TY - JOUR AB - John McDowell claims that perception provides reasons for empirical beliefs. Perceptual reasons, according to the author of Mind and World, can be identified with passively “taken in” facts. Concepts figure in the acts of acquiring perceptual reasons, even though the acts themselves do not consist in judgments. Thus, on my reading, McDowell’s account of reasons-acquisition can be likened to Descartes’ account of the acquisition of ideas, rather than to Kant’s theory of judgment as an act by means of which one’s cognition comes to be endowed with objective validity. However, unlike Descartes, McDowell does not acknowledge the skeptical challenge which his conception of reasons-acquisition might face. He contends that perception is factive without arguing for the background assumption (about a “perfect match” between mind and world) on which it rests. Hence, as I suggest in my article, the McDowellian claim that perception provides reasons for empirical beliefs is not sufficiently warranted. AD - Jagiellonian University, Kraków AU - Tomaszewska, Anna DO - 10.5840/forphil20121714 KW - argumentation; Descartes, René; Mcdowell, John Henry; perception LA - en M1 - 1 M3 - Article PY - 2012 RN - Aquila, Richard. Representational Mind: a Study of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Brewer, Bill. Perception and Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Chuard, Philippe. “Perceptual Reasons” (ms). http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/people-defaults/philippe/perceptual_reasons.pdf. Crowther, Timothy M. “Two Conceptions of Conceptualism and Nonconceptualism.” Erkenntnis 65 (2006): 245–276. Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by Lawrence J. Lafleur. New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1951. 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Perception and Reality: A History from Descartes to Kant. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. SN - 1426-1898 (paper) 2353-7043 (online) SP - 73–88 ST - McDowell and Perceptual Reasons T2 - Forum Philosophicum TI - McDowell and Perceptual Reasons UR - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=87003043&lang=pl&site=ehost-live http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2012_0017_0001_0073_0088 VL - 17 ID - 12 ER -