A reasonable personin similar circumstances would not have an experience that they inferredfrom the ill-founded presumption.

If Jill goesahead and believes her eyes anyway, then her belief is not as well-foundedas it could be, because it is formed on the basis of an experience that lacksthe baseline amount of epistemic power that the same experience couldhave, if it weren’tinfluenced by fear. Her experience is merelydowngraded,meaning its epistemic power is reduced below the baseline

Itcan explain why it is not rational for subjects in these cases to believetheir eyes—even though, to them, they are simply taking in what comestheir way, even when they are not in a position to understand what theepistemically best option is.

It is not rational, because theirhijacked experiences are irrational. They are irrational because they areepistemically sensitive to their psychological precursors, in the same waythat conclusions of inference epistemically depend on inferential inputs

My label for this property is“epistemic charge.”

Jill is not inany way accountable for her experience, and therefore could not speak tohow rational she i

The Rationality of Perception focuses on theroutetoperceptual experience from other psychological states of the per-ceiver.

If perceptual experiences can arise from infer-ence, then the Rationality of Perception is true

a belief isill-founded if it is formed or maintained irrationally, well-founded if itis formed and maintained rationally.3These notions are also gradable.One belief can be more ill-founded (or well-founded) than another.

Perceptual experiences that arose from this kind of reasoning wouldbe rational, in a broader sense that encompasses both good and badoutcomes: they are evaluable as rationally better or worse.

First, merely having a perceptual experiencecan benefit or detract from the subject’s rational standing, and in thatmanner redound on the subject

They all assume that thephenomena they govern are epistemically appraisable. They are normsthat purport to describe how a specific aspect of a properly rationalsubject’s mental life would be. The kind of rationality thatfigures inthe Rationality of Perception hypothesis is located at this high level ofabstraction.

relative tocertain types of norms—norms of rationality

My solution is that it is not rational in these cases for the subjects ofhijacked experiences to believe their eyes. It is not rational because in eachcase, the subject’s having the perceptual experiences detracts from his orher rational standing, and it does that because the experience came aboutthrough an irrational process. These subjects are not in a position toknow, on their own, what the reasonable reaction to their experiences is

there is nothingepistemically special about cases where the mind is insulated from realityby its own assumptions.

Attention(hijacked experience): The pliers look somewhat like a gun,because the state activated by the black prime directs the subjectsattention to features of the pliers that are congruent with beinga gun (metallic), and away from features incongruent with being agun (shape)

In all of the cases, the challenge is to assess whetherthe ultimate conclusions are epistemically appropriate (the stigmatizedapplicant is under-qualified, Jack is angry, the sperm cell contains anembryo, the audience is pleased, the banana is yellow), and to eitherexplain away the appearance of an epistemicflaw in the conclusion, ifthere isn’t one, or else identify the epistemicflaw, if there is one

given yourexperience, and no inkling that it was influenced by your expertise

she has no indication that the experience is misleading

But if Jill’s fear makes her perceptual experience congruent with thefear, then the situation is epistemically more complicated. When we lookmore closely at hijacked perception that reaches all the way to a visualexperience, wefind a distinctive philosophical problem. I’m going to callthis problemthe problem of hijacked experience

It is also possible for a prior outlook toproperly steer the processing that leads to perceptual experience orjudgment. It is properly steered when the prior outlook and perceptualinputs are both given their proper weight.

When perceptual judgments or perceptual experiences arise fromprocesses that give prior outlooks too much weight and fail to giveproper weight to perceptual inputs (if there are any such inputs), wecan say that the outlookhijacksthe perceptual state

oran inbuilt structural mismatch between our minds and reality, but fromour own individual prior outlook

The distinction between perceptual experience and judgment gives usat least two broad kinds of potential effects on perception

irrational perception. Influences on perception could come from beliefs,hypotheses, knowledge, desires, traits, and moods.1They could alsocome from evaluative states that psychologists call“attitudes.”

I forward the notion that blackness comprises a “cathectic and world-making” apparatus that is indispensable to understanding the cultural politics of African American popular texts.1 By offering an orientation to the discourses of desire that inform Black Panther’s fabulations, I will illustrate how black and queer critical idioms might speak to one another’s respective and mutual interests in the construction of identity, space, and modernity, as well as gender and sexuality.

In the interpretation ofBlack Panthercomics thatfollows, I forward the notion that blackness comprises a“cathectic andworld-making”apparatus that is indispensable to understanding thecultural politics of African American popular texts.1By offering an ori-entation to the discourses of desire that informBlack Panther’s fabula-tions, I will illustrate how black and queer critical idioms might speakto one another’s respective and mutual interests in the construction ofidentity, space, and modernity, as well as gender and sexuality.

