Essays on Perceptual Experience

Abstract A central figure in Anglo-American philosophy for over four decades, Paul Snowdon made seminal contributions to the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. Snowdon’s work on perception and perceptual experience—much of which is collected in this volume for the first time—was particularly impactful and firmly established “disjunctivism” as a view with which any theorist working in the field must reckon. In Part 1 (“Issues”), Snowdon traces the contours of the concept of perception, refining his formulation of the disjunctivist position, determining the degree of involvement of the concept of causation, and engaging critically with arguments which aim to support sense-data theories. In its critical examination of the views propounded by a number of influential philosophers, Part 2 (“Philosophers”) amounts to a partial sketch of the history of twentieth-century philosophy of perception. Among the figures whose work Snowdon engages are J. L. Austin, A. J. Ayer, Michael Ayers, Michael Hinton, John McDowell, G. E. Moore, H. H. Price, Wilfrid Sellars, P. F. Strawson, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The volume opens with a robust and generous introduction in which Snowdon describes the theoretical challenges, approaches, and themes that animate the set of interrelated problems addressed across all sixteen chapters. Sprinkled throughout are an array of candid reflections that serve both to illuminate substantive connections between the chapters as well as the historical and circumstantial contexts that occasioned their writing.