Experience and Evidence Susanna Schellenberg Rutgers University susanna.schellenberg@rutgers.edu I argue that perceptual experience provides us with both phenomenal and factive evidence. To a first approximation, we can understand phenomenal evidence as determined by how our environment sensorily seems to us when we are experiencing. To a first approximation, we can understand factive evidence as necessarily determined by the environment to which we are perceptually related such that the evidence is guaranteed to be an accurate guide to the environment. I argue that the rational source of both phenomenal and factive evidence lies in employing perceptual capacities that we have in virtue of being perceivers. In showing that both kinds of evidence have the same rational source, I provide a unified account of perceptual evidence and its rational source in perceptual experience. What evidence does perceptual experience provide us with? Why heed the testimony of our senses? To motivate these questions, consider a perceiver and a hallucinator. Percy, the perceiver, accurately perceives a white cup on a desk. Hallie, the hallucinator, suffers a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination as of a white cup on a desk; that is, it seems to her that there is a white cup where in fact there is none. What evidence do Percy and Hallie have for believing that there is a white cup on a desk? I will argue that Hallie has some evidence for her belief, but that Percy has more evidence than Hallie. While standard internalist views have it that Hallie has as much evidence as Percy (e.g. Feldman and Conee 1985), standard externalist views of evidence have it that Hallie has only introspective evidence, but no evidence provided directly through experience (e.g. Williamson 2000).1 In contrast to both approaches, I will argue that perceptual experience provides us with both phenomenal and factive evidence and that both kinds of evidence have the same rational source. To a first approximation, we can understand phenomenal evidence as determined by how our environment sensorily seems to us when we are 1 Conee and Feldman (2008) are open to there being differences in evidence derived from beliefs in the case described. It should be noted that 'introspective evidence' is not Williamson's term. I will clarify it shortly. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 doi:10.1093/mind/fzt088 Advance Access publication 19 November 2013 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from experiencing. To a first approximation, we can understand factive perceptual evidence as necessarily determined by the environment to which we are perceptually related such that the evidence is guaranteed to be an accurate guide to the environment. As I will argue, Percy and Hallie both have phenomenal evidence for believing that there is a white cup on a desk, but Percy has additional factive evidence. In this sense, Hallie has some evidence, but not as much as Percy. In showing that the rational source of both kinds of evidence lies in employing perceptual capacities, I will develop a unified account of perceptual evidence. I will proceed as follows. In section 1, I distinguish perceptual evidence from introspective evidence. In section 2, I argue that experience provides us with phenomenal evidence. In section 3, I argue that experience provides us with factive evidence. In section 4, I show that phenomenal and factive evidence have the same rational source. My project is purely positive. I will mention competitor views only to the extent that it helps motivate and situate the view I develop. With internalists, I will argue that we have at least some evidence provided directly through experience regardless of whether we are perceiving, hallucinating, or suffering an illusion. However, against internalists, I will argue that if we accurately perceive, we have more evidence, where that evidence is of a distinct kind. So while I will develop an externalist view of perceptual evidence, I am in disagreement with externalists like Williamson (2000), according to whom we have only introspective evidence when we hallucinate, but no evidence provided directly through experience. Others have developed hybrid views on which evidence has both internal and external elements.2 What is new about the account developed here is that, if right, it establishes that perceptual experience provides us with two kinds of evidence that have the same rational source: both factive and phenomenal evidence have their rational 2 Alston (1986) integrates the internalist condition that we have direct access to the grounds of our beliefs within an externalist view of justification. Sosa (1991) integrates internal and external dimensions of epistemic appraisal by distinguishing between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge. Comesaña (2010) and Goldman (2011) defend views on which justification has both an external, reliable and an internal, evidential component, which jointly yield justification, where the internal and external components are attributed to different aspects of experience. The internal component derives from the sensory character of experience. The external component derives from the alleged reliability of perceptual experience. Hellie (2011) argues that being perceptually justified is a matter of accepting externally individuated sentences that cohere with one's stream of consciousness. By contrast to these views, I argue that the internal and external components are grounded in the very same aspect of experience. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 700 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from source in the perceptual capacities employed in experience. So what is new about the account developed here is that it provides a unified account of the internal and external elements of perceptual evidence and their common rational source. Although my focus is on perceptual evidence, the lessons I wish to draw are more general. I believe that my arguments generalize to a bilateral view of evidence that is not restricted to perceptual evidence. But to keep the discussion tractable I will focus on the case of perceptual evidence. Before I embark on this project, it is worth pausing to clear up a potential misconception. Accepting that perceptual experience yields evidence does not commit one to any form of evidentialism. According to evidentialists, what one is justified in believing is entirely determined by one's evidence (Feldman and Conee 1985). While an evidentialist could adopt many of the ideas I will argue for, they could equally be adopted by someone who rejects the basic commitment of evidentialism. Indeed, the thesis that perceptual experience provides us with evidence is neutral on what connection there is between having evidence and being justified.3 More specifically, the thesis is neutral on the relationship between the evidence that experience provides and any beliefs formed on the basis of that evidence. The arguments of the paper could be accepted regardless of what stance one takes on how and why experience justifies beliefs. The thesis that experience yields evidence is neutral not only on the relationship between having evidence and being justified but also on the relationship between having evidence and what is rational to believe. Indeed, it is neutral on whether being justified and being rational are one and the same. After all, the thesis that experience provides us with evidence is compatible with there being many other features that affect what would be rational to believe. One might, for example, be a foundationalist about justification, but think that additional coherence considerations come into play when assessing what it would be rational to believe. Moreover, one might have non-evidential defeaters and so despite one's evidence for p, it might not be rational to believe p. Consider for instance a case in which a subject has negligently 'buried her head in the sand' and failed to gather easily accessible evidence against p. Such a subject can retain good evidence for p and so have at least some justification for believing p. Nevertheless, 3 One might argue that having perceptual evidence is sufficient for an experience to justify a belief about the external world (Pollock 1974, Feldman and Conee 1985, Pryor 2000). Alternatively, one might argue that background beliefs necessarily play a role when an experience justifies a belief about the external world (Cohen 2002). Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 701 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from it would arguably not be rational for her to believe that p. Finally, the thesis that perceptual experience provides us with evidence is neutral on the connection between having evidence and having knowledge. In short, I am neither concerned here with whether we are doxastically justified when we have evidence, nor am I concerned with what, if any, further conditions are required for knowledge. I am concerned only with what evidence perceptual experience provides us with and why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses. 1. Perceptual evidence and introspective evidence If we have evidence, it is rational to heed this evidence. Perceptual evidence is evidence provided by perceptual experience. In so far as perceptual experience is directed at our environment, the evidence that perceptual experience provides us with is of (or as of ) our environment. The idea that perceptual evidence is of (or as of ) our environment is neutral on a whole range of vexed questions. It is neutral on whether perceptual evidence has content. It is neutral on what the nature of its content is - assuming there is evidential content. Moreover, it is neutral on what the relation is between the content of perceptual evidence (if any) and the perceptual experience that provides us with perceptual evidence. Finally, it is neutral on whether all aspects of our perceptual evidence are accessed or even accessible.4 I will take a stance on all these choice points in section 3. But for the most part, the arguments in this paper can be accepted irrespective of what stance one takes on these issues. Regardless of how perceptual evidence is understood, it must be distinguished from introspective evidence. Introspective and perceptual evidence differ in what they are of: while perceptual evidence is of (or as of ) one's environment, introspective evidence is of (or as of ) one's experience or some other mental state. They differ in their source: while perceptual evidence stems from perception, introspective evidence stems from introspection. They differ in what one attends to: while one gains perceptual evidence in virtue of attending to one's environment, one gains introspective evidence in virtue of attending to one's experience or some other mental state (which may be of one's 4 For the view that all evidence is propositional, see Williamson 2000; for the view that evidence can be non-propositional, see Plantinga 1993. For the view that evidence is necessarily accessible, see Chisholm 1977; for the view that evidence is not necessarily accessible, see again Williamson 2000. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 702 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from environment). When I speak of experience as providing us with evidence directly, I mean that we need not attend to our experience to have the evidence. So we need not introspect our experience to gain evidence: we have evidence simply in virtue of experiencing.5 I am not denying that when we experience we can introspect our experience and thereby gain introspective evidence. However, as I will argue in the next section, experience yields evidence without us having to introspect our experience. Indeed, I will argue - contra Williamson - that even when we are hallucinating our experience yields at least some evidence without having to resort to an appearance proposition. On Williamson's view, the evidence one has when one hallucinates is an appearance proposition of the form 'it seems to me that p' and so is provided by attending to the fact that one's environment seems a certain way to one. Appearance propositions involve appearance concepts - for example 'it seems' or 'it appears' - and entertaining such a proposition requires the ability to refer to oneself. Animals that do not possess appearance concepts and that are not capable of self-reference can hallucinate. They gain evidence in virtue of hallucinating even though they are not capable of entertaining appearance propositions. After all, they act on their hallucination.6 While it is a fact that the environment seems a certain way to us when we experience, we should distinguish between this fact and the sensory state we are in when such a fact holds. If we gain evidence in hallucination only by attending to the fact that it sensorily seems to us as if our environment is a certain way and so only by attending to our experience (rather than by attending to our environment, albeit failing to perceive), then the evidence we gain in hallucination is not provided directly through experience. I will present a view of perceptual 5 This constraint is neutral on a whole range of ways of thinking of direct and indirect perception. For a discussion of the notions of 'direct' and 'indirect' perception, see Jackson 1977 and Snowdon 1992. It should be noted that on a radical view of the transparency of experience we are never aware of properties of our experience but only ever of what our experience is about. There are both empirical and philosophical reasons to deny that experience is radically transparent in this way. To name just one reason: when our epistemic access to our environment changes - for instance, because we take off our glasses - our experience will be different. The difference is due to how we experience our environment. While we are not necessarily aware of the fact that the difference in experience is due to a change in the experience rather than the environment, we can be. The fact that we can be aware of this is reason alone to reject the thesis that experience is radically transparent. For a discussion of this set of issues, see Smith 2002 and Martin 2002. 6 Williamson (2000, p. 199) denies that such animals gain evidence through their hallucination. Such a view requires an independent explanation of why animals act on their hallucinations. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 703 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from evidence on which evidence need not be understood as propositionally or conceptually structured and on which phenomenal evidence need not involve appearance concepts. 2. The phenomenal evidence argument The basic argument for the thesis that perceptual experience provides us with phenomenal evidence goes as follows: (1) If a subject S is perceptually directed at her environment (while not suffering from blindsight or any other form of unconscious perception), then it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is). (2) If it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence. So (3) If S is perceptually directed at her environment (while not suffering from blindsight or any other form of unconscious perception), then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence. The first premiss makes a claim about what is the case when we are perceptually directed at our environment. We can be perceptually directed at our environment without being perceptually related with our environment: when suffering a hallucination that is subjectively indistinguishable from a perception, we are perceptually directed at our environment, but fail to be perceptually related with our environment. The premiss states that it sensorily seems to us as if our environment is a certain way, if we are perceptually directed at our environment.7 It is neutral on whether our environment could 7 One might object that the notion of being perceptually directed to one's environment is equivalent to the notion of the environment sensorily seeming a certain way to one. In response, we can say that one could have a notion of being perceptually directed at one's environment while being eliminativist about sensory seemings. This alone shows that the notion of being perceptually directed is distinct from the notion of sensory seemings. It is controversial whether blindsighters are perceptually directed at their environment. One could argue that they do not perceive, but merely detect or register particulars in their environment. Dretske (2006) argues that there is no such thing as unconscious perception and so would deny that blindsighters perceive. If there is no such thing as unconscious perception, then the qualifying clause in premiss 1 can be dropped. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 704 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from sensorily seem the very same to us regardless of whether we are perceiving, hallucinating, or suffering an illusion. So it is compatible with a whole range of views about the nature of sensory seemings. Moreover, the premiss is neutral on whether experience has content. So it is compatible with a whole range of views about the nature of experience. Since the relevant sensory seemings are restricted to those in which our environment seems a certain way to us, the scope of the premiss does not extend to the ways things seem to us when we imagine. After all, when we visually imagine an object in our environment, it is not our environment that sensorily seems a certain way to us. It is rather what we imagine (e.g. our mental imagery) that sensorily seems a certain way to us.8 2.1 Premiss 2: Sensory states and phenomenal evidence The second premiss of the argument is more controversial. It states that sensory states provide us with phenomenal evidence. Accounts on which evidence is necessarily factive (Williamson 2000) and disjunctivist accounts (Snowdon 1981, McDowell 1982) will reject this premiss. In order to give support to this premiss, we need to address the question of what the relationship is between sensory states and phenomenal evidence.9 Since a sensory state is a kind of mental state, the thesis that sensory states provide phenomenal evidence entails - together with the theses that only mental states provide phenomenal evidence and that phenomenal evidence exists only if it is provided by something - the widely accepted thesis that our phenomenal evidence supervenes on our mental states.10 One might argue that there is a much stronger relation between phenomenal evidence and mental states - namely, identity. But for the sake of the phenomenal evidence argument, the relation of supervenience is all that is needed. A different way of understanding the question of what relationship there is between sensory states and phenomenal evidence is as a question about their epistemic relation. The key epistemological questions 8 The second premiss does not over-generalize to imagination for the same reason. 9 For the purposes of this paper, I am following Chisholm (1966) and Jackson (1977) in taking the relation between sensory seemings and sensory states to be a simple one. For dissenting views, see Sosa 2007 and Bengson MS. 10 See Feldman and Conee 1985, Pryor 2000, and Tucker 2010 for versions of this view, and Gupta 2006, White 2006, DeRose 2011, Wright 2007, and McGrath forthcoming for critical discussions. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 705 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from are: What is the epistemic bridge that gets us from being in a sensory state to having phenomenal evidence? More generally, why is it rational to heed the testimony of our senses - especially if unwittingly we happen to be hallucinating? In different ways, these questions ask for the motivation behind premiss 2.11 I will give support to premiss 2 by arguing that sensory states provide us with phenomenal evidence, since sensory states are systematically linked (in ways to be explained) to the particulars that they single out in the case of an accurate perception. Due to the existence of this systematic link it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses. What is the notion of rationality in play? For present purposes, it will suffice to work with the following understanding: if it is rational to heed the testimony of the senses, then a person who does not heed the testimony of her senses is blameworthy - provided she does not have defeaters. She is, for example, subject to the criticism that she is ignoring relevant information that is available to her. In order to get a better grip on the question of why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses, it will be helpful to consider the shortcomings of internalist conceptions of evidence. This conception of evidence goes back to at least Russell (1913) and arguably to Descartes (1641, especially Meditation II). Russell understood evidence in terms of sense data, that is, strange particulars that are directly present to the mind. Neo-Russellians and more generally evidential internalists understand perceptual evidence in terms of conscious mental states that can be the very same regardless of the environment of the experiencing subject (e.g. Pollock 1974, Feldman and Conee 1985, Pryor 2000). If our conscious mental states can be the very same regardless of our environment and if these conscious mental states determine our perceptual evidence, then our evidence will be the very same in the good and the bad case - that is, our evidence will be the very same regardless of whether we are accurately perceiving or suffering a hallucination.12 But if perceptual evidence is the very same in the good and the 11 Here and throughout, I understand 'rational' in an epistemic sense. I am not here concerned with practical rationality. 12 Illusions can be understood as a version of the good or the bad case. For discussion, see Antony 2011. For present purposes, we can remain neutral on how best to classify them. So as to avoid unnecessary complications, I will focus on the uncontroversial good and bad cases: accurate perception and hallucination. In Sect. 3, I will show how the suggested view applies to illusions. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 706 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from bad case, then it is mysterious why it would be rational to heed the testimony of our senses (see Goldman 1999 for this line of criticism). It is plausible that the reason for why it is valuable to take how our environment seems to us at face value is because doing so constitutes a useful way of pursuing an accurate view of the world. Evidence can play that role, however, only if there is a systematic link between our sensory seemings and the way our environment actually is. In so far as evidential internalists do not account for such a link, they fail to account for the role of evidence as being a guide to how the world is. In fairness, it must be noted that at least some evidential internalists take phenomenal evidence as determined simply by how the world sensorily seems to us, where that seeming need not be a guide to how the world actually is.13 So they are unlikely to be moved by the above line of argument. But the aim was not to argue against evidential internalists. The aim was to motivate the claim that an account of perceptual evidence ought to explain why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses. The thesis that evidence is a guide to how the world is puts into focus what phenomenal evidence is evidence for. Evidence is always evidence for something. Phenomenal perceptual evidence is evidence for what our experience is of - or would be of, were we perceiving. In order to make this explicit in the phenomenal evidence argument, we need to reformulate premiss 2 as follows: (Premiss 2*) If it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. How should we understand this? Consider again Percy who perceives a white cup on the desk in front of him and Hallie who suffers a hallucination as of a white cup on the desk in front of her. Percy 's sensory state is of his environment and provides phenomenal evidence that there is a white cup on the desk. Similarly, Hallie's sensory state provides phenomenal evidence that there is a white cup on the desk. So Percy and Hallie both have phenomenal evidence in virtue of their 13 See for example Pollock and Cruz 2004; though note that they talk of justification, rather than evidence. They argue that justification bears no deep connection to truth, but is rather to be understood in internalist procedural terms. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 707 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from environment seeming a certain way to them. The argument in support of premiss 2* goes as follows: (2a) If it sensorily seems to a subject S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external, mindindependent particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. (2b) If S is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external, mind-independent particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case, then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. So (2*) If it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. The conclusion is the reformulation of the second premiss of the basic phenomenal evidence argument, that is, the premiss for which we needed further support. If we conjoin this argument for why sensory states provide phenomenal evidence with the basic phenomenal evidence argument, we get the following comprehensive phenomenal evidence argument: (1) If a subject S is perceptually directed at her environment (while not suffering from blindsight or any other form of unconscious perception), then it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is). (2a) If it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external, mind-independent particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. (2b) If S is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external, mind-independent particulars of the type that Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 708 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from the sensory state is of in the good case, then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. (2*) If it sensorily seems to S as if her environment is a certain way (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. (From 2a and 2b) So (3*) If S is perceptually directed at her environment (while not suffering from blindsight or any other form of unconscious perception), then S is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. (From 1 and 2*) We already discussed premiss 1. In the rest of this section, I will give support to premisses 2a and 2b. 2.2 Premiss 2a: Sensory states and perceptual capacities In order to give support to premiss 2a, it will be necessary to show that sensory states are systematically linked to external, mind-independent particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case and to specify how that systematic linkage is to be understood. Doing so will require presenting a modest externalist view of sensory states. The basic idea of this view is that when we perceive, we employ perceptual capacities by means of which we differentiate and single out particulars in our environment. The relevant particulars are external and mind-independent objects, events, property-instances, and instances of relations. Sensory states are understood as determined by employing perceptual capacities in a sensory mode, that is, modes such as seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, or tasting.14 I will argue that if a subject S's environment sensorily seems to contain F particulars to her (regardless of how it in fact is), then S is in a sensory state that is determined by employing perceptual capacities that function to single out F particulars. 14 Here and throughout, 'determined' is understood in the sense of 'at least partially determined'. This leaves open whether there might be other determinants. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 709 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from Consider Percy who perceives a white cup on a desk. He employs his capacity to discriminate white from other colours and to single out white in his environment. Similarly, he employs his capacity to differentiate and single out cup-shapes from, say, computer-shapes and lamp-shapes. He may also employ the capacity to differentiate and single out cups from, say, computers and lamps. The important point is that in virtue of employing such capacities, he is in a sensory state that is of a white cup. What happens in hallucination? When we hallucinate, we employ the very same capacities that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception are employed while being perceptually related to external, mind-independent particulars. In hallucination, since we are not perceptually related to a particular, we fail to single out a particular in our environment. We merely purport to single out a particular. As a consequence, at least some of the capacities employed are baseless. They are baseless in the sense that the targets of discrimination and selection - external, mind-independent particulars - are absent. Analogously, if we employ concepts, but fail to refer, the concepts employed remain empty. Consider Hallie who suffers a hallucination as of a white cup on a desk. Like Percy, she employs the capacity to discriminate and single out white from other colours and she employs the capacity to differentiate and single out cup-shapes from, say, computer-shapes and lamp-shapes. Since she is hallucinating rather than perceiving and so not perceptually related to a white cup, the capacities she employs are baseless. Yet even though she fails to single out any white cup, she is in a sensory state that is as of a white cup in virtue of employing the capacity to discriminate and single out white from other colours and cup-shapes from other shapes. How should we understand the perceptual capacities in play? They can be understood to be discriminatory, selective capacities, concepts, or some kind of functional property. There is good scientific evidence that discriminatory, selective capacities are the cognitively most lowlevel mental capacities employed in perception, so I will focus on this specific kind of perceptual capacity.15 A discriminatory, selective capacity is a low-level mental capacity that functions to differentiate, single out, and in some cases type the kind of particulars that the 15 For discussions of the role of basic visual capacities and pre-attentive discrimination in early vision, see Julesz 1981, Watson and Robson 1981, Sagi and Julesz 1985, Malik and Perona 1990, Krummenacher et al. 2010, and To et al. 2011. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 710 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from capacity is of. For example, if we possess the discriminatory, selective capacity that functions to differentiate and single out red, we are in a position to differentiate instances of red from other colours in our environment and to single out instances of red. More generally, to possess a discriminatory, selective capacity is to be in a position to differentiate and single out a particular of the type that the capacity is of, were one related to such a particular.16 So if we possess such a capacity, then - assuming no finking, masking, or other exotic case obtains (see Lewis 1997) - the following counterfactual should hold: if we were perceptually related to a particular that the capacity functions to single out, then we would be in a position to single out such a particular.17 Singling out a particular is a proto-conceptual analogue of referring to a particular. Non-rational animals and infants as young as four months old can perceptually single out objects and propertyinstances in their environment, yet they do not have the capacity to refer. While referring requires conceptual capacities, singling out particulars requires no such capacities. There are further analogies between discriminatory, selective capacities and concepts. Like concepts, the same discriminatory, selective capacity can be employed in different environments and in this sense such capacities are repeatable. It is worth noting that discriminating between two particulars does not require attending to both particulars. It requires only registering their differences - however much in the background of one's sensory state this registering may occur. It is unclear what it would be to single out, say, the shade of a leaf without registering how it differs in at least one respect from its surround. More generally, it is unclear what it would be to single out a particular without registering how it differs in at least one respect from other particulars. 16 The notion of capacity in play can but need not be understood in a teleological, phylogenetic, virtue epistemological, or ontogenetic manner. For such accounts, see Millikan 1989, Neander 1996, Sosa 1991, 2007, Zagzebski 1996, Greco 2001, 2010, and Burge 2003, 2010. As I will argue in the rest of this section, a sensory state provides phenomenal evidence in so far as it is determined by capacities that are metaphysically and explanatorily dependent on the good case. As I will show, accepting this idea is compatible with accepting that such capacities may more often than not be used in a way that fails to produce accurate representations of the environment. 17 The inference from a claim about perceptual capacities to a counterfactual fails in finking, masking, and similarly exotic cases. However, all the standard ways of fixing the disposition-to-counterfactual inference can be exploited for the capacity-to-counterfactual inference. See in particular Lewis 1997. Finding a formulation of the capacity-to-counterfactual inference that is indefeasible in light of all possible finking, masking, and similarly exotic cases would be a project of its own. Therefore, I will here work on the assumption that no such exotic cases obtain. This assumption is independently plausible. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 711 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from How does appealing to such capacities help understand sensory states in a way that supports premiss 2a of the phenomenal evidence argument? The suggestion is that sensory states are determined by employing perceptual capacities in a sensory mode. Any two experiences in which all the same capacities are employed in the same sensory mode will have the same sensory character if all else is equal. Although such capacities are necessarily determined by functional connections between perceivers and their environment, arguably they can be employed even if one is misperceiving or hallucinating. After all, the capacities are determined by general, functional relations between the organism and its environment - for instance, global patterns of the organism's response to its environment - and not by individual token responses. Yet, one could be prompted to employ such capacities due to nonstandard circumstances: unusual brain stimulations or misleading distal inputs. If this is right, then we can employ a discriminatory, selective capacity even if a relevant particular is not present - where a relevant particular is a token of the type that the capacity functions to single out. The capacities employed account for the fact that in hallucinations we can purport to single out particulars: from a first-person perspective it can seem as if we were perceptually related to particulars in our environment. Since sensory states are understood as determined by employing perceptual capacities rather than the capacities themselves, it is not revealed in our sensory character whether the capacities are baseless. So it is not revealed in our sensory character whether we succeed in differentiating and singling out particulars, and so whether we are perceiving or hallucinating. An example will help illustrate the point. We possess the capacity to perceive red. Sometimes we employ this capacity successfully to single out something red, and sometimes we employ this capacity but fail to single out anything red. In the latter case, we suffer a hallucination as of something red, or an illusion that an object we perceive is red when in fact it is not red. The important point is that one can distinguish the employment of the capacity - what perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions have in common - from discriminating and singling out a particular - the matter on which perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions differ. It is the employment of the capacity that determines the sensory state. Whether or not a particular is singled out does not affect the sensory state. If it is right that two experiences in which ceteris paribus all the same perceptual capacities are employed in the same sensory mode have the Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 712 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from same sensory character, then subjectively indistinguishable perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions will share a metaphysically substantial common factor. The common factor is determined by the perceptual capacities that the subject employs in a sensory mode. But as I will show shortly, the fact that there is such a common factor does not imply that we are aware of a common factor, nor does it imply that the good case is analysed as a conjunction of a common factor and some additional element, such as a causal perceptual relation. Before I show how this way of understanding sensory states supports premiss 2a, I will address four potential misconceptions. First, the idea that sensory states are determined by employing discriminatory, selective capacities in a sensory mode is compatible with there being additional aspects that determine sensory states. Such aspects may be sensations, appearance properties, sense data, qualia, intentional objects, phenomenal properties, awareness relations to property-clusters, or (uninstantiated) universals - to name just a few options.18 For present purposes, we can remain neutral both on whether there are any such additional aspects and - if there are any - on what their nature is. We can remain neutral on this, since the aim here is not to give a full account of sensory states, but rather to analyse what it is about sensory states that makes them rational to heed. Second, we possess and make use of many discriminatory, selective capacities that are not phenomenally relevant - even when we perceive. I have not argued that whenever we use such a capacity, we are in a sensory state. I have argued only that sensory states should be understood in terms of employing perceptual capacities in a sensory mode. We can accept this thesis while acknowledging that there are many capacities - including discriminatory, selective capacities - the 18 For sensations, see Peacocke 1983; for appearance properties, see Shoemaker 2007; for sense-data, see Robinson 1994; for qualia, see Levine 1983, Chalmers 1996, Block 2003, McLaughlin 2007; for intentional objects, see Harman 1990, Lycan 1996, Crane 1998; for phenomenal properties, see Chalmers 2006, Block 2007; for (uninstantiated) universals, see Dretske 1995, Byrne 2001, Tye 2002; for property-clusters, see Johnston 2004. For an excellent recent account of consciousness and overview of the current debate, see Hill 2009. While the proposal that sensory states are determined by employing perceptual capacities is compatible with there being such additional aspects that determine sensory states, the suggestion allows for a way to analyse sensory states without appealing to phenomenologically or metaphysically problematic entities, such as sense-data, qualia, intentional objects, or sensory awareness relations to (uninstantiated) universals, property-clusters, or other abstract entities. For a discussion of the problems of such views, see my 2011a. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 713 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from employment of which has no repercussions for our conscious mental lives. Third, it is crucial that employing discriminatory, selective capacities is not just a matter of differentiating particulars, but also of singling out particulars. Due to this, the sensory character of perceiving an instance of red is distinct from the sensory character of perceiving an instance of blue. Both cases may include differentiating red and blue, but in the former case an instance of red is singled out, while in the latter case an instance of blue is singled out. So the capacities employed are distinct and the sensory states differ. Finally, all sorts of things can be understood to discriminate, including thermometers and sunflowers. When I speak of discriminatory, selective capacities, I mean always a kind of low-level mental capacity. Since I am not trying to analyse what makes a capacity mental, I will help myself to the notion of a mental capacity. The notion of capacities in play does not apply to thermometers and sunflowers, since the relevant capacities are a kind of mental capacity and thermometers and sunflowers do not have mental capacities. Now, how does analysing sensory states in terms of employing perceptual capacities help explain why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses? The aim was to develop a way of thinking about sensory states on which they are systematically linked to what they are of in the good case, and so a way of thinking about sensory states that supports premiss 2a of the phenomenal evidence argument. How does appealing to perceptual capacities help develop such an account? As I will argue, sensory states are systematically linked to what they are of in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. There is an explanatory primacy of the good over the bad case since one can give an analysis of the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case only by appealing to their role in the good case. Consider again Hallie who suffers a hallucination as of a white cup on a desk. Even though she fails to single out anything white, she is in a sensory state that is as of an instance of white in virtue of employing the capacity to discriminate and single out white from other colours. She would single out an instance of white, were she in the good case - assuming again that no finking, masking, or other exotic case obtains. After all, she is employing a discriminatory, selective capacity the very function of which is to differentiate white from other colours and to single out white in her environment. In this sense, we need to Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 714 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from refer to what Hallie would discriminate between and what she would single out in the good case in order to explain the role of the capacities she employs in the bad case. Underlying this explanatory primacy there is a metaphysical primacy of the good over the bad case. More specifically, the explanatory primacy is licensed by a more basic metaphysical primacy. There is a metaphysical primacy of the good over the bad case in so far as one can possess the discriminatory, selective capacities employed in the bad case only in virtue of being the kind of being that could employ those very capacities in the good case. Call this the metaphysical primacy thesis. Why should we accept this thesis? The function of discriminatory, selective capacities is to differentiate and single out particulars of the type that the capacity is of. It would be unclear what it would mean to possess a discriminatory, selective capacity, the very function of which is to single out a kind of particular, without being in a position to single out such a particular when perceptually related to one. So the 'could' in the metaphysical primacy thesis should be understood to indicate a metaphysical rather than an epistemic possibility.19 An example will help illustrate the point. If we possess the capacity to discriminate and single out red from other colours, we can use this capacity to single out red in our environment. Were we not in a position to use our capacity in this way when perceptually related to an instance of red, we would not count as possessing the capacity. In short, while discriminatory, selective capacities can be employed in hallucination, they are necessarily determined by relations between perceivers and their environment in so far as the function of the capacity is to differentiate and single out, say, instances of red in perception. In this sense, there is a metaphysical priority of the good over the bad case. The metaphysical priority thesis entails the counterfactual that if we possess a discriminatory, selective capacity, then - assuming that no finking, masking, or other exotic case obtains - we would be in a position to single out a relevant particular, were we related to such a particular. However, it also entails the counterfactual that if we possess such a capacity, we would fail to single out a relevant particular, were we not related to such a particular. Similarly, the explanatory priority thesis entails symmetric counterfactuals. So why should we 19 More specifically, the 'could' should be understood to indicate a restricted metaphysical possibility. A plausible restriction is to scenarios in which the subject's mental constitution is not radically altered. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 715 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from accept that there is an asymmetry between the good and the bad case? Why not say that the bad case is no less fundamental than the good case? After all, perceptual capacities are characterized by how they behave both in the good and the bad case. In responding to this challenge, I will focus on the metaphysical priority thesis, since it licenses the explanatory priority thesis. My explanation for why the metaphysical priority thesis holds carries over to an explanation of why the explanatory priority thesis holds. While the metaphysical priority thesis entails symmetric counterfactuals, the thesis is not to be identified with them. The asymmetry buttressing the thesis is an asymmetry of function. Perceptual capacities function to single out particulars. They do not function to fail to single out particulars. It is compatible with this that they may be employed in hallucination thereby failing to single out particulars. In order to support this, it will be necessary to take a closer look at the notion of function in play. The heart has the function to pump blood. It does not have the function to fail to pump blood - though in the bad case it will fail. One possible way to understand this asymmetry is in terms of evolution: the function of the heart is what it was selected for (Millikan 1984). However, it need not be understood in an evolutionary way. Any plausible account of natural function will support the idea that the heart has the function to pump blood rather than the function to fail to pump blood. Likewise, perceptual capacities have the function to single out particulars in the environment. They do not have the function to fail to single out particulars. An evolutionary account of function would posit that perceptual capacities evolved for the purpose of singling out particulars rather than for the purpose of failing to single out particulars: they were selected to single out particulars. However again, there is no need to explain the asymmetry in evolutionary terms. On any plausible account of natural function, we can say that perceptual capacities function to single out particulars rather than function to fail to single out particulars. Accepting the metaphysical priority thesis is compatible with acknowledging that one could possess a perceptual capacity that one has never actually used successfully in perception. Moreover, the perceptual capacities employed in hallucinations need not have been acquired through perceptions. They might be innate, they might have been acquired through testimony, or they might have been arrived at through imagination. So the metaphysical priority thesis does not imply that we must have successfully used a perceptual capacity in the past to count as possessing such a capacity. It implies only Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 716 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from that we must be in a position to use the capacity successfully when perceptually related to a relevant particular, thereby singling out that very particular in our environment. It is worth highlighting that my argument does not depend on the notion of discriminatory, selective capacities. It depends only on the idea that sensory states are systematically linked to what they are of in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. The perceptual capacities in play can be understood to be discriminatory, selective capacities, but alternatives are to understand the capacities to be concepts or some kind of functional property. I focus on discriminatory, selective capacities only since they are arguably the cognitively most low-level mental capacities employed in perception. One can accept my argument while appealing to perceptual capacities that are not discriminatory, selective capacities. Now, does the existence of a perceptual capacity require the existence of at least one successful employment of that capacity? While it is possible to possess such a capacity without having been perceptually related to any particulars of the type that the capacity singles out in the good case, it is plausible that any such perceptual capacity is grounded in perception in so far as the existence of the capacity depends on perceptions of the particulars that the capacity singles out.20 If this is right, then it follows that there cannot exist any such perceptual capacity that is not grounded in perception. However, it does not follow from this that an individual subject must have had perceptions of the particulars that the capacity singles out in order to possess the relevant capacity. It follows only that there can exist a perceptual capacity that functions to single out a kind of particular, only if a particular of that kind has been perceived by someone, somewhere. The argument for the metaphysical priority of the good over the bad case does not depend on resolving the question of whether the existence of a perceptual capacity requires the existence of at least one successful application by someone, somewhere. However, depending on what stance one takes on this issue, one must either reject or accept the 20 This is not implied by the argument of the paper. The phenomenal evidence argument requires only a weaker claim, namely, that any perceptual capacity is grounded in how things would come out in the good cases. However, for empiricist reasons independent of the argument of this paper, it is plausible to assume that such capacities are grounded in actual perceptions and not just possible perceptions. For a discussion of such reasons, see Goodman 1955. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 717 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from metaphysical possibility of the scenario of a world of brains in a vat that can hallucinate. Regardless of what stance one takes on this issue, the suggested capacity view allows that a brain in a vat in our world could have hallucinations and so phenomenal evidence. Can Swampman possess perceptual capacities? Swampman is a being that came into existence through a bolt of lightning and so has no causal history (Davidson 1970). If perceptual capacities are understood in an evolutionary way, then Swampman could not possess the capacities in play. However, if they are understood in a non-evolutionary way, then Swampman could possess the relevant capacities. After all, no past experiences are necessary to possess such capacities. The condition for their possession is understood counterfactually: if one possesses the capacity to single out red, then one would be able to single out an instance of red, were one related to such an instance. For present purposes, we can remain neutral on whether capacities are understood in an evolutionary or a nonevolutionary sense. This opens the question of whether perceptual capacities are dependent on the particulars they function to single out.21 There are at least three different ways of understanding this question and my response is different depending on which way the question is understood. One way of understanding it is as a question about possessing capacities: Could a subject possess a perceptual capacity, even though she has never been perceptually related to a particular of the kind that the capacity functions to single out? In response: Yes. After all, the capacities could be innate, acquired through testimony, or acquired through imagination, and she may have been unlucky and never been perceptually related to a relevant particular. Another way of understanding it is as an existence question: Could a perceptual capacity exist that functions to single out a kind of particular that does not exist in our world, such as supersaturated red? In response: given what I argue in the paper, that is possible. However, for empiricist reasons that go beyond the scope of this paper, one might think that perceptual capacities must be grounded in perception in the sense that any given perceptual capacity must have been used by someone, somewhere. On such a view, hallucinations of supersaturated red need to be analysed in terms of employing both the capacity to single out instances of red and the capacity to single out instances of supersaturatedness. A third way of understanding the question is as 21 Thanks to Matt McGrath for raising this question. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 718 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from a question about employing capacities: Could a perceptual capacity be employed even if the relevant particular is not present? In response: Yes. After all, the very same perceptual capacity can be employed in hallucination and in perception. I have argued that sensory states are systematically linked to particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. The idea that sensory states are determined by employing such perceptual capacities is what supports premiss 2a of the phenomenal evidence argument. 2.3 Premiss 2b: Phenomenal evidence and systematic linkage Recall that premiss 2b of the phenomenal evidence argument has it that if a subject is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external and mind-independent particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case, then she is in a sensory state that provides phenomenal evidence for the presence of particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case. This premiss supports the crucial transition from the metaphysical fact that a sensory state is systematically linked to the external and mind-independent F particulars it is of in the good case to the epistemic fact that such a sensory state provides evidence for the presence of F particulars. The truth of premiss 2b depends on two principles. The first principle is that if sensory states are systematically linked to what they are of in the good case in the sense specified, then it is epistemically rational to heed the testimony of these sensory states. The second principle is that if it is epistemically rational to heed the testimony of sensory states, then they provide evidence. I will give support to each principle in turn. I argued that sensory states are systematically linked to particulars of the type that the sensory state is of in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. Sensory states are systematically linked to particulars in this way in so far as it is the function of the perceptual capacities that determine the sensory state to single out the relevant particulars. In speaking of it being the function of perceptual capacities to single out the relevant particulars, I do not mean to speak of their actual reliability but rather of how they are to be understood metaphysically. It is the function of a perceptual capacity to single out, say, instances of red. This is so regardless of how often the capacity is employed successfully to Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 719 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from single out an instance of red. So this way of understanding why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses has the advantage of not relying on any form of reliabilism. Our senses frequently lead us astray. Nevertheless, they provide us with evidence. On the suggested capacity view, it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses since sensory states are systematically linked to the particulars that they are of in the good case. The notion of systematic linkage in play is understood in terms of a metaphysical and explanatory primacy notion, which is not a reliabilist notion. If perceptual capacities are employed in perception, then they happen to be reliable. However, even in this case it is the primacy of the good over the bad case that gives experience its epistemic force. On the account presented, the epistemic force of perceptual experience does not depend on whatever reliability (if any) perceptual experience might have. The second principle states a sufficient condition for something to count as evidence. It follows from a substantive but largely uncontroversial view about evidence, namely, that it is a crucial property of evidence that if it is epistemically rational to heed x in the absence of defeaters, then x provides evidence.22 Now, one might object that beliefs are linked to what they are of in the good case, but it is not rational to treat beliefs as evidence. So why is it rational to treat sensory states as evidence but not beliefs?23 In response, we can concede that many things are in some way linked to what they are of in the good case. It is not rational to treat all those things as evidence. However, I argued that sensory states are systematically linked to particulars of the type that they are of in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. So the systematic linkage between sensory states and what they are of in the good case was understood in a specific way. The capacities employed in perception link perceptual states 22 For discussions of this property of evidence, see Ayer 1972; Kelly 2003, 2007; Neta 2003, 2008; Weatherson 2005; and Pryor forthcoming. An interesting question is what the connection is between the strength of the evidence we have for a proposition and our confidence in that proposition. For discussion of the relation between having evidence for p and having confidence in p, see Neta 2003, 2008 and Silins 2005. Since our concern here is restricted to the questions of what evidence perceptual experience provides us with and why it is rational to heed it, we can bracket this issue for the purposes of this paper. I reserve a detailed discussion of how the account developed here connects to questions about confidence for a future paper. 