Chapter 4, section 1 Perspectivism

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Chapter 4, section 1Perspectivism

• PHL 472
• Spring 2004

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The Rise of Perspectivism

• The Appearance/Reality Distinction
• Just because things seem to be a certain way does
  not mean they really are that way
• We would like to know how things really are

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The Rise of Perspectivism

• Philosophical Rationalism and the
  appearance/reality distinction
• Philosophical Rationalism is the view that we
  have the ability to use pure reason to discover
  fundamental truths about the nature of reality

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The Rise of Perspectivism

• The Empiricist approach to the problem
• Empiricism is the view that all knowledge and
  belief is ultimately grounded in experience (pure
  reason does not allow us to discover fundamental
  truths about the nature of reality)

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The Rise of Perspectivism

• Positivism grew out of empiricism
• The symmetry of language and reality
• Simple parts of thought are given through
  experience
• Scientific method results in sentences that are
  objective representations of reality itself

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The Rise of Perspectivism

• Although rationalism and empiricism/positivism
  differ in many respects, they both agree on one
  thing
• It is possible to arrive at a completely
  objective view of reality that does not depend on
  the person who holds that view in any way

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The Rise of Perspectivism

• Perspectivism denies this claim that is common to
  them both
• According to perspectivism, all belief and
  cognition occur from a perspective (and this
  perspective therefore contributes something to
  what is believed)

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Facts and Descriptions
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Facts and Descriptions
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Facts and Descriptions

• For someone who has never seen a duck, the
  picture will always be a picture of a rabbit.
• But for us, it is both a duck and a rabbit. We
  can describe it as both since we have both
  concepts (duck and rabbit)

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Facts and Descriptions

• Notice how the very nature of the visual
  experience changes depending on what aspect of
  the image you concentrate on. When you see it as
  a duck, you cannot see the rabbit, and vice versa.

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Facts and Descriptions

• This shows us something general about facts
• Facts are not base, brute things in the world,
  but are instead phenomena under a particular
  description
• It is a picture of a duck
• Water is H2O

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Facts and Descriptions

• These claims undermine one of the central parts
  of positivism namely, that in experience we are
  simply given the basic concepts by which we
  categorize the world
• The concepts by which we categorize the world are
  required for any part of experience to make sense
  in the first place

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Facts and Descriptions

• Some further examples
• (1) Protons and the cloud chamber
• (2) Cooking and the perception of flavors

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Facts and Descriptions

• Ultimately, then, all facts and descriptions
  require a background conceptual scheme by which
  the raw data of experience is rendered meaningful
  and placed in categories