Affiliation:
1. Philosophy, South Texas College
Abstract
Abstract
While his pragmatism subsumes a form of empiricism, Peirce denies that perception is a type of self-intuitive cognition that serves as an incorrigible foundation for knowledge. Rather, on his account, perception is a fallible and interpretive process on which all our knowledge depends nonetheless. All reasoning and inquiry rest on perceptual judgments, so there is no “going behind” those judgments, although semiotic analysis can explain how, or in what sense, we directly perceive the external world (the “doctrine of immediate perception”). This chapter traces the development of Peirce’s theory of perception from 1868 to 1906, paying special attention to the 1903 Harvard Lectures, while explaining how his theory addresses what we perceive, how perception represents the world, and what perception means for science and inquiry. These correspond to metaphysical, semiotic, and normative aspects of his account. Finally, it attempts to reconcile the strong empiricist claims of the 1903 Harvard Lectures with his commitment to a form of nativism about concepts and beliefs in other works.
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