Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Adam Pautz, a philosopher at Brown University, has written PERCEPTION, a new book from Routledge. I gather from the review in NOTRE DAME PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEWS that Routledge takes it there are four distinct schools about perception, which he regards as roughly synonymous with human experience. He categorizes these schools as different answers to the following fill-in-the-blank question: "To have an experience with a certain character (that is, to have an experience of a certain type) just is to ____________________."   First there is "naive realism." This holds that to have an experience of a certain character just is to  experience the actual character of material things, e.g., the redness and roundness of the tomato.   Then there is "sense datum theory." To have an experience of a certain character just is  to be aware of  non-material  objects, viz., sense data, generated by neural processes in the brain. Thirdly, there is "internal physical ...

  In philosophical writings about epistemology today there is a rather big to-do about internalist versus externalist accounts of knowledge. I'll define the distinction here speaking very roughly.  To an internalist, I know X to be the case if and only if (a) X is the case, (b) I believe X, and (c) I have a good reason, or warrant, or justification, to believe X. To an externalist, on the other hand, I know X to be the case if and only if (a) X is the case, (b) I believe X, and (c) the reason why I believe X has an appropriate causal connection with X.  The point of the labels is that justification (or whatever a particular theorist in this line may call it) is internal to my state of mind as the believer-of-X.  Causation may be entirely external to my state of mind.  Direct sense perception provides the simplest example.  I form a belief that the leaves of this tree in front of me are green. It IS the case that they are green. The reason why I believe them...