
104th PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: Marie McGinn on Non-Inferential Knowledge
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
What Is the Role of Observational Judgment?
In general, our mastery of observational concepts include a grasp of the conditions in which we are entitled to make straight off judgments involving them. In circumstances which count as normal for the relevant concepts, the truth of the observational judgment is enough on its own to establish that that was what was seen. True judgments which in the circumstances I am entitled to make establish the description under which what is there to be seen is seen. A parallel point applies in the cases in which I wrongly believe that circumstances are such that I'm not in a position to make an observational judgment about colour say because I wrongly believethat the light is not standard. The reference to seeing goes against the logical priority that I have argued the