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Context:Directrealism is a non-reductive, anti-representationalist theory of perception lying at the heart of mainstream analytic philosophy, where it is currently generating a lot of interest. For all that, it is widely held to be both controversial and anti-scientific. On the other hand, the sensorimotor theory of perception initially generated a lot of interest within enactive philosophy of cognitive science, but has arguably not yet delivered on its initial promise. Problem: I aim to show that the sensorimotor (...) theory anddirectrealism complement each other, and that the result is a philosophically radical, but fully scientifically realised, theory of perception. Method: The article uses philosophical analysis and discussion. It also draws on empirical evidence from the relevant cognitive sciences. Results:Directrealism can be augmented by sensorimotor theory to become a scientifically tractable alternative to the mainstream, representationalist research programme within cognitive science. Implications: The article aims to further clarify the philosophical importance of the sensorimotor approach to perception. It also aims to show that the apparently radical claim that we perceive objects themselves is amenable to normal scientific study. Constructivist content: Objects are analysed as a kind of collaboration between the world and the perceiver. On this account, we can never perceive outside the categories of our own understanding, but we do perceive genuinely outside our own heads. Thus, the approach here is not exactly constructivism, though it shares many goals and results with constructivism. (shrink)

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Smythies and Ramachandran claim that thedirect realist theory of perception has been refuted by recent psychophysics. This paper takes up the psychophysics, and the definition ofdirectrealism employed by Smythies and Ramachandran, to show thatdirectrealism has not been so refuted. I argue that thedirect realist may grant that perceptual images are constructed by the central nervous system, without treating those images as “phenomenal objects.” Until phenomenal objects are shown to (...) be distinct from extra-mental objects, and the only objects of perception properly so-called, thedirect realist will remain generally edified by the relevant psychophysics. (shrink)

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a vigorous and challenging defence ofdirectrealism in which one gets not only a clear overview of what precisely the problems are, but also a forceful and ...

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I discuss the so-called “problem of perception” in relation to the Argument from Illusion: Can we directly perceive the external world? According toDirectRealism, at least sometimes perception providesdirect and immediate awareness of reality. But the Argument from Illusion threatens to undermine the possibility of genuine perception. In The Problem of Perception (2002), A. D. Smith proposes a novel defense ofDirectRealism based on a careful study of perceptual phenomenology. According to his (...) theory, the intentionality of perception is explained in terms of three phenomenological features of perception: phenomenalthree-dimensional spatiality, movement, and the Anstoss. He argues that this account of perceptual intentionality can resist a central premise of the Argument from Illusion, i.e. the “sense-datum inference.” After presenting Smith’s theory, I argue that he fails to distinguish two independent tasks for thedirect realist, and that he underestimates the threat of the so-called “sense-datum infection.” My contention is that even if Smith’s theory of perceptual intentionality is correct,DirectRealism has not been saved from the Argument from Illusion. To resist the Argument from Illusion, it is not enough to merely consider how to block the sense-datum inference. Thedirect realist must also find a way to undermine the sense-datum infection. If so, I suggest,DirectRealism cannot be defended by perceptual phenomenology alone. (shrink)

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My aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the distinction betweendirectrealism and representationalism by offering a critical analysis of Steven Nadler.

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ARISTOTLE’S THEORY OF PERCEPTION AND THOUGHT in books 2 and 3 of de Anima is usually interpreted in terms of representationalism: in perception and thought, we receive sensible or intelligible forms. These forms are representations of qualities, things, or events in the world. We gain epistemic access to the world by means of these representations. In this paper I argue that contrary to received opinion, Aristotle’s text can also be read in terms ofdirectrealism: we have epistemic (...) access to the world in perception and thought without representations intervening as epistemic intermediaries. (shrink)

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First published in 1925, A Theory ofDirectRealism is divided in two parts: the first part is an attempt to formulate a realistic theory of Perception and of the physical world, and the second part is an exposition of Hegelian idealism and its compatibility withrealism. This book ondirectrealism will be of interest to students of philosophy, history and literature.

