Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception

Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception

Richard A. Fumerton

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear on page xi. Copyright 1985 by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Publication of this book was aided by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Fumerton, Richard A., 1949Metaphysical and epistemological problems of perception. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Perception (Philosophy) I. Title. B828.45.F851985 121'.3 84-11920 ISBN 0-8032-1966-0 (alk. paper)

For 7ara and Rob

Contents

Preface

IX

Acknowledgments

XI

Introduction

2

Knowledge, Justification, Foundationalism, and Truth

37

3

Naive Realism

73

4

Causal Theories

107

5

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

131

6

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

151

7

Epistemological Questions

175

Notes

195

Bibliography

203

Index

209

Preface

It may wcll bc that in thc past thrcc hundrcd ycars or so analytical philosophers havc writtcn morc about the problem of pcrccption than about any othcr philosophical question. Aftcr so many books and articles, one should fccl at least somcwhat uncasy about trying to add somcthing uscful to thc litcraturc, and I do. My rcason, howcvcr, for swelling thc alrcady voluminous mass of writing on pcrccption is thc philosophcr's usual rcason-I do not think anyonc has quitc got the answcrs right. I hastcn to add that much of what I shall say is not original. Many philosophcrs havc put parts of thc puzzle in thcir propcr places. Indccd, as onc should expcct, thcrc is somcthing attractivc about most of thc main positions philosophcrs havc takcn on thc epistcmological and mctaphysical problems associatcd with pcrccption. Philosophcrs arc, by and largc, not tcrribly stupid, and if thcy hold a vicw it is usually bccausc some part of that vicw is (at least in isolation) plausiblc. In this book I shall try to save what is plausible in conflicting philosophical vicws, in thc coursc of proposing a compromisc bctwccn certain classically antagonistic positions. Monstcrs can bc crcatcd by indiscriminate attcmpts to put parts of differcnt entitics togcther, but I shall argue that views that on the surface appcar dramatically opposed may bcgin to merge when modificd to cope with critical objections. There is anothcr rcspcct in which I hope this book will advance discussion of thc epistemological and mctaphysical problems of perccption. Philosophers vcry often do philosophy without ad-

x

Preface

dressing the meta philosophical question of just what it is thcy arc doing, and without explicitly sctting forth or cvaluating the mcthodological assumptions thcy rely on in dcciding bctwccn conflicting positions. In this book I try to bc as self-conscious as I can about both thc conception of philosophical analysis I rely on and thc methodological prcsuppositions of my approach to thc traditional problems of pcrccption. It is particularly important to addrcss thcsc mctaphilosophical issucs today, for thcrc arc significant rcvolutions in contcmporary philosophy oflanguagc that bring with them ncw conccptions of philosophy. As I shall arguc, thc position onc takcs on thc new philosophy oflanguagc should dramatically affcct one's analysis of the cxtcrnal world.

Acknowledgments

My views have developed in part through many discussions with my colleagues at the University of Iowa, and I also found helpful my discussions with the late Grover Maxwell when I was a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota (1978-79). I would like to thank Richard Foley, Laird Addis, and Robert Audi for helpful comments on a rough draft of the manuscript. I particularly thank George Pappas. I revised the original manuscript extensively as a result of his many detailed criticisms and suggestions. Much of this book was written while I was on a developmental leave granted by the University ofIowa (1981-82). For part of that leave my parents, Robert Carl and Madeleine Fumerton, were kind enough to let me stay at their summer cottage, and the setting and their hospitality provided an ideal atmosphere for writing. I also thank my wife Patti for the help and encouragement she provided throughout the writing of this book. Part of chapter 1 appeared as "The Paradox of Analysis," Philosophy and Phcllolllcl1oio,Ricai Research 43 (1983):477-97. Parts of chapters 4 and 5 appeared as "Old Analyses of the Physical World and New Philosophies of Language," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1983) :507-23. And a brief section of chapter 7 appeared as part of "Induction and Reasoning to the Best Explanation," Philosophy of S(iCI1((' 47 (1980):589-600. I thank the publishers for their permission to use this material.

Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception

Chapter 1 Introduction

The Problems of Perception Philosophers often refer to the problem of perception. But from both historical and analytical viewpoints, there are many philosophical problems connected with our perception of the physical world. These problems are essentially of two kinds: epistemological and metaphysical. One of our first tasks is to determine as clearly as we can what the relevant epistemological and metaphysical questions are and decide to what extent answers to the two kinds of questions can be independent of one another.

E:.pistemoloj?ical Problems oj Perception The problems of perception that have dominated so much of analytical philosophy probably have their historical origin with Descartes's Meditations. I am not suggesting that Descartes was the first to see a philosophical problem associated with perception, nor am I suggesting that he realized all the ramifications of the problems he did see. I am making a causal claim. I believe that the questions Descartes raised in the Meditations set in motion the evolution of the philosophical questions and answers that have dominated Western philosophical thought on perception of the physical world. The problems of perception Descartes presented there were essentiallyepistemological. Indeed, the Meditations as a whole ostensibly

2

Introduction

was primarily an epistemological work whose purpose was to build an ideal system of knowledge based on secure foundations. To find these secure foundations, Descartes decided to sift through all his beliefs and retain only those that were immune from a certain sort of doubt. The epistemological problems of perception were born when Descartes considered and rejected our ordinary belie(~ about the physical world (beliefs about tables, trees, desks, dogs, grandfather clocks, and cherry pies) as candidates for beliefs that are immune from doubt. After observing that the support for all our beliefs about the physical world can be traced back at least as far as some belief based on immediate perception, 1 Descartes reasoned that ifhe could cast doubt on those beliefs about the physical world based on immediate perception, he would have cast doubt on all beliefs about the physical world. This he proceeded to do, employing his famous dream and evil demon arguments. The dream argument we might reconstruct this way: 1. The qualitatively same sensations that come to us when awake could come to us in a dream. 2. If the qualitatively same sensations that come to us when awake could come to us in a dream, then we cannot be certain of any given set of sensations that they have not come to us in a dream. 3. If we cannot be certain of any given set of sensations that they have not come to us in a dream, then we cannot be certain that beliefs about the physical world based on those sensations arc true. Therefore 4. We cannot be certain that beliefs about the physical world based on sensations arc true. Though my interpretation is controversial, I believe the evil demon argument has exactly the same structure: 1. The qualitatively same sensations we take to be caused by physical objects could instead be produced in us by some malevolent being. 2. If the qualitatively same sensations we take to be caused by

Introduction

3

physical objects could instead be produced in us by some malevolent being, then we cannot be certain that any given set of sensations has not been produced in us by some malevolent being. 3. If we cannot be certain that any given set of sensations has not been produced in us by some malevolent being, then we cannot be certain that beliefs about the physical world based on those sensations are true. Therefore 4. We cannot be certain that beliefs about the physical world based on sensations are trne. Note that, as I have presented both arguments, the crucial first premises assert only a possibility. 2 The actual occurrence of dreams no doubt did wonders for the plausibility of the argument (the most convincing proof of a possibility is always an actuality), but the soundness of the argument in no way hinges upon the occurrence or actual character of dreams, just as the force of the demon argument clearly in no way is supposed to depend on the existence of demons. Both arguments are, I believe, sound, but I shall postpone any kind of detailed discussion of this until chapter 2. The historical importance of the arguments is not really their rather surprising conclusions. Ordinary people without a philosophical background are usually somewhat shocked when someone suggests that they do not know with absolute certainty any ordinary truths about the physical world, but if one stresses the "with absolute certainty" enough and makes it clear that one has something very strong in mind, most people can get used to the idea that all their beliefs about the physical world are fallible. The initial unease with which students react to Descartes's preliminary conclusions more often than not gives way to a shrug of the shoulders. Skepticism comes in all sizes and shapes, and the extent to which the skeptic's position is counterintuitive is directly dependent on the concept of knowledge he employs. If knowing with absolute certainty involves something like possessing evidence or justification so strong as to preclude even the conceivability of error, who would have thought one could know with absolute certainty much of anything at all?

4

Introduction

One of the great ironies of the Meditations, of course, is that Descartes himself raised his initial doubts only to resolve them in the sixth meditation with the ultimate deus ex machina. Not only did he not convince very many others of his solution to the doubts he raised, but philosophers who came after began to wonder whether the problem was far greater than talk about knowledge with absolute certainty suggested. In arguing that we cannot know the physical world with absolute certainty, Descartes seemed to drive a logical wedge between the content of our beliefs about the physical world and what we base such beliefs upon. Epistemological gaps once opened are notoriously difficult to close. After we conclude that the gap between statements describing sensation and statements describing the physical world cannot be bridged through deduction, we are still faced with the problem of saying how, if at all, it can be bridged. From Descartes wondering whether we can know with certainty that there is a table before us, it was only a short step, historically and logically, to Hume wondering what evidence of any kind we could have for thinking that our sensations are produced by physical objects: The only existences of which we are certain, are perceptions, which being immediately present to us by consciousness, command our strongest assent, and are the first foundation of all our conclusions. The only conclusion we can draw from the existence of one thing to that of another, is by means of the relation of cause and effect, which shews, that there is a connexion betwixt them, and that the existence of one is dependent on that of the other. The idea of this relation is deriv'd from past experience, by which we find, that two beings are constantly conjoin'd together, and are always present at once to the mind. But as no beings are ever present to the mind but perceptions; it follows that we may observe a conjunction or a relation of cause and effect between different perceptions, but can never observe it between perceptions and objects. 'Tis impossible, therefore, that from the existence of any of the qualities of the former, we can ever form any conclusions concerning the existence of the latter, or ever satisfy our reason in this particular. 3 Indeed, Descartes himself may have realized that the skepticism he faced was far more serious than the relatively innocuous sort in-

Introduction

5

volved in denying knowledge with absolute certainty, for he was certainly committed to the view that, unless his nondeceiving God could do the trick, we could have no grounds at all for believing in the existence of a world populated by the ordinary objects we certainly seem to take for granted. The main epistemological problems of perception growing directly or indirectly out of Descartes are these: 1. Are perceptual beliefs about the physical world based on sensation or experience in a way that precludes the possibility of knowing with absolute certainty propositions about physical objects? 2. Are propositions about the physical world nondeductively justified by what we know about a different sort of thing? And if they are, what is the nature of such justification? 3. Do we at least know that from which we infer what we believe about the physical world? And if we do, what is the nature of that knowledge? I somewhat arbitrarily describe these as the main epistemological questions involving perception, for each involves other questions involving the nature of the epistemological concepts that these questions presuppose we understand. What conditions must be met before one can know with absolute certainty? What is the nature of justification? What is the nature of inferential justification, and is there a distinction between inferential justification and some other kind of justification?

Metaphysical Problems

~f Perception

Descartes's epistemological concerns were not expressed in a metaphysical vacuum. Indeed, one of the reasons it was so easy for him to be moved by his dream and demon arguments is that he held a certain view about the distinction between veridical and nonveridical perception. Descartes accepted a version of the so-called causal theory of perception called representative realism 4 (a view I shall be discussing in some detail in chapter 5). According to the classical representative realist, veridical perception was understood as occurring when sensations in the mind were produced by objects appropriately represented by those sensations. The representing for

6

Introduction

some of the more important properties (the primary qualities) consisted in the mental entity's exemplifying the same property as the object producing it. The most striking analogy for us today is the way film represents what is filmed. Now if one is in the grip of such a theory, one had better take seriously the possibility that sensations could have an origin or cause other than the one necessary for veridical perception. The actual occurrence of dreams convinces us that they sometimes do, but even if we never dreamed, we must as philosophers countenance the possibility that the causes of our sensations are not always, usually, or ever what we take them to be, and we must give reasons for thinking that our unreflective prejudices on this matter are correct. When a metaphysical view gives rise to such enormous epistemological problems, you can be sure that philosophers are going to reexamine it. Philosophical questions call be difficult to answer because there is something wrong with the way they are asked, and philosophers should always consider the possibility that the epistemological questions that so perplex a given philosopher are infected by that philosopher's metaphysics. (The classic example of a philosopher who explicitly took this position was Berkeley, who was convinced that through acceptance of a mistaken metaphysics philosophers were led to try to solve a problem that never really existed.) Philosophers concerned with the epistemological questions of perception were inevitably forced to consider the following metaphysical questions: 1. What are physical objects? 2. What is involved in veridical perception of a physical object, and what is the distinction between veridical and nonveridical perception? 3. Is there a component of perception we can separate as sensation? And if so, what is its relation to the whole of which it is a part?

