Abstract
In this paper I try to defend McDowell’s empiricism from a certain objection made by Davidson, Stroud and Glüer. The objection states that experiences cannot be reasons because they are—as McDowell conceives them—inert. I argue that, even though there is something correct in the objection (only an accepted content can be a reason), that is not sufficient for rejecting the epistemological character that McDowell attributes to experiences. My strategy consists basically in showing that experiences involve a constitutive attitude of acceptance of their contents.
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Notes
Also: “we can make sense of the world-directedness of empirical thinking only by conceiving it as answerable to the empirical world for its correctness, and we can understand answerability to the empirical world only as mediated by answerability to the tribunal of experience, conceived in terms of the world’s direct impacts on possessors of perceptual capacities” (McDowell 1994, p. xvii).
“In experience one takes in, for instance sees, that things are thus and so. That is the sort of thing one can also, for instance, judge” (McDowell 1994, p. 9). On p. 26 he says: “In a particular experience in which one is not misled, what one takes in is that things are thus and so. That things are thus and so is the content of the experience, and it can also be the content of a judgment: it becomes the content of a judgment if the subject decides to take the experience at face value. So it is conceptual content. But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of the layout of the world: it is how things are”. This is the version of perceptual content held by McDowell until his paper “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2009b). I will consider his new position below.
In this context, justification should be understood as a matter of giving reasons for holding judgments or beliefs. See McDowell (1994, “Lecture I”).
For a response to an accusation of foundationalism attributed to McDowell, see McDowell (2009a, pp. 253–254).
According to McDowell, facts are true propositions. See McDowell (1994, pp. 179–180).
It is not clear to me how we should precisely understand the metaphor of “invitation.” Someone might think that, perhaps, McDowell uses “invitation” as a third option between the idea that experience is inert and the one according to which experience involves the acceptance of its content. I find no textual basis for that possibility in McDowell’s works. But let us suppose for a moment that “invitation” refers to a third possibility; what could it be? It might be said, for instance, that in the literal social case, invitations are not neutral because they have a certain force depending on who makes the invitation, and to what one is invited. This could suggest that, insofar as experiences are invitations, they are something like prima facie reasons (thanks to Adrian Cussins for suggesting to me this possibility). However, if one has not previously accepted the invitation, the mere appeal to the fact that one has been invited cannot explain or justify one’s action. Thus, talking about prima facie reasons cannot be but another way of talking about accepted invitations. Another possibility could be to read “invitations” as dispositions to accept a certain proposition. But again, how could a disposition that is not actualized in the effective acceptance of a proposition be a reason for a belief?.
In (1994) p. 11, McDowell alludes to the Müller-Lyer illusion, where an informed person judges, contrary to what seems to reveal her experience, that the lines in question have the same length; and in (2002) pp. 277–278, he refers to the case of a person who wrongly thinks her visual experience does not put her in a position to say how things are and, consequently, judges that things are not such as her experience presents them to her.
I have formulated the objection in terms of propositions because Davidson, Stroud, and Glüer present their objection in such terms, and because McDowell, until (2009b), held that the content of experience is propositional in nature. It is true that there is some recent discussion about what epistemic reasons are. Are they propositions, facts, or mental states? See, for example, Turri (2009). McDowell seems to think that, to the extent that facts can be considered as true propositions, there is no incompatibility between claiming that the content of experiences are facts and/or propositions. Therefore, although it is plausible to see McDowell’s position in Mind and World as a sophisticated version of factualism, this is not necessarily incompatible with his thesis according to which experiences have propositional content. In any case, I do not need to enter the debate about the ontology of reasons, insofar as my interest in this article concerns not the contents of reasons but the particular attitude involved in perception. If a reader, in spite of these considerations, still believed that my formulation of Davidson, Stroud, and Glüer’s objection presupposes a particular ontology of reasons, the same objection could be reformulated referring, in a more neutral way, to contents.
See, for instance, Scanlon (1998).
It may be thought that McDowell has a direct reply to the objection considered here: if p is true (or there are good reasons in favor of p), and p, in effect, counts in favor of q, then this fact entitles me to believe q on the basis of p, even in case I mistakenly do not accept p as a reason in favor of q. In such a case, it is only that I mistakenly do not take advantage of this entitlement (see, e.g., McDowell 2004, pp. 214–215, 2009b, p. 132). However, it should be noted that the point of Davidson’s (and others) objection is that, even if I see that p and accept p as a reason in favor of q, my seeing that p cannot count as my reason for believing that q, if experience itself does not involve any attitude of taking p as true. The point is, thus, that I cannot exploit my perceptual entitlement if my seeing that p does not include the acceptance of p. This “subjective” (or internal) sense of epistemic reason is necessary in order to explain how one rationally acquires one’s beliefs and why one justifies them by giving certain reasons. This does not prevent us from acknowledging the existence of “objective” (or external) reasons, i.e. propositions that one should accept as true, in order to rationally justify other propositions (even though one, in fact, does not take them as so).