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Up until the middle years of the twentieth century, the vast majority of philosophers rejected theories ofdirect perception, but by its closedirectrealism had become the new orthodoxy. On the other hand, mainstream cognitive science has been consistent in its rejection ofdirect perception. And, moreover, whendirect perception is championed by an avowedly radical Gibsonian minority it is at the expense of questioning the realist assumptions that underpin contemporary analytic philosophy. So here (...) is a dilemma fordirectrealism: it seems you can have the directness-claim or therealism-claim, but not both together. (shrink)

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It is fairly standard in accounts of the epistemology of perceptual knowledge to distinguish three main alternative positions: representationalism, phenomenalism, and a third view that is called either naïverealism ordirectrealism. I have always found the last of these views puzzling and elusive. My aim in this paper is to try to figure out whatdirectrealism amounts to, mainly with an eye to seeing whether it offers a genuine epistemological alternative to the (...) other two views and to representationalism in particular. My main thesis will be that it does not—that what is right indirect realist views turns out to have little bearing on the central epistemological issue concerning perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

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The most common form ofdirectrealism is PhenomenologicalDirectRealism (PDR). PDR is the theory thatdirectrealism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with SemanticDirectRealism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you indirect cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked (...) by PDR. PDR is what most understand bydirectrealism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories. (shrink)

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In The Problem of Perception, A.D. Smith’s central aim is to defend the view that we can directly perceive ordinary objects, such as cups, keys and the like.1 The book is organized around the two arguments that Smith considers to be serious threats to the possibility ofdirect perception: the argument from illusion, and the argument from hallucination. The argument from illusion threatens this possibility because it concludes that indirectrealism is true. Indirectrealism is the view (...) that we perceive mind-independent ordinary objects, but can only do so indirectly, by perceiving mind-dependent objects: objects whose existence depends on being perceived or thought about. The argument from hallucination draws a similar conclusion: if we perceive mindindependent ordinary objects at all, then our perception of them is indirect in the same way. In responding to these arguments, Smith develops an account of percep- tual consciousness. Perceptual consciousness is a kind of experience, distinct from what Smith calls ‘mere sensory experiences’, or equivalently, ‘mere sensation’. Perceptual consciousness is experience that is properly percep- tual, in which one has the phenomenology of perceiving things in the external world (including one’s body) that exist independently of one’s mind. Perceptual consciousness on its own does not suffice for actually being in perceptual contact with mind-independent reality, although it suffices for it to seem as if one i s . It follows that perceptual consciousness does not suffice fordirect perception of ordinary objects, or fordirectrealism. Nevertheless, Smith holds that the correct account of perceptual consciousness is a crucial element in blocking the arguments from illusion and hallucination, and therefore in supporting the possibility ofdirect perception. This is an extraordinarily engaging book. Within a single, unified narrative, one encounters the views of many philosophers—Husserl, Fine, Broad, Sextus Empiricus, Loar, Schopenhauer, Meinong, Burge, Dilthey, Russell, Dennett, Sartre, O’Shaughnessy, Evans, Berkeley, Craig, Brentano and many.... (shrink)

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In this paper, I show how Thomas Aquinas's account of sensory cognition is undergirded by a strong commitment todirectrealism. According to the specific form ofdirectrealism I articulate and defend here, which I claim emerges from a proper study of Aquinas's account of sensory cognition, it is only by having sense experiences that possess definitive content--content that is isomorphic or formally identical with the sensible features of mind-independent reality--that we can be credited with (...) occupying world-intending sensory states, in which we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell objective aspects or features of the world itself. Thus, it is by virtue of possessing the requisite content that the veridical sensations or perceptions we enjoy and possess bear directly on the world, and thereby unite us to the world. In defending this claim, I exposit what I take to be the most important features of Aquinas's account of sensory cognition: most notably, the operation of the external senses, and secondarily, the role of the common sense and phantasms. Interpreting Aquinas in the right light allows us better to understand and appreciate his account of sensory cognition as well as the nature and benefits ofdirectrealism itself. (shrink)

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The overall contention of this paper, conducted through an examination of the idea of a ‘criticaldirectrealism’ as this was developed across the twentieth century first in the thought of Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973) and then in a different form by his son Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989), is that such a view, in both its conceptual and sensory representational dimensions, is plausible as a form ofdirectrealism. However, to the extent that the mediating sensory or (...) qualitative dimension was itself conceived by both thinkers in what I characterize as strongly ‘phenomenal realist’ terms, the resulting philosophical commitments were of a kind that most currentdirect realists would generally not accept, even in cases where they themselves are phenomenal realists (perhaps naïve realists). The various perceiver-dependent forms of that additional, perhaps detachable commitment of most critical realists is likely responsible for the assessment of William Pepperell Montague (1873–1953) and other ‘neo-realists’ that ‘criticalrealism’ is not really, as advertised by Roy Wood Sellars, a version ofdirectrealism, but ultimately a retreat to indirectrealism. However, I argue that in both of its primary conceptual and sensory representational commitments, ‘criticaldirectrealism’ remains a plausible competitor todirect acquaintance versions ofdirectrealism. (shrink)