While it may not be as obvious, I think it is true that, just as the epistemological questions I referred to above presupposed an understanding of certain epistemological concepts, so the metaphysical questions above presuppose an understanding of metaphysical concepts. Most basically, the questions above presuppose an understanding of what would constitute an appropriate answer to them.

Introduction

7

The most obvious answer to the question, What is involved in perception of the physical world? is probably one that identifies the intricate causal chain that proceeds from the stimulation of various sense organs and culminates in either neural or mental activity (depending on whether the dualist or the identity theorist is right). In some contexts the most natural answer to the question, What are physical objects? is one that would take you from molecular and atomic structure to the nether regions of the microworld and the more exotic universe of electrons, protons, quarks, and the like. These are obviously perfectly appropriate answers to questions (1) and (2) above, yet they are answers that even in these days of "naturalistic" philosophy are likely to disappoint most philosophers who take seriously the classical problems of perception. But if this is so, it is incumbent upon such philosophers to say what kind of response would constitute an appropriate philosophical answer. Since I am one of those who thinks science has no light to shed on either the epistemological or the metaphysical problems of perception, let me try to do just that.

Philosophical Analysis One of the traditional ways to distinguish metaphysical from scientific questions is to construe metaphysical questions as those concerned with the meanings of certain statements. The philosopher who takes this approach would immediately suggest a more perspICUOUS reformulation of our metaphysical questions (1) through (3): 1. What is the meaning of statements asserting the existence of physical objects? 2. What is the meaning of a statement asserting that a given person actually (veridically) perceives a physical object? 3. Is there a statement describing the occurrence of certain sensations that captures part of the meaning of a statement describing perception? And if there is, what is the logical relation of the former to the latter? Although I did not always think so, I now believe (with some important qualifications I shall mention) that this approach is essentially correct, that philosophical analysis is usually meaning analy-

8

Introduction

sis. It is not a conclusion one should accept lightly, however, for on one traditional and highly plausible view philosophical discoveries are said to be a priori, and it is difficult to see how discoveries about the meanings of words or statements can be so. Let me explain and defend my view of philosophical analysis first by saying why I think the most obvious alternatives are implausible. Philosophers who want to divorce philosophical analysis from an examination of language and its meaning will invariably try to find some nonlinguistic entity to serve as the object of their philosophical analysis, and they will construe analysis as an attempt to dissect, or break down, this complex object into its categorical constituents. By nonlinguistic entity I mean an entity whose existence is not logically dependent on language. The three main candidates for the nonlinguistic objects of analysis are facts, propositions, and states of affairs. I shall try to avoid discussing arguments for or against the existence of entities in these problematic categories except insofar as they directly concern an argument I make. Whenever possible I shall assume as traditional and neutral a characterization of the respective candidates as I can and shall ask hypothetically whether, if they do exist, they could plausibly be construed as the objects of philosophical analysis. I think we can begin by eliminating facts as the objects of most philosophical analyses. As I use the expression, a fact is a nonlinguistic complex that makes a true sentence or proposition true. By referring to an entity as nonlinguistic, I mean that the existence oflanguage is not a logically necessary conditionS for its existence. "The fact that snow is white" refers to a complex that makes it true that snow is white. "The fact that snow is black" does not refer. If a given sentence or proposition is not true, then there is no fact that corresponds to it, there is nothing in the world that makes it true (since it is false). Now it seems obvious to me that for many paradigms of philosophical analysis facts cannot be the objects of the analyses. If philosophers were always trying to analyze facts, then if there were no knowledge (no true statements of the form S knows that P) it would be impossible to provide a correct analysis of knowledge, for there would be no facts of the form S knows that P to analyze. But since a philosopher's providing a correct analysis of knowledge not only is consistent with his embracing skepticism but is an essential part of an ideal defense of skepticism, it cannot be jClCIS of the

Introduction

9

form 5 knows that P upon which a philosopher is directing his attention in analyzing knowledge. Again, in these days of quantum theory and the consequent popularity (probably just a fad) of indeterminism, the contemporary philosopher of science might begin to wonder whether there are universal laws of nature. But surely it seems absurd to suggest that, were there no universal laws, his carefully defended analysis of the distinction between laws and accidential generalizations must ipso facto be abandoned as an illusion. To convince yourself that it is not a fact whose nature you are analyzing when you try to provide a correct analysis of causation, knowledge, laws of nature, other minds, the physical world, God, and so on, a thought experiment might be in order. Ask yourself whether it is possible, relative to your evidence, that there is no fact of the form 5 knows that P, it is a law of nature that L, someone else thinks, there are physical objects, or there is a God. The answer, in the examples I have chosen, should I think always be yes. Now ask yourself whether if unknown to you the world should lack these facts (while you retain your evidence) it would or even could logically affect your ability to arrive at correct analyses by employing the methods that characterize your search for adequate philosophical analyses in these respective areas. It seems to me undeniable that it could not and thus that the existence of these respective facts is no part of, is not a necessary condition for, the success of the respective philosophical analyses. In rejecting facts as the objects of philosophical analysis, it may seem to some that I am belaboring an obvious point. But the view has had some distinguished supporters, and what is more, despite all I have said above, I think there is a kind of philosophical analysis that does have as its end the dissection of a fact into its ultimate categorical constituents. If there is a kind of fact that is directly or immediately present to consciousness (and, as I shall argue, I think there are such facts), then there seems no reason we cannot "examine" (phenomenologically) that fact in order to assay it for its constituents. Indeed, the kind of philosophical work epitomized by the philosopher who takes himself to be an ontologist very often focuses on facts of just this sort. The thought experiment I described earlier might well be inappropriate for the ontologist contemplating his red, round sense datum in an effort to find its constituents, for he may (ifhe is a conservative epistemologist) reject as

10

Introduction

unintelligible the supposition that there might not exist (relative to his evidence) the fact he is interested in analyzing. I confine the remarks above, therefore, to philosophical analysis in areas where our epistemic access to the kind of fact that is a candidate for analysis is necessarily indirect, in a way that makes its nonexistence compatible with our evidence. If there is a distinction between this kind of analysis and analysis of facts that are somehow directly and immediately presented to consciousness, I shall refer to the two, respectively, as meaning analysis and ontological analysis. Myearlier argument against the possibility of construing facts as the objects of analysis was directed, then, at meaning analysis. But as I emphasized in presenting that argument, it seems that most of the paradigms of contemporary philosophical analysis (analyses of knowledge, causation, other minds, theoretical entities in physics, and the physical world, for example) must be construed as meaning analysis. Our access to the respective facts (if they exist) is always at best indirect. In what follows I shall be concerned only with meaning analysis. In referring to these paradigms of philosophical analysis as meaning analyses, I have, one might suppose, prejudiced an important question by supposing that the object of a philosophical analysis is something it makes sense to describe as having meaning. This is not really so, for the expression "meaning analysis" would be appropriate if the object we are analyzing did not haFe meaning but was a meaning. So that I may reach a conclusion on whether what we are trying to analyze is something that has meaning as opposed to something that is a meaning, I shall consider the other two candidates for the nonlinguistic objects of philosophical analysis: propositions and states of affairs. Most of what I shall say applies to both, so I shall consider them together. As I use the expressions, propositions and states of affairs are, like facts, nonlinguistic complexes (in the sense of nonlinguistic defined earlier). Both propositions and states of affairs are embraced by many philosophers, in large part to fill the void left by the absence of facts corresponding to falsehoods. We can, for example, believe falsely, and if we think ofbclief as directed upon some ol~ject we need an object to replace the fact that is not there. In the true sentence "John believes that there are unicorns" it is certainly tempting, perhaps even initially plausible, to suppose that the noun clause "that there are unicorns" names something. Of those philoso-

Introduction

11

phers who were convinced (for a variety of reasons) that the something could not be a sentence, some came up with propositions, others with states of affairs. Given the wide range of views on what propositions and states of affairs are, even among those who think of them as nonlinguistic complexes, it will be difficult to formulate a "traditional" or "neutral" characterization of each. Indeed, one prominent contemporary philosopher identifies propositions as a species of states of affairs. 6 Some philosophers construe propositions as mental entities (perhaps nonrelational properties of a mind or self). Others are committed to propositions as abstract Platonic entities that serve as intentional objects. Still others want intentional objects to be another sort of abstract entity, a state of affairs, the concept of which differs from most traditional conceptions of abstract propositions primarily in terms of the picture of truth associated with it (see below). Fortunately, for the following discussion we need not worry about the many distinctions between different conceptions of nonlinguistic propositions and states of affairs, for such distinctions will not affect my objection to taking them as the objects of philosophical analysis. If one has an ontological commitment to either nonlinguistic propositions or nonlinguistic states of affairs, one has a prime candidate not only for the objects of intentional states, but also for the meanings of sentences. If one is committed to propositions, a meaningful declarative sentence (be it true or false) will express a proposition, and the proposition will be the meaning of the sentence. On at least one traditional view, the true proposition will stand in yet another relation of mapping or correspondence to the previously discussed category of fact. If one opts for states of affairs over propositions, then meaningful declarative sentences will name or express states of affairs. True sentences will name or express states of affairs that obtain or occur. False sentences will name states of affairs that fail to obtain or occur. Both these views have a kind of obvious appeal owing to their elegance and simplicity. To understand a sentence is to grasp either the proposition or the state of affairs it expresses, a process that normally involves entertaining or being conscious of both the linguistic item and the nonlinguistic complex, and also the relevant relation of symbolizing, or meaning, or naming in which the former stands to the latter. We would on either view also have obvious candidates for the objects of nonlinguistic ontological analysis.

