Volume 35, 1998
Philosophy of Mind
Robert Hudson
Pages 119-123
In Defense of Direct Perception
My goal in this paper is to defend the claim that one can directly perceive an object without possessing any descriptive beliefs about this object. My strategy in defending this claim is to rebut three arguments that attack my view of direct perception. According to these arguments, the notion of direct perception as I construe it is objectionable since: (1) it is epistemically worthless since it leaves perceived objects uninterpreted; (2) it cannot explain how perceived objects are identified; and (3) it is ill-prepared to assign objective content to perceptual states.