There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.

Siegel and Byrne debate whether perceptual experiences present rich properties or exclusively thin properties.

Philosophical/epistemic theories of rationality differ over the role of judgment in rational argumentation. According to the “classical model” of rationality, rational justification is a matter of conformity with explicit rules or principles. Critics of the classical model, such as Harold Brown and Trudy Govier, argue that the model is subject to insuperable difficulties. They propose, instead, that rationality be understood, ultimately, in terms of judgment rather than rules. In this article I respond to Brown's and Govier's criticisms of the classical (...) model, and to the “judgment model” they propose in its place. I argue that that model is unable both to distinguish between rational and irrational judgment and to avoid recourse to rules, and is therefore inadequate as an account of rationality, critical thinking, or argument appraisal. More positively, I argue that an adequate account of rationality must include a place for both rules and judgment. (shrink)

I discuss the roles of journalism in aspirational democracies, and argue that they generate set of pressures on attention that apply to people by virtue of the type of society they live in. These pressures, I argue, generate a problem of democratic attention: for journalism to play its roles in democracy, the attentional demands must be met, but there are numerous obstacles to meeting them. I propose a principle of salience to guide the selection and framing of news stories that (...) I argue may help address the puzzle: the public-as-protagonist principle. -/- . (shrink)

An overview of the epistemology of perception, covering the nature of justification, immediate justification, the relationship between the metaphysics of perceptual experience and its rational role, the rational role of attention, and cognitive penetrability. The published version will contain a smaller bibliography, due to space constraints in the volume.

In Educating Reason, Harvey Siegel presented the case regarding rationality and critical thinking as fundamental education ideals. In Rationality Redeemed? , a collection of essays written since that time, he develops this view, responds to major criticisms raised against it, and engages those critics in dialogue. In developing his ideas and responding to critics, Siegel addresses main currents in contemporary thought, including feminism, postmodernism and multiculturalism.

In this paper I offer a theory of what makes certain influences on visual experiences by prior mental states (including desires, beliefs, moods, and fears) reduce the justificatory force of those experiences. The main idea is that experiences, like beliefs, can have rationally assessable etiologies, and when those etiologies are irrational, the experiences are epistemically downgraded.

In this paper I argue that it's possible that the contents of some visual experiences are influenced by the subject's prior beliefs, hopes, suspicions, desires, fears or other mental states, and that this possibility places constraints on the theory of perceptual justification that 'dogmatism' or 'phenomenal conservativism' cannot respect.

Inquiry is guided, in the minimal sense that it is not haphazard. It is also often thought to have as a natural stopping point ceasing to inquire, once inquiry into a question yields knowledge of an answer. On this picture, inquiry is both telic and guided. By contrast, mind-wandering is unguided and atelic, according to the most extensively developed philosophical theory of it. This paper articulates a puzzle that arises from this combination of claims: there seem to be plenty of (...) examples of inquiry progressing within mind-wandering, yet theories of inquiry and mind-wandering can make wandering inquiry seem impossible or incoherent. I offer several solutions to this puzzle and make the case that taken together, they illuminate a prevalent form of inquiry that the burgeoning literature on that topic overlooks: inquiry that progresses spontaneously. (shrink)

In discussions of perception and its relation to knowledge, it is common to distinguish what one comes to believe on the basis of perception from the distinctively perceptual basis of one's belief. The distinction can be drawn in terms of propositional contents: there are the contents that a perceiver comes to believe on the basis of her perception, on the one hand; and there are the contents properly attributed to perception itself, on the other. Consider the content.

What do we see? We are visually conscious of colors and shapes, but are we also visually conscious of complex properties such as being John Malkovich? In this book, Susanna Siegel develops a framework for understanding the contents of visual experience, and argues that these contents involve all sorts of complex properties. Siegel starts by analyzing the notion of the contents of experience, and by arguing that theorists of all stripes should accept that experiences have contents. She then (...) introduces a method for discovering the contents of experience: the method of phenomenal contrast. This method relies only minimally on introspection, and allows rigorous support for claims about experience. She then applies the method to make the case that we are conscious of many kinds of properties, of all sorts of causal properties, and of many other complex properties. She goes on to use the method to help analyze difficult questions about our consciousness of objects and their role in the contents of experience, and to reconceptualize the distinction between perception and sensation. Siegel's results are important for many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. They are also important for the psychology and cognitive neuroscience of vision. (shrink)

This research examines whether and how firms can meet both business goals and social needs through their innovation activities. We examine antecedents and consequences of innovation that addresses social needs, in addition to business goals, using data collected from European for-profit firms. We find that innovation including social intent is more likely under conditions of high market turbulence, which represents an important form of demand-driven threats. Meanwhile, we find no relationship with competitive intensity, a form of pressure driven threats. Together, (...) these findings suggest that customers and other stakeholders are more likely to drive firms to focus on the social dimension than competitors. The findings also indicate that innovation including social intent is positively related with customer acceptance, which supports the notion that innovation can meet both business goals and social needs. This relationship is partially mediated by perceived market turbulence, which highlights the importance of customers and their demands for social responsibility. This research advances both theory and practice as we add to existing discourses on innovation by providing a broader than common perspective that includes the social dimension as a potential part of innovation conducted to meet business goals. Furthermore, we shed light on how and when firms are likely to include intended social outcomes in their innovation and when they are less likely to do so, which highlights a potential untapped opportunity. (shrink)

Education's Epistemology extends and defends Siegel's "reasons conception" of critical thinking, developing it in both philosophical and educational directions. Of particular note is its emphasis on epistemic quality and epistemic rationality and its concerted defense of "universal" educational and philosophical ideals in the face of multicultural, postmodern, and other challenges.