12

Introduction

The words or sentences are unimportant and are no part of the focus of our attempt to provide a philosophical analysis. If we are interested in analyzing, say, knowledge, we simply focus on (think about, entertain) the relevant proposition or state of affairs and perform our philosophical dissection of it. The importance of somehow divorcing the objects of philosophical analysis from language for the traditional conception of philosophical analysis as an a priori enterprise is obvious. Facts about how people use words or sentences seem to be paradigms of empirical facts discoverable only a posteriori, only through methods that, as far as I have been able to tell, philosophers do not follow and are not particularly competent to follow. While the elegance and simplicity of both the view that the object of a philosophical analysis is a proposition and the view that it is a state of affairs accounts for their appeal, it is also, ironically, the major obstacle to their ultimate plausibility. If either view were correct, everything would be too simple. It would be difficult to understand why providing a philosophical analysis is so often difficult and results in so much controversy. On both views, when I am about to perform a philosophical analysis, sayan analysis of causation, there is there before my consciousness this nonlinguistic complex something at which I am directing my attention in order to discover its constituents. But ask yourself-and here I must again rely on an honest report of a phenomenological experimentwhether this is so. I am not asking here whether you have before your mind some particular example of something that falls under the concept we are trying to analyze. In trying to analyze causation we might well hold before our minds, as Hume did, one billiard ball striking another, and we might examine this state of affairs, convinced that somewhere in its complexity there is to be found the relation of causation. But that is, of course, not to hold the rclation of causation itself before the mind. The state of affairs that is X causing Y does not contain as its constituents the myriad other relational and nonrelational properties of X and Y. If in beginning an analysis philosophers held before their minds some specific complex object whose constituents they were about to describe, why would there be so much disagreement-radical disagreement-on the correct analysis of, say, causation? To be sure, proponents of these respective views are going to try to give

Introduction

13

some account of error in philosophical analysis. They are going to give some account of how it is possible to overlook a constituent of the complex before one's mind or to "hallucinate," so to speak, an element that is not there, but it will take some fancy philosophical footwork to account for the radical nature of the disagreements (and hence presumably errors) that have existed. Remember that on these views, when you and I both seek to analyze, for example, causation or knowledge or good, there is (on the assumption that we use language the same way) some definite, spec(fic complex entity before our minds whose nature we are trying to make clear. When Moore and Hume, for example, set out to define good, each had the same specific nonlinguistic entity before his mind and was simply trying to set out its character as clearly as possible. But again, how could at least one of them get so confused, make such a radical mistake, fail so miserably in characterizing that object? The phenomenological experiments that seem to refute the view that in providing a philosophical analysis we have before our minds some specific complex nonlinguistic entity, a proposition or a state of affairs, also refute the rather natural theory of meaning that goes along with that view. If one held that something like propositions or states of affairs constituted the meanings of declarative sentences, then it might seem natural to suppose that to understand a sentence is to grasp, become conscious of, entertain the relevant proposition or state of affairs it expresses. But if it is implausible to hold that G. E. Moore and David Hume, for example, both held the same proposition or state of affairs before their minds in beginning their philosophical analysis of "good," and equally implausible to hold that at least one of them did not understand the English expression "good," it seems we must reject this conception of what it is to understand language. In rejecting facts, propositions, and states of affairs as the objects of philosophical analysis, I have not argued that there are no such things as facts, propositions, or states of affairs. Specifically, I have not denied that there is such a thing as thinking of such and such being the case where this state (be it a nonrelational aspect of the self or mind or a peculiar intentional relation directed upon a state of affairs or proposition) is nonlinguistic, that is, is a state that could (logically) exist in the absence of language. Indeed, as I shall try to make clear, I think there must be such a state if we are to make sense

14

Introduction

of meaning, ordinary understanding of language, and the kind of philosophical understanding that is reached through philosophical analysis. If we dismiss facts, propositions, and states of affairs as the objects of philosophical analysis, we seem left with only one alternative, and that is to take a "linguistic turn," at least on this one issue. As I implied before, this seems a step that a philosopher should take only with considerable reluctance. As I have already noted, if it is something about language use that we come to discover when we discover a correct philosophical analysis, it appears that our discovery is bound to be of an empirical truth known only a posteriori. Philosophers who engage in meaning analysis, and I am no exception, almost all have desperately tried to distinguish their activites from the intellectually less lofty activities of the lexicographer. And with good reason, for if the philosopher is performing a lexicographer's task, he is doing it without the appropriate credentials-without the background and training necessary for doing it properly. How are we to avoid this dilemma? There are, I think, two parts to the answer. One involves recognizing philosophical activity as essentially "egocentric." The other involves recognizing that the linguistic turn we take in understanding philosophical analysis must bring with it an ontology that is anathema to most so-called linguistic philosophers. Let us examine each of these in turn. In some important meta philosophical preliminaries to his metaethical investigations, G. E. Moore distinguishes the question of how most people use the word "good" from the questions of how he uses it and indicates emphatically that it is only the latter question that interests him as a philosopher: What, then is good? How is good to be defined? Now it may be thought that this is a verbal question. A definition does indeed often mean the expressing of one word's meaning in other words. But this is not the sort of definition I am asking for. Such a definition can never be of ultimate importance in any study except lexicography. If I wanted that kind of definition I should have to consider in the first place how people generally use the word "good"; but my business is not with its proper usage, as established by custom. I should, indeed, be foolish, if I tried to

Introduction

15

use it for something which it did not usually denote; if, for instance, I were to announce that, whenever I used the word "good," I must be understood to be thinking of that object which is usually denoted by the word "table." I shall, therefore, use the word in the same sense in which I think it is ordinarily used; but at the same time I am not anxious to discuss whether I am right in thinking that it is so used. 7 Though probably not very popular today, Moore's suggestion is, I think, essentially correct. We can at least convince ourselves that concern with other people's linguistic habits is not an essential part of the method of philosophical analysis by performing a thought experiment similar to the one we employed in rejecting facts as the objects of philosophical meaning analysis. Imagine that tomorrow you suddenly came to the conclusion that the existence of other people, complete with their linguistic habits, was all a massive illusion. You had been reading Descartes in a particularly susceptible frame of mind, let us suppose, and were so impressed by the early results of applying the method of doubt that you became a confirmed solipsist. Now ask yourself whether if this were to happen it would affect in the least either the correctness of your earlier attempts at philosophical analysis or your ability to engage in new efforts to discover philosophical truths of the sort we call analyses. I think you will agree that it would not. And the most obvious explanation of this is Moore's-that, even if we as philosophers are concerned with the use of words, it is always essentially the question of how we ourselves use words that is the primary object of our meaning analysis. To be sure, most of us are not solipsists, and we take the trouble to publish the results of our philosophical analyses so that others may benefit from them. We operate on the assumption that the way we use words is not idiosyncratic. But I am arguing that this presupposition of my communication with others is in no way a presupposition of the correctness of my philosophical analyses. By recognizing the task of discovering a correct meaning analysis as "egocentric" we shall have distinguished the philosopher's task from the lexicographer's and hence shall have cleared the philosopher of performing his task without the appropriate qualifications. But the difference is not much of a difference. So far I seem to

16

Introduction

be suggesting only that the philosopher is a lexicographer with rather parochial interests. This, however, is not the right conception of meaning analysis, and I must explain why. The task of the lexicographer is to discover that one word or expression has the same meaning as other words or expressions. The task of the philosopher in performing meaning analysis (and here we take a crucial ontological turn) is to relate the language he uses to something nonlinguistic. I emphasized earlier that I was not trying to argue that there is no such thing as nonlinguistic thinking. In fact, I think there is such a state. (I shall offer an analysis of it in chapter 2.) My suggestion, put simply and without the important qualifications I shall add shortly, is that the philosopher's primary objective in providing a philosophical analysis is to relate his use of language to certain nonlinguistic states. Let me elaborate. One can discover that two expressions have the same meaning without knowing what either means. The Frenchman can easily enough discover that "bachelor" means "unmarried man" without knowing what either "bachelor" or "unmarried man" means. I am convinced that in an analogous (though only analogous) sense a speaker of English can know that two familiar English expressions have the same meaning without in some sense knowing what either or both mean. To be a competent speaker of English (or any other language), to know or understand the meanings of the words one uses, is to follow certain complex rules governing the use of these words. To follow these rules is to have certain complex dispositions of a sort I shall discuss shortly. But to follow a semantic rule in this sense is not the same thing as to know what the rule is, at least in the sense that to know the rule is to be explicitly conscious of it. There is a useful analogy here between the way we follow semantic rules and the way we follow syntactic rules. It seems obvious that one can be perfectly grammatical, can follow without exception the rather complex rules of English grammar, without being in a position to state them-that is, without knowing in another sense what the rules of English grammar are. Indeed, as people in the field of linguistics will tell you, it is often very difficult to determine precisely what rules we follow in putting words together to form sentences, even for the people we may presume follow the very rules they are trying to discover. Philosophers sometimes refer to the "paradox of analysis." The "paradox" of philosophical analysis is very much like the "paradox" of linguistic analysis, in that in both cases one

Introduction

17

might wonder how one can follow certain rules without knowing what they are. The answer is simply that to follow either semantic or syntactic rules is at one level merely to have certain complex linguistic dispositions. To have a disposition to behave in a certain way is one thing: to know what that disposition is is quite another. Because one can follow a semantic rule without knowing what it is, it is possible for someone to use two expressions, "alpha" and "beta," in accordance with the same rule without knowing he is doing so. While it may not be as obvious, it is also possible for someone to use these two expressions in accordance with the same rule and know that he is doing so without knowing (in the sense of being explicitly conscious of) what the rule is. In knowing that he uses "alpha" the same way he uses "beta" he is, of course, aware that he follows what I shall call a same-level meaning rule: Regard "alpha" and "beta" as interchangeable salva veritate in certain contexts. But if my earlier remarks are correct, the philosopher is not just concerned with rules that relate language to language but is, rather, primarily concerned with the rules he follows that relate language to something nonlinguistic. That there are-indeed must be-such rules has been argued by a great many philosophers and seems to me obvious. The most concise argument for the view is simply that it is possible (logically) for someone to know all the same-level rules of a language (rules relating words to words) without understanding the language, that is, without being able to follow the appropriate rules relating language to the nonlinguistic. 8 This distinction between same-level and different-level meaning rules helps us make clear the distinction philosophers draw between providing a philosophical analysis and merely discovering synonymous expressions. When Hume told us not to analyze causation using such terms as "efficacy," "agency," "power," "force," "energy," and "productive power,"9 he did so because he was at least implicitly aware that we could know that two terms, for example, "causes" and "produces," are synonymous, are used in accordance with the same rule, without knowing what we want to knowwithout knowing what the rule is. What, then, would these different-level meaning rules look like? Essentially, they would be rules of the form: Regard "alpha" as a correct description of all and only those possible situations in which alpha is the case.

18

Introduction

While the rule itself, being a rule, lacks a truth value, philosophical analysis involves the discovery of truths, for what we discover in analysis is that we do follow certain different-level meaning rules. And what is involved in becoming conscious of, in coming to know explicitly the different-level meaning rule one is following for a given expression? Essentially, 1 suggest, to discover the differentlevel meaning rule one is following is to discover that one has a certain disposition, a disposition to regard a certain expression as a correct way to describe all possible situations that are construed in a certain way. The thought experiments through which one discovers that one has the relevant disposition that constitutes, for example, following the rule: Regard "alpha" as a correct description of all and only those possible situations in which alpha is the case will involve entertaining before the mind both "alpha" and alpha. Note that 1 did not state the different-level meaning rule: Use "alpha" if and only if alpha. This would imply that the dispositions one has that constitute understanding the expression are dispositions to actually say certain things under certain conditions. Such a behavioristic analysis of understanding would encounter all the usual objections to behaviorism. What 1 would or would not say in any given situation is a function of all kinds of things (e. g., my honesty, my interest in communicating with others, my love of irony). To avoid these sorts of problems, 1 replace the more familiar talk of "dispositions to use ... " with the more awkward, but 1 believe more accurate, talk of "dispositions to regard as correct .... " But how is this different from the theory of meaning and view of philosophical analysis advanced by the philosopher who takes propositions or states of affairs to be the object of philosophical analysis? Well, first of all, 1 am not arguing for the view (I have already rejected it on phenomenological grounds) that to understand a sentence is to entertain a nonlinguistic proposition or state of affairs. Understanding a sentence involves following a rule, and the statement of the rule will involve reference to something nonlinguistic; but since 1 can follow a rule without knowing what it is, 1 can understand a sentence without entertaining a proposition or a state of affairs. Philosophical understanding of the sentence 1 use will involve entertaining a nonlinguistic proposition or state of affairs (however that is understood), because philosophical understanding is realized only when we come to know what rule it is that we are following when we use the sentence, a process that involves

Introduction

19

bringing before one's mind the rule relating language to the world. This in turn involves bringing before one's mind the respective relata. The picture of philosophical analysis I have been presenting may still be misleading in some ways, and I wish to try to eliminate possible misinterpretations of my view. I suggested that discovering a correct analysis is essentially becoming explicitly conscious of a different-level meaning rule having the form: Regard "alpha" as a correct description of all and only those possible situations in which alpha. Some discovery! If in the course of this book I announce that I have finally concluded that I regard "table" as the correct way to pick out tables, the philosophical community will be justifiably unimpressed. What is the solution to this puzzle? Well, you will recall that, as I characterized philosophical analysis, the aim is to become explicitly conscious of a different-level meaning rule. In the example used earlier, this involves becoming conscious of the word "causation" and of that to which the word applies. To know that the statement" 'Causation' picks out cases of causation" is true does not require even reflecting upon any nonlinguistic states. The sentence "'Alpha' means alpha" is true, and I know it is true no matter what "alpha" refers to: consequently I can readily assent to this claim without moving beyond the level oflanguage. To become explicitly conscious of the meaning rule that" 'Alpha' means alpha" expresses involves, again, holding before one's mind "alpha" and alpha, something that is by no means easy to do. So discovering the correct philosophical analysis of the meaning of "causation" is more than knowing that the statement" 'Causation' means causation" is true. It involves becoming explicitly conscious of the rule, a process that involves holding before one's mind the relata of the asserted meaning relation. It might seem I am suggesting that to discover what we mean by, for example, "causation" we should, so to speak, simply run through our minds all the candidates for the causal rclation we can think of (where this thinking is nonlinguistic) until suddenly a light goes on when we hit on the right rclation. But, as I am sure you will agree, when we reflect upon what we actually do in trying to discover a philosophical analysis, it is in most cases not nearly as straightforward as this. Nothing I have said, however, suggests that it should be. Quite the opposite. To discover a philosophical meaning analysis is to discover what different-level meaning rule one is

20

Introduction

following in using a word or sentence. This in turn is to discover that one has a disposition to regard certain words as correct descriptions of certain situations construed in certain ways. To hold before one's mind the linguistic item "X causes Y" and some relation R holding between X and Y is not by itself to discover that "X causes Y" either does or does not refer to X standing in R to Y. The meaning relation is not like the relation of being on top of. It is not the kind of relation one automatically discovers in perceiving or reflecting upon the relata. To discover that "X causes Y" means X stands in R to Y, one must discover that one would regard "X causes Y" as a correct description of all and only those possible situations that one construes as situations in which X stands in R to Y. One might argue that this suggestion fails to take account of an important distinction between synthetic necessary connections and analytic necessary connections. I may have the disposition to regard "equiangular triangle" as a correct way to describe all and only those triangles that are equilateral, but one must surely hesitate before one analyzes the meaning of "equiangular triangle" in terms of the property of being an equilateral triangle. But remember that, on my account, to follow the meaning rule: Regard "equiangular triangle" as a correct description of all and only those objects that are equilateral triangles, I must have the disposition to regard "equiangular triangle" as a correct description of an object in all and only those possible situations in which I construe an object as an equilateral triangle. Thus there must be no possible situation in which I would regard "equiangular triangle" as a correct description of an object I do not construe as an equilateral triangle. In fact, I think this is false of me. It seems to me that I can conceive of a situation in which I am presented with the equiangular character of a triangle and yet do not construe it (occurrently or dispositionally) as equilateral. I am willing to predict that in such a situation I would nevertheless regard "equiangular" as a correct description of the triangle, and that is why I do not think the property of being equilateral should be referred to in the statement of the meaning rule I follow for "equiangular triangle." To be sure, it may be difficult to make such determinations through thought experiments. It is not easy to determine what one's dispositions would be in hypothetical situations that involve not possessing certain concepts or recognitional capacities. But then this might explain rather nicely why phi-

Introduction

21

losophers often have such a terrible time deciding whether a necessary truth is analytic or synthetic-indeed, why so many philosophers are persuaded that there are no synthetic necessary truths. On a quite different point, it should also be admitted, I think, that, even though our ultimate aim in providing a philosophical meaning analysis is to leave the level of language by discovering different-level meaning rules, for a time we may profitably carryon our investigation at the level of language. If we were trying to analyze the concept of knowledge, we might proceed by trying to think of other words that seem interchangeable with "know." This method might lead to the discovery of the relevant different-level meaning rule, particularly if the synonymous expressions we come up with are complex, having as constituents other expressions for which we may have less trouble finding the relevant different-level meaning rules. It is not easy to break away from language, and often much preliminary work needs to be done before the move is feasible. Last, I want to acknowledge one important respect in which this account of analysis may be incomplete or oversimplified. Any plausible view of meaning has to take into account and explain the fact that language seems vague and open textured. Although I have been talking as though there are determinate different-level meaning rules for meaningful expressions governing their use in all possible or conceivable situations, I suspect that this is simply not so for much of language. Although I will not argue the case here, I think the view I have sketched can accommodate rather nicely the opentextured character of much of language. Roughly, my suggestion would be that for some expressions the only different-level meaning rules may be of the form: Regard "alpha" as a correct description of all and only those possible situations in which alpha, provided that beta is the case. The rules, if you like, may leave completely open the question of how to describe situations in which alpha is present and beta is not. At the same time the expression governed by such "open-textured" rules may be perfectly useful, particularly ifbeta is the kind of condition that is usually satisfied and is such that in most contexts of communication everyone is aware that it is satisfied. This might be the case, for example, if "provided that beta" is some kind of "normal conditions" clause. In fact, as I shall argue later, I

22

Introduction

think that many of the different-level meaning rules for ordinary expressions are protected by "normal conditions" clauses in just this way. This account of philosophical analysis does not fit well with the traditional conception of philosophical analyses as both significant and a priori. The significance of philosophical analyses is accommodated-I have indicated why discovering different-level meaning rules is a complex and difficult task. But significance is accommodated at a cost. I have given up the view that knowledge that a given philosophical meaning analysis is correct is a priori. The discovery that one follows a different-level meaning rule in using an expression is an a posteriori discovery (albeit of a rather special kind). That one would or would not apply an expression in a certain situation is a straightforward contingent fact. To be sure, even philosophers sometimes loosely and misleadingly characterize a priori knowledge as simply knowledge that is independent of sense experience, and in this sense knowledge of the correct philosophical analysis of a term might be construed as a priori. The thought experiments that are the source of our discoveries are not visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, or gustatory sensations. The philosopher who wishes to avoid soiling his hands in the search for empirical data can by the above account of philosophical analysis console himself with the knowledge that he still need not leave his armchair (and that, I suspect, is all he is really worried about). The data he relies upon are there "at his fingertips," even though they are empirical data in the strict sense of the term used by philosophers when they are being careful. The distinction between philosophy and science, between the kind of discoveries one can make through thought experiments and the kind one must make through experiments that rely ultimately on sense experience, is still dramatic according to my account of philosophical meaning analysis, even if it is not the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. While the data required for evaluating philosophical analyses are, on my view, no further away than the nearest thought experiment, I should emphasize again that discovering a correct analysis is no easy task. Finite minds can perform only a finite number of thought experiments, and the philosopher should always be open to the possibility that a hitherto plausible analysis might be revealed as defective by consideration of a new hypothetical situation. That, pre-

Introduction

23

sumably, is precisely what happened to philosophers who were convinced by Gettier-style counterexamples that knowledge is not just justified true belief. In imagining a certain situation, they realized they did not have the relevant linguistic dispositions they thought they had and hence realized they did not follow the different-level meaning rules they thought they followed. It is perhaps an understatement to suggest that the conception of philosophical analysis presented above is not all that popular today. Indeed, the reason I have gone to such lengths in presenting my view of philosophical analysis is that later in the book I must consider and reject an alternative conception of analysis, an alternative that carries with it important implications for the analysis of the physical world. When I reject that view I want it to be clear that I do not do so without having a positive alternative. If we construe philosophical analysis of propositions asserting veridical perception and propositions asserting the existence of physical objects as meaning analysis, then we can understand why the scientist's attempts to characterize the neurophysiological workings of perception and the ultimate constituents of the physical world fail to answer the metaphysical questions of perception. Light may impinge on the retina and by a complex process result in an alpha wave in the brain, but this is no part of what we assert, no part of what we mean when we say we see a table. If it were, it would be an analytic truth that when we see a table light impinges on the retina, ultimately resulting in an alpha wave, and this analytic truth would be discoverable solely by reflecting on the meanings of the terms involved. Unfortunately for the psychophysiologist, this is simply not so. The psychophysical story of perception can be discovered only by employing the empirical methods of science.

Methodological Presuppositions Assuming I have succeeded in making clear the epistemological and metaphysical questions that are to be answered in the remainder of this book, we should decide some preliminary matters concerning the connection between the two kinds of questions and the methodological presuppositions we should follow in trying to answer these questions. Roughly speaking, we must decide to what extent our epistemology is to be determined by our metaphysics

24

Introduction

and to what extent our metaphysics is going to be decided by our epistemology. I shall begin by considering the view I call epistemological commonsensism.

EpistemoloJ?ical Commonsensism Epistemological commonsensism is a view implicitly or explicitly embraced by many contemporary philosophers in dealing with epistemological problems like those associated with perception. It seems to have two versions, linguistic and nonlinguistic. The linguistic version, implicitly accepted by many Wittgensteineans (though perhaps not by Wittgenstein himself), holds that at least most of what we say in paradigmatically normal situations is true or at least reasonable. (I use the deliberately vague expression "paradigmatically normal" to allow the Wittgensteinean as much room as possible to qualify the view in the light of obvious objections.) Thus if people all go around saying that they see tables, remember what they had for breakfast, know their last names, have good reason for thinking the sun will rise tomorrow, and so on, and such people do not feel that their grounds for saying such things are in any way defective, then in doing philosophy we ought to assume that they do sec tables, remember what they had for breakfast, know their last names, and have good reason for thinking the sun will rise tomorrow, or at least we ought to assume that these assertions are perfectly reasonable. In doing his philosophy the philosopher ought to make adjustments to his epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy oflanguage until he preserves as true (or at least as reasonable) as much as possible of paradigmatic assertions. The nonlinguistic version of epistemological commonsensism wants what people take for granted, take to be obvious, believe unhesitatingly, are quite convinced of to be the philosopher's guide in constructing his epistemology and metaphysics. Thus if it seems obvious to people, if they believe unhesitatingly or take for granted that they remember what they had for breakfast, see a table, have good reason for thinking the sun will rise tomorrow, then the philosopher ought to assume that they are right or at least reasonable and make adjustments to his philosophy until he can consistently hold this. Since we may assume that for the most part what a person unhesitatingly says expresses an unhesitating belief, it may be that

Introduction

25

there is no great difference between the linguistic and nonlinguistic versions of commonsensism. Roderick Chisholm has been more self-conscious than most about the sort of methodological presuppositions we are discussing here, and in a chapter of his Theory if Knowledge called "The Problem of the Criterion" he discusses not only his general acceptance of commonsensism but also the kinds of epistemological and metaphysical tinkering that a philosopher can do to preserve commonsensism against its epistemological enemy radical skepticism. (As I use the expression, a person is a radical skeptic with respect to a given kind of proposition if almost everyone else claims to know or at least have good reason for believing some proposition of that kind and the skeptic in question claims that neither he nor anyone else has evidence that makes any proposition of that sort more likely to be true than false.) I think it is fair to suggest that, historically, the philosopher has most often attempted to rebuff the skeptic's challenges through metaphysical manipulation. Thus Berkeley, one of the most ardent of commonsense philosophers (albeit with one of the most bizarre philosophies) attempted to resolve Descartes's skeptical worries through a metaphysical reduction of the physical world to the world of ideas (sensations). The details, of course, got rather complicated as he tried to find a reasonable compromise between a commonsense epistemology and a commonsense metaphysics. The positivists of the early twentieth century almost all waged battle with the radical skeptics employing the weapons of metaphysical analysis. to Those who took knowledge of the physical world to be relatively unproblematic reduced the mental to the physical; those who took knowledge of the mental to be relatively unproblematic reduced the physical to the mental; and a few hardy souls, never flinching in the face of paradox, tried to do both. 11 Talk about the unobservable theoretical entities of physics was reduced to talk of the familiar macroworld and the dispositions of macrobodies to behave therein, and the most daring of all toyed with the idea of reducing talk about the past to talk of the present and future. 12 Although I think it has not been emphasized nearly enough, the guiding force moving the positivist was his commitment to commonsensism, a commitment that required him to do battle with the forces of radical skepticism. Typically adhering to a rather austere

26

Introduction

epistemology that sanctioned only deductive and, possibly, inductive inference, the positivist found his defenses limited. They consisted almost exclusively of various attempts to reduce the meaning of conclusions under skeptical attack to premises the skeptic would accept or, more accurately, to analyze the sense of the conclusions under skeptical attack in such a way that the conclusions could be reached by employing deductive and inductive inference from the unchallenged premises. One would get, of course, all kinds of variations on reductionism, depending on what the philosopher in question took to be the unchallengeable premises. The irony of the positivist's metaphysical machinations in defense of epistemological commonsensism is that one usually got a metaphysics that everyone except the positivists viewed as completely bizarre. Only someone in the grip of a theory, for example, would even consider trying to reduce propositions about the past to propositions about the present and future or, for that matter, propositions about mental life to propositions about physical behavior and dispositions to behave. The trend today seems to be away from metaphysical tinkering in defense of commonsensism and toward epistemological tinkering in defense of commonsensism. If deductive and inductive principles of reasoning will not get us the conclusions of commonsense, given our metaphysics, then why not simply expand on our set of acceptable principles of reasoning? This, in effect, is the course proposed by Chisholm in Theory of Knowledge. Roughly, the idea seems to be that if you cannot get from your available data E to a given conclusion C via the epistemic principles you have committed yourself to so far, and C is a conclusion of "commonsense," then expand on your epistemic principles until you come up with something that will sanction the inference from E to C. The unofficial method of choosing the relevant principle seems to be just that. Come up with something that gets you where you want to go from what you take to be the appropriate starting point, and at the same time make sure the principle is not so broad as to sanction inferences to conclusions that commonsense does not endorse. I say "unofficial" because in at least some cases the philosopher who endorses this method of dealing with radical skepticism is committed to a version of foundationalism according to which he ou:id desi>:nator, by which he means that a name can be used to talk 2bout an individual in all possible worlds (in less flamboyant terminology, in any counterfactual situation). But if this view is meant to imply that a definite description (or expression equivalent in meaning to a definite description) cannot be used as a rigid designator, that is, cannot be used to refer to an individual in all counter factual situations, the view is false. One can use a definite description "the F" to pick out an individual and to

128

Causal Theories

assert counterfactually of him that had certain conditions obtained he would not have been F. That is just what the definite descriptions in (la) and (2a*) do. 10 One cannot therefore explain the difference between giving a name the meaning of a definite description and fixing the reference of a name using a definite description by pointing out that (2a) and (2b) have different truth conditions. Where (2a) is a statement of de re possibility, it can be viewed as unproblematically true. What about statements of de dicto necessity? Consider the following: (3a) Necessarily, Alpha (ifhe exists) is the tallest man in America at t. (3b) Necessarily, Alpha* (ifhe exists) is the tallest man in America at t. I suppose that one who thinks that the notion of fixing reference is intelligible may argue that (3a) is true while (3b) is false. But I cannot think what would justify such an assertion. As I have already suggested in connection with intentional contexts, if someone introduces the expression "Alpha*" and tells me he is using it to pick out the tallest man in America (whoever that may be), then tells me it might not be the case that Alpha* is the tallest man in America, I would be completely at a loss how to understand his use of the expression "Alpha*." In trying to give sense to the concept of fixing reference, one might appeal to modal contexts in yet another way. The proposition that Alpha* is F, one might argue, would be about the same individual in all possible worlds, whereas the proposition that Alpha is F would be about different individuals in different possible worlds. This suggestion seems no less question begging than that above, however. Everything rests on our criteria for identifying propositions through possible worlds. If K introduces "Alpha*" in this world in the way I described, when Jones is the tallest man "Alpha*" will pick outJones. Ifin P2 Kintroduces "Alpha*" in the same way when Smith is the tallest man, "Alpha*" will pick out Smith. Kripke and company will deny that the statement "Alpha* if F" in this world expresses the same proposition as the statement "Alpha* is F" in P2, but one would find this denial plausible only if one were antecedently convinced that there exists a referential mag-

Causal Theories

129

ic wand capable of transforming an unknown individual into a constituent of the thought expressed by a given statement. The expression "fixing reference" is a technical philosophical expression that must be given meaning. Finding out what it is not supposed to mean is not finding out what it does mean. I very much fear that a rather large number of philosophers are allowing into their philosophical vocabulary an expression that has no sense. If you think there is a difference between fixing the reference of an expression using a definite description and giving a name the meaning of a definite description, then you should be prepared to give an example of a statement in which substituting "Alpha" for "Alpha*" would alter the truth value, or at least the sense of the statement. There are no such examples. The new emphasis on reference in philosophy of language is misguided for a reason similar to one raised in chapter 1 as an objection to construing facts as the objects of philosophical analysis. Just as the search for the meaning of a statement is not impeded by the supposition that there is no fact that makes it true, so the meaning of names and common nouns is quite independent of their having a referent or extension. If one wants to understand what gives language meaning, what gives it life, how it enables us to express thoughts and understand others, one must look for something other than the referents of names and the extensions of common nouns and predicate expressions. I conclude that a proponent of a causal theory of physical objects has no alternative to the admittedly painful task of trying to find analytical equivalence between statements asserting the existence of physical objects and statements asserting the existence of the causes of certain sorts of sensations. We would be doing the classical causal theorists a disservice if we reconstructed their views as presupposing the incoherent notion of fixing reference. There is one extremely important consequence of rejecting refence-fixing definite descriptions as what enables us to talk meaningfully about the physical world. If we are committed to a program of defining physical objects as the causes of sensations, we obviously cannot include in the definition reference to anyone's actual sensations. Such a view would be as absurd as the crudest form of idealism. No part of what we mean by asserting the existence of a physical object can be captured by a statement asserting the exis-

130

Causal Theories

tence of a cause of someone's actual sensations, for that would make the occurrence of those sensations a logically necessary condition for the existence of the physical object. The very concept of a physical object is that of an object whose existence is logically independent of the existence of conscious beings and their sensations. (The reference fixers, of course, could use definite descriptions that refer to actual sensations in order to fix the reference of physical object terms, for they are not committed to finding synonymy.) If the causal theorist cannot define phyysical objects as the causes of certain actual sensations, in which direction should he move? Subjunctive conditionals beckon, and despite all the dangers I believe the causal theorist has no alternative but to move that way. If one is to reduce talk about the physical world to talk about the existence of things causally connected to sensations or patterns of sensations, it must be in terms of statements asserting the existence of that which would under certain conditions produce certain sensations or patterns of sensations. That the causal theorist must turn to subjunctive conditionals in providing his analysis of physical object statements is interesting, for there is of course another historically important analysis of physical object propositions famous for its reliance on subjunctive conditionals. I refer, of course, to classical phenomenalism. The wary philosopher should already be alert to the possibility that objections raised against phenomenalism (often by causal theorists) might eventually come back to haunt the causal theorist. In fact, I think this is just what happens. Before I argue the point, I want to sketch the kind of phenomenalism I am interested in discussing and the argument against phenomenalism that so many have taken to be decisive. I shall then show that the objection is equally effective against the causal theory.

Chapter 5 Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

Most contemporary philosophers consider phenomenalism a dead theory-an interesting, if somewhat bizarre, example of the excesses to which philosophers were drawn in the name of positivism. But while phenomenalism is almost universally rejected, I do not think some philosophers are clear about the implications of the arguments they employ in attacking phenomenalism. A great many philosophers have a vested interest in finding a reply to the kind of argument most often raised against phenomenalism. The term "phenomenalism" has been used in a number of ways. I shall begin by considering what I call classical phenomenalism and the objections that have been raised against it. As I go along I shall be suggesting modifications of classical phenomenalism, and as I do it may be unclear whether we should continue to refer to the modified view as phenomenalism. As long as we are clear what the view is, however, the label we choose for it is unimportant.

Classical Phenomenalism By classical phenomenalism I mean the view that propositions asserting the existence of physical objects are analytically equivalent to propositions asserting that a subject would have certain sequences of sensations were he to have certain others. As I use the expression "classical phenomenalism," the view is compatible with

132

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

a number of different analyses of the self or subject of sensation. The phenomenalist, for example, might understand that which has a sensation as a mind of the sort Berkeley was committed to, or as a construct out of actual or possible experience. The historical origins of classical phenomenalism are difficult to trace, in part because, as one would expect, early statements of the view were not usually careful statements of the view. In his Dialogues, Berkeley hinted at classical phenomenalism when he had Philonous explain how he could reconcile his ontology with the story of a creation that took place before the existence of man: Why I imagine that ifI had been present at the creation, I should have seen things produced into being; that is, become perceptible, in the order described by the sacred historian. 1 More often, however, Berkeley seems to have ideas in the mind of God securing the existence of a physical world that is independent of the existence of any finite being. Like Berkeley, Hume was responsible for many of the arguments that phenomenalists have adopted, but also like Berkeley he was not himself a phenomenalist. Though (on my interpretation) Hume believed, or at least was officially committed to, the view that there exists nothing but experience, I do not think he believed that view was compatible with our beliefs about the physical world. Rather than analyze propositions about the physical world into propositions about sensation, I think Hume decided to live with philosophical skepticism with respect to the physical world. In An Examination oj Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy John Stuart Mill may have been the first philosopher to put forth a phenomenalistic analysis. In that work he says: "Matter, then, may be defined a Permanent Possibility of Sensation."2 In explaining his view, Mill seems to suggest that a belief in the permanent possibility of sensations of a given kind just is the belief in certain subjunctive propositions about what sorts of sensations would occur given certain antecedent conditions. Foreshadowing the problem that was to plague all phenomenalists, Mill invariably "cheated" on the classical phenomenalist's commitments. The antecedents of his conditionals referred not to sensation but to physical location:

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

133

I believe that Calcutta exists, though I do not perceive it and that it would still exist if every percipient inhabitant were suddenly to leave the place or be struck dead. But when I analyze the belief, all I find in it is, that were these events to take place the Permanent Possibility of Sensation which I call Calcutta would still remain; that if I were suddenly transported to the banks of the Hoogly, I should still have the sensations which, if now present, would lead me to affirm that Calcutta exists here and now. 3 It would be foolish to infer from this that Mill was not a classical phenomenalist as I have defined the term, for it may well be that, like so many other phenomenalists, he had a tendency to forget the position to which he was committed. While I am inclined to think that Mill was a classical phenomenalist in my sense, he could also plausibly be construed as holding a version of the causal theory I shall be discussing shortly. That it might be hard to tell which view he held is not surprising, for if I am right, the two views are not nearly as far apart as many philosophers suppose. In more recent times, the most famous version of classical phenomenalism was probably that so enthusiastically endorsed by A. J. Ayer in LanRuaRe, Truth and LORic, but in my opinion the clearest, most carefully developed version of the view was presented by C. I. Lewis in An Analysis of KnowledRe and Valuation. With the benefit of hindsight I think we can see that classical phenomenalism was an inevitable outgrowth of the evolution in philosophical thought initiated by the epistemological concerns Descartes expressed in the Meditations. As I indicated earlier, the radical empiricists and early positivists faced a dilemma. Convinced (usually by some version of the argument from illusion or hallucination) that the only way to justify a belief in the existence of physical objects (thought of as enduring, mind-independent entities) was to infer their existence from the occurrence of fleeting and subjective experience, and further convinced that only deduction and induction were available as a means of bridging the gap between knowledge of sensation and knowledge of the physical world, the empiricists and positivists had a problem. Propositions asserting the existence of physical objects are obviously not equivalent in meaning to propositions asserting that some individual (indi-

134

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

viduals) is (are) actually sensing in some way, for the concept of an external world is such as to make perfectly possible the existence of physical things without sentient beings. This rules out the possibility of our deducinR the existence of physical objects from what we know about our sensations. But induction seems to fare no better. If physical objects are thought of as entities of a radically different ontological kind from sensation, somehow standing in a causal connection to sensation, then the only way to inductively establish sensation as evidence for the existence of physical objects would be to correlate the two in experience. As Hume so persuasively argued in a passage to which I have already alluded, since ultimately all we ever have to rely on as evidence is knowledge of our sensations, we can never observe a correlation or a connection between sensation and something other than sensation. Skepticism of course was one alternative, but justifiably or not, the epistemological commonsensism I discussed in chapter 1 seems to have been implicitly accepted by the vast majority of empiricists and positivists. Beginning to despair of finding a solution to the skeptical problem, some empiricists thought they saw a way out. They suggested that previous inability to resolve the skeptical problem was due to a faulty understanding of what it is that is asserted by a physical object proposition. It occurred to them that our talk about the physical world could be construed as a kind of very complicated talk about sensation. To say that a given object exists is not to say that some entity exists of an ontologically different sort from that we are acquainted with in perception; nor, of course, is it to say that someone is actually having some sensation. Rather, they decided, we should view such propositions as equivalent in meaning to assertions about what sensations or sequences of sensations a subject would have were he to have certain others. The truth or falsity of such propositions is mind independent in the way the truth or falsity of propositions about the physical world is mind independent, and what is more, to the empiricist's great relief, it looks as if such propositions could be established inductively. Subjunctives that assert connections holding between sensations can presumably be justified without having to correlate anything but sensations. Since the subjunctive conditional plays such a critical role for the phenomenalist, and since, if my conclusions in the previous chapter were correct, the causal theorist will be unable to escape the necessity of employing such conditionals, it might be appropriate to dis-

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

135

cuss some of the problems associated with the analysis of these conditionals. Such a discussion should also facilitate an understanding of the major problem facing any phenomenalistic analysis.