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The brain-in-a-vat argument for skepticism is best formulated, not using the closure principle, but using the “Preference Principle,” which states that in order to be justified in believing H on the basis of E, one must have grounds for preferring H over each alternative explanation of E. When the argument is formulated this way, Dretske’s and Klein’s responses to it fail. However, the strengthened argument can be refuted using adirect realist account of perception. For thedirect realist, (...) refuting the SIV scenario is not a precondition on knowledge of the external world, and only thedirect realist can give a non-circular account of how we know we’re not brains in vats. (shrink)

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Since the demise of the Sense-Datum independent objects or events to be objects Theory and Phenomenalism in the last cenof perception; however, unlikeDirect Retury,DirectRealism in the philosophy of alists, Indirect Realists take this percepperception has enjoyed a resurgence of tion to be indirect by involving a prior popularity.1 Curiously, however, although awareness of some tertium quid between there have been attempts in the literature the mind and external objects or events.3 to refute some of (...) the arguments against Idealists and Phenomenalists agree withDirectRealism, there has been, as of yet, the Indirect Realists. (shrink)

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Direct Realists believe that perception involvesdirect awareness of an object not dependent for its existence on the perceiver. Howard Robinson rejects this doctrine in favour of a Sense-Datum theory of perception. His argument againstDirectRealism invokes the principle ‘same proximate cause, same immediate effect’. Since there are cases in whichdirect awareness has the same proximate cerebral cause as awareness of a sense datum, theDirect Realist is, he thinks, obliged to deny (...) this causal principle. I suggest that althoughDirectRealism is in more than one respect implausible, it does not succumb to Robinson’s argument. The causal principle is true only if ‘proximate cause’ means ‘proximate sufficient cause’, and theDirect Realist need not concede that there is a sufficient cerebral cause fordirect awareness of independent objects. (shrink)

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If (1) a person's knowing a proposition P implies that P is true and if (2) facts are unidentical with true propositions then in knowing P a person does not know a fact. Unless the correspondence view of truth is abandoned, this skepticism as regards facts cannot be answered by denying (2). If facts are identical with true propositions then facts are (trivially) true. But if truth consists in a correspondence to fact then every fact, being true, corresponds to a (...) fact and the latter fact to another fact and so ad infinitum leaving the truth of any fact groundless. But the skepticism can be answered by construing the dictum that knowledge implies truth not as (1) above but as (1')» a person's knowing a fact F implies that the statement of that fact is true. On this solution ofdirectrealism facts are substituted for propositions as the objects of knowledge and statements instead of propositions are made the bearers of 'true'. (shrink)

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Although it has been something of a fetish for philosophers to distinguish between hallucination and illusion, the enduring problems for philosophy of perception that both phenomena present are not essentially different. Hallucination, in its pure philosophical form, is just another example of the philosopher’s penchant for considering extreme and extremely idealized cases in order to understand the ordinary. The problem that has driven much philosophical thinking about perception is the problem of how to reconcile our evidentdirect perceptual contact (...) with objects and properties with the equally evident fact that there is no phenomenological signal separating error and truth. “The obscure object of hallucination” offers a subtle and plausible solution to this problem and one that solves the problem generally, not just in the special case of hallucination. Johnston’s objective is to offer a theory of perception that meets two constraints: (1) that it provide an explanation of the possibility of delusive and veridical sensings that are indistinguishable from the first-person perspective and (2) that it count as form ofdirectrealism where this is taken to involve acquaintance with the objects of perception. Johnston uses the first constraint to rule out disjunctivism. The second constraint is used to rule out conjunctivism, which as Johnston uses the term, includes most of the widely adopted philosophical theories of perception. Johnston also develops his own sophisticated and interesting theory of perception. In what follows, I will discuss the relation of Johnston’s theory to conjunctivism, examine one of his anti-conjunctivist arguments and finally compare Johnston’s theory with some other versions ofdirectrealism. These topics constitute a very incomplete selection of the important issues discussed in this rich and interesting paper. I will also not disagree, in any fundamental way, with any of the central theses of Johnston’s discussion.. (shrink)

