Perception and Knowledge: A Phenomenological Account

Description

This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike.

Walter Hopp is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He has published articles in numerous journals including the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy and Husserl Studies.

'This is a book of many virtues. I think first among them is the level of detail in its arguments, with such a great many figures currently working in the 'analytic' philosophy of mind.' Philosophy in Review '... one of the merits of Hopp's book is that he gives beautifully lucid accounts of debates that have become highly obscure. I can well imagine recommending the discussions of content and of the non-conceptual to an undergraduate confused by the literature, and I intend that as a sincere compliment.' Nick Wiltsher, The Philosophical Quarterly