McDowell does not make clear why he changed his mind about perceptual content. He seems to think that, if perceptual content is propositional in character, then one is obliged to attribute to it something like assertoric force. Presumably, that explains why he says now that experiences have intuitional content like “This red cube” (assuming that a non-propositional content cannot have assertoric force). But I think that —leaving aside the fact that I do believe that experiences have some sort of assertoric force—the mere fact that experiences have propositional content (if they actually have it) does not compromise us to attributing assertoric force to them. One can just entertain a proposition, without taking any attitude towards it. If perception involves some sort of acceptance of its content, this does not come merely from the fact that it has propositional content.
As an anonymous reviewer points out to me, when one considers McDowell’s works written after Mind and World, one can see that his position is more intricate. For instance, he claims “But more typically, perceptual belief-acquisition is not a matter of judging, of actively exercising control over one’s cognitive life, at all. Unless there are grounds for suspicion, such as odd lighting conditions, having it look to one as if things are a certain way (…) becomes accepting that things are that way by a sort of default, involving no exercise of the freedom that figures in a Kantian conception of judgment” (McDowell 2009b, p. 11. See also McDowell 2009b, p. 139). For discussion, see Gustafsson (2012). In this article, Gustafsson correctly holds that just as McDowell takes unreflective perceptual belief-formation to require a capacity for critical assessment, he also takes the capacity for critical assessment to require that one’s default attitude towards experience is a matter of unreflectively accepting that things are as one experiences them. I agree with Gustafsson about this point. Notwithstanding this, I think that my point remains because one can still ask how having it look to one as if things are a certain way becomes reflectively or unreflectively accepting, believing that things are that way if experiences do not involve, in themselves, any attitude of acceptance that things are, or look like, a certain way. To claim, correctly to my mind, that perceptual belief-acquisition is typically a matter of unreflective acceptance of the content of experience does not explain, in itself, why this is so. In effect, let us suppose that I have an experience as if p is the case. Why should I form (reflectively or unreflectively) the belief that p if my experience does not involve an attitude of acceptance that p? (A comparison with imagining that p could be of help here: in imagining that p, we do not typically form the belief that p because imagining that p does not involve —at least in ordinary cases— any acceptance that p is the case). As I hold in the following section, what explains (reflective and unreflective) perceptual belief-acquisition is the presence of a particular kind of acceptance in perceptual experience. Experiences can be reasons for holding beliefs because they have “assertoric force”, even in cases in which they are unreflectively accepted.
In McDowell (2013a, p. 145), McDowell claims: “An experience that enables someone to know there is something red and rectangular in front of her, again in the most straightforward way, makes present to her not a state of affairs, but an object: something presented in the experience as red and rectangular and in front of her.” The point of McDowell’s critics may be that, in order to know that there is something red and rectangular in front of one, one needs to accept that one is seeing something red and rectangular in front of one.
I am supposing here that the person aims to make a true judgment.
For example, Davidson claims: “To perceive that it is snowing is, under appropriate circumstances, to be caused (in the right way) by one’s senses to believe that it is snowing by the actually falling snow.” (Davidson 2001a, p. xvi). (Davidson does not distinguish between perceiving, experiencing and sensing). As experiences do not have propositional content —Davidson believes— they cannot be reasons at all. Consequently, Davidson famously claims that only believed propositions can be reasons for holding beliefs. See, for instance, Davidson (2001a, p. 141). See also Glüer (2004, p. 207) and Stroud (2002, p. 87).
This has been disputed. See, for example, Travis (2004) and Brewer (2006). I cannot discuss this topic here. My aim in this paper is to respond to the specific objection I have just outlined, which does not concern the problem of whether experience has content or not, but rather whether, assuming it does have content, experience involves a particular attitude of acceptance of its content. Responses to Travis and Brewer can be found in Ginsborg (2011), Schellenberg (2011) and McDowell (2013a, b).
Discussing what kind of content perceptual experience has (propositional, intuitional, or other) would require another article. Crane (2009) criticizes the idea that experience has propositional content. Some authors have also argued that, if experience has intuitional content, it cannot provide direct access to facts. See Echeverri (2011). McDowell acknowledges this point in (2013a); however, he believes that this is not an impediment to hold that experience can justify judgments and beliefs, or hold the factive view of experience. See McDowell (2013a, p. 147). I think that McDowell is right on this last point: the fact that I actually see this red cube implies that there is a red cube in front of me.
Many philosophers think that only entities with propositional content can be reasons (see, for example, Sellars 1997; Davidson 2001a; Rorty 1979; Brandom 1994, among many others). In Mind and World, McDowell holds that reasons are propositional in nature; however, in “Avoiding the Myth of the Given”, he holds that even states with non-propositional content (intuitional content) can also be reasons (see also McDowell 2013b, p. 265). Although this is undoubtedly a difficult issue, I tend to favor the propositional conception of reasons because I do not clearly see how states with non-propositional content could support, or have the appropriate logical relations with, states with propositional content such as judgments and beliefs. In any case, for my purposes here I do not need to enter this discussion. My argument is that, even if experiences have non-propositional content and they can be reasons for holding beliefs, this can be so because perceptual experiences involve an attitude of acceptance of their content.
See also Burge (2003, p. 543).
Silins and Siegel also use the term “phenomenal force.” See Siegel and Silins (2015).
He thinks of Armstrong’s conception of perceptual experience (see note 45, p. 81). See also Sellars (1978).
Taking into account this fact, Noë has stated that perceptual content has a double aspect: what he calls “factual content” (we see a book) and a “perspectival content” (the particular side of the book that appears given our location). See Noë (2004, ch. 3).
Smith (2010). The idea was originally stated by Husserl in terms of “internal horizons”.
Nanay characterizes amodal perception in these terms: “We perceive a part of a (perceived) object amodally if we receive no sensory stimulation from that part of the object”, Nanay (2010), pp. 241–242. Although amodal perception is usually defined in terms of occlusion, Nanay characterization is more general. It includes, for example, the wall’s color in case of partial illumination, the details in a room, the window’s shape, etc. All these things are hidden from view. “They are present as absent”, as Noë puts it (Noë, 2012, p. 18).
See Husserl (1970), Lewis (1929) and Smith (2010). Of course, I do not mean that, in order to perceive, one has to have an explicit knowledge of those conditionals; rather, the knowledge involved is usually implicit. Noë claims that this sort of implicit knowledge is practical in character. I find his thesis plausible even in those cases in which objects —not the subject—change their position. Surely, this requires some kind of ability to wait for a certain object to rotate in order to verify whether one’s perceptual expectations are correct, focus the attention on one particular region of the visual field, or have certain expectations about what one will perceive while an object moves.
This seems to be Sellars’s position. See Sellars (1978).
For further objections to the so-called belief-account, see Nanay (2010).
It is true that Noë also claims that “The ground of this accessibility is our possession of sensorimotor skills” (Noë, 2004, p. 63). This claim suggests that, to a certain extent, he is aware of the distinction I am tracing. But, then, he should clarify what his thesis exactly is. I believe that Noë should claim: we can perceive the hidden parts of an object as available because we have some expectations or practical knowledge about how these parts would look like if we moved in such-and-such way.
Indeed, an answer to Nanay’s third objection may be found in Noë (2004, pp. 67–73).
As Noë nicely expresses: “perceiving is a way of finding out how things are from how they look or sound or, more generally, appear” (2004, p. 81). Of course, one can have a perceptual experience of something without being able to identifying it and, thus, without knowing what kind of object is (Dretske 1969). Some authors have even reflected on whether there is perception without awareness (see, for instance, Dretske 2006). However, note that I am talking about perception in the epistemological context in which one needs to be able to give a perceptual experience as a reason for a belief. It is in this context that I claim that some sort of identification is required. Cases of perception in a non-epistemic sense, or without awareness (if they are possible) are not important here.
I use here the terms “identification” and “recognition” to refer to a non-doxastic capacity. It is not the case that, in perceiving a certain object, for example, one merely forms the belief that the perceived object is such-and-such object or sort of object, as if perceiving such object merely caused the identificatory belief. Of course, as a consequence of perceiving an object, one can form such a belief. But, my idea is, rather, that in perceiving a certain appearance of an object, to the extent that one is aware of what object, or sort of object, one perceives, one perceptually identifies or recognizes the object one perceives. In this sense, it may be possible for someone to see an appearance as (the presence of) a certain object, even when that person does not believe it to be so. Depending on how one conceives perceptual content (as propositional or intuitional), this involves the use of propositions or not. For example, if we consider McDowell’s propositionalist version of perceptual content, it could be claimed that the perceptual identification of a book involves the proposition “This is a book”. In contrast, if we consider McDowell’s idea according to which perception has intuitional content, perceptual identification may involve a non-propositional content such as “This book”. In this case, the perceptual presentation of a book as a book may count as a case of perceptual identification of a book. Although I tend to think that McDowell’s first version is the correct one, I cannot argue here in favor of this particular point.