. This essay investigates the production of female virtue in a different but related textual site: vernacular religious drama. My particular focus is the late medieval English dramatic vita of Mary Magd

Rhetorically,theDigbyplayofTheConversionofSaintPaulmovesfromanemphasisonthevisualattheoutsettoanemphasisontheverbalatitsclimax.Suchamovementcoincideswithitshistory:straddlingtheborderoftheEnglishReformation,theplaydisplaysanuneasybalancebetweenatraditionalreligionoftheimageandanewerreligionoftheword.Thematically,however,theplayconcentratesonissuescommontobothpre-Reformationandpost-ReformationEnglishsociety:theperennialsinofprideandthetensionbetweenclasses.Alloftheseconcernscanbeseenexemplifiedinthegroom'shoodandtheapostle'sbasket

nglian art. The narrator figure, processions, and recapitu- lation of contrasting scenes act as framing devices which mediate between the audience and the Conversion's devotional center. The juxtaposition of sacred and profane space on separate loca necessarily places the audience in a type of liminal territory in or adjacent to the platea. From such a perspective - which is an accurate representation of the audience's status as fallen men and women - they inevitably follow the progress of the action from the secular to the sacred; in the interim they internalize the devotional and didactic content of the play in such a way that they, like St. Paul, can bring the divine word and spirit with them

The devotional frame provided by the Poeta, the processions, and the recapitulatory scenes foreground the internal and spiritual nature of Paul's action and demand a proper devotional and ethical response from the play's audience

h priests. In most respects the English play resembles its continental analogues, but the Digby Conversion notably is the only one repeatedly and insistently to signal its tripartite struc- ture through the use of a Poeta, the explicit setting of the action at different "stacyons," the addition of scenes, and the curtailing of action at the play's conclusion. Such explicit framing tech- niques highlight t

nd time"^ In the Digby Conversion dramatic structure functions as a frame which, by defining the spiritual significance of the central devo- tional scene, allows the audience to internalize the play's spir- itual message.

ramas from the region.9 The dramatist of The Con- version of St. Paul exploits the dramatic potential inherent in a frame structure in order to create, in Gail McMurray Gibson's phrase, a "concrete image of devotion."10 He carefully balances his action around the symmetrical center of Paul's conversion by means of the speeches of the Poeta, audience movement, and recapitulatory scenes. These devices in effect mediate between the moment of St. Paul's mystic experience and the audience in order to exp

Is the problem on the ëhardí side of the ledger sufficiently well-defined to sustain thedivision as a fundamental empirical principle? Although it is easy enough to agree aboutthe presence of qualia in certain prototypical cases, such as the pain felt after a brick hasfallen on a bare foot, or the blueness of the sky on a sunny summer afternoon, things areless clear-cut once we move beyond the favoured prototypes. Some of our perceptualcapacities are rather subtle, as, for example, positional sense is often claimed to be. Somephilosophers, e.g. Elizabeth Anscombe, have actually opined that we can know theposition of our limbs without any ëlimb-positioní qualia. As for me, I am inclined to sayI do have qualitative experiences of where my limbs are ó it feels different to have myfingers clenched than unclenched, even when they are not visible. The disagreementitself, however, betokens the lack of consensus once cases are at some remove from thecentral prototypes. Vestibular system qualia are yet another non-prototypical case. Is there somethingëvestibular-yí it feels like to have my head moving? To know which way is up? Whateverthe answer here, at least the answer is not glaringly obvious. Do eye movements haveeye-movement qualia? Some maybe do, and some maybe do not. Are there ëintrospectivequaliaí, or is introspection just paying attention to perceptual qualia and talking toyourself? Ditto, plus or minus a bit, for self-awareness. Thoughts are also a bit problem-atic in the qualia department. Some of my thoughts seem to me to be a bit like talking tomyself and hence like auditory imagery but some just come out of my mouth as I amtalking to someone or affect decisions without ever surfacing as a bit of inner dialogue.None of this is to deny the pizzazz of qualia in the prototypical cases. Rather, the point isjust that prototypical cases give us only a startingpoint for further investigation, andnothing like a full characterization of the class to which they belong. My suspicion with respect to The Hard Problem strategy is that it seems to take theclass of conscious experiences to be much better defined than it is. The point is, if youare careful to restrict your focus to the prototypical cases, you can easily be hornswoggledinto assuming the class is well-defined. As soon as you broaden your horizons, trouble-some questions about fuzzy boundaries, about the connections between attention, shortterm memory and awareness, are present in full, what-do-we-do-with-that glory.

In general, what substantive conclusions can be drawn when science has not advancedvery far on a problem? Not much. One of the basic skills we teach our philosophy studentsis how to recognize and diagnose the range of nonformal fallacies that can undermine anostensibly appealing argument: what it is to beg the question, what a non sequitur is, andso on. A prominent item in the fallacy roster is argumentum ad ignorantiam ó argumentfrom ignorance. The canonical version of this fallacy uses ignorance as the key premisefrom which a substantive conclusion is drawn. The canonical version looks like this: We really do not understand much about a phenomenon P. (Science is largelyignorant about the nature of P.)Therefore: we do know that:(1) P can never be explained, or(2) Nothing science could ever discover would deepen our understanding of P, or(3) P can never be explained in terms of properties of kind S. In its canonical version, the argument is obviously a fallacy: none of the tenderedconclusions follow, not even a little bit. Surrounded with rhetorical flourish, much browfurrowing and hand-wringing, however, versions of this argument can hornswoggle theunwary.

llowed by specification of typical stimuli for, or responses to, the ex- perience.

So it does not discriminate between the two.

But we materialists believe that these causal roles which belong by analytic necessity to experiences be- long in fact to certain physical states.

ost philosophers of language, and recently even by some linguists,