Philosophy PhD student Auke Montessori's paper, "Overlap: On the Relation Between Perceiving and Believing," as been accepted for publication in Synthese. An abstract is below. Congratulations, Auke!
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that mental types can overlap. That is, one token mental state can be multiple types. In particular, I argue that a perceptual experience can simultaneously be a belief. This does not imply that belief and experience are typeidentical, they merely share some of their tokens. When a subject perceives with content p, that content is usually accessible to the subject. By endorsing p, whether automatically or consciously, the subject comes to believe that p. In this instance, the perceptual experience, while retaining its content and phenomenology, becomes a belief. The possibility of this kind of overlap turns out to have epistemic benefits, especially in the face of arguments by Alex Byrne and Kathrin Glüer. I consider several objections to overlap, including the idea that perception and belief have different kinds of content, that beliefs tend to outlast experiences and differences in phenomenology.
