Perception and action: essays

"The main point in the first section is the difference it makes if we see perceptual experience as the characteristic actualization of a fallible capacity for knowledge. Perceptual experiences can mislead us. If we consider what that implies without seeing them as actualizations of a capacity for knowledge, it can easily seem that they cannot render judgments about how things are in the subject's surroundings any better than highly probable. That makes it hard to see how perceptual experience can yield something recognizable as knowledge. We risk losing the very idea that there is such a thing as a capacity for knowledge through perception. If we conceive perceptual experiences as actualizations of a fallible capacity for knowledge, which does not need its credentials as a capacity for knowledge established on the basis of the epistemic yield of experiences taken one by one, that puts their occasional misleadingness in a more manageable context"-- Provided by publisher.