An ecological approach to disjunctivism
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An ecological approach to disjunctivism Eros Moreira de Carvalho1 Received: 14 August 2018 / Accepted: 11 May 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract In this paper I claim that perceptual discriminatory skills rely on a suitable type of environment as an enabling condition for their exercise. This is because of the constitutive connection between environment and perceptual discriminatory skills, inasmuch as such connection is construed from an ecological approach. The exercise of a discriminatory skill yields knowledge of affordances of objects, properties, or events in the surrounding environment. This is practical knowledge in the first-person perspective. An organism learns to perceive an object by becoming sensitized to its affordances. I call this position ecological disjunctivism. A corollary of this position is that a case of perception and its corresponding case of hallucination—which is similar to the former only in some respects—are different in nature. I show then how the distinguishability problem is addressed by ecological disjunctivism. Keywords Discriminatory skills · Ecological approach to perception · Disjunctivism · Affordances · Practical knowledge
1 Introduction Gibson ended his paper “New Reasons for Realism”, published in Synthese, with a plea for help (1967, p. 172). He asked us to join him in the task of figuring out the epistemological consequences of his then new ecological view of perception. Responding to this call, I claim that disjunctivism and the ecological view of perception fit each
Productivity Researcher Level 2 of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
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Eros Moreira de Carvalho [email protected] Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Campus do Vale, Av. Bento Gonçalves, 9500 – Prédio 43311, Bloco AI, Sala 211, Cx. Postal 15.055, Porto Alegre, RS CEP 91501-970, Brazil
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Synthese
other.1 The ecological view of perception is good for disjunctivism in providing a response to Tyler Burge’s objection that disjunctivism is incompatible with science (2011, p. 43).2 Disjunctivism is not only compatible with but also supported by ecological psychology. The ecological view also helps disjunctivism to explain why an episode of perception and its corresponding episode of hallucination are different in nature. Due to the way an organism becomes sensitized to its environment, the perceptual skills of the organism can only be exercised in their proper environment. Whatever the response of the organism in an improper environment, it’s not the outcome of the exercise of a perceptual skill or ability. As I will show, this ecological construal of perceptual skills helps disjunctivism to deal with the distinguishability problem. The problem here is that even if an episode of perception and its corresponding episode of hallucination are different in nature, as claimed by disjunctivists, this difference is not enough to explain how one can know that they are perceiving, rather than hallucinatin
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