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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Seemings or appearances are distinct from beliefs.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Doxastic theories (e.g., Pitcher, Armstrong) identify perceptual experience with a set of beliefs or belief-like states about the environment.
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    • 2.The Müller-Lyer case can be explained as a conflict between a persistent sub-doxastic or tacit belief and a reflectively held explicit belief, not a belief-appearance gap.
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    • 3.If seemings are functionally individuated by their inferential role and behavioral dispositions, no principled distinction from belief-states remains.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Wilfrid Sellars argued in 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind' that all awareness, including perceptual seeming, is already conceptually structured and hence doxastic in character.
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    • 2.If seemings necessarily inherit their content from the conceptual repertoire of the perceiver, they are not categorically distinct from belief but rather a species of it.
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    • 3.The alleged epistemic asymmetry between beliefs and appearances dissolves if normative assessment applies to how one deploys concepts in perceptual uptake, as Sellars's argument implies.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Once one is familiar with the Müller-Lyer illusion, one no longer believes that the two lines are of unequal length, yet the lines still appear to be unequal.
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    • 2.The same pattern holds for apparent intuitions and apparent memories that one becomes convinced are false: the seeming persists even after the belief is retracted.
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    • 3.Beliefs are subject to epistemic norms and can be supported by epistemic reasons, whereas it does not make sense to say the same of appearances.
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    Next step

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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.