Gedisa-uam. pp. 19-77. 2020.
  •  661
    I am deeply indebted to Alex Byrne, Jonathan Cohen and Matthew McGrath for their careful, constructive, and penetrating comments on The Unity of Perception and I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify my view further.
  •  307
    Summary
    Analysis 79 (4): 709-713. 2019.
    The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness and Evidence By SchellenbergSusannaOxford University Press, 2018. 272 pp.
  •  449
    The origins of perceptual knowledge
    Episteme 14 (3): 311-328. 2017.
    I argue that the ground of the epistemic force of perceptual states lies in properties of the perceptual capacities that constitute the relevant perceptual states. I call this view capacitivism, since the notion of a capacity is explanatorily basic: it is because a given subject is employing a mental capacity with a certain nature that her mental states have epistemic force. More specically, I argue that perceptual states have epistemic force due to being systematically linked to mind-independe…Read more
  •  359
    Fregean Particularism
    In Dirk Kindermann, Peter van Elswyk, Andy Egan & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini (eds.), Unstructured Content, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  811
    Perceptual Capacities
    In Steven Gouveia, Manuel Curado & Dena Shottenkirk (eds.), Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics, Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. 2019.
    Despite their importance in the history of philosophy and in particular in the work of Aristotle and Kant, mental capacities have been neglected in recent philosophical work. By contrast, the notion of a capacity is deeply entrenched in psychology and the brain sciences. Driven by the idea that a cognitive system has the capacity it does in virtue of its internal components and their organization, it is standard to appeal to capacities in cognitive psychology. The main benefit of invoking capaci…Read more
  •  116
    Perception is our key to the world. It plays at least three different roles in our lives. It justifies beliefs and provides us with knowledge of our environment. It brings about conscious mental states. It converts informational input, such as light and sound waves, into representations of invariant features in our environment. Corresponding to these three roles, there are at least three fundamental questions that have motivated the study of perception. How does perception justify beliefs and yi…Read more
  •  860
    In Defense of Perceptual Content
    Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1): 409-447. 2017.
  •  2293
    When we perceive an object, we perceive the object from a perspective. As a consequence of the perspectival nature of perception, when we perceive, say, a circular coin from different angles, there is a respect in which the coin looks circular throughout, but also a respect in which the coin's appearance changes. More generally, perception of shape and size properties has both a constant aspect—an aspect that remains stable across changes in perspective—and a perspectival aspect—an aspect that c…Read more
  •  1696
    Perceptual Consciousness as a Mental Activity
    Noûs 53 (1): 114-133. 2019.
    I argue that perceptual consciousness is constituted by a mental activity. The mental activity in question is the activity of employing perceptual capacities, such as discriminatory, selective capacities. This is a radical view, but I hope to make it plausible. In arguing for this mental activist view, I reject orthodox views on which perceptual consciousness is analyzed in terms of peculiar entities, such as, phenomenal properties, external mind-independent properties, propositions, sense-data,…Read more
  •  872
    A Trilemma about Mental Content
    In Schear Joseph (ed.), Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-world, Routledge. pp. 272-282. 2013.
    Schellenberg sheds light on the recent debate between Dreyfus and McDowell about the role and nature of concepts in perceptual experience, by considering the following trilemma: (C1) Non-rational animals and humans can be in mental states with the same kind of content when they are perceptually related to the very same environment. (C2) Non-rational animals do not possess concepts. (C3) Content is constituted by modes of presentations and is, thus, conceptually structured. She discusses…Read more
  •  1040
    Perceptual Experience and the Capacity to Act
    In N. Gangopadhay, M. Madary & F. Spicer (eds.), Perception, Action, and Consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 145. 2010.
    This paper develops and defends the capacity view, that is, the view that the ability to perceive the perspective-independent or intrinsic properties of objects depends on the perceiver’s capacity to act. More specifically, I argue that self-location and spatial know-how are jointly necessary to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects. Representing one’s location allows one to abstract from one’s particular vantage point to perceive the perspective-independent properties of objects.…Read more
  •  1012
    Externalism and the Gappy Content of Hallucination
    In D. Platchias & F. E. Macpherson (eds.), Hallucination, Mit Press. pp. 291. 2013.
    There are powerful reasons to think of perceptual content as determined at least in part by the environment of the perceiving subject. Externalist views such as this are often rejected on grounds that they do not give a good account of hallucinations. The chapter shows that this reason for rejecting content externalism is not well founded if we embrace a moderate externalism about content, that is, an externalist view on which content is only in part dependent on the experiencing subject“s envir…Read more
  •  2420
    Experience and Evidence
    Mind 122 (487): 699-747. 2013.
    I argue that perceptual experience provides us with both phenomenal and factive evidence. To a first approximation, we can understand phenomenal evidence as determined by how our environment sensorily seems to us when we are experiencing. To a first approximation, we can understand factive evidence as necessarily determined by the environment to which we are perceptually related such that the evidence is guaranteed to be an accurate guide to the environment. I argue that the rational source of b…Read more
  •  2688
    The particularity and phenomenology of perceptual experience
    Philosophical Studies 149 (1): 19-48. 2010.
    I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily s…Read more
  •  194
    Perception in Perspective
    Dissertation, . 2006.
    How can perception yield knowledge of the world? One challenge in answering this question is that one necessarily perceives from a particular location. Thus, what is immediately perceptually available is subject to situational features, such as lighting conditions and one’s location. Nonetheless, one can perceive the shape and color of objects. My dissertation aims to provide an explanation for how this is possible. The main thesis is that giving such an explanation requires abandoning the tradi…Read more
  •  3170
    The Situation-Dependency of Perception
    Journal of Philosophy 105 (2): 55-84. 2008.
    I argue that perception is necessarily situation-dependent. The way an object is must not just be distinguished from the way it appears and the way it is represented, but also from the way it is presented given the situational features. First, I argue that the way an object is presented is best understood in terms of external, mind-independent, but situation-dependent properties of objects. Situation-dependent properties are exclusively sensitive to and ontologically dependent on the intrinsic p…Read more
  •  3458
    Belief and Desire in Imagination and Immersion
    Journal of Philosophy 110 (9): 497-517. 2013.
    I argue that any account of imagination should satisfy the following three desiderata. First, imaginations induce actions only in conjunction with beliefs about the environment of the imagining subject. Second, there is a continuum between imaginations and beliefs. Recognizing this continuum is crucial to explain the phenomenon of imaginative immersion. Third, the mental states that relate to imaginations in the way that desires relate to beliefs are a special kind of desire, namely desires to m…Read more
  •  1543
    Sameness of Fregean sense
    Synthese 189 (1): 163-175. 2012.
    This paper develops a criterion for sameness of Fregean senses. I consider three criteria: logical equivalence, intensional isomorphism, and epistemic equipollence. I reject the first two and argue for a version of the third.
  •  3156
    Ontological Minimalism about Phenomenology
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1): 1-40. 2010.
    I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense-data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind-independ…Read more
  •  1989
    Phenomenal evidence and factive evidence
    Philosophical Studies 173 (4): 875-896. 2016.
    Perceptions guide our actions and provide us with evidence of the world around us. Illusions and hallucinations can mislead us: they may prompt as to act in ways that do not mesh with the world around us and they may lead us to form false beliefs about that world. The capacity view provides an account of evidence that does justice to these two facts. It shows in virtue of what illusions and hallucinations mislead us and prompt us to act. Moreover, it shows in virtue of what we are in a better ep…Read more