The Metaphysics Of Perception: Wilfrid Sellars Critical Realism And The Nature Of Experience

‘What we are, what we can know, and how we fit into the world turn centrally on the analysis of perception. In The Metaphysics of Perception Paul Coates teases apart the tensions that have systematically confused philosophers of perception and defends a sophisticated form of the causal theory of perception. In his detailed responses to recent Realist arguments and his careful consideration of modern psychology of perception and the growing body of empirical results, Coates has essentially re-invented Critical Realism, revising, expanding, filling in, and deepening the proto-theory found in Sellars pe `re et fils. Coates’s theory is the only one I know that is at home accounting for the fact that perception is first-personal and qualitative and yet subject to empirical, scientific investigation. It will become a landmark in the philosophy of perception.’- Willem deVries, Professor of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire