Better than Mere Knowledge? The Function of Sensory Awareness

This chapter discusses the function of sensory awareness for perception in two ways. First, it addresses how sensory awareness functions so as to make available external items as objects of immediate demonstration. Second, it addresses how sensory awareness serves as grounding for that which is judged and predicated of the external items. These issues are taken up with the aid of an analogy between perception and digestion. In particular, it is argued that the function of sensory experience is to directly present truthmakers which guarantee the truth of the immediate judgments made about the sensed scenarios. Sensory experience provides us with direct awareness of environmental particulars, and immediate perceptual judgments of some feature of an environmental particular are then grounded in that direct sensory awareness. In this way, what is sensed can make true what is immediately judged on the basis of sensing.