Perception and Knowledge A Phenomenological Account

This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike.

Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Content; 2. Experiential conceptualism; 3. Conceptualism and knowledge; 4. Against experiential conceptualism; 5. Conceptual and nonconceptual content; 6. The contents of perception; 7. To the things themselves; Bibliography.

Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play such a distinctive epistemic role is something that sets them radically apart from beliefs. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology.

Walter Hopp is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He has published articles in numerous journals including the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy and Husserl Studies.