Susanna Siegel

Can perceptual experiences be states of uncertainty? We might expect them to be, if the perceptual processes from which they're generated, as well as the behaviors they help produce, take account of probabilistic information. Yet it has long been presumed that perceptual experiences purport to tell us about our environment, without hedging or qualifying. Against this long-standing view, I argue that perceptual experiences may well occasionally be states of uncertainty, but that they are never probabilistically structured. I criticize a powerful line of reasoning that we should expect perceptual experience to be probabilistic, given their interfaces with unconscious probabilistic information, with behavior responsive to it, and with credences.

Using certain bits of language, we seem to be able to refer to particular middle-sized dry goods. How is this possible? In this essay, I address this question with respect to uses of demonstrative expressions. I argue that perception makes demonstrative reference possible, and I try to explain how it does so. I argue that the reference of uses of demonstrative expressions, such as "these" in utterances of "these are my keys," is fixed by a demonstrative mental state: more exactly, by an intention to refer that is anchored by perception. When the intention is visually anchored, it, in turn, comes to be about its object thanks to a contribution from visual experience. A full explanation of how in the visual case perception makes demonstrative reference possible will include an account of what visual experience contributes. I argue that visual experience helps establish demonstrative reference because it represents which visible surfaces and edges belong to the same middle-sized dry-good

Includes a summary of my book *The Rationality of Perception* (Oxford, 2017) and replies to commentaries on it by Endre Begby, Harmen Ghijsen, and Katia Samoilova. These commentaries and my summary and replies will be published soon in Analysis Reviews. Begby focuses on my analysis of the epistemic features of the interface between individual minds and their cultural milieu (discussed in chapter 10 of *The Rationality of Perception*), Ghijsen focuses on the notion of inference and reliabilism (chapters 5 and 6), and Samoilova focuses on the relationship between epistemic charge (chapter 3) and shifts in the amount of justification needed for knowledge.

I argue that inference can tolerate forms of self-ignorance and that these cases of inference undermine canonical models of inference on which inferrers have to appreciate (or purport to appreciate) the support provided by the premises for the conclusion. I propose an alternative model of inference that belongs to a family of rational responses in which the subject cannot pinpoint exactly what she is responding to or why, where this kind of self-ignorance does nothing to undermine the intelligence of the response.