Subjunctive Conditionals The problem of analyzing subjunctive conditionals is critical for both the phenomenalist and the causal theorist, but it is a problem almost any philosopher will eventually face. I believe it is impossible to analyze dispositional properties without employing subjunctive conditionals, and, on almost any view, predicate expressions that refer to dispositions pervade the language. Of course, if either phenomenalism or certain versions of the causal theory of objects are correct, literally all talk about physical objects and their properties involves reference to dispositions that can be explicated only through subjunctive conditionals. Though I refer to the problem as the problem of analyzing subjunctive conditionals, it should be obvious that the use of the subjunctive mood in asserting a conditional is not by itself what requires explication. Many-indeed, the vast majority of-indicative conditionals assert the same sorts of problematic relations asserted by subjunctive conditionals. The grammatical correctness of using the subjunctive mood seems to be primarily a function of the extent to which the speaker wishes to leave open the question whether the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent has occurred. We might use the expression "counterfactual conditional" to refer to those subjunctive conditionals that presuppose that the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent is contrary to fact. Obviously, not all subjunctive conditionals are counterfactual conditionals. The one point on which most everyone agrees is that subjunctive conditionals arc not simply conditionals of material implication. Indeed, it is widely recognized to be at best highly misleading to even translate the truth functional "P materially implies Q" into English as "if P then Q." Subjunctive conditionals are simply not truthfunctionally complex, as the following two statements illustrate: 1. If this piece of wax had been heated, then it would have melted. 2. If this piece of wax had been heated, then it would have sprouted wings.

136

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

The antecedents and consequents of (1) and (2) (translated into the indicative mood) are false, yet (1) would be regarded as true (in most contexts) while (2) would be regarded as false. The truth of the complex statement is not a mere function of the truth or falsity of the constituent statements. Subjunctive conditionals (and most indicative conditionals) are not truth functional, because they assert a connection between the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent and the state of affairs referred to in the consequent. The problem of analyzing subjunctive conditionals is the problem of determining what the connection asserted by a subjunctive conditional is. As it turns out, a number of different relations between the state of affairs referred to in its antecedent and the state of affairs referred to in its consequent are sufficient for the truth of a subjunctive conditional, and if it is possible to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of subjunctive conditionals, I think it will involve disjoining a number of sufficient conditions such that the disjunction will be a necessary condition. Perhaps the most straightforward sufficient condition for the truth of the subjunctive conditional, if P were the case Q would be the case, is P's formally, analytically, or synthetically entailing Q. Thus the following are all unproblematically true: 3. IfJones were a man, then he would be either a man or a horse. 4. IfJones were a bachelor, then he would be unmarried. 5. If this were red all over, it would not be blue all over. What make (3) through (5) true are, respectively, that Jones's being a man formally entails Jones's being a man or a horse; that Jones's being a bachelor analytically entails Jones's being unmarried; and that this being red all over synthetically entails this being not blue all over. Subjunctive conditionals made true in one of these three ways are necessarily true. Unfortunately, the subjunctive conditionals employed by the phenomenalist and the causal theorist in analyzing propositions asserting the existence of physical objects are continJ?ent subjunctive conditionals. This should go without saying, of course, for the physical object propositions they analyze are contingent propositions. What then makes a contingent subjunctive conditional true? The most obvious suggestion is a nomological connection be-

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

137

tween the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent and the state of affairs referred to in the consequent. 4 The fact that P entails Q will make true the necessary truth if P were the case Q would be the case, and that Pis nomologically sufficient for Q will make true the contingent truth if P were the case Q would be the case. Thus we regard the following conditionals as true: 6. If a piece of wax were heated to sixty degrees centigrade under standard conditions it would melt. 7. If a body were in motion and no forces were acting upon it it would continue in motion. And we do so because we regard heating wax to sixty degrees as nomologically sufficient for wax's melting and a body's being in motion with no forces acting upon it as nomologically sufficient for its continuing in motion. In my earlier discussion of causation, I noted that when we describe X as the cause of Y we seldom intend to assert that X is a nomologically sufficient condition for Y. Similarly, if we reflect upon the contingent subjunctive conditionals that we assert and take to be unproblematically true in ordinary discourse, we should reach the conclusion that we do not regard a relation of nomological sufficiency between antecedent and consequent as a necessary condition for the truth of a subjunctive conditional. The following conditionals would be regarded as true in some contexts: 8. If two more people were to enter the room there would be four people in the room. 9. IfI were to strike this match it would light. 10. If I were to flip the light switch up in this room the light would go on. Yet none of these conditionals have antecedents that are nomologically sufficient for their consequents. What makes such conditionals true? Well, we might again rely for an answer on our earlier discussion of causation. A contingent subjunctive conditional can be made true by virtue of the fact that its antecedent is an appropriate nonredundant part of a nomologically sufficient condition for its consequent. It can also be made true by virtue of the fact that its antecedent is an appropriate nonredundant part of a logically suffi-

138

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

cient condition for its consequent. More precisely, one might suggest the following: If P were the case Q would be the case if either (a) there exists some X that obtains such that (P and X) is nomologically sufficient for Q when P is a nonredundant part of the sufficient condition (P and X), or (b) there exists some X that obtains such that (P and X) is consistent and entails (formally, analytically, or synthetically) Q when P is a nonredundant part of the logically sufficient condition (P and X). (8) above would seem to satisfy the second disjunct if it were asserted by me in a room in which you and I were the only two people. (9) and (10) would presumably satisfy the first disjunct if (9) were asserted when the match was dry, oxygen was present, and so on, and (10) were asserted when the switch was properly hooked up to some complex machinery, the light bulb was good, and so on. Though promising, this suggestion is not without its difficulties. Put crudely, in evaluating a subjunctive conditional one must hypothesize the occurrence of the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent and determine whether, conditions being what they are, the addition of that state of affairs would lead nomologically or logically to the occurrence of the state of affairs referred to in the consequent. But it is often difficult to determine what additional changes in the standing conditions one is supposed to hypothesize along with the occurrence of the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent. In "Law Statements and Counterfactual Inference" Chisholm (1975, 153) considers a man who accepts the following statements as true (and who accepts the universal statements as expressions oflaw): 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

All gold is malleable No cast-iron is malleable Nothing is both gold and cast-iron Nothing is both malleable and not malleable That is cast-iron That is not gold That is not malleable.

He then considers contexts in which the person who accepts (11) through (17) might assert the following conditionals: 18. If that were gold it would be malleable.

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

139

19. If that were gold then some gold things would not be malleable. 20. If that were gold then some things would be both malleable and not malleable. What is interesting is that we can construe all three conditionals as true. We can imagine a perfectly rational person asserting anyone of the three. Which conditional he asserts seems to depend on an arbitrary choice with respect to which of (11) through (17) he will continue to presuppose in considering the hypothetical situation in which this is gold. If he were to assert (18), Chisholm suggests, he would be supposing the denial of (16), excluding (15), (16), and (17), and emphasizing (11). If he were to assert (19), he would be supposing the denial of (16), excluding (11) and (16), and emphasizing either (15) or (12). And if he were to assert (20), he would be again supposing the denial of (16), be excluding (13), and be emphasizing (11), (12), or (15). The moral Chisholm infers, and I think it is correct, is that in evaluating a subjunctive conditional there are no rules that dictate the changes one is supposed to imagine in supposing the occurrence of the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent. It is really up to the person asserting the conditional to decide on the presuppositions of the assertion. Sometimes the context will make these presuppositions clear. Sometimes it will not, and the only way to evaluate the conditional will be to insist that the person who asserts it make clear what he wants us to suppose in evaluating it. As Chisholm points out, the problem of analyzing subjunctive conditionals is like the problem of analyzing ordinary probability statements that involve implicit reference to a reference class. There is no analysis we can give of the meaning of "Jones will probably live to be eighty." The most we can do is provide instructions for asking the sort of question that will enable us to determine what the statement asserts. Specifically, we must insist that the person making the statement indicate the reference class his probability statement presupposes. In the same way, some subjunctive conditionals defy analysis not because there is anything intrinsically mysterious about the relation asserted by the subjunctive conditional, but because the same subjunctive conditional can make different assertions depending on the presuppositions of the person making the statement. As with ordinary probability claims, the most one can do as a philoso-

140

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

pher is to indicate the kinds of questions one must ask the speaker in order to determine which of a number of propositions he is using that conditional to assert. We have obviously not solved all the problems associated with subjunctive conditionals, but I think we have at least managed to distinguish three importantly different kinds of subjunctive conditionals: (1) those that assert entailment between antecedent and consequent, (2) those that assert nomological sufficiency between antecedent and consequent, and (3) those that assert that the antecedent together with some set of conditions that obtain is nomologically or logically sufficient for the consequent. Now, assuming the phenomenalist hopes that some propositions asserting the existence of physical objects are true, which of the three kinds of conditionals referred to above can he plausibly take to be the kind of conditional that analyzes physical object propositions? Well, he obviously does not want the relevant subjunctives to be true in the first way, for, since propositions asserting the existence of physical objects are contingent, the conditionals that analyze them must also be contingent. That leaves the second and third kinds. Note that subjunctive conditionals of the third sort are context dependent. If! assert that if P were the case Q would be the case, when I know that P is by itself neither logically nor nomologically sufficient for Q, I am asserting that there is some set of conditions that obtains such that P together with those conditions stands in the appropriate relation to Q. Of course I need not have much, if any, idea what those conditions are. When I assert that if I were to flip the light switch in this room up the light would go on, I am assuming that there is some set of conditions that obtains such that the switch's being flipped under those conditions would lead (nomologically) to the light's going on, but I really have very few beliefs about what those conditions are. I suppose I know they have something to do with wires, electricity, generating plants, and the like, but I could not even begin to provide an exhaustive description of the causally relevant conditions. I am also aware that the conditions (whatever they are) I assume to exist may not exist, and that if they do not the subjunctive conditional I assert will be false. That is what I mean by saying that conditionals of this sort are context dependent. The very same conditional can be true when asserted in one context and false in another. This by itself does not preclude the phenomenalist from construing the subjunctive conditionals with which he analyzes

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

141

physical object propositions as being of the third sort. But it does suggest that if he does he must be quite sure that the context upon which the truth or falsity of the subjunctive conditional depends cannot vary independently of the conditions that make true or false the physical object proposition he purports to analyze employing these subjunctive conditionals. The phenomenalist would not have to worry about the contextdependent character of his conditionals if they were construed as asserting that the state of affairs referred to in the antecedent is a nomologically sufficient condition for the state of affairs referred to in the consequent. Such conditionals, if true, are true in all contexts in which they are asserted. But it is extraordinarily difficult, indeed it seems impossible, to come up with a subjunctive conditional whose antecedent and consequent refer only to sensations or sequences of sensations such that the antecedent is nomologically sufficient for the consequent. As we shall see, this problem lies at the very heart of the most devastating objection to classical phenomenalism, the argument from perceptual relativity.

