Subject: Epistemology

Name: Hoang Minh Nang

Pham Van Doan
Perceptual knowledge
In the perceptual knowledge according to William Alston revolve around two questions
regard to perception.
 One is the condition for perceptual Justification or perceptual knowledge in normal case.
 Second is how a philosopher might provide a justification for perception in general.
 Alston distinguish externalist and internalist approaches to perception.
 That externalist accounts of perceptual justification has at least a weak internalist constraint. For
example: can we imagine that we have two spoons and we are sure that we have in our mind the
image of the spoon. So I am sure that I know about it, if someone does has the image of spoon in
their mind, they will not know that is the spoons.
 A perceptual experience justifies me in holding some perceptual belief.
 There are four views that he defends. They are:
 The realism, on this view, perceptual consciousness is irreducibly relation in its nature, to have a
perceptual experience is to have some object appear to you in some way. For example: I see
objects in front of me, and I know that it is the best way, to know, to understand, if I cannot see
the objects, I am hard to know the objects.
The sense – datum theory, On the most common conception, sense data (singular: “sense
datum”) have three defining characteristics:

i. Sense data are the kind of thing we are directly aware of in perception,
ii. Sense data are dependent on the mind, and
iii. Sense data have the properties that perceptually appear to us.
this view holds that what appears to us in perception is a mental object.

 Adverbialism which perceptual experience is a way of being conscious rather than a conscious
relation to some mental or extramental object.
 The phenomenal quality view understands perceptual experience as an awareness of qualities of
one’s mental state.
 So only the realism is the best to know clearly objects, another just help us know that there are
many views which help us knowing more, how to imagine, or contemplating, but only realism is
best.
Finally, he concludes that such attempts are inadequate, insofar as they either: simply lay it
down in an ad-hoc way that perceptual beliefs are justified, invoke some discredited thesis
about the ontology of physical objects, or give up on the idea that justification has any
connection to truth.
 He is also considering the problem of hallucinatory experience. That experiences are
problem for direct realism. On the other hand hallucinatory experiences seem not to have the
structure that direct realist has described for justifying experiences: an object appearing to a
subject in a particular way. The direct realist may then hold that beliefs about physical objects
can be justified by either kind of experience, the central contention of direct realism is
preserved.