Our perceptions seem to give us information we can use in decision-making. But our goals, beliefs, and biases all affect our perceptions. We’ll explore why experience can’t help but be contaminated– and why we can still sometimes rely on it.

Presenter: Maura Tumulty is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Colgate University. She works at the intersection of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and moral psychology. She is particularly interested in questions about how ethical self-criticism relates to perceptual experience. Her recent work examines worries like, “If I were a better person, her voice wouldn’t sound so shrill to me.” Considering such worries has useful implications for how we think about self-control, bias, and the effect our assumptions have on what we see and hear.