The conference is open to all who are interested. No registration is required.

To be a perceiver, at least on one traditional conception, is to possess certain capacities, to perceive is to exercise those capacities, and perceiving correctly requires that one exercise those capacities in the right way. The aim of this conference is to explore certain questions that arise when perception is understood in this way.

These questions fall into two groups. First, there are questions about perceptual capacities themselves. What is it to have a capacity generally, and what is it to have a perceptual capacity in particular? What perceptual capacities do we normally have, and what are the relationships between them? Which, if any, perceptual capacities are distinctively human ones, and which do we share with the other animals? Second, there are questions about how thinking about perceptual capacities affects our understanding of traditional questions about perception. What connections are there between perceptual capacities and debates about the contents and the objects of perception? How do perceptual capacities bear on perceptual justification and perceptual knowledge?

Questions about perceptual capacities, despite their long provenance and importance in the work of Aristotle and Kant, have been neglected in recent philosophical work on perception. A number of writers, however, have begun to emphasize their significance. This conference will bring together philosophers, from the ANU and elsewhere, in order to pursue the questions posed above and to further this renewed interest in perceptual capacities.

For registration details, conference program and further information please visit:
http://www.susannaschellenberg.org/PerceptualCapacities/Program.html