Elijah Chudnoff – författare

We know about our immediate environment--about the people, animals, and things around us--by having sensory perceptions. According to a tradition that traces back to Plato, we know about abstract reality--about mathematics, morality, and metaphysics--by having intuitions, which can be thought of as intellectual perceptions. The rough idea behind the analogy is this: while sensory perceptions are experiences that purport to, and sometimes do, reveal how matters stand in concrete reality by making us aware of that reality through the senses, intuitions are experiences that purport to, and sometimes do, reveal how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. In this book, Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends such a view of intuition. He focuses on the experience of having an intuition, on the justification for beliefs that derives from intuition, and on the contact with abstract reality via intuition. In the course of developing a systematic account of the phenomenology, epistemology, and metaphysics of intuition on which it counts as a form of intellectual perception Chudnoff also takes up related issues such as the a priori, perceptual justification and knowledge, concepts and understanding, inference, mental action, and skeptical challenges to intuition.

Perception and intuition are our basic sources of knowledge about the concrete world around us, and more abstract matters such as mathematics, metaphysics, and morality. Perception and intuition, however, are also capacities we deliberately improve in ways that draw on our knowledge about these domains. How can the sensory and intellectual impressions that lie at the foundation of our knowledge themselves be informed by our knowledge? In Forming Impressions: Expertise in Perception and Intuition, Chudnoff addresses this and other questions that derive from trying to understand the improvability of our basic sources of knowledge. At the extreme of improvement lies expertise, and there is a wealth of research on the structures and mechanisms underlying expert perception and expert intuition that promises to illuminate the nature and significance of improvements to these sources of knowledge in general. Taking this cue, the first part of the book lays the groundwork for the rest by elaborating an interpretation of the psychology of expertise. The second part develops a setting for thinking about the epistemology of expert perception and expert intuition. The third part of the book explores the significance of the resulting view of intuition and its improvability for recent debates about philosophical methodology. Chudnoff defends a rationalist view of the role of intuition in philosophy that can be traced back to classic works on methodology such as Descartes' Rules and Spinoza's Emendation of the Intellect.

We know about our immediate environment--about the people, animals, and things around us--by having sensory perceptions. According to a tradition that traces back to Plato, we know about abstract reality--about mathematics, morality, and metaphysics--by having intuitions, which can be thought of as intellectual perceptions. The rough idea behind the analogy is this: while sensory perceptions are experiences that purport to, and sometimes do, reveal how matters stand in concrete reality by making us aware of that reality through the senses, intuitions are experiences that purport to, and sometimes do, reveal how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. In this book, Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends such a view of intuition. He focuses on the experience of having an intuition, on the justification for beliefs that derives from intuition, and on the contact with abstract reality via intuition. In the course of developing a systematic account of the phenomenology, epistemology, and metaphysics of intuition on which it counts as a form of intellectual perception Chudnoff also takes up related issues such as the a priori, perceptual justification and knowledge, concepts and understanding, inference, mental action, and skeptical challenges to intuition.

Phenomenology is about subjective aspects of the mind, such as the conscious states associated with vision and touch, and the conscious states associated with emotions and moods, such as feelings of elation or sadness. These states have a distinctive first-person ‘feel’ to them, called their phenomenal character. In this respect they are often taken to be radically different from mental states and processes associated with thought. This is the first book to fully question this orthodoxy and explore the prospects of cognitive phenomenology, applying phenomenology to the study of thought and cognition. Does cognition have its own phenomenal character? Can introspection tell us either way? If consciousness flows in an unbroken ‘stream’ as William James argued, how might a punctuated sequence of thoughts fit into it? Elijah Chudnoff begins with a clarification of the nature of the debate about cognitive phenomenology and the network of concepts and theses that are involved in it. He then examines the following topics: introspection and knowledge of our own thoughtsphenomenal contrast argumentsthe value of consciousnessthe temporal structure of experiencethe holistic character of experience and the interdependence of sensory and cognitive statesthe relationship between phenomenal character and mental representationIncluding chapter summaries, annotated further reading, and a glossary, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a clear and informative introduction to and assessment of cognitive phenomenology, whether philosophy student or advanced researcher. It will also be valuable reading for those in related subjects such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and epistemology.