According to Burge (2010), perceptual constancies are capacities to represent a particular or an attribute as the same from different perspectives, produced by different proximal stimulation. Those constancies simply occur in the perceptual system and “do not depend on knowledge or conceptual understanding”, (Burge 2010, p. 14). I personally have some doubts about this thesis that, I am afraid, I cannot develop here. Nevertheless, I would like to point out that, even if one accepts Burge’s account, it must be complemented in order to explain how a subject, not her perceptual system, is able to perceptually identify or recognize objects and properties such as books, pencils, trees, or cars. Without possessing the relevant concepts, a subject could not be able to perceptually identify those kinds of things. (On this point, see Siegel 2006).
See Grice (1989).
As Dretske claims, coincidental correlations are not sufficient for the purposes of transmitting information. According to him, the correlation must be assured by a law of nature or principle of logic (Dretske 1981, ch. 3). An alternative view can be found in Millikan (2004, ch. 3). I do not need to choose between them. For my purpose, it is enough to claim that relevant correlations must be non-accidental.
Dretske (1988, p. 55) claims that natural signs do not require the idea of a subject for whom an event, property or condition naturally means something. I disagree. Dretske’s version of natural signs seems to be a version of naturalized Platonism, according to which there would be meanings in the world independently of all possible users. Just as I explain below, independently of all possible conceptual interpretation, states or conditions naturally mean nothing.
As Millikan claims, “The notion of a sign makes intrinsic reference to a possible interpreter”, Millikan (1984, p. 118).
See the second example presented by Grice (1989, p. 213).
Chisholm (1957) famously distinguished between three different uses of appear words (“appear”, “look”, “seem”, “sound”, “feel”, and the like): epistemic, comparative and non-comparative. For example, locutions such as “x appears to S to be so and so” may express, in some contexts, the epistemic use of “appear”. Locutions of the form “x appears to S in the way in which things that are…appear under conditions which are…” typically express the comparative use of appear. Finally, in a statement of the form “x looks red”, “looks” may be used in a non-comparative (or phenomenal) sense. Chisholm’s distinction does not exactly fit my purposes. Notwithstanding this, to the extent that the way a thing appears to one can be a reason for believing that it is such-and-such a thing, I may say that this use of “appear” bears a resemblance to Chisholm’s epistemic use of “appear”. Something similar happens with Chisholm’s comparative use of “appear”. Instead of saying, as Chisholm would do, “that book appears in the way in which books might normally be expected to appear” (I am paraphrasing Chisholm (1957, p. 45)), I may claim: “the way that book appears to one can mean (that there is) a book over there because that is the way in which books normally appear from this perspective”. In such a case, the way that book appears from a certain perspective would be compared with the way books normally appear to have from that perspective. This may explain, among other things, why the appearance of a book can mean (that there is) a book over there. This could be held even when the way the book appears to one is a mere appearance, that is, even when what appears to one is not actually a book (though it looks as if it were a book).
It is usually accepted that one can entertain different contents (p, q, etc.) with the same attitude (say, belief), or entertain the same content with different attitudes (belief, doubt, desire, etc.). According to my view, if one sees that p, one could also believe, of course, that p, or doubt that p, etc. Notwithstanding this, in considering the particular nature of perceptual content, I also hold that there is a kind of acceptance that is constitutive of the content of perception. In the particular case of perception, then, the attitude is essential for the constitution of its content: I cannot perceive a book as a book if I do not take the way it appears to me as the presence of a book. To hold this thesis is not incompatible, I believe, with acknowledging the traditionally distinction between content and attitude. In effect, once I take myself to perceive a book, I may believe, doubt, etc. that there is a book in front of me. The constitutive acceptance that is distinctive of perception is due to the fact that, in perceiving, things appear to us from a certain perspective. This does not happen in the case of the other attitudes.
Of course, one can finally decide, wrongly, to believe that not p even in case, as in McDowell’s example, one actually sees that p. In such a case, one would end up dismissing one’s experience as a reason to believe that p. But one may reasonably think that in such situation the force of the experience will not be completely extinguished. Confronted with a supposedly trustworthy testimony that contradicts one’s experience, a natural response may normally be “Really? It actually seems to be as though p is the case”. Dismissing “the demanding voice of the experience” is not equivalent to claiming that experience has no voice at all.
See also McDowell (2011), pp. 30 and ff.
Of course, in claiming this I am not denying that a subject who lacks the concept of book could see a book as a mere volumetric entity or material object. But the important thing is that such a subject, in perceiving the face of a book, could not understand that the perceived object is a book. Now, does perceiving a book as a mere volumetric entity require possessing conceptual capacities? If conceptualism is true, even in such a case, some conceptual capacities need to be in play in experience. For McDowell’s conceptualism, see McDowell (1994), “Lecture III”, “Conceptual Capacities in Perception” and “Avoiding the Myth of the Given”, both in McDowell (2009b).
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Kalpokas, D.E. Experience and Justification: Revisiting McDowell’s Empiricism. Erkenn 82, 715–738 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9840-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9840-8