Aquinas, Evidence, and Perception

Perceptual experiences are commonly regarded as evidence. For example, when one has an experience of a tree, this is typically viewed as evidence for the belief that there is a tree. However, there is more than one view about the nature of perceptual experiences, and it is not clear that every view of perception is equally adequate to the task of accounting for experience’s evidential role. In this paper I will do two things. First, I argue that neither a sense-data view of perception nor a direct realist view of perception can adequately account for the fact that perceptual experiences count as evidence. Second, I outline a third view of perception: that of Thomas Aquinas, who holds that experiences have intentional mediating content that directs the mind to the world. I argue that Aquinas’s view is able to avoid the inadequacies of both the sense-data theorist and the direct realist and thus can better account for the evidential role of perceptual experience.