Perception, Normativity and Action in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science

Working on the background of a view of mind as “in action”, as pragmatically shaped by its own dynamic interactions with the world, emerging from theachievements of contemporary philosophy of mind (from Searle to enactivism)and cognitive science (from Gibson to Goodale and Milner)I aim to propose a view of perception as a form of human activity of which we are responsible, and in which our “commitment” to truth and rationality can take place. Against some recent phenomenalist and antirepresentationalist viewsof perception I'll try to show that the action-oriented character of perception does not challenge its rational constraint to a right representation of the stateof affairs which it is about. I'll argue for this point using Searle's conceptualtool of the causal selfreferentiality of perception, showing how this causalself-referentiality can account for the normative constraint to truth underlying every perceptual experience. This constraint means that, even at the morereceptive level of our interaction with the world, perception is not merely apassive event causally dependent on the environment. In fact, not only “itmust be possible to decide whether or not to judge that things are as one’sexperience represents them to be” (McDowell, 1994, 11), but also, beyondMcDowell, it is up to us to have the right relationship with the state of affairs which experience is about. Finally I will show how such a theory of mind andperception can give a non ad hoc answer to Gettier counterexamples to themodel of knowledge as true and justified belief