Gabriel Greenberg

Not all probability ascriptions that appear in scientific theories describe chances. There is a question about whether probability ascriptions in non-fundamental sciences, such as those found in evolutionary biology and statistical mechanics, describe chances in deterministic worlds and about whether there could be any chances in deterministic worlds. Recent debate over whether chance is compatible with determinism has unearthed two strategies for arguing about whether a probability ascription describes chance—that is, to speak metaphorically, two different strategies for figuring out where the chances are: find the chances by focusing on chance’s explanatory role or find the chances by focusing on chance’s predictive role. These two strategies tend to yield conflicting results about where the chances are, and debate over which strategy is appropriate tends to end in stalemate. After discussing these two strategies, I consider a new view of chance’s explanatory role. I argue that one theoretical advantage of this new view is that allows us to make progress on the question of where the chances are by providing a principled way of determining which probability ascriptions describe chances. From the vantage of this new view, the correct application of both strategies involves figuring out where the chances are by figuring out where the probabilistic scientific explanations are and what those explanations are like.

Amodal completion is the representation of occluded parts of perceived objects. We argue for the following three claims: First, at least some amodal completion-involved experiences can ground knowledge about the occluded portions of perceived objects. Second, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge are not sensitive, that is, it is not the case that in the nearest worlds in which the relevant claim is false, that claim is not believed true. Third, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge are not safe, that is, it is not the case that in all or nearly all near worlds where the relevant claim is believed true, that claim is in fact true. Thus, certain instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge refute both the view that knowledge is necessarily sensitive and the view that knowledge is necessarily safe.

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 yield knowledge of our environment? How does perception bring about conscious mental states? How does a perceptual system accomplish the feat of converting varying informational input into mental representations of invariant features in our environment? This book presents a unified account of the phenomenological and epistemological role of perception that is informed by empirical research. So it develops an account of perception that provides an answer to the first two questions, while being sensitive to scientific accounts that address the third question. The key idea is that perception is constituted by employing perceptual capacities - for example the capacity to discriminate instances of red from instances of blue. Perceptual content, consciousness, and evidence are each analyzed in terms of this basic property of perception. Employing perceptual capacities constitutes phenomenal character as well as perceptual content. The primacy of employing perceptual capacities in perception over their derivative employment in hallucination and illusion grounds the epistemic force of perceptual experience. In this way, the book provides a unified account of perceptual content, consciousness, and evidence.