The Argument from Perceptual Relativity The idea behind phenomenalism was, in the abstract, enormously attractive for many philosophers, but difficulties arose in the attempt to make it more concrete. Philosophers, understandably, grew impatient with vague sketches of the general form a phenomenalistic analysis should take and wanted specific examples of conditionals that could adequately capture the meaning of some ordinary assertion about the physical world. As soon as the phenomenalist tried to give even one example of a conditional that constitutes a partial analysis of the meaning of a proposition about the physical world, the door was open to the argument from perceptual relativity. The argument was so devastating that singlehandedly it almost cleared the philosophical community of phenomenalists. Many philosophers have endorsed the argument from perceptual relativity, but the first, clearest, and most concise version of it was presented by Chisholm in "The Problem of Empiricism." Chisholm offers, in effect, a strategy for attacking any phenomenalistic analysis. The first move in the strategy is to force the phenomenalist into giving at least one example of an alleged analytic consequence (expressed in phenomenal language) of a proposi-

142

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

tion asserting the existence of some physical object. When one gets the example, one simply describes a hypothetical situation in which, though the physical object proposition is true, its alleged analytic consequence would obviously be false. If the physical object proposition really did entail the experiential proposition, then there could be no hypothetical situation in which the one is true and the other false, and so we would have constructed a reductio of the proposed analysis. Lewis, for example, claimed 5 that the proposition that there is a doorknob in front of me and to the left (P) entails the proposition that ifI should seem to see such a doorknob in front of me and to the left and should seem to be initiating a certain grasping motion, then in all probability the feeling of contacting a doorknob would follow (R). Chisholm argues that P does not entail R, for there is another proposition Q (the proposition that I am unable to move my limbs and my hands but am subject to delusions such that I think I am moving them; I often seem to myself to be initiating a certain grasping motion, but when I do I never have the feeling of contacting anything), which is obviously consistent with P and which when conjoined with P entails not-R. In my discussion of subjunctive conditionals I suggested that the phenomenalist must be on guard against employing context-dependent subjunctive conditionals that are such that the context determining their truth or falsehood is independent of the truth conditions of the physical object proposition the phenomenalist is trying to analyze. If Chisholm's objection is correct, this is precisely what has gone wrong. It would no doubt be true to assert ill some contexts that if I were to seem to see a doorknob and seem to reach out and touch it then I would seem to feel it-indeed, such a conditional is presumably usually true when I am standing before a doorknob under relatively normal conditions. The antecedent of this conditional, however, is obviously not nomologically sufficient for its consequent. If the conditional is true, it is true because there exists some set of conditions X such that the antecedent together with the statement of these conditions is nomologically sufficient for the consequent. We all take at least some of these conditions, however, to be independent of the existence of the doorknob. Thus we assume X to involve reference to the internal and external conditions of perception, conditions that are neither logically nor causally connected to the existence of the doorknob. It is for this reason that one can imagine contexts in which the conditional would be false even

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

143

though the proposition asserting the existence of the table would be true. Since the truth of phenomenal statements will always depend on contexts logically independent of the physical object proposition the phenomenalist is trying to analyze, his project is doomed to failure. (, What moves might the phenomenalist make in trying to escape the objection? Well he might try to "protect" the conditionals he employs in his analysis with a "normal conditions" clause added to the antecedents. When I believe that there is a doorknob in front of me now, part of what I believe is that if I were to seem to reach out and touch it and the causally relevant conditions ojperception were normal then I would seem to feel it. One might argue that this analysis would survive Chisholm's counterexample, for the hypothetical situation he describes is not one in which the causally relevant conditions are normal. At this point, however, the non phenomenalist is obviously going to complain that the phenomenalist has violated his own criterion for an adequate phenomenalistic theory by referring to something beyond the experientially given. He will claim that the normal conditions referred to in the antecedent of the subjunctive conditional can only be facts about the physical world (the internal and external conditions surrounding perception). The phenomenalist, the critic continues, must be prepared to substitute for "normal conditions of perception" an adequate phenomenalistic analysis (presumably, more conditionals describing the sensations a subject would have were he to have others) of the conditions that are in fact normal. This he will never be able to do, for each conditional or conjunction of conditionals that is designed to eliminate some distorting condition of perception will fail to do so precisely because it itself is susceptible to additional distorting conditions. Gritting his teeth, the phenomenalist might press on and flirt with an infinite regress by adding more and more "protecting" conditionals to the antecedent of each conditional he employs in his analysis. Each of these conditionals, in turn, will have antecedents "protected" by additional conditionals, whose antecedents will be protected by still more conditionals and so on ad infinitum. The complexity of this analysis would differ somewhat from the usual sort of complexity involved in phenomenalistic analyses. Since the beginning, phenomenalists have acknowledged the necessity of having a physical object proposition entail an in.finite number of

144

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

conditionals, but the phenomenalist we are considering here is trying to build a kind of infinite complexity into the antecedent of each conditional he employs in his analysis of a physical object proposition. If we let "5 > E" stand for "If 5 were the case E would be the case," the conditionals he employs in his analysis have the following form: ((((51 and (((52 and ((53 and (. En . .. )) > E3))) > E2)))) > El.

and 5n . ..

. .. »

It is perhaps an understatement to suggest that such a move appears to be born of desperation. The regress does appear to be vicious, for if the assertion that there is a table before me now really involved this kind of complexity, how could a finite mind understand the proposition in the first place? To this the phenomenalist might reply that he presupposes no greater conceptual ability than does the nonphenomcnalist in presenting his objection. After all, if the nonphenomenalist can know that for every experiential test ad infinitum there is a possible distorting condition that if present would invalidate that test as an indication of the way the physical world is, then he must be able to think of an infinite number of possible distorting conditions. And if the nonphenomenalist can think of an infinite number of possible distorting conditions, why cannot the phenomenalist think of an infinite number of relevant experiential tests, all of which he takes into account in his analysis of physical object propositions in the way sketched above? This maneuver, is, I think, ultimately unsuccessful. The problem is that there is a distinction to be drawn between thinking of there being an infinite number of possible distorting conditions or thinking of there being an infinite number of relevant experiential tests, on the one hand, and thinking oj an infinite number of possible distorting conditions or thinking ~f an infinite number of experiential tests, on the other. The phenomenalist, it seems, must do the latter if he is to support the claim that we understand an ordinary physical object proposition as asserting conditionals having the kind of internal complexity sketched above. The argument from perceptual relativity certainly seems to reveal a serious problem facing the classical phenomenalist. It is important to realize, however, that it is a problem that also faces the

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

145

causal theorist who tries to define physical objects solely in terms of their nomological relations to sensation.

The Causal Theory and Perceptual Relativity At the end of the previous chapter I argued that the causal theorist cannot d~fine a physical object as the cause of any actual sensation, for that is incompatible with our concept of a physical object as logically independent of the existence of conscious beings. The only alternative I could suggest was to turn to subjunctive conditionals. To say that there is a red, round physical object in front of me now might be to say that there exists that which would under certain conditions produce certain sensations, for example, the visual sensation of seeming to see something red and round. But let us examine this suggestion more carefully. Two questions immediately arise, one more obvious than the other. The obvious question concerns the interpretation of the "under certain conditions" clause. The less obvious question involves difficulties already discussed in connection with the causal theory of perception, difficulties relating to the fact that the concept of cause fails to uniquely denote some one of many different causally relevant conditions. Let me consider the latter problem first. We in fact believe that sensations are the end product of a very long and enormously complex causal chain. Most often we assume that a table is one critical link in the causal chain that results in my seeming to see a table, but it is no more critical than the changes that take place in the retina and in certain regions of the brain. Indeed, if our commonsense beliefs are correct, the table is in one sense less critical than the occurrence of a certain brain state in producing the sensation of seeming to see a table, for one can produce the sensation without a table but not without the relevant brain state. If the causal theorist defines the red, round object simply as that which under certain conditions would produce a sensation of seeming to see something red and round, it seems that, in the hypothetical situation that reflects our actual beliefs, the image on the retina and the brain state each have as good a claim to being the table as anything further removed in the causal chain leading to the sensation.

146

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

As I suggested in discussing the analogous problem for a causal theory of perception, it seems to me that the obvious way out of this difficulty is to define the red, round object in such a way as to "triangulate" in on that which would be the common link in a number of different causal chains leading to different sensations. Thus, while we cannot define the red, round object as the thing that under certain conditions would cause my seeming to see something red and round, we might be able to define the red, round object as the thing that would under certain conditions cause a sensation of seeming to see something red and round and would under certain other conditions produce a sensation of seeming to feci something round. The concept of a physical object is the concept of that which would be the common link in a number of different causal chains leading to a number of different sensations. So far, so good. But we must now address the first of the questions referred to above, the question concerning the interpretation of the all-important "under certain conditions" clause. The causal theorist we are considering here is committed to a program of defining propositions that assert the existence of physical objects in terms of propositions that assert the existence of "possible" causes of sensation. The causal theorist, consequently, can no more replace the "under certain conditions" clause with a description of internal and external physical conditions of perception than can the phenomenalist. Yet without the protecting clause the causal theorist is even more vulnerable to the argument from perceptual relativity than is the phenomenalist. The round object cannot be defined simply as that which would result in certain visual sensations, for we can trivially conceive of its being the case, we all believe that it often is the case, that there is a round object there even though it would not produce a sensation of seeming to see a round object-there might be no one there to see it, it might be too dark, the person who is there might be blind, and so on. To make it less obvious that he is vulnerable to this objection, the causal theorist might borrow a leaf from the phenomenalist's book. We cannot, of course, define a round object simply as that which would produce a sensation of seeming to see a round object; we must instead understand the physical object as that which would produce certain sensations provided there was a subject having certain other sensations. The round object can be understood, for example, as that which would produce a tactile sensation of feeling something round if

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

147

there were a subject who had the visual sensation of seeming to see something round and had the visual and kinesthetic sensations of seeming to initiate a certain grasping motion. Such a move might raise the plausibility of the causal theory to the level of classical phenomenalism, but it would of course fare no better than classical phenomenalism against the argument from perceptual relativity. The concept of a round physical object is at best the concept of that which would produce a certain tactile experience following the appropriate visual and kinesthetic sensations under certain conditions. And the causal theorist, like the phenomenalist, is prohibited from describing these conditions using physical object language on pain of circularity. It is important to realize, I think, that even if considerations of circularity did not prohibit replacing the "under certain conditions" clause required by both the phenomenalist and the causal theorist with an exhaustive description of the causally relevant internal and external conditions of perception, it would obviously be a mistake to do so. The ordinary concept of a physical object clearly should not be defined even in part by reference to physiological conditions of perception, many of which are just now being discovered and most of which have never even been thought of by ordinary people. The vast majority of us know next to nothing about the operation of light waves, sense organs, and neural processes. In asserting the existence of a table we are surely not asserting anything about what would occur if light waves were being reflected from the surface of an object, striking optic nerves and producing alpha waves in the brain. Most of the people of this world have never even heard of light waves or alpha waves but have the same concept of a table that we have. A causal theorist who accepted my view that the concept of reference fixing is unintelligible would certainly be tempted at this point to reconsider his position. Things would be ever so much easier if the new philosophy of language were correct. That, no dQubt, accounts for its current popularity and will, no doubt, make it difficult to encourage defections from the ranks of those who support the view. If he had the concept of reference fixing, the causal theorist could hold that people typically (implicitly) fix the reference of "round object" as that kind of thing which is the common link in the causal chain resulting in the visual and tactile sensations they actually have at some time. That is not what "round

