Abstract
This paper argues that there is a problem for the justificatory significance of perceptions that has been overlooked thus far. Assuming that perceptual experiences are propositional attitudes and that only propositional attitudes which assertively represent the world can function as justifiers, the problem consists in specifying what it means for a propositional attitude to assertively represent the world without losing the justificatory significance of perceptions—a challenge that is harder to meet than might first be thought. That there is such a problem can be seen by reconsidering and modifying a well-known argument to the conclusion that beliefs cannot be justified by perceptions but only by other beliefs. Nevertheless, the aim of the paper is not to conclude that perceptions are actually incapable of justifying our beliefs but rather to highlight an overlooked problem that needs to be solved in order to properly understand the justificatory relationship between perceptions and beliefs.
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Notes
The feature of assertively representing the world mentioned in premise (2) might seem superfluous in the argument as it now stands. However, since this feature will become important later on, including this feature in the first exposition of the argument will help simplify the subsequent discussion.
This notion of “evidence”, which restricts the term to cognitive states or episodes, does not fit a certain usage of the term, by which a bloody knife or fingerprints on a gun are considered to be evidence. But it is consistent with a wide range of philosophical understandings of the term. For instance, some philosophers think of evidence as sense-data, others maintain that evidence consists in the stimulation of one’s sensory receptors (cf. Quine 1968, p. 75). Still others take evidence to be everything one knows (cf. Williamson 2000) or such diverse things as one’s beliefs, feelings, and thoughts (cf. Conee and Feldman 2004, pp. 2, 219–241).
Process-reliabilists, for instance, hold that if a belief is justified, then it has to be formed by a reliable belief-forming mechanism (cf. Goldman 1976). This belief-forming mechanism does not have to involve evidence, but as soon as it does, reliabilists typically agree that there is an inferential relation between the evidence and the belief.
It is also interesting to note that in the way we have understood “inferential justification”, (1) alone does not preclude that there is something like immediate or direct justification. For a convincing explanation of this point, see Pryor (2005, pp. 189–191).
In this paper I use the terms “perception” and “perceptual experience” interchangeably. Thus, I consider the sentence “S perceives that p” as an abbreviation of the sentence “S has a perceptual experience with the content p”. The difference between these two sentences is usually drawn by pointing out that the first sentence has an obvious factive reading, whereas the second does not. For the purposes of this paper I want to use “S perceives that p” in a non-factive way.
There are different versions of representationalism. The versions I am focusing on here are versions that accept premises (1) and (2) of IA. Since direct realism (as I understand the term) implies that premise (1) is false, I am focusing on versions of representationalism that are incompatible with direct or naïve realism. On my usage of the term, direct realism is characterized by a combination of claims. Direct realists claim (a) that a person who has a genuine perceptual experience stands in a direct relation to concrete things or facts in the world, where (b) that direct relation is somehow supposed to non-inferentially justify our beliefs about the world. Thus, direct realism implies that premise (1) is false. The reasons why I focus on versions of representationalism that are incompatible with direct realism are twofold. First, only these versions of representationalism are confronted with the problems surrounding the notion of assertivity that I am going to raise in this paper. As soon as one accepts a direct realist position, one has options to circumvent these problems. I discuss these options below in Sect. 5. Second, there simply are not many versions of representationalism in the literature that seem compatible with direct realism. Since direct realists claim that in a perceptual experience one stands in direct relation to concrete things in the world, which constitute the content of the experience, if one wants to combine this view with representationalism––the view that perceptual experiences have propositional content––it seems that one has to claim that propositions are concrete things in the world. McDowell (1994) comes close to such a view. See Siegel (2010, Sect. 2.6) for a discussion of the relation of representationalism (which she calls the “strong content view”) and direct realism (which she calls “naïve realism”). For another representationalist position that seems compatible with direct realism, which, however, employs a different understanding of the term, see Huemer (2001).