Although testimonies of divine healing figure prominently in pentecostal missions, pentecostals are frequently reluctant to subject testimonials to empirical investigation. In an age of evidence-based medicine, many people insist on medical corroboration before giving claims credence. Hence, pentecostal resistance toward medical validation comes at a price of reduced missionary impact. Investigation of healing claims reveals medically unexpected healings for which there is no obvious medical explanation, and recoveries that can be explained naturalistically or seem not to have occurred. Since fraudulent (...) cases tend to attract the most notice, they are widely perceived as normative in the absence of countervailing examples. (shrink)

My replies to Errol Lord, Adam Pautz, and Peter Railton's commentaries on The Rationality of Perception (2017).

This paper makes the case that when wishful thinking ill-founds belief, the belief depends on the desire in ways can be recapitulated at the level of perceptual experience. The relevant kinds of desires include motivations, hopes, preferences, and goals. I distinguish between two modes of dependence of belief on desire in wishful thinking: selective or inquiry-related, and responsive or evidence-related. I offers a theory of basing on which beliefs are badly-based on desires, due to patterns of dependence that can found (...) in the relationship between experiences and desires as well. This conclusion brings us a large part of the way to the conclusion that like beliefs, experiences can be ill-founded by depending on a desire. (shrink)

A series of experiments tested the hypothesis that very brief exposure to feared stimuli can have positive effects on avoidance of the corresponding feared object. Participants identified themselves as fearful of spiders through a widely used questionnaire. A preliminary experiment showed that they were unable to identify the stimuli used in the main experiments. Experiment 2 compared the effects of exposure to masked feared stimuli at short and long stimulus onset asynchronies . Participants were individually administered one of three continuous (...) series of backwards masked or non-masked stimuli: unreportable images of spiders , clearly visible images of spiders , or unreportable images of trees . Immediately thereafter, they engaged in a Behavioral Avoidance Test with a live, caged tarantula. Exposure to unreportable images of spiders resulted in greater approach towards the tarantula than unreportable neutral images. A post-hoc comparison with clearly visible exposure to these same images approached significance. These effects were maintained at a 1-week follow-up . In Experiment 3 , participants engaged in the BAT 1 week prior to the exposure manipulation in order to provide a baseline measurement of their avoidant behavior, and again immediately after the exposure manipulation. Exposure to unreportable images of spiders reduced avoidance of the tarantula. Similar exposure to trees did not. Implications for the non-conscious basis of fear are discussed. (shrink)

Siegel defends "Limited Intentionism", a theory of what secures the semantic reference of uses of bare demonstratives ("this", "that" and their plurals). According to Limited Intentionism, demonstrative reference is fixed by perceptually anchored intentions on the part of the speaker.

There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.

This paper defends the Content View: the thesis that all visual experiences have contents.

Some have defended a Fregean view of perceptual content. On this view, the constituents of perceptual contents are Fregean modes of presentation (MOPs). In this paper, I propose that perceptual MOPs are best understood in terms of object files. Object files are episodic representations that store perceptual information about objects. This information is updated when sensory conditions change. On the proposed view, when a subject perceptually represents some object a under two distinct MOPs, then the subject initiates two object files (...) that both refer to a. My defense of this view appeals to its satisfaction of four constraints that I argue theories of perceptual MOPs should satisfy. Furthermore, I show that some existent accounts of perceptual MOPs fail to satisfy them. The defended constraints also indicate what is unique about perceptual, as opposed to linguistic or cognitive, MOPs. (shrink)

This chapter argues, using the method of phenomenal contrast, that causation is represented in visual experience. The conclusion is contrasted with the conclusions drawn by Michotte in his book The Perception of Causation.

This is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the contents of perception.

