Scepticism and the Senses

This chapter considers some lessons that can be learned from philosophical scepticism and some strategies to be pursued in understanding human knowledge in the right way. It examines the conception of perceptual experience and what is needed for a more accurate—and hence more trouble-free—account of what we can and do in fact perceive. It also discusses René Descartes’s sceptical argument and his notion of perceptual knowledge before concluding with an explanation of what it calls propositional perception to account for knowledge of the world. It argues that we can perceive particular objects without believing or knowing anything about them. It is only with such ‘propositional’ objects of perception that direct perceptual knowledge of the world is possible, since knowledge is knowledge of what is so.