Brewer (1999) does not actually argue that perceptions have propositional content but rather conceptual content. However, he can only draw this conclusion because he implicitly assumes that all propositional or representational contents are conceptually constituted––cf. Heck (2000) for an illuminating discussion of this point. In this paper I will stay neutral with regard to the question of whether there is a kind of propositional content that is non-conceptual.
It is worth noticing here that representationalism seems to have a twofold epistemic payoff. Not only does it block IA, it also tears down the so-called “veil of perception” to which sense-data theories give rise. If the content of perceptions does not consist of sense-data which interpose themselves between perceivers and mind-independent objects, but instead consists of propositions, then there is no so-called “veil of perception” anymore, which is supposed to make our perceptual, cognitive and epistemic access to the world around us deeply problematic.
I will discuss a few other possible candidates for X in Sect. 5 of this paper.
See footnote 6.
The criterion as formulated here presupposes a binary model of belief, but this is merely to simplify the discussion. It could be formulated for a non-binary model of belief as well: A propositional attitude Ap of a subject S assertively represents the world iff it cannot be the case that S has Ap and simultaneously assigns ¬p a higher degree of belief than p without being irrational. But since nothing important in the discussion hinges on which formulation we choose, I will stick to the binary model in what follows.
Not every conflict of propositional attitudes has to be of that sort. It might be that a person has a conflicting set of propositional attitudes that might lead to a certain form of cognitive dissonance but where rationality does not require one to resolve that conflict. I will discuss such a case later.
Structural rationality (and the question if this form of rationality is normative) is the subject of interesting discussions in the (non-formal) theory of practical reasoning, cf. Broome (2007a, b), Kolodny (2005) and Scanlon (2007). Since this discussion is led in terms of requirements of rationality, criterion (D) could be formulated in a way that is closer to this discussion:
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(D)*
A propositional attitude Ap of a subject S (at time t) assertively represents the world iff rationality requires: If A S p (at t), then ¬B S ¬p (at t); or equivalently: ¬[A S p(at t) & B S ¬p (at t)].
In this formulation “B” is the belief-operator. The formulation makes it explicit that I want “rationality requires” to have wide scope in Broome’s sense, cf. Broome (2007a).
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(D)*
It is also worth noticing that this is not restricted to the somewhat peculiar Müller-Lyer case. In fact, it seems to happen all the time that our perceptual experiences have the content p but we simultaneously believe that ¬p without being irrational. For example, think of two coins of the same type in front of you, where one of these coins is standing on the edge (see Fig. 2).
In such a situation you perceive that two coins have a different shape and yet you simultaneously believe that they have an identical shape without being irrational. An interesting difference to the Müller-Lyer case consists in the fact that in these everyday cases no cognitive dissonance seems to be involved.
On Glüer’s view, perceptions have only phenomenal content. Assume I am looking at a red tomato in front of me. Representationalists claim that in this case, I have a perceptual experience with a certain propositional content; furthermore they claim that the content of my perceptual experience is: The tomato is red. According to Glüer, however, the content of my perceptual experience in this case is: The tomato looks red (to me). Thus, on this view perceptions do not ascribe sensible properties to material objects, but rather only phenomenal ones (cf., Glüer 2009, p. 24). Interestingly, if we were to accept this view regarding the propositional content of perceptions, then perceptions would presumably satisfy criterion (D) for assertivity.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Dina Emundts, Wolfgang Spohn, and all the members of their Research Colloquia at the University of Konstanz, as well as the Philosophy Department Colloquium at the University of Konstanz, for their helpful discussions on this material. I have also benefited from discussions with Brendan Balcerak Jackson, Lars Dänzer, and Wolfgang Freitag. Their comments on earlier drafts of the paper have led to direct and significant improvements. I especially want to thank Amber Griffioen, who has read and critically commented on the text in various stages of its development. Her comments and suggestions have always been very helpful. I am also grateful to anonymous reviewers of this paper for their comments.
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Briesen, J. Perceptual justification and assertively representing the world. Philos Stud 172, 2239–2259 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0407-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0407-8