Essays on Perceptual Experience

This volume collects essays by Paul F. Snowdon on the philosophy of perception. The first part refines Snowdon's formulation of disjunctivism, examines the role of causation, and evaluates sensa-data theories. The second part contains critical examinations of the views propounded by several influential philosophers.

A central figure in Anglo-American philosophy for over four decades, Paul F. 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 influential and firmly established ''disjunctivism'' as a view with which any theorist working in the field must reckon. In the essays collected in the first part of this volume, 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. The second part contains critical examinations of the views propounded by several influential philosophers, amounting 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 intellectually generous introduction in which Snowdon describes the theoretical challenges, approaches, and themes that animate the set of interrelated problems addressed across all sixteen essays. Sprinkled throughout are an array of candid reflections that serve to illuminate both the substantive connections between the essays as well as the historical and circumstantial contexts that occasioned their writing.