Abstract
As an important view in the epistemology of perception, dogmatism proposes that for any experience (e.g. perceptual, memorial, imaginative, etc.), if it has a distinctive kind of phenomenal character, then it thereby provides us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world. This paper rejects dogmatism by looking into the epistemology of imagining. In particular, this paper first appeals to some empirical studies on perceptual experiences and imaginings to show that it is possible for imaginings to have the distinctive phenomenal character dogmatists have in mind. Then this paper argues that some of these imaginings fail to provide us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world at least partly due to their inappropriate etiology. Such imaginings constitute counterexamples to dogmatism.
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Notes
Adherents of dogmatism include Bengson (2015), Brogaard (2013, 2016), Chudnoff (2011, (2012, (2013), Chudnoff and DiDomenico (2015), Huemer (2001, (2006, (2007), Lycan (2014), Pryor (2000, (2004), Silins (2014), Skene (2013), and Tucker (2010, (2013). Some philosophers use “dogmatism” to only refer to the Immediacy Thesis, but Tucker (2013) points out that it is the Immediacy Thesis together with the Phenomenal Thesis that “captures the usage that is most prevalent in the minds of epistemologists” (p. 2). That is also how I use the term in this paper.
For defenses of the view that perceptual experiences only represent low-level properties, see Clark (2000), Dretske (1995), Reiland (2014), and Tye (1995). For defenses of the view that perceptual experiences can also represent high-level properties, see Peacocke (1992), Siegel (2006), and Siewert (1998).
Our rejection of dogmatism does not depend on the last assumption. If perceptual experiences only represent low-level properties, then the Phenomenal Thesis is about how perceptual experiences justify beliefs about low-level properties. We can instead focus on such beliefs in our argument against dogmatism.
Kind (forthcoming) argues that some imaginings can provide us with justification for non-modal beliefs about the external world. My view in this paper is not necessarily contradictory to this view. I will explain it more in the final section, where I consider possible objections to my argument.
Ghijsen (2014) calls this the “distinctiveness problem.”
See Walton (1990) for a similar distinction between deliberate imaginings and spontaneous imaginings.
Seashore (1895) wrote: “The fact that the experimenter performed apparently the same manipulations that in the preparatory trials had produced a distinct sensation, formed the definite suggestion that, since the conditions were in toto repeated, the resultant sensation would recur in the same time and manner as before. By force of a firm expectant attention, caused by this inference, the image of the sensation realized itself into the peripheral organs. And in the positive instances, the observer felt it just as he expected to feel it, although there was no physical stimulus.” (p. 32) “They [the participants] knew when, where, and how to see the bead, and this was sufficient to project the mental image into a realistic version.” (p. 47) Craver-Lemley and Reeves (1992) also mentioned the same explanation of Seashore’s experiments: “Scripture’s [Seashore’s] subjects, expecting to see the bead, might have unwittingly imagined it.” (p. 635)
For some defenses of cognitive penetrability, see Cecchi (2014), Churchland (1988), Hohwy (2013), Macpherson (2012), and Vetter and Newen (2014). For rejections, see Deroy (2013), Firestone and Scholl (2015), Fodor (1984, (1988), Pylyshyn (1999), and Raftopoulos (2001). For further discussions on the issue, see the anthology The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception: New Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Zeimbekis and Raftopoulos (2015).
One might use these findings to argue that Perky’s experiment should not be understood as that the participants’ visual experiences lacked phenomenal force, but rather that they failed to have conscious visual experiences in the first place. I want to point out that there is an important difference between the set-up of Perky’s experiment and that of Segal and her colleagues’ experiments. Whereas Perky had the shapes shown on the screen before the participants successfully called up imaginings, Segal and her colleagues had the shapes projected only after the participants had successfully called up imaginings. It is plausible that Perky’s participants had seen the projected shapes before the interference of imagining kicked in.
Some dogmatists seem to think that the vivacity and specificity of an experience can influence the phenomenal force of the experience (see Bengson 2015). What those dogmatists have in mind should not be that if an experience is highly specific and vivid then it has phenomenal force, otherwise it does not have phenomenal force. For some perceptual experiences are not so vivid or specific, such as the perceptual experiences of people with poor eyesight, but those perceptual experiences can still have phenomenal force. On the other hand, some imaginings are very vivid and specific, such as the imaginings of people who are good at calling up eidetic mental images, but those imaginings can still lack phenomenal force. Such considerations show that vivacity and specificity does not determine whether an experience has phenomenal force.
