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ON A NEGLECTED EPISTEMIC VIRTUE *
Author(s) -
Johnston Mark
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
philosophical issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.638
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1758-2237
pISSN - 1533-6077
DOI - 10.1111/j.1533-6077.2011.00201.x
Subject(s) - virtue , citation , epistemology , philosophy , sociology , computer science , library science
For more than a decade I have been quietly complaining that contemporary epistemology lacks an adequate answer to this question: What is the epistemic function of sensory awareness as opposed to immediate (or non-inferential) perceptual judgment?1 It still seems to me a good complaint, and I wish to enter it again today. Perhaps one sign that the complaint is still good is that on many epistemological views, a being as close to us as is possible given that it is devoid of sensory awareness --a “zombie” if you will --could be just as wellplaced epistemically as his closest normal, fully sensate, counterpart. All the zombie would lack is the accompanying light, sound, and bodily sensational show. His beliefs could be as reliably formed as you like. They could be, in the recent terminology of Jack Lyons, vide his fine book Perception and Basic Beliefs, the output of a “primal perceptual system” that has evolved to generate reliable basic beliefs.2