12 Perceptual Attention and the Space of Reasons

It is sometimes said that the source of direct perceptual knowledge of the world around us is peculiarly transparent. In Michael Ayers's words, such knowledge is " perspicuous in that one who has it knows how he knows what he knows " (1991, p. 183). What is the content of this immediate understanding we seem to have of the source of perceptual knowledge? And what is the role of perceptual experience in making that kind of understanding available? The classical answer is that the " perspicuity " of perceptual knowledge is grounded in the distinctive intelligibility of rational belief: experience provides us with justifying reasons, and our awareness of the reasons for which we hold a belief normally gives us a ready understanding of how we know what we know. In this chapter I present a line of objection to what I think is the most promising version of the classical picture, John McDowell's account of the epistemic role of experience. My objection is that the account cannot respect the role of perceptual attention in providing for perspicuous perceptual knowledge. My main claim will be that there is an inextricable link between two aspects of the role of perceptual attention: its role in grounding perceptual demonstrative thought and its role in yielding noninferential propositional knowledge. I argue that the link poses a challenge to McDowell's theory, and simultaneously provides support for an alternative account of the perspi-cuity of perceptual knowledge. The alternative account does not dispute that there is a deep connection between perspicuity and rationality, but it reverses the classical view of the connection: it holds that perceptual beliefs are rational in virtue of the more basic phenomenon of the perspi-cuity of perceptual knowledge. 1. RATIONALITY AND PERSPICUITY At the beginning of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant writes: " But the combination (conjunctio) of a manifold in general can never come to us MOLE-Chapter 12-Revised Proof 274 January 24, 2011 1:36 PM 274Roessler: Perceptual Attention and Reason 275 through the senses " (2007, A 95). McDowell disagrees. He holds that sensory experience has conceptual representational content. For example, a visual experience may represent a particular lemon as being yellow, where this involves a combination of a perceptual demonstrative, " this, " and the concept " x is yellow. " This kind of combination may come to us through the senses. Still, there is an important point of agreement between McDowell …