With what modes of mentality can we build a visceral, subjective sense of being in some specific mass-political society? Theorists and political cultivators standardly call upon the imagination – the kind prompted by symbols and rituals, for example. Could perception ever play such a role? I argue that it can, but that perceptions of mass-political publics come with costs of cruelty and illusion that neither democratic theorists nor participants should be willing to pay. The clearest examples of such perceptions are (...) found in fascist political culture. My discussion aims to illuminate what it is about publics, perception, and democracy that makes this so. -/- . (shrink)

Courts reviewing gun laws that burden Second Amendment rights ask how effectively the laws serve public safety — yet typically discuss public safety narrowly, without considering the many dimensions of that interest gun laws serve. “Public safety” is a social good: it includes the public's interest in physical safety as a good in itself, and as a foundation for community and for the exercise of constitutional liberties. Gun laws protect bodies from bullets — and Americans' freedom and confidence to participate (...) in every domain of our shared life, whether to attend school, to shop, to listen to a concert, to gather for prayer, or to assemble in peaceable debate. Courts must enforce the Second Amendment in ways that respect the public health and constitutional reasons a democracy seeks to protect public safety. Lawyers and citizen advocates can help, by creating a richer record of their reasons in seeking to enact laws regulating guns.This inquiry is urgent at a time when the Supreme Court's new conservative majority may expand restrictions on gun laws beyond the right to keep arms for self-defense in the home first recognized inDistrict of Columbia v. Hellerin 2008. (shrink)

Includes a summary of my book *The Rationality of Perception* (Oxford, 2017) and replies to commentaries on it by Endre Begby, Harmen Ghijsen, and Katia Samoilova. These commentaries and my summary and replies will be published soon in Analysis Reviews. Begby focuses on my analysis of the epistemic features of the interface between individual minds and their cultural milieu (discussed in chapter 10 of *The Rationality of Perception*), Ghijsen focuses on the notion of inference and reliabilism (chapters 5 and 6), (...) and Samoilova focuses on the relationship between epistemic charge (chapter 3) and shifts in the amount of justification needed for knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that certain perceptual relations are represented in visual experience.

In this paper I argue that causal relations between objects are represented in visual experience, and contrast my argument and its conclusion with Michotte's results from the 1960's.

I distinguish between two kinds of selection effects on experience: selection of objects or features for experience, and anti-selection of experiences for cognitive uptake. I discuss the idea that both kinds of selection effects can lead to a form of confirmation bias at the level of perception, and argue that when this happens, selection effects can influence the rational role of experience.

Beginning with a discussion of the Informal Logic Movement and the renewed interest in critical thinking in education, this book critically assesses the work of Robert Ennis, Richard Paul and John McPeck.

I analyze a type of practice related to inquiry: treating things as zetetically relevant to questions, and argue that this practice is a central normatively evaluable way to extend lines of inquiry. My strategy is to introduce the practice and its normative features by examining its relationship to something already well-understood: the ways that news stories produced by journalists frame events. I then argue that the same core zetetic practice can be found across domains, just not in journalism. Finding the (...) same practice across such different human settings suggests it is a core feature of inquiry. (shrink)

chapter on perception and bias including implicit bias.

In the field of epistemology, naturalism holds that there are no a priori norms for guiding our belief-formation: we must start our inquiries in situ, assuming some beliefs and the general reliability of our basic cognitive practices to justify others. Naturalized epistemology seeks to motivate norms for cognitive enquiry on such a naturalistic basis. The author argues that, whilst naturalism must be embraced, this more abmitious project is in vain: to the extent one can justify naturalistic norms, they are not (...) needed for optimal rational belief-formation. (shrink)

‘Argument’ has multiple meanings and referents in contemporary argumentation theory. Theorists are well aware of this but often fail to acknowledge it in their theories. In what follows, I distinguish several senses of ‘argument’ and argue that some highly visible theories are largely correct about some senses of the term but not others. In doing so, I hope to show that apparent theoretical rivals are better seen as collaborators or partners, rather than rivals, in the multi-disciplinary effort to understand ‘argument,’ (...) arguments, and argumentation in all their varieties. I argue as well for a pluralistic approach to argument evaluation and argumentative norms, since arguments and argumentation can be legitimately evaluated along several dimensions, but urge that epistemic norms enjoy conceptual priority. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Critical Thinking Critiques of Reason The Fundamental Reply to All Critiques of Reason.

In two recent papers, I criticized Ronald N. Giere's and Larry Laudan's arguments for 'naturalizing' the philosophy of science (Siegel 1989, 1990). Both Giere and Laudan replied to my criticisms (Giere 1989, Laudan 1990b). The key issue arising in both interchanges is these naturalists' embrace of instrumental conceptions of rationality, and their concomitant rejection of non-instrumental conceptions of that key normative notion. In this reply I argue that their accounts of science's rationality as exclusively instrumental fail, and consequently that (...) their cases for 'normatively naturalizing' the philosophy of science fail as well. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Arguments Con Arguments Pro Ambivalence Concerning Relativism? The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense of Relativism References.

During periods of scarcity, or the fear of it, many health systems create or adopt triage protocols to determine how to best allocate limited resources. Interest in such protocols has become acute...

Since disjunctivists when talking about perception deny that hallucinations and veridical perceptions have a common fundamental nature, they need some other way to account for the fact that these kinds of experiences can ‘seem the same’ from the inside. A natural response is to give a purely epistemic account of hallucination, according to which there is nothing more to hallucinations than their indiscriminability from veridical perceptions. This chapter argues that the epistemic conception of hallucination falters in its treatment of cognitively (...) unsophisticated creatures, and that it cannot respect all the facts about what we can know on the basis of introspection. (shrink)