Philosophers on Failure: Perceptual Success and Failure

Leading philosophers from King’s College London discuss aspects of failure in a series of informal and inclusive Salons (on Tuesday 22nd / Wednesday 23rd  and Thursday 24th October).

At Thursday’s Salon, join Professor Bill Brewer for a discussion on perceptual success and failure:

Cases of failure have been used throughout the history of philosophical theorizing about perception to shape and constrain positive accounts of our perceptual success. Professor Bill Brewer focuses on classic arguments from illusion and hallucination, and casts doubt upon their orthodox use in motivating representationalist theories of perception as against more traditional relational conceptions. No philosophical background will be assumed.

Professor Bill Brewer

Professor Bill Brewer read Maths and Philosophy at Oxford, where he also received the B. Phil and the D. Phil in Philosophy, working with P. F. Strawson, David Pears, Jennifer Hornsby, and John Campbell.

He was a Senior Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, a Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge, a Tutorial Fellow and University Lecturer at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and, most recently, a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Warwick. He has also held visiting positions at Brown, Hamburg, and UC Berkeley. He joined King’s College London in September 2012 as the Susan Stebbing Professor of Philosophy. He works in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and epistemology, and is the author of two monographs, Perception and Reason (OUP, 1999) and Perception and its Objects (OUP, 2011), as well as many papers in journals and collections.

His current major research project concerns the parts and persistence of macroscopic material objects.  

Main image credit: Somerset House, courtesy of Somerset House Trust