Alan Millar

According to the rationality thesis , the possession of propositional attitudes is inextricably tied to rationality. How in this context should we conceive of rationality? In one sense, being rational is contrasted with being non-rational, as when human beings are described as rational animals. In another sense, being rational is contrasted with being irrational. I shall call rationality in this latter sense evaluative rationality . Whatever else it might involve, evaluative rationality surely has to do with satisfying requirements of rationality such as, presumably, the following: That one avoid inconsistency in beliefs. That one not adopt new beliefs unless what one knows entails or is evidence for the truth of those beliefs. That one not have φing as a goal yet do nothing necessary for one to φ

Plausibly perceptual knowledge satisfies the following: It is knowledge about things from the way they appear. It can embrace more than the way things appear. It is phenomenologically immediate and thus, in one sense, non-inferential. and place a significant constraint on adequate elucidations of . Knowledge about an object, from the way it looks, which embraces more than the way it looks, should not turn out to be inferential in the relevant sense. The paper shows how this constraint can be met, drawing upon a conception of a discriminative capacity. The discussion touches on literature dealing with observation in science, knowledge of other minds, and the possibility of moral knowledge

A conception of recognitional abilities and perceptual-discriminative abilities is deployed to make sense of how perceptual experiences enable us to make cognitive contact with objects and facts. It is argued that accepting the emerging view does not commit us to thinking that perceptual experiences are essentially relational, as they are conceived to be in disjunctivist theories. The discussion explores some implications for the theory of knowledge in general and, in particular, for the issue of how we can shed light on the nature of knowledge is if we do not aim to provide conceptual analyses of knowledge in terms of true belief plus something else. Consideration is also given how we can best make sense of the practical value that knowledge has for us

In a discussion of rule-following inspired by Wittgenstein, Kripke asks us to consider the relation which holds between meaning plus by ‘+’ and answering questions like, ‘What is the sum of 68 and 57?’. A dispositional theory has it that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then you will probably answer, ‘125’. That is because, according to such a theory, to mean plus by ‘+’ is , roughly speaking, to be disposed, by and large, and among other things, to answer such questions with the correct sum. Kripke wants to emphasize, by contrast, that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then, faced with the question, ‘What is 68 + 57?’ you ought to answer, ‘125’. One could sum up the assumption about meaning which appears to underpin this criticism of dispositional theories in terms of the slogan that meaning is normative. Allan Gibbard gives us a way of reading that slogan which is suggested by Kripke's brief remarks: The crux of the slogan that meaning is normative … might be another slogan: that means implies ought . To use roughly Kripke's example, from statements saying what I mean by the plus sign and other arithmetic terms and constructions, it will follow that I ought to answer ‘7’ when asked ‘What's 5 + 2?’

© Millar 2018This bold, provocative, and highly original book is in three Parts. Part I outlines a problem, sketches a solution, and defends a claim that is crucial to the solution—that ‘perceptual experiences and the processes by which they arise can be rational or irrational’. This claim is The Rationality of Perception. In Part II Siegel argues that the power of experiences to justify beliefs can be downgraded or upgraded by psychological precursors. Part III applies, and further develops, the theoretical framework that has been outlined in the previous parts. The topics addressed there include fearful and wishful seeing, and selection effects as they bear on the character of experiences. The last chapter concerns the appraisal of culturally appropriated racial attitudes that can influence beliefs and, on Siegel’s view, visual experiences as well. The discussion throughout takes readers well off the beaten track and is to...

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 4, pp 235 - 245 The discussion highlights the need to distinguish between perceptions and the experiences implicated by perceptions, noting that Coliva’s framework makes perception irrelevant to justified belief, except for being the contingent means by which we are furnished with experiences that are the real source of justified belief. It then addresses two issues concerning the problem of cognitive locality. The problem concerns what enables us rationally to suppose that our perceptual experiences mostly put us in touch with reality. The issues addressed are: whether, assuming that there is a problem of cognitive locality, Coliva’s Moderate position adequately addresses it; and whether Coliva gives us enough to make sense of the claim, central to the Moderate position, that certain background presuppositions are constitutive of empirical rationality.