Objects and the Explanation of Perception

TY - CHAP

T1 - Objects and the Explanation of Perception

AU - Brewer, Bill

PY - 2018/6/28

Y1 - 2018/6/28

N2 - Persisting macroscopic material objects play a fundamental role in our commonsense understanding of the world around us, and this is central to our appreciation of their status as mind-independent things. I offer a characterization of one central aspect of this explanatory role and elaborate a conception of such objects themselves that I argue is essential to their playing it. I conclude that the objects that play this fundamental explanatory role meet the conception that I elaborate. The material objects that we encounter in perception are evidently independent of our perceptions of them; and, as such, they conform to what I call the Natural Continuants View.

AB - Persisting macroscopic material objects play a fundamental role in our commonsense understanding of the world around us, and this is central to our appreciation of their status as mind-independent things. I offer a characterization of one central aspect of this explanatory role and elaborate a conception of such objects themselves that I argue is essential to their playing it. I conclude that the objects that play this fundamental explanatory role meet the conception that I elaborate. The material objects that we encounter in perception are evidently independent of our perceptions of them; and, as such, they conform to what I call the Natural Continuants View.

KW - Natural Continuant, Artificial Continuant, Exclusivity, mind-independence, Explanatory Determinacy, Sortalism, Reference Magnetism

U2 - 10.1093/oso/9780198809630.003.0011

DO - 10.1093/oso/9780198809630.003.0011

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9780198809630

BT - In the Light of Experience

A2 - Gersel, Johan

A2 - Jensen, Rasmus Thybo

A2 - Thanning, Morten S.

A2 - Overgaard, Søren

PB - Oxford University Press

CY - Oxford

ER -