ABSTRACT

As I sit reading, I hear knocking. I wonder whether someone is at the door. I then hear extended, very rapid knocking. It now occurs to me that it is a pecking sound, and I conclude that there is a woodpecker nearby. This way of coming to believe something differs from the way I came to believe there was a knocking in the first place. That belief was perceptual; it arose from my hearing the knocking. My belief that there is a woodpecker nearby is not perceptual. It arises not from, for instance, seeing the bird, but from a further belief: that the rapid knocking sounds like the pecking of a woodpecker. I hear the rapid knocking, recognize its character, and come to believe that it sounds like the pecking of a woodpecker. On the basis of this belief, I naturally conclude that there is a woodpecker nearby.