Mizrahi's argument against Phenomenal Conservatism Mizrahi (2013, "Against Phenomenal Conservatism", The Reasoner, 7(10), pp. 117-118) argues that Phenomenal Conservatism (see Huemer 2007, "Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74, pp. 30–55) is an untrustworthy method of fixing belief (MFB). I respond that Mizrahi's argument is unsound because one premise is rationally unacceptable, and that if this premise is refined and made more acceptable, the argument proves invalid. Phenomenal Conservatism says that seemings are special mental states – i.e. propositional attitudes, different from beliefs, capable of supplying justification for their contents. Accordingly: (PC) If it seems to S that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing p. (PC) holds that it is by virtue of (or on the grounds of) S's having a seeming with content p that S has some degree of defeasible justification for believing p (cf. Huemer 2007, p. 30). This is Mizrahi's argument: 1. (PC) [Assumption for reductio] 2. It seems to S1 that p and it seems to S2 that not-p, independently of each other. [Premise] 3. Therefore, in the absence of defeaters, S1 has some degree of justification for believing p and S2 has some degree of justification for believing not-p. [From (1) & (2)] 4. If an MFB provides some degree of justification for contradictory beliefs, it's untrustworthy. [Premise] 5. Appealing to seemings provides some degree of justification for contradictory beliefs. [From (3)] 6. Therefore, appealing to seemings is an untrustworthy MFB. [From (4) & (5)] As Mizrahi indicates, (2) appears true for some p. For instance, to Jackson (1982, "Epiphenomenal Qualia", Philosophical Quarterly, 32, pp. 127–136) it seems that Mary learns something new, whereas to Dennett (1991, Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little Brown) it seems that she doesn't. To Hauser (2002, "Nixin' Goes to China", in Preston and Bishop (eds.), Views Into the Chinese Room, NY: OUP) it seems that the person in the Chinese room understands Chinese, whereas to Searle (1999, "The Chinese Room", in Wilson and Keil (eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, MIT Press) it seems that that person doesn't. I find Mizrahi's examples prima facie plausible, so I won't question (2). Mizrahi reports an objection to (4) by an anonymous reviewer, which he leaves unaddressed but appears to regard as serious. I don't think Mizrahi's argument is flawed because of it. The objection runs as follows: you know that an urn U contains a red, a blue and a yellow ball. Alice extracts one ball from U but you cannot see its colour. She truthfully tells you that (e) the ball isn't yellow. This gives you some justification to believe that (r) it is red and some justification to believe that (b) it is blue. The alleged difficulty for (4) is that although r and b are incompatible, your MFB isn't untrustworthy. I see no real challenge for (4) because r and b are incompatible but not just one the logical negation of the other. (It is customarily accepted, for instance in science, that the same evidence can support incompatible hypotheses.) Furthermore, in this example it is false that e gives you some justification for both r and not-r (or both b and not-b). Suppose U contains the three coloured balls only. It is intuitive that before you learn e, your degree of confidence in not-r should be 2/3, but after you learn e your confidence in not-r should drop to 1/2. So e cannot give you justification for not-r. This conclusion holds in general even if U contains additional balls. Since e boosts your confidence in r, it follows from the probability calculus that e must lessen your confidence in not-r. 2 Mizrahi's argument against (PC) presupposes that the same MFB can be used by different subjects (or the same subject at different times). But there is a problem with the way he implements this idea. In particular, if (4) were true, we should conclude that any MFB utilizable by different subjects is untrustworthy. For, trivially, different subjects may have different evidential grounds that support contradictory propositions via the same MFB. Take for instance testimony. Let p be the proposition that my pet flies. I tell S1 that my pet is a bird and I tell S2 that my pet is a penguin. S1 will have some justification for believing p and S2 some justification for believing not-p. So if (4) is true, testimony is untrustworthy. Consider now perception. Suppose S1 only sees that my pet has a beak, whereas S2 clearly sees that my pet is a penguin. S1 has some justification for believing p and S2 has some justification for believing not-p. If (4) is true, perception is untrustworthy. These examples easily multiply. We cannot accept (4) because this would commit us to a very implausible conclusion. An obvious refinement of (4), which settles this difficulty, is the following: 4*. If an MFB provides some degree of justification for contradictory beliefs on the grounds of the same evidence, it's untrustworthy. Mizrahi might intend (4) as equivalent to (4*). For instance, to defend (4) Mizrahi envisages a situation in which he uses a Litmus test as a MFB about the pH of a given solution. The test is repeated again and again. Mizrahi sensibly concludes that if his blue Litmus paper sometimes turned red (thereby indicating an acidic solution) and sometimes stayed blue (thereby indicating a basic solution), he wouldn't put much trust in his MFB. In this thought experiment, Mizrahi's MFB can be described as processing at different times the same evidence, constituted by the same solution and the same background information necessary to interpret the test's observational outcomes. Suppose we replace (4) with (4*). The resulting variant of Mizrahi's argument against (PC) would go through only if (5) could be interpreted accordingly, i.e. as stating that appealing to seemings provides some degree of justification for contradictory beliefs on the basis of the same evidence. This interpretation is very questionable. Take again the case in which it seems to Jackson that (p) Mary learns something new, whereas it seems to Dennett that she doesn't. The phenomenal conservative would claim that the evidential grounds of Jackson's belief that p and the evidential grounds of Dennett's belief that not-p are to be identified with Jackson's and Dennett's respective seemings. The phenomenal conservative would thus insist that Jackson and Dennett have (defeasible) justification for contradictory beliefs because they have different evidence constituted by their conflicting mental states coinciding with incompatible seemings. This example generalizes: appealing to seemings can provide some justification for contradictory beliefs only on the basis of different evidential grounds – i.e. different seemings. In conclusion, if we replace (4) with (4*), (6) doesn't follow from (4*) & (5); the resulting argument is invalid. I don't exclude that Mizrahi is onto something and that (PC) could turn out to be untrustworthy. However, to believe so we would need a neat argument that Mizrahi has not delivered. Luca Moretti Philosophy, University of Aberdeen