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Directrealism with respect to perceptual experiences has two facets, an epistemological one and a metaphysical one. From the epistemological point of view it involves the claim that perceptual experiences provide immediate justification. From the metaphysical point of view it involves the claim that in perceptual experience we enter intodirect contact with items in the external world. In a more radical formulation, often associated with naiverealism, the metaphysical conception ofdirectrealism involves (...) the idea that perceptual experiences depend on the items in the external world they are related to. This paper describes a simple account that makes room for immediate justification provided by perceptual experience. The simple account establishes an explanatory relation between the justificatory role of a perceptual experience and the fact that such an experience provides a reason for a belief. The account is evaluated in the light of some objections. Different ways to react to those objections are discussed. It will appear that in order to preserve the explanatory relation established by the simple account, one has to accept naiverealism. By breaking the connection between reason and justification, on the other side, one jeopardizes the possibility for perceptual experience to deliver immediate justification. (shrink)

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Let’s define epistemologicaldirectrealism as the view that we have noninferentially justified beliefs in at least some contingent propositions describing the external physical world. I add the adjective “external” here so as to leave open the question of whether sensations and other mental phenomena are themselves physical. I take it that an indirect realist can consistently maintain both that all knowledge of external physical reality must be inferred from knowledge of subjective sensations and also conclude that subjective (...) sensations are, for example, brain states. It’s a bit awkward, however, to use the cumbersome expression “external physical reality” and so for ease of exposition I shall often omit the adjective “external.” I shall say that a proposition describes the physical world only if its truth entails a proposition which attributes to some object those properties in virtue of which the thing is physical. So, for example, I might be able to know that the F exists, where the F is, in fact, a physical object. But if the proposition that the F exists does not entail that the F is physical, the proposition that the F exists is not, in this sense, a proposition describing the physical world. Berkeley, for example, sometimes posed as an epistemologicaldirect realist when he claimed both that we can know unproblematically that certain ideas exist and that a physical object is nothing but a bundle of ideas. But when he was being careful he made clear that the ideas we know directly are never by themselves constitutive of a physical object—at best they are logical “parts” of objects. On his more sophisticated view, knowledge that a given physical object exists would always require inference—complex inference at that. Berkeley was no epistemologicaldirect realist. (shrink)

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Direct realist versions of foundationalism have recently been advocated by Pryor, Huemer, Alston, and Plantinga. DRF can hold either that our foundational observation beliefs are about the simple perceptible qualities of objects, or that our foundational observation beliefs are more complex ones about objects in the world. I will show that whether our observational beliefs are simple or complex, the agent must possess other epistemically significant states in order for these observational beliefs to be justified. These other states are (...) therefore epistemically prior to observation belief, and prevent them from being epistemically foundational. (shrink)

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In his account of visual perception, Thomas Reid describes visible figure as both ‘real and external’ to the eye and as the ‘immediate object of sight’. These claims appear to conflict with Reid'sdirectrealism, since if the ‘immediate’ object of vision is also itsdirect object, then sight would be perceptually indirect due to the role of visible figure as a perceptual intermediary. I argue that this apparent threat to Reid'sdirectrealism may be (...) resolved by understanding visible figure as the set of geometrical properties that holds between an object's visible surfaces and some particular perspective or point of view. On this relational interpretation of visible figure, and once an ambiguity over the use of the term ‘object’ is resolved, Reid's account of vision is both epistemically and perceptuallydirect, as well as consistent with his account of the other senses and doctrine of signs. (shrink)

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These comments are concerned to show thatdirectrealism about perception is quite compatible with the physical and neuroscientific story. Use is made of D.M. Armstrong's account of perception as coming to believe by means of the senses. What we come to believe about is the bird on the gatepost, say. So the account isdirect realist. But it is obviously compatible with the scientific story which explains how the coming to believe comes about. We can also (...) identify beliefs with brain states. (shrink)

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Analytic philosophy took a wrong turn when it rehabilitateddirectrealism. From the perspective of cognitive science, it seems that we can have the directness-claim or therealism-claim but not both together. Up until the mid-1900s the vast majority of philosophers dismisseddirectrealism as hopelessly naïve, but by the close of the century it had become the orthodoxy within analytic philosophy. In contrast, mainstream cognitive science has remained constant in its opposition to the directness-claim, (...) and when the directness-claim is maintained, by an avowedly-radical minority, it is at the expense of therealism-claim. (shrink)

