How Is Wishful Seeing Like Wishful Thinking?

A Simple Argument It is a commonplace that beliefs can be epistemically appropriate or epistemically inappropriate. Suppose Frank wishfully believes that today, all his best features are evident even to the most casual observation. Passers-­‐by who greet him with neutral expressions are holding back their appreciation of him, because they're embarrassed to show it. Anyone who seems displeased with him is feeling inadequate in the face of his many assets. These interpretations make sense to Frank given his original wishful belief, but they are unreasonable, and that belief is the source of their unreasonableness. Can a perceptual experience ever be a source of unreasonableness, because of its dependence on a desire? Could wishful seeing compromise the rational support offered by experience, just as wishful thinking compromises the rational support offered by Frank's wishful belief? Here is a simple argument that it could. Wishful thinking is a route to belief, wishful seeing is a route to perceptual experience. Premise: Beliefs can be ill-­‐founded by wishful thinking. Premise: Wishful seeing is possible. Conclusion. Experiences can be ill-­‐founded by wishful seeing. What kinds of considerations could possibly support such a conclusion? The argument's conceit is that wishful seeing and wishful thinking are sufficiently analogous that they both have ill-­‐founding effects. But as it stands, the argument is poor. There are many places to probe it, starting with whether the idea of wishful seeing makes sense to begin with. Even if it does make sense, one might strongly suspect that equivocation on " ill-­‐ foundedness " between the premise and conclusion is unavoidable, on the grounds that beliefs are ill-­‐founded if they are formed or maintained epistemically inappropriately, but experiences are not governed by epistemic norms. And even if equivocation on " ill-­‐ founded " can be avoided, nothing in the argument explains why the fact that wishful thinking can ill-­‐found beliefs should tell us anything about what wishful seeing can do to the epistemic status of experiences. This is a major gap in the argument. Perhaps wishful seeing and wishful thinking are psychologically similar phenomena, but their epistemic effects differ: wishful seeing does not compromise the rational powers of experience at all. The Simple Argument is invalid. But if its conclusion is true, so that wishful seeing does compromise the rational powers of experience, then a major consequence follows. Experiences are not uniformly receptive. They are not always a landing pad for