23 Thanks to Alex Byrne and David Chalmers for pressing me on this point. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 720 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from with particulars in the environment. Indeed, perception is our primordial connection to particulars in our environment. For present purposes, the crucial difference between perception and belief is that perceptual capacities function to single out particulars, while the capacities employed in belief do not necessarily have this function. Any belief that is about particulars is arguably parasitic on perception. The capacities that determine beliefs are not systematically linked to what they are of in the good case in the sense that there is an explanatorily and metaphysically primacy of their employment in the good case. Therefore, the argument provided for why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses does not over-generalize to beliefs. Now, what if we assume for the sake of argument both that beliefs are a kind of sensory state and that the capacities that determine beliefs are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case? On these two controversial assumptions, it is plausible that beliefs provide us with evidence.24 So on these assumptions, the argument provided for why it is rational to heed the testimony of our senses generalizes to beliefs. It does not, however, over-generalize, and so would not be a problem for the capacity view developed here, since beliefs are now understood to have many of the fundamental properties of perceptual states. 2.4 Coda I have argued that our phenomenal evidence in the bad case is brought about by employing the very same perceptual capacities that in the good case allow us to perceptually navigate our environment. While these capacities are determined by functional relations to the particulars they single out in perception, we can employ the same capacities while failing to single out a relevant particular. So having phenomenal evidence is compatible with our perceptual capacities being employed baselessly. As a consequence, hallucinations provide us with tangible, though misleading phenomenal evidence. So while the notion of phenomenal evidence developed here is externalist in that phenomenal evidence is determined by employing perceptual capacities and the capacities employed in the bad case are both metaphysically and explanatorily parasitic on their employment 24 Indeed, Harman's (1973) coherentist view of justification suggests - albeit for different reasons - that beliefs provide us with justification. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 721 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from in the good case, we can have phenomenal evidence even when we are in the bad case. The developed notion of phenomenal evidence is internalist only in so far as the phenomenal evidence of two experiencers in different environments can be the very same. It is not internalist regarding the accessibility of the evidence. More importantly, it is not internalist in so far as our phenomenal evidence is understood in terms of an asymmetric dependence of the bad on the good case.25 This externalist notion of phenomenal evidence makes room for the idea that having evidence is a matter of being in an epistemic position that is a guide to how the world is, while allowing that we can have evidence even if we happen to have been led astray and so are in a state that is not accurate with regard to our environment. As a consequence, the suggested capacity view shows how experience provides us with phenomenal evidence even in the bad case without retreating to introspective evidence. 3. The factive evidence argument So far I have argued that Percy and Hallie both have phenomenal evidence that is determined by employing perceptual capacities. How do we explain why Percy has more evidence than Hallie? How do we get from the thesis that perceptual experience is a matter of employing perceptual capacities to the thesis that accurate perceptions yield factive evidence? Factive perceptual evidence is necessarily determined by the environment to which one is perceptually related such that the evidence is guaranteed to be an accurate guide to the environment. There are many ways of understanding a factive conception of evidence given this constraint. One way is that such evidence is the set of propositions that one knows at any given moment. Another way is that factive evidence is not propositional and does not amount to knowledge. A third way is that factive evidence is propositionally structured without constituting knowledge.26 We can remain neutral on these options, since we are not concerned here with whether factive perceptual 25 See Pryor (2001, pp. 105–8) and Wedgwood (2002) for useful distinctions between ways of understanding the access requirement on our evidence and more generally different forms of epistemic internalism. 26 If evidence is propositionally structured, then we can say that factive evidence entails what it is evidence for. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 722 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from evidence is necessary or sufficient for perceptual knowledge. The question at issue is whether perception provides us with such evidence, not what its relationship is to knowledge. The notion of factive evidence being necessarily determined by the environment to which one is perceptually related suffices to distinguish factive from phenomenal evidence. After all, a perceiver and a hallucinator in the very same environment can have different phenomenal evidence. If a perceiver and a hallucinator are, for instance, both sitting in front of a white cup on a desk, the perceiver will have phenomenal evidence that there is a white cup on a desk, while the hallucinator might have phenomenal evidence that there is a green dragon playing the piano - or whatever she may be hallucinating. So in contrast to factive evidence, phenomenal evidence is not necessarily determined by the environment of the experiencing subject. The argument for the thesis that experience provides us with factive evidence goes as follows: (4) If a subject S accurately perceives her environment, then S accurately represents her environment on the basis of her environment. (5) If S accurately represents her environment on the basis of her environment, then S has factive evidence determined by her environment. So (6) If S accurately perceives her environment, then S has factive evidence determined by her environment. While the phenomenal evidence argument was premissed on the condition of a subject being perceptually directed at her environment, the factive evidence argument is premissed on the stronger condition of a subject accurately perceiving her environment. 3.1 Premiss 4: Perceptual content The truth of premiss 4 depends on the thesis that perception is representational and moreover on the thesis that perceivers accurately represent their environment on the basis of their environment. I will address each thesis in turn. So far my argument has been neutral on whether experience is representational. It would go well beyond the scope of this paper to Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 723 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from argue for that here.27 I will however briefly motivate it in light of the modest externalist view of sensory states developed in the previous section. I argued there that when experiencing, we employ perceptual capacities in virtue of which we are in a sensory state that is systematically linked to the particulars that the capacities function to single out in the good case. On one standard notion of perceptual content, to have an experience with content just is to be in a perceptual state that has a certain sensory character, where the content corresponds to the way the environment seems to one. The thesis that there is such a correlation between perceptual content and sensory states is orthogonal to whether perceptual content determines sensory states or vice versa. Moreover, it is compatible with there being aspects of sensory states that are not captured by perceptual content. In so far as employing perceptual capacities determines sensory states and in so far as sensory states are correlated with perceptual content, we can say that employing perceptual capacities yields perceptual content. It is important to note that the content yielded by employing perceptual capacities need neither be conceptually nor propositionally structured. Indeed, understanding perceptual content as the product of employing perceptual capacities allows for a substantive way of understanding perceptual content as non-conceptual and nonpropositional. Moreover, the capacity view neither implies that the experiencing subject stands in a propositional attitude to the content of her experience nor does it rely on there being such a relation between the subject and content of her experience. So there is no need to say that the experiencing subject 'exes' that p - to use Byrne's (2009) phrase. The thesis that we accurately represent our environment on the basis of our environment implies not only that when we perceive our environment we are causally related to that environment, but moreover that this causal relation is not deviant. So cases are ruled out in which our experiences are not caused along a normal route by the very particulars that we purport to single out. Consider the following situation: we experience a white cup at location L 1 and there is in fact a white cup (cup 1 ) at that location. But since this white cup is behind a mirrored wall, it could not have caused our experience. However, there is a different white cup (cup 2 ) at location L 2 that 27 See my 2011b for an argument for the thesis that experience is fundamentally representational. For a critical response to this argument, see Brewer 2011. For further arguments against the thesis that experience is fundamentally representational, see Martin 2002, Campbell 2002, Travis 2004, and Brewer 2006. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 724 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from does cause our experience, albeit in a deviant manner. The second cup (cup 2 ) is located such that we see its reflection in the mirror: it is reflected in a way that makes it seem as if it is at location L 1 , thereby causing our experience through a deviant causal chain. Since we are not perceptually related to the white cup (cup 1 ) at location L 1 , we do not accurately represent our environment on the basis of our environment - despite our experience being caused by our environment. For similar reasons so-called veridical hallucinations do not yield accurate representations of our environment on the basis of our environment. In the case of a so-called veridical hallucination, we hallucinate, for example, a white coffee cup at location L 3 . As it happens there is a white coffee cup at that very location which looks just like the one that we are hallucinating. But the white cup at location L 3 is behind a screen, so it could not have caused our experience. Since we are not perceptually related to the cup, our experience is not based on our environment. As these two cases show, we count as accurately perceiving our environment only if we accurately represent our environment on the basis of our environment. This is just what premiss 4 puts forward. 3.2 Premiss 5: Perceptual content and the factivity of perception Premiss 5 has it that if we accurately represent our environment on the basis of our environment, then we have factive evidence determined by that environment. Why should we accept this? I argued that sensory states provide phenomenal evidence since the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are systematically linked to their employment in the good case in so far as we can possess the capacities employed in the bad case only in virtue of being the kind of being that could employ the relevant capacities in the good case. After all, we would not count as possessing the relevant capacities were we not in a position to use them when the environment plays along. The capacities employed in the bad case function to single out what the capacities in fact single out in the good case. In this sense, there is a metaphysical priority of the good over the bad case. In virtue of this metaphysical priority of the good over the bad case phenomenal states provide us with evidence. The analysis of the epistemic role of phenomenal evidence in terms of a notion of systematic linkage carries over to an analysis of the epistemic role of factive evidence. After all, in the case of a perception, there is an ideal link between one's perceptual state and the environment due to one's being perceptually related to one's environment. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 725 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from Therefore, factive representational content is also rational to heed. But how should we understand the idea that there is such an ideal link? The truth of premiss 5 depends jointly on (i) the thesis that we have evidence if we accurately represent our environment on the basis of our environment, and (ii) the thesis that such representations yield factive evidence. The first thesis is neutral on most ways of understanding evidence. We can accept it, if we understand evidence as having the property of being rational to take at face value. After all, it is rational to be guided by an accurate representation of our environment arrived at on the basis of our environment. Likewise we can accept it if we understand evidence as having the property of being truth-conducive. After all, an accurate representation of our environment arrived at on the basis of our environment is truth-conducive and it is rational to treat truthconducive representations as evidence. It is fair to say that, on any reasonable conception of what having evidence requires, we should hold that we have evidence if we accurately represent our environment on the basis of our environment. Why should we accept the second thesis, that is, the thesis that representations arrived at on the basis of our environment yield factive evidence? A simple response is to say that perception is factive and it is reasonable that the evidence provided by perception inherits the factivity of perception. A more substantial response will require showing that perceptual evidence inherits its content from perceptual experience and that perceptual content is determined by the environment in the right way. I argued that one has evidence in virtue of being in a perceptual state that is determined by employing perceptual capacities. Parsimony dictates that the evidential state is itself the perceptual state.28 In so far as the perceptual state co-varies with its content, such a view posits that any changes in content will yield changes in evidence. To understand perceptual evidence otherwise would require having a more complicated view of perceptual evidence and its relation to experience. If perceptual evidence inherits its content from perceptual experience and perceptual content is determined by the 28 One might reject this view by arguing that perceptual evidence merely supervenes on content, such that there could be changes in content without changes in evidence. Any such view would have to account for why there is a difference between perceptual states and perceptual evidence and so would be more complicated than the view suggested. So reasons of parsimony will count against such a view. For a defence of the view that epistemic reasons are mental states, see Turri 2009. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 726 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from environment in the right way, then, necessarily, an accurate perception will yield evidence that is accurate with respect to that environment. The thesis that perceptual content is determined by the environment in the right way can be supported in a number of ways. I will give grounds for it by drawing on a view of perceptual content that I have defended in detail elsewhere (see my 2010 and 2011b). I will first present this view and will then abstract away from its details in order to reach a more general rationale for thinking that perceptual content is determined by the perceiver's environment in the right way. In the last section, I argued that perceptual capacities function to single out particulars. If the fact that such capacities single out particulars in some situations but not in others has any semantic significance, then the content ensuing from employing these capacities will depend at least in part on the environment in which they are employed. After all, relations to particulars are implicated in the very nature of perceptual content, if perceptual content is determined by employing perceptual capacities and such capacities function to single out particulars. In so far as perceptual capacities function to single out particulars, perceptual experience is fundamentally both relational and representational. On the proposed view, employing perceptual capacities yields representational content. More specifically, employing perceptual capacities determines a content type that subjectively indistinguishable experiences have in common. However, the token content of an experience co-varies with the environment of the experiencing subject. Since the perceptual capacities employed are the very same in subjectively indistinguishable experiences, the content type will be the same. Individuating experiences by a content type amounts to individuating experiences with regard to the experiencing subject's sensory state. While subjectively indistinguishable experiences are individuated by the same content type, their token content differs to the extent that the environment of the experiencing subject differs. How should we understand these token contents? I argued that employing perceptual capacities determines our sensory states and that by means of employing such capacities we (purport to) single out particulars in our environment. This idea is analogous to the Fregean idea that modes of presentation both have a cognitive significance and are a way of referring to particulars. Corresponding to Frege's use of modes of presentation as accounting for both these roles, there are two standard ways of understanding modes of presentation. If one focuses on the role of modes of presentation as accounting for cognitive significance, then it Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 727 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from is natural to think of them as de dicto. A de dicto mode of presentation can be the very same regardless of what (if anything) the experiencing subject is related to. If one focuses on the role of modes of presentation as a way of referring to a particular, then it is natural to think of them as de re. A de re mode of presentation is relational in that what particular (if any) the subject is related to has repercussions for the token content. This way of thinking about the content of experience recognizes that the mental act of representing a particular is not independent of singling out the particular that is the referent of the sense. Building on this idea, we can distinguish between mode of presentation types that are determined by employing capacities (for instance concepts), on the one hand, and mode of presentation tokens that are determined by employing capacities in a particular environment, on the other. More specifically, the token content of a perception of object o 1 that instantiates property P 1 can be expressed in the following way: ðcontentpÞ <MOP 1 r ðo1Þ, MOP 2 r ðP1Þ> where MOP1r ðo1Þ is an object-related de re mode of presentation of o1 and MOP2r ðP1Þ is a property-related de re mode of presentation of an instance of P 1 . So the content of any two subjectively indistinguishable perceptions e 1 and e 1 * in which we are perceptually related to the same object o 1 in the same way will include the token de re mode of presentation MOP1r ðo1Þ, where MOP 1 r ðo1Þ ensues from employing a perceptual capacity and being perceptually related to o 1 . Where one has a hallucination that is subjectively indistinguishable from e 1 , the same perceptual capacity has been employed, but the environmental requirements for successfully singling out a particular are not met. So unwittingly no particular is singled out. As a consequence, the capacity employed remains baseless in the sense that there is no external, mind-independent particular to serve as the target of discrimination and selection. It is key that the failure is not on the level of employing the relevant capacity. The failure is on the level of singling out a particular. Since there is no failure on the level of employing the capacity, there is no reason to think that the mental state of hallucination does not have a token content. After all, the very same perceptual capacities are employed that determine the content of a subjectively indistinguishable perception. Employing perceptual capacities gives sufficient structure for the relevant experience to have a Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 728 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from token content and moreover accounts for the fact that we purport to single out a particular. However, since we fail to single out a particular, the token content is defective. One way of understanding the idea that the content is defective is to say that it is gappy. The gap marks the failure to single out a particular. So the content of a hallucination in which we purport to single out an object that instantiates a property is: ðcontenthÞ <MOP 1 r __ð Þ, MOP 2 r __ð Þ> where MOP1r __ð Þ in the object-place is a gappy, object-related de re mode of presentation and MOP2r __ð Þ in the property place is a gappy, property-related de re mode of presentation.29 For a perceptual capacity to be baseless amounts to the ensuing token content being gappy. Analogously, in a case of illusion the same capacity is employed that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception is used to single out a property-instance, but since the subject fails to be perceptually related to the relevant property-instance, the capacity employed remains baseless. The token content that ensues from employing that perceptual capacity is gappy since the subject fails to single out a property-instance. So the token content of an illusion includes a non-gappy object place and a gappy property place. It is important to note that the content types are not general contents, but rather potentially particularized token contents. To motivate this, consider that if I have a thought as of a white cup, but there is no white cup present, I fail to refer. In such a case, the content of my thought is not singular. After all, I failed to refer. However, it is not a general content either. After all, I purport to refer to a particular object. So the content has the form of a singular content while failing to be a token singular content. In short, content can have the form of a 29 It is important to distinguish this view from Burge's view. Burge has been read as defending a gappy content view. However, as Burge notes of his view 'I have heard interpretations ... according to which there is a "hole" in the representational aspects of the proposition, where the hole corresponds to the object (which completes the proposition). I regard these interpretations as rather silly ' (1977/2007a, p. 75). Burge argues that there are demonstrative elements in the content of experience that are in place regardless of whether they refer to the object of experience. As he puts it 'I do not think that a physical re in the empirical world ... is itself "part of" the belief. ... In my view, the Intentional side of a belief is its only side. In many cases, in my view, a belief that is in fact de re might not have been successfully referential (could have failed to be de re) and still would have remained the same belief. Moreover, the belief itself can always be individuated, or completely characterized, in terms of the Intentional content' (1991, p. 209). The way I am using the terms, what Burge refers to as de re would be more aptly labelled de dicto. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 729 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from singular content while failing to be a token singular content. This does not imply that the content is general. There are more options than that, namely being a potentially singular content. As in the case of a failed singular thought, the content of hallucination is not a general content. The content is structured by two levels: the content type and the token content. More specifically, a potentially particularized content type and a defective or gappy token content. One might object that the content of a hallucination and the content of a perception could never be tokens of the same type. After all, the former is gappy and the latter is not. In response, particulars can be tokens of the same type even if the particulars differ significantly. For them to be tokens of the same type they need only to exhibit the feature relevant to be classified under that type. There are many ways to type contents. One way is with regard to whether or not they are gappy. On this criterion, gappy contents and non-gappy contents would be tokens of different types. However, another way to type contents is with regard to the perceptual capacities employed. On the suggested capacity view, employing perceptual capacities in a sensory mode yields a content type that subjectively indistinguishable experiences have in common. The token contents of this type can differ significantly: in the case of hallucination, they are gappy; in the case of perception, they are environment-dependent. Despite these differences, they have features in common, namely the perceptual capacities employed in the same sensory mode. In virtue of these common features, they are tokens of the same type.30 Now while in the good case the perceiver is perceptually related to the particulars that it seems to her she is perceiving, in the bad case she is not so related. Nevertheless, the gappy token content is inherently relational in virtue of being determined by employing perceptual capacities that are asymmetrically dependent on their employment in the good case. The perceptual capacities that determine the content of experience are inherently related to external and mind-independent particulars of the type that they function to single out.31 What follows from this for perceptual evidence? The view of perceptual content that I have presented provides us with two ways of individuating perceptual experiences. Each perceptual experience can be individuated with regard to the content type that is determined by 30 For an elaboration of the advantages of this understanding of perceptual content over competing disjunctivist views, see my 2010 and 2011b. 31 For a detailed discussion of the nature of gappy token contents, see my 2010. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 730 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from the capacities employed in perceptual experience. Alternatively, each perceptual experience can be individuated with regard to the environment-dependent token content that ensues from employing perceptual capacities in a particular environment. This account of perceptual content not only puts the notions of phenomenal and factive evidence on firmer footing, but also integrates them into a unified view of perceptual evidence. Phenomenal evidence is determined by the content type of a perceptual experience. Factive evidence is determined by the environment-dependent token content of a perceptual experience. So the factive evidential basis changes as the token content changes - even if one cannot tell. In this sense, factive evidence provides the perceiver with evidence that goes beyond mere phenomenal evidence. So the distinction between phenomenal and factive evidence emerges from two levels of perceptual content. In the next section, I will show how this bilateral view of evidence grounds the internal and external dimensions of perceptual evidence in the perceptual capacities that we employ in perceptual experience.32 I have presented a way of giving support to the idea that perceptual content is determined by the perceiver's environment in the right way. In order to reach a more general rationale for this idea, I will now abstract away from the details of the proposal. A more general rationale for the idea is motivated by how best to think of the accuracy conditions of experience. The accuracy conditions of perceptual experience specify the way the world would have to be for the content of experience to be accurate. Given this constraint there are several different ways of understanding accuracy conditions. If the content of experience lays down a condition under which it is accurate in a way that is sensitive to which particulars (if any) are perceived, then the way the experiencing subject's environment is will make a difference to the content of her experience. The motivation for this way of understanding accuracy conditions is that the condition that needs to be met for an experience to be accurate is not just that there is an object in the world that instantiates the properties specified by the content. It is necessary to specify which particular object in a subject's environment is represented to determine whether the subject's environment is as it is represented to be. If this is right, then for an experience with the content 'that coffee cup is white' to be accurate it is not sufficient that 'that' refers to some coffee cup instantiating the right properties. It is necessary that 'that' refer to the particular object 32 For an alternative context-sensitive view of factive evidence, see Neta 2003. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 731 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from perceived. If the content of experience lays down the conditions under which the experience is accurate and the accuracy of an experience depends on the environment, then the particulars to which the subject is perceptually related will make a constitutive difference to the token content of her experience. Such a relational view of perceptual content can be contrasted with a non-relational view. On a non-relational view, the content connects with the particulars it is about only in virtue of that particular satisfying the condition laid down by the content. The relation between content and particulars is the semantic relation of satisfaction. The condition to be satisfied does not depend on the particular that satisfies it. This condition may amount to a description such that the particulars that the content is about are those that uniquely fit the description.33 On the proposed relational view, the content is itself dependent on the particulars it is about. So the content does not remain constant whatever the environment of the experiencing subject. If she were in a different environment and so would single out different particulars or none at all, the content of her experience would be different. 3.3 Coda In order to fully support the idea that experience provides us with more evidence in the good than in the bad case, we need to show that we do not have factive evidence in the bad case. It falls out of the argument for why we have factive evidence in the good case that we do not have factive evidence in the bad case. On the suggested view, the token content of an accurate perception is a singular content, but the token content of hallucination is gappy. The gappy token content of hallucination does not provide evidence, since a gappy content cannot be true. After all, it is defective and so either does not have a truthvalue or is necessarily false. It is not rational to heed something that by its very nature could not guide one to the truth. Therefore, a gappy content does not provide evidence. A different way of expressing the underlying idea is that systematic linkage to how things are in the good case is what makes a mental state rational to heed. A gappy token content is never systematically linked to external and mindindependent particulars that it is of in the good case, since in the 33 A non-relational view need not, however, amount to a descriptive view. The distinction between relational and non-relational views of content overlaps but does not coincide with the distinction between non-descriptive and descriptive views of reference. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 732 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from good case a mental state will never have a gappy token content. So due to its defectiveness, a gappy content cannot yield factive evidence. More generally, we can say that an environment-dependent content is singular in the case of an accurate perception, but fails to be singular in the case of a hallucination. I argued that only if the content of our experience is determined by our environment in the right way, could it yield factive evidence. If we hallucinate, the content of our experience is not determined by our environment in the right way and so cannot yield factive evidence. Now, accepting that perceptual experience provides us with factive evidence in the good case requires denying that our evidence is always accessed or even accessible to us. At the very least, this requires denying that we can always recognize what the content of our experience is by introspection alone.34 In order to see why, consider the following switching case. At time t 1 , we perceive a white coffee cup (cup 1 ) on a desk. At time t 2 , the cup (cup 1 ) is, unbeknownst to us, replaced by a qualitatively identical cup (cup 2 ). Since the two cups are qualitatively identical, it is implausible that we have access to whether we are perceptually related to cup 1 or cup 2 at t 2 . But if perceptual content is environment-dependent, then the content of our experience will be different before and after cup 1 is replaced with cup 2 . So accepting that perceptual content is environment-dependent requires accepting that we are not always in a position to have access to all aspects of our perceptual content. While it is necessary to deny that we have access to all aspects of our perceptual content if we accept that perceptual states are factive, there are reasons to deny this for non-factive mental states.35 In order to see why, consider the following case. We perceive three subtly distinct shades of red: red 1 , red 2 , and red 3 . We cannot perceptually tell the difference between red 1 and red 2 . We cannot perceptually tell the difference between red 2 and red 3 . Yet we can perceptually tell the difference between red 1 and red 3 . In order to analyse this case, it is plausible that we must posit a difference regarding our phenomenal evidence 34 For classical discussions of the problem of knowing or grasping the content of one's mental states, if that content is externally individuated, see Brueckner 1986, McKinsey 1991, Warfield 1998, and Brown 2004. The idea that we are always in a position to access our evidence has been famously criticized by Williamson (2000). 35 Some internalists have understood the accessibility of evidence as an essential part of the very nature of evidence. Indeed, it has been argued that denying the accessibility of evidence or even our accessing our evidence amounts to changing the subject (Cohen 1984, p. 284). It will lead too far astray to address this issue here. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 733 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from when we perceive red 1 and red 2 , despite the fact that we cannot distinguish between the two shades of red. Similarly, it is plausible that there is a difference regarding our phenomenal evidence when we perceive red 2 and red 3 . An explanation for how we can distinguish between red 1 and red 3 draws on the premiss that there is a subjectively indiscernible difference between our phenomenal evidence when we perceive red 1 and red 2 , and there is a difference between our phenomenal evidence when we perceive red 2 and red 3 . The case suggests that there are aspects of our phenomenal evidence to which we do not have access and which moreover are not accessible to us. Given that there are reasons to reject the thesis that we have access to all aspects of our perceptual content for non-factive mental states, we need not be troubled that we must reject it, if we accept that experience provides us with factive evidence.36 4. The common rational source of phenomenal and factive evidence I have argued that in virtue of its sensory character perceptual experience provides us with phenomenal evidence, and that an accurate perception provides us with additional factive evidence. Phenomenal and factive evidence both have their rational source in the perceptual capacities employed in experience. Phenomenal evidence is determined by the content type of an experience that is in turn determined by the perceptual capacities employed. Factive evidence is determined by the token content of an experience that ensues from employing these capacities in a particular environment. In so far as both kinds of evidence have the same rational source, this capacity view of perceptual evidence shows how the internal and external aspects of perceptual evidence are fundamentally connected in the perceptual capacities that we employ in perceptual experience. As I argued in section 2, it is rational to heed the testimony provided by sensory states, which are determined by employing perceptual capacities, since such states are systematically linked to external and mind-independent particulars of the type that they are of in the good case. After all, if a subject's environment sensorily seems to contain F particulars, then she is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external and mind-independent F particulars. She is 36 For a more general discussion of the limits of introspection and knowledge of one's mental states, see Pereboom 1994, Goldberg 2000, and Fumerton 2009. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 734 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from systematically linked to such particulars in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. If she is in a sensory state that is systematically linked to external and mindindependent F particulars, then she is in a sensory state that provides evidence for the presence of F particulars. After all, if a subject is in a sensory state that is determined by employing perceptual capacities that function to single out F particulars, then the subject is in a sensory state that provides evidence for the presence of F particulars. As I argued in section 3, an accurate perception provides us moreover with factive evidence. The analysis of the epistemic role of phenomenal evidence in virtue of a notion of systematic linkage carries over to an analysis of the epistemic role of factive evidence. After all, in the case of a perception, there is an ideal link between our perceptual state and the environment due to our being perceptually related to our environment. Therefore, we have additional factive evidence in virtue of accurately representing our environment. Factive evidence provides additional evidence that is different from phenomenal evidence. It is evidence of a different kind since the systematic linkage to the environment is stronger than the one governing phenomenal evidence. More specifically, it is evidence of a different kind since it is provided by successfully employing perceptual capacities in a particular environment. So factive evidence provides a rationality boost beyond the rationality boost that one already has from phenomenal evidence. Thus it is explained why the perceiver is in a better epistemic position than the hallucinator. Now, from the first-person perspective one may not be able to tell the difference between a hallucination, in which one has only phenomenal evidence, and a perception in which one has both phenomenal and factive evidence. However, we need not think that what is accessible from the first-person perspective dictates what is rational to heed. A sensory state is rational to heed in virtue of being determined by employing perceptual capacities that function to single out the external mindindependent particulars that the state is of in the good case. There is no need to have access to all aspects of that state. It is worth pausing to consider how the content type and the content token are expressed in natural language.37 The content type and a singular token content can be articulated in the very same way in natural language. They better be. After all, a perception and a 37 Thanks to Adam Pautz for pressing me on this point. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 735 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from hallucination can be subjectively indistinguishable. Consider an experience of a white cup. The content type and the singular token content can both be articulated with 'that cup is white'. However, the demonstrative 'that' will play a different logical role in the two cases. In the content type, the demonstrative will refer to whatever (if anything) happens to be available to be singled out. In the singular content, by contrast, the demonstrative will refer to the very thing that the perceiver is perceptually related to. So unbeknownst to the experiencing subject, the two contents will play different roles in inferences and so have different evidential force. This capacity view of perceptual evidence has several attractive features. First, it is an externalist view of evidence that makes room for hallucinations providing us with evidence without retreating to introspective evidence, a general content, or an existentially quantified content. The view is externalist in so far as the content of factive evidence is an environment-dependent token content and in so far as our phenomenal evidence is determined by our sensory states, which in turn are individuated externally. Sensory states are individuated externally since they are determined by employing perceptual capacities that are by their very nature linked to the particulars that they are of in the good case. While the content of factive evidence is an environment-dependent token content, the content of phenomenal evidence is a content type. No doubt we can articulate a general content or an existentially quantified content to express the content of our sensory states. But the fact that we can articulate such content does not imply that the content of phenomenal evidence is such a general content or an existentially quantified content. It is a potentially particularized content type. Second, the capacity view implies that we can have perceptual evidence only if we are in a sensory state. Arguably, it is a condition of adequacy for a view of the epistemological role of perceptual experience that we have perceptual evidence only if we are in a sensory state.38 I argued that employing perceptual capacities yields phenomenal evidence and, if the environment plays along, also factive evidence. So we can have phenomenal evidence without having factive evidence. However, since we have factive perceptual evidence in virtue of employing perceptual capacities and since employing such 38 For a discussion of the role of sensory awareness in perceptual justification, see Bergman 2006, Glüer 2009, Lyons 2009, Hellie 2011, Silins 2011, Johnston 2011, Smithies 2011, and Siegel and Silins forthcoming. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 736 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from capacities yields a sensory state, we cannot have factive perceptual evidence without being in a sensory state. If this is right, then monotonicity between factive and phenomenal evidence is guaranteed. Third, the capacity view provides for a way of explaining why it is that a perceiver is in a better epistemic position than a hallucinator. Consider again Percy who perceives a white cup on a desk and Hallie who suffers a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination. On the suggested capacity view, Hallie has some evidence for her belief that there is a white cup on the desk, but Percy has more evidence for his belief. More generally, we can say that a person who is perceiving is in a better epistemic position than a person who is hallucinating, since the perceiver has more evidence, where that evidence is a distinct kind of evidence, namely factive evidence. So for any subject S 1 and any subject S 2 , if S 1 has all the evidence that S 2 has plus an additional bit of evidence that is factive and thereby of a distinct kind, then S 1 is in a better epistemic position than S 2 . Now, an alternative way of arguing that Percy has more evidence than Hallie is to show that there are two distinct facts that can figure as the truthmakers of perceptual content: facts about the experience and facts about the environment in which one is experiencing. After all, we have evidence that consists of true propositions when we are hallucinating - namely, introspective evidence of how it seems to us that the environment is. Such an approach restricts the evidence we get when we experience to factive evidence; however, the factive evidence includes not just perceptual evidence, but also introspective evidence. So the evidence we have in perceptual experience is either factive with regard to our environment or with regard to our experience. Williamson defends a version of this view. According to Williamson, evidence is a known proposition and knowledge is a mental state. Evidence is the object of the mental state, namely, a proposition or a set of propositions. Since evidence is a known proposition, there is no room on Williamson's view for evidence provided directly through experience in the bad case. After all, in the bad case there are no true propositions provided directly through experience. On the Williamsonian view, we have only introspective evidence in the bad case, that is, known propositions about how things seem to us. On both the Williamsonian view and the one I have argued for, perceiving Percy has more evidence than hallucinating Hallie. On the Williamsonian view, Percy has factive perceptual evidence and factive introspective evidence, while Hallie has only factive introspective Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 737 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from evidence. On the capacity view, Percy has phenomenal and factive perceptual evidence, while Hallie has only phenomenal perceptual evidence. While the Williamsonian view also accounts for the idea that Hallie has some evidence, but not as much as Percy, it is less attractive than the capacity view for three reasons. First, the Williamsonian view requires positing that we do not get evidence directly through our experience when we hallucinate, but only through introspection. Arguably, however, experience provides us with evidence directly - even when we hallucinate. The notion of phenomenal evidence that I have developed makes room for experience providing us with phenomenal evidence directly even in the bad case without retreating to introspective evidence. Second, introspection is a sophisticated intellectual activity, yet even subjects who do not have sophisticated intellectual abilities can get evidence through hallucination. By relying on subjects attending to how things seem to them, the Williamsonian view over-intellectualizes the way we get evidence in the bad case. A distinct and more pressing over-intellectualization worry is that on the Williamsonian view, the evidence we have in the bad case is an appearance proposition. Appearance propositions involve appearance concepts and some sort of self-reference. However, non-rational animals hallucinate and, presumably, they gain evidence in virtue of hallucinating even though they are not capable of being in mental states that are constituted by appearance propositions. The capacity view does not face these overintellectualization problems, since we have phenomenal evidence in the bad case in virtue of being in a sensory state: there is no need to introspect or attend to our experience to have phenomenal evidence. On the view developed, we can have phenomenal evidence even if we have no ability to refer to ourselves and do not possess appearance concepts. Finally, a view on which we get evidence only through introspection in the bad case, but directly through perceptual experience in the good case, requires positing that the source of our evidence differs at least in part in the good and the bad case. By contrast, the capacity view shows that the source of both factive and phenomenal evidence is our perceptual experience. Indeed, the capacity view provides for a unified account of perceptual evidence by revealing the common rational source of the evidence one has in perception and the evidence one has in a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination. So while I am following Williamson in arguing that we have a kind of evidence in the good case that we do not have in the bad case, Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 738 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from contra Williamson I am not rejecting the phenomenal conception of evidence. Moreover, the notion of evidence in play is not understood as identified with knowledge. Against Williamson, I have argued that we should not and need not retreat to the idea that experience provides us only with introspective evidence in the bad case. Doing so would undermine the epistemic force of experience. The capacity view makes room for an externalist account of the epistemic role of perceptual experience that does not depend on and does not entail reliabilism (Goldman 1979). One might argue that it is in virtue of perceptual capacities being reliable that the sensory states they determine provide us with evidence. On the defended view, sensory states provide us with evidence since sensory states are systematically linked to the particulars that they are of in the good case. I argued that sensory states are systematically linked to what they are of in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are explanatorily and metaphysically parasitic on their employment in the good case. More specifically, I argued that if a subject's environment sensorily seems to contain F particulars, then she is in a sensory state that is determined by employing perceptual capacities that function to single out F particulars. If a subject is in a sensory state that is determined by employing perceptual capacities that function to single out F particulars, then she is in a sensory state that provides evidence for the presence of F particulars. So the notion of systematic linkage in play is understood in terms of a metaphysical and explanatory primacy notion rather than a reliabilist notion. As I argued in section 2, while a sensory state provides phenomenal evidence in so far as it is determined by perceptual capacities that are metaphysically and explanatorily dependent on the good case, such capacities may more often than not be used in ways that fail to produce accurate representations of the world. So such capacities may fail to be reliable. But while the suggested capacity view does not depend on and does not entail reliabilism, it is compatible with such a view. The thesis that experience yields factive and phenomenal evidence is compatible not only with reliabilism, but also with the basic commitments of virtue epistemology.39 However, again one can accept the capacity view without accepting the basic commitments of virtue epistemology. The capacity view, for instance, neither entails nor depends on the thesis that epistemology is a normative discipline. Neither the 39 For virtue epistemological approaches, see among others Sosa 1991, Zagzebski 1996, and Greco 2001. Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 Experience and Evidence 739 at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from capacities nor the metaphysical and explanatory primacy notions in play need be understood in terms of virtues or any other normative notion. Indeed, the capacity view shows how the epistemic force of experience is grounded in metaphysical facts about experience. 5. Conclusion I have argued for an externalist view of perceptual evidence that makes room for a phenomenal conception of evidence. More specifically, I have argued that perceptual experience provides us with both phenomenal and factive evidence and that the rational source of both kinds of evidence lies in employing perceptual capacities that we have in virtue of being perceivers. On the view I have developed, sensory states are analysed in terms of employing perceptual capacities that in turn are analysed in terms of perceptual relations to external, mind-independent particulars of the type that the capacities single out in perception. My explanation for why sensory states provide phenomenal evidence is that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are systematically linked to their employment in the good case in the sense that the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case are metaphysically and explanatorily parasitic on their employment in the good case. There is a metaphysical primacy of the good over the bad case since one can possess the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case only in virtue of being the kind of being that could successfully employ those capacities in the good case. There is an explanatory primacy of the good over the bad case since giving an analysis of the perceptual capacities employed in the bad case requires appealing to their role in the good case. The analysis of the epistemic role of phenomenal evidence in virtue of a notion of systematic linkage carries over to an analysis of the epistemic role of factive evidence. After all, in the case of a perception, there is an ideal link between one's perceptual state and the environment due to one being perceptually related to one's environment. So on the proposed view, the epistemic power of perceptual experience is explained in terms of metaphysical facts about perceptual experience. Thus, the proposed view grounds the epistemic force of experience in facts about the physical world. In contrast to externalist views such as Williamson's, the capacity view about perceptual evidence shows that we have at least some evidence provided directly through experience in the bad case: we have Mind, Vol. 122 . 487 . July 2013  Schellenberg 2013 740 Susanna Schellenberg at R utgers U niversity on D ecem ber 30, 2013 http://m ind.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from phenomenal evidence. In contrast to evidential internalist views, the capacity view shows that we have more evidence in the good than the bad case: we have additional factive evidence. So the defended view provides us with something that neither factive evidentialists nor evidential internalists can supply. The distinction between phenomenal and factive evidence emerges from two levels of perceptual content. I argued that any perceptual experience can be individuated by a content type or a token content. Phenomenal evidence is determined by the content type that is in turn determined by the perceptual capacities employed. Factive evidence is determined by the token content that ensues from employing these capacities in a particular environment. So perceiving Percy has both phenomenal and factive evidence, while hallucinating Hallie has only phenomenal evidence. Phenomenal evidence and factive evidence are epistemically united in so far as both are provided by mental states that are constituted by employing the same perceptual capacities. In showing that both kinds of evidence have the same rational source in employing perceptual capacities, the suggested view provides a unified account of perceptual evidence.40 References Alter, T. and S. Walter (eds) 2007: Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 40 Thanks to John Bengson, Rachael Briggs, David Chalmers, Katie Elliott, Reinaldo Elugardo, James Genone, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Leon Leontyev, John Maier, Angela Mendelovici, John Morrison, Ram Neta, Casey O'Callaghan, Jonathan Schaffer, Nico Silins, Ernest Sosa, Kurt Sylvan, and Joshua Spencer for detailed comments and to Ned Block, Marian David, Branden Fitelson, Mikkel Gerken, Anna-Sara Malmgren, Chris Peacocke, David Rosenthal, and Jason Stanley for helpful discussions and email exchanges. 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