But what do those dogmatists have in mind? As I see it, they have in mind that once an experience has phenomenal force with respect to some content, specificity and vivacity can influence the strength of the phenomenal force with respect to that content. Compare two visual experiences of the same book: one is had by a person with poor eyesight and only represents the shape of the book, whereas the other is had by a person with good eyesight and represents not only the shape of the book, but also the title and author of the book, its being on a wooden bookshelf, etc. If both experiences have phenomenal force with respect to “There is a book,” the phenomenal force seems stronger in the good-eyesight experience than the poor-eyesight experience. It follows from such a view that when imaginings have phenomenal force, specificity and vivacity can also influence the strength of the phenomenal force.
However, such a view is controversial since one might think that phenomenal force is an on/off thing: your experience either represents some content with phenomenal force or it does not. According to this alternative view, the two book experiences above have just as much phenomenal force with respect to “There is book.” What distinguishes between them is that the good-eyesight experience in addition has phenomenal force with respect to various other propositions, such as “The book is on a bookshelf,” “The title of the book is...” etc. (I thank Susanna Siegel and Nico Silins for pressing this point). It is beyond the scope of this paper to decide which of these views on phenomenal force is correct. But in case one thinks that specificity and vivacity can make a difference to the strength of phenomenal force, I will consider how specificity and vivacity influence the justificatory power of imaginings with phenomenal force in a footnote in the next section.
David Hume famously argues for this view.
See Siegel and Silins (2015).
The phrase “through a semantically intelligible route” is important. Consider that your expectation to see apples causes you to imagine seeing a cat, or that your expectation that it will rain causes you to imagine seeing tiny people walking on the carpet. One might think that as such imaginings get more and more spontaneous, it becomes more and more vague whether we can attribute the relevant etiology to you rather than to some subpersonal system (I thank Matthew McGrath for pressing this point).
Suppose that specificity and vivacity can affect the strength of phenomenal force. How do specificity and vivacity influence the justificatory power of imaginings with phenomenal force? Dogmatists might construe the relationship between the strength of immediate justification and the strength of phenomenal force in two ways. On the one hand, they might take the strength of immediate justification as proportionate to that of phenomenal force: the stronger the phenomenal force of an experience is, the more immediate justification the experience provides (see Bengson 2015; Huemer 2007; Tucker 2010). On the other hand, they might reject that the strength of immediate justification varies with the strength of phenomenal force, but instead take all experiences with phenomenal force to provide us with the same amount of immediate justification. Either way, they adhere to the basic idea of the Phenomenal Thesis that phenomenal force is sufficient for immediate justification.
Once we clarify that the inappropriate etiology of Sam’s rain imagining at least partly prevents the imagining from providing him with immediate justification, it is not difficult to argue that specificity and vividness makes little difference to the justificatory power of the imagining. Suppose that Sam’s spontaneous rain imagining is more vivid and specific and has stronger phenomenal force. As long as the imagining is caused by Sam’s expectation through a semantically intelligible route, it would still be an experience that Sam fabricates for himself, and hence fails to give him immediate justification.
A usual definition in psychology takes hallucinations as perception-like experiences that are not caused by the appropriate external stimuli but nonetheless have phenomenal force just like ordinary perceptual experiences do (see Farkas 2013; Slade and Bentall 1988). According to this definition, Sam’s spontaneous rain imagining is also a hallucination.
I thank Nico Silins for raising these cases to me. Also, as mentioned in fn. 9, Kind (forthcoming) argues that some imaginings can provide us with justification for non-modal beliefs about the external world.
Spaulding (2016) rejects that we can gain non-modal knowledge merely though imaginings, but her reason is that imaginings only reveal possibilities and need to be supplemented with background information in order to produce knowledge about the actual world. This argument further supports that imaginings at best provide us with mediate justification for non-modal beliefs about the external world.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Andrew Chignell, Elijah Chudnoff, Harmen Ghijsen, Sophie Horowitz, Magdalena Balcerak Jackson, Quan Jin, David Mark Kovacs, Philippe Lemoine, Yao Lin, Fiona Macpherson, Julia Markovits, Sofia Ortiz, Jasmin Özel, Susanna Siegel, Nico Silins, Declan Smithies, Zeynep Soysal, Will Starr, Jona Vance, Ru Ye, and Yuan for helpful feedback and discussion. Thanks also to all the attendees at Harvard Graduate Student Epistemology and Metaphysics Workshop, Cornell Sage School of Philosophy Graduate Student Workshop, Cornell Sage School of Philosophy Placement Seminar, and 2016 Pacific APA, where earlier versions of this paper were presented. Finally, thanks especially to the anonymous referees of this journal for helpful criticism.
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Teng, L. Is phenomenal force sufficient for immediate perceptual justification?. Synthese 195, 637–656 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1233-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1233-7