Caleb Estep

Perceptual experiences are commonly regarded as evidence. For example, when one has an experience of a tree, this is typically viewed as evidence for the belief that there is a tree. However, there is more than one view about the nature of perceptual experiences, and it is not clear that every view of perception is equally adequate to the task of accounting for experience’s evidential role. In this paper I will do two things. First, I argue that neither a sense-data view of perception nor a direct realist view of perception can adequately account for the fact that perceptual experiences count as evidence. Second, I outline a third view of perception: that of Thomas Aquinas, who holds that experiences have intentional mediating content that directs the mind to the world. I argue that Aquinas’s view is able to avoid the inadequacies of both the sense-data theorist and the direct realist and thus can better account for the evidential role of perceptual experience.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Appearance and Explanation: Phenomenal Explanationism in Epistemology by Kevin McCain and Luca MorettiCaleb EstepMcCAIN, Kevin and Luca Moretti. Appearance and Explanation: Phenomenal Explanationism in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. iv + 195 pp. Cloth, $70.00Since its beginning, phenomenal conservatism (PC) has grown rapidly in popularity as a theory of epistemic justification. In Appearance and Explanation, McCain and Moretti develop out of PC a new theory of justification that they call phenomenal explanationism (PE). Their goal is to integrate PC with explanationism—the view that epistemic justification comes from the best explanation—thereby creating PE as a hybrid theory. They ambitiously contend that PE captures the same basic intuitions as PC but is better equipped to handle epistemic phenomena as a whole, troubling objections to PC (and foundationalism in general), and skeptical [End Page 354] arguments.

The question of when human life begins is critical in debates related to life issues. While there are a variety of proposals as to how an organism should be defined, many biologists and ethicists, particularly Catholics, have approached this issue by arguing that fertilization defines the beginning of a new organism. Examining the processes of fission and fusion, which take place before gastrulation, provides strong evidence for when human life beings and therefore how it should be defined. Among the four dominant theories, regulative fission and fusion are the best explanations in terms of being the most consistent with the biological data. This explanation of twinning provides compelling evidence that fertilization is not a necessary condition for human generation, although it may be a sufficient condition. While fertilization generates the vast majority of human beings, additional human beings may rarely be generated during fission events.