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As we now know, most, if not all, philosophers in the High Middle Ages agreed that what we immediately perceive are external objects and that the immediate object of perception must not be some image present to the mind. Yet most — but not all — philosophers in the High Middle Ages also held, following Aristotle, that perception is a process wherein the percipient takes on the likeness of the external object. This likeness — called a species — is a (...) representation (of some sort) by means of which we immediately perceive external objects. But how can perception be at oncedirect — or immediate — and at the same time by way of representations? The usual answer here was that the species represents the external object to some percipient even though the species itself is not at all perceived: the species is that by which I perceive and not that which I perceive. John Buridan defends this traditional view — call itdirectrealism with representations. However, just a couple of decades before Buridan, one of the more important philosophers at Paris, Durand of St.-Pourçain, had already rejecteddirectrealism with representation. Durand defends what I will calldirectrealism without representations. On his view, a species is not at all necessary during overtlydirect forms of perception, neither as cause nor as representation. This paper has two parts. In the first part, I will discuss some of the more interesting arguments that Durand makes againstdirectrealism with representations. In the second part, I will look at Buridan's defense of the view. -/- . (shrink)

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If (1) a person's knowing a proposition P implies that P is true and if (2) facts are unidentical with true propositions then in knowing P a person does not know a fact. Unless the correspondence view of truth is abandoned, this skepticism as regards facts cannot be answered by denying (2). If facts are identical with true propositions then facts are (trivially) true. But if truth consists in a correspondence to fact then every fact, being true, corresponds to a (...) fact and the latter fact to another fact and so ad infinitum leaving the truth of any fact groundless. But the skepticism can be answered by construing the dictum that knowledge implies truth not as (1) above but as (1')» a person's knowing a fact F implies that the statement of that fact is true. On this solution ofdirectrealism facts are substituted for propositions as the objects of knowledge and statements instead of propositions are made the bearers of 'true'. (shrink)

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This paper examines pain states (and other intransitive bodily sensations) from the perspective of the problems they pose for pure informational/representational approaches to naturalizing qualia. I start with a comprehensive critical and quasi-historical discussion of so-called Perceptual Theories of Pain (e.g., Armstrong, Pitcher), as these were the natural predecessors of the more moderndirect realist views. I describe the theoretical backdrop (indirectrealism, sense-data theories) against which the perceptual theories were developed. The conclusion drawn is that pure representationalism (...) about pain in the tradition ofdirect realist perceptual theories (e.g., Dretske, Tye) leaves out something crucial about the phenomenology of pain experiences, namely, their affective character. I touch upon the role that introspection plays in such representationalist views, and indicate how it contributes to the source of their trouble vis-à-vis bodily sensations. The paper ends by briefly commenting on the relation between the affective/evaluative component of pain and the hedonic valence of emotions. (shrink)

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In response to Ari Armstrong's essay, "ADirect Realist's Challenge to Skepticism," Huemer defends his views on two issues concerning the nature of perception, against the Objectivist position: First, he argues that perceptual experiences have propositional but nonconceptual content; second, he argues that in perceptual illusions, the senses misrepresent their objects. He finds that the Objectivist view that perception cannot misrepresent because it lacks propositional content not only is absurd but opens the door to philosophical skepticism.

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The aim of the present article is to identify and analyze three particular disputes among current proponents of perceptualrealism which may throw light on tensions present in the history ofdirectrealism and current discussions. Starting from John Searle’s conception ofdirectrealism, I first set McDowell and Travis’s approaches in contrast with it. I then further compare Travis’ view with McDowell’s. I claim that differences among the three philosophers are traceable first to methodological (...) conceptions of the approach to perceptual experience (whether philosophical naturalism implies dealing with the sub-personal level), then to what makes for the particularity of a perceptual experience (whether it involves consciousness and a task of unity or not), and finally to what makes for the determinacy of an experience of things in the world (whether such determinacy characterizes the world itself or, as such, involves language and thought). (shrink)

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William James' Radical Empiricist essays offer a unique and powerful argument fordirectrealism about our perceptions of objects. This theory can be completed with some observations by Kant on the intellectual preconditions for a perceptual judgment. Finally James and Kant deliver a powerful blow to the representational theory of perception and knowledge, which applies quite broadly to theories of representation generally.

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Perception and Reason is a subtle and sophisticated exploration of some of the most fundamental issues concerning perception and its ontological and epistemic connection to belief about the external world. For those of us sympathetic to rather traditional views about the nature of thought and knowledge, the book is particularly intriguing as Brewer wants to defend a version ofdirectrealism that would satisfy those unhappy with contemporary externalist accounts of reference, knowledge, and justification.

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Perler, D. Essentialism andDirectRealism: Some Late Medieval Perspectives. Topoi 19, 111–122 (2000).

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The aim of my dissertation is to exploit philosophical insights advanced by John McDowell in the contemporary analytic philosophy of mind in order to readdress a fundamental theological issue, viz. how persons can have knowledge of God, or more specifically, how God can transcend the mind but still remain known to the mind. In the first chapter, I present the 'problem' of how God can be known, and briefly trace its development in modern and contemporary 'antirealist' philosophies of religion. In (...) the second chapter, I exposit the main features of McDowell's philosophy of mind and place McDowell in his wider philosophical context. A secondary aim of this chapter is to lay the necessary groundwork for the third chapter, in which I exposit and defend Aquinas's theory of cognition as a unique form ofdirectrealism akin to thedirectrealism that undergirds McDowell's wider philosophy of mind as well as his specific construal of the nature of perceptual experience. In the fourth chapter, I build on themes developed in the third chapter and exposit and defend Aquinas's account of beatific knowledge of God as a paradigmatic instance of cognition anddirectrealism in Aquinas. In the fifth and sixth chapters, I use Aquinas's account of faith to advance a 'theologicalrealism' akin to McDowell's 'ethicalrealism', which forms the basis of McDowell's moral psychology. (shrink)

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In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate the structure of Sellars' criticaldirectrealism in the philosophy of perception. This position is original because it attempts to balance two claims that many have thought to be incompatible: (1) that perceptual knowledge isdirect, i.e., not inferential, and (2) that perceptual knowledge is irreducibly conceptual. Even though perceptual episodes are not the result of inferences, they must still stand within the space of reasons if they are to be (...) counted not only as knowledge, but also as thoughts directed at the world. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how Sellars elaborates and defends this position. (shrink)

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For traditional epistemologists like myself the rise in popularity of externalist epistemologies has made philosophical life more than a little difficult. The debate between internalist and externalist analyses of knowledge and justification has implications that range far beyond the immediate topic in dispute—the nature of knowledge and justified belief. This paper was written for a conference titled "Can Epistemology Be Unified?" Whether or not it can be unified, it certainly is not at the present time. To say that a field (...) of philosophy is unified is not, of course, to say that there is universal agreement on the answers to fundamental questions—if unification required that, then no field of philosophy would ever be unified. It is enough for epistemology to be unified that epistemologists recognize the legitimacy or philosophical interest of the same kinds of questions and recognize the legitimacy of the same general philosophical methodology. Both internalists and externalists are indeed addressing a common question when they ask about the nature of knowledge and justified belief, when the ask, that is, metaepistemological questions. Moreover, as far as I can tell, in attempting to answer metaepistemological questions, epistemologists employ more or less the classic methodology of analytic philosophy—analyses of epistemic concepts seek necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of epistemic concepts, and proposals are evaluated with the thought experiments that have been the stock in trade of analytic philosophy for centuries. The field of metaepistemology is unified. If the externalist's metaepistemology were correct, however, we would need to rethink the entire conceptual framework within which philosophers have addressed a host of epistemological and even metaphysical issues. If paradigm externalists were correct, philosophers, qua philosophers, should stop asking certain questions they used to find very interesting and should even abandon certain methods of doing philosophy. In this paper I am primarily interested in the implications of an externalist epistemology for the classic debate overdirectrealism concerning the external world. After suggesting that even externalists might need to abandon epistemologicaldirectrealism and outlining a problem that that might cause, I'll close with some very general remarks on how different the epistemic landscape becomes given the way in which externalists understand the distinction between inferentially and noninferentially justified belief. (shrink)

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In the first chapter, I explain the concept of awareness and the distinction betweendirect and indirect awareness.Direct awareness of x is understood as awareness of x which is not based on awareness of anything else, and the "based on" relation is understood as a particular way in which one state of awareness can be caused by another state of awareness when the contents of the two states are logically related.

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