148

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

object" means, of course, but having fixed its reference to a kind of thing, we can thereafter use the expression secure in the knowledge that we are talking about something (assuming, of course, that there is a common link in the causal chains leading to the relevant visual and tactile sensations). The epistemological problem of knowing that there exists a round object would reduce to the problem of knowing that the relevant reference-fixing definite description denotes. Life is not always easy, however, and I remain convinced that the concept of reference fixing is an illusion. If I am right, phenomenalism and the causal theory are equally vulnerable to problems generated by perceptual relativity. And this should not really be that surprising, for from the very start the two views have had more in common than many philosophers seem to realize. Both views, after all, are committed to understanding talk about the physical world by relating it to what can be given in experience. On both views, it is predicate expressions referring to the qualitative character of sensations that carry the burden of the cognitive content of a physical object proposition, that distinguish the analysis of one physical object proposition from another. And, indeed, on both views the concept of nomological connection plays a critical role. The causal theorist, of course, makes overt reference to causation, and the phenomenalist's contingent subjunctive conditionals make implicit reference to nomological connections. Before we consider more carefully the ways the phenomenalist and the causal theorist might try to cope with perceptual relativity, I think it is worth noting that strikingly similar problems arise in the attempt to use subjunctive conditionals in analyzing properties that most everyone would take to be dispositional. Consider, for a moment, such paradigms of dispositional properties as being inflammable, being fragile, and being soluble. These are concepts that most of us have, and if we were pressed to say what it means to say of something that it is inflammable, fragile, or soluble, we would no doubt turn to subjunctive conditionals. If we were not too worried about being careful, we might begin this way: To say of something that it has the property of being inflammable is just to say that it either would or would probably burn if held to a flame. To say of something that it is fragile is to say that it would break if struck with a certain amount of force. And to say of something that it is soluble is just to say that it would dissolve in a liquid. But, of course, these initial analyses would have to be modified in the face

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

149

of an argument analogous to the argument from perceptual relativity. X is inflammable does not mean X would burn if held to a flame, for there are propositions we could conjoin with X is inflammable such that the conjunction would not entail that if X were held to a flame it would burn-X might be wet; there might be a man nearby ready to douse X with water the instant the flame approaches; there might be insufficient oxygen present, and so on. The same problem faces the analyses of fragility and solubility. Fragile things do not have to break when struck. Under certain conceivable conditions they would not. Descartes's great deceiver might be alive and well and so bent on deceiving me with respect to the fragility of some object that every time the object is struck in my presence he arranges for the atoms of the object struck to "mesh" exactly with the atoms of the object with which it is struck, causing the one to move harmlessly through the other. And soluble things do not have to dissolve in a liquid. What the soluble thing does depends on a host of conditions involving the characteristics of the thing, the liquid, the atmospheric conditions, and so on. But surely, you will object, there is a marked difference between the problems facing the proponent of the analyses above and the problems facing the phenomenalist and the causal theorist, for there are no restrictions against employing descriptions of the physical world in adding to the antecedents of the conditionals employed in analyzing inflammability, fragility, and solubility. This is a difference and, in a sense, an important difference. But while one is free to add a description of causally relevant conditions to the antecedents of the conditionals that analyze these dispositional properties, one would be ill advised to do so. Earlier I argued that, even if the phenomenalist and the causal theorist were free to protect the antecedents of their conditionals with an exhaustive description of those physical conditions nomologically relevant to the occurrence of certain sensations, it would still be a mistake to do so. The reason was simply that we all have the concepts of tables, chairs, trees, and such stuff, but many of us-most of us, probably all of us-have no conception of at least some of the links in the causal chains that culminate in sensations. Our assertion that there exists a table, then, can hardly be construed as the assertion of a conditional whose antecedent involves a description of conditions, some of which we have never even thought of. Similar considerations, however, should preclude

150

Phenomenalism and Perceptual Relativity

an attempt to add to the antecedents of the conditionals analyzing inflammability, fragility, and solubility an exhaustive description of the conditions that (causally) must be present in order for inflammable things to burn when lit, fragile things to break when struck, and soluble things to dissolve when put in a liquid. Most of us possess the concepts of inflammability, fragility, and solubility but would be quite unable to add to the antecedents of the subjunctive conditionals enough description of relevant conditions so that the antecedents become nomologically sufficient for the consequents. The dilemma appears to be this. The antecedents of the conditionals analyzing most dispositional properties need to be "protected" by some qualifying "normal" or "standard" conditions qualification. But any attempt to flesh out the qualifying clause in terms of a description of relevant conditions seems in danger of presupposing too much in the way of conceptual and cognitive sophistication on the part of the people who, we all agree, have the concepts we are trying to analyze. Is there a solution to this dilemma? Let us return to the phenomenalist struggling to modify his analysis in order to cope with perceptual relativity.

Chapter 6 Some Solutions and Some Decisions

Our phenomenalist's first move in revising his analysis to escape the argument from perceptual relativity was to protect the antecedent of the conditional he offered as a partial analysis of a physical object proposition with an "under normal conditions of perception" qualification. The nonphenomenalist then insisted he replace the expression "under normal conditions of perception" with some phenomenalistic analysis of the conditions that arc in fact normal-a project doomed to failure since, for the very reason that the original conditional failed as an analytic consequence of a physical object proposition, the proposed phenomenalistic analysis of normal conditions will fail as an analysis of the various propositions describing normal conditions. To retain the point and the plausibility of his analysis, I suggest, the phenomenalist must refuse to replace his "under normal conditions of perception" with an attempted phenomenalistic analysis of those conditions that are in fact denoted by the expression "normal conditions of perception." The popularity of referential theories of meaning notwithstanding, the meaninR of a denoting expression is quite distinct from its denotation. I understand perfectly well, for example, the definite description "the tallest man in Argentina" and I believe that in all likelihood it succeeds in denoting someone. But I do not have the slightest idea whom the definite description denotes. Similarly, there is no reason to suppose that understanding the expression "under normal conditions of perception" involves knowing what

152

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

the conditions in question are. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose a priori that because I do not know the denotation of the "normal conditions" clause I cannot be justified in believing statements containing the expression. Although I have no idea who the tallest man in Argentina is, I believe that the tallest man in Argentina is taller than Mickey Rooney, and this belief would certainly strike most of us as justified. As I suggested in the previous chapter, there are many examples of conditionals having the form if P and causally relevant conditions are normal then Q that we understand and justifiably believe without having the slightest idea which conditions are normal. I believe, and presume I am justified in believing, the proposition that if I were to flip the light switch in this room and the causally relevant conditions were normal then the light would go otT. I know perfectly well that flipping the switch is not nomologically sufficient for the light's going otT, that flipping the switch is at best an essential part of some more complex set of conditions that is sufficient for the light's going otT. And, like most of us, I have only the vaguest idea of what these other conditions are. They have something to do with, among other things, wires' being connected in various ways so as to eventually link up with some very complex machinery whose workings are largely a mystery to me. Again, it is important to realize that my lack of knowledge of what these conditions are docs not atTect my belief, and may not even atTect my justification for believing, that if I were to flip the switch and the causally relevant conditions were normal the light would go otT. I can even use my knowledge of this conditional to predict that the light will go otT when I flip the switch. To justifiably use such a conditional to make a prediction I would, of course, have to be justified in believing that the causally relevant conditions are normal, and one might wonder how I could be justified in believing that the causally relevant conditions are normal when for the most part I do not even know what they are. But whatever the answer to this question is, I do in fact seem to presuppose normal conditions even though I do not know what they are. Let me illustrate the point I am trying to make with another example more closely related to traditional phenomenalistic attempts to analyze physical object propositions. Among those who reject a phenomenalistic analysis of propositions about the external world, some support a Lockean distinction between primary and

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

153

secondary qualities. They would analyze a proposition ascribing a color property to a thing in terms of the way most people would be appeared to were they in the presence of that thing under normal or standard conditions. Now, regardless of what one thinks about the plausibility of such an analysis, it would surely be a mistake to argue against it on the grounds that most people are quite unable to state those conditions that are, in fact, denoted by the locution "normal conditions" as used in this context. Most of us realize that the conditions in question have something to do with, among other things, lighting conditions, the state of the optic nerves, and neurophysiological states of the brain, but few if any would be able to give anything like a detailed description of these processes. This does not affect our ability to use and understand the locution "normal conditions" in our attempt to analyze the proposition expressed by "X is red," for we can use and understand that locution without knowing what it denotes. What is more, on at least some occasions we take ourselves to be justified in believing that if we were before X and conditions were normal it would appear red, without knowing what all, or even most, of the causally relevant conditions are. Just as the philosopher we have been considering need not and should not replace the "under normal conditions" qualification he adds to the antecedent of the subjunctive conditionals he employs in analyzing the proposition that something is red with a detailed description of the conditions that are normal, so the phenomenalist trying to escape Chisholm's argument from perceptual relativity need not and should not replace the "under normal conditions" qualification he adds to the antecedents of the conditionals he employs in his analysis with a description of those conditions that are normal. But suppose we grant that understanding the meaning of "under normal conditions," and perhaps evenjustifiably believing that conditions are normal, is quite independent of knowing what the normal conditions are. How exactly are we to analyze the meaning of the "normal conditions" qualification needed by the phenomenalist? The most promising suggestion, I think, is to understand the locution statistically. When I assert that if I were to have sensation S and the causally relevant conditions were normal then I would have sensation E, I am understanding the normal conditions as those conditions, whatever they are, that are nomologically relevant to the occurrence of such sensations as Sand E and that usu-

154

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

ally obtain. This suggestion is, of course, extremely vague. Part of the vagueness arises from a failure to indicate the relevant temporal framework. Are the normal conditions surrounding a sequence of sensations those that usually obtain past, present, and future? This seems to raise all sorts of complications given that we not only can conceive of its being the case, but actually believe it is the case that conditions that (causally) determine the character of our sensations evolve through time. I suspect it is more plausible to construe the normal conditions for Sand E as those conditions causally relevant to the occurrence of Sand E such that they usually obtain now, where now refers to an indefinite period of time that minimally covers the period in which we acquired our concepts of physical objects and that is, to a certain extent, openended in the direction of both past and future. I realize that this hardly eliminates the vagueness of the concept of causally relevant normal conditions, but I think it would be a serious mistake to try to eliminate vagueness for the sake of artificial precision. In discussing philosophical analysis in chapter 1, I conceded the open-textured character of many, perhaps most, ordinary concepts. An analysis of physical object propositions that eliminates the vagueness inherent in our everyday concepts would ipso facto become implausible. In analyzing that which is inherently vague it is critical that the analysis capture that vagueness. If the phenomenalist does decide to go with a normal conditions clause of the sort sketched above, he must choose carefully the conditionals he employs in his analysis. Consider again Lewis's suggestion that the proposition that there is a doorknob before me and to the left entails the proposition that if I were to seem to see a doorknob and to seem to be initiating a certain grasping motion, then in all probability the feeling of contacting a doorknob would occur. I have suggested adding a normal conditions qualification to the antecedent. But if we add such a clause, the truth of the conditional seems to have no connection to the truth of the proposition that there is a doorknob before me. As I sit here at my desk with nothing but a wall in front of me, it is true that if I were to seem to see a doorknob and were to initate a certain grasping motion and the causally relevant conditions were normal, then I would seem to feel a doorknob. The truth of the conditional seems to have nothing to do with the existence of a doorknob. All this indicates is that the

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

155

phenomenalist must be more careful in formulating the antecedent of the conditionals he employs in his analysis. The antecedent of the conditional must, so to speak, set a phenomenal stage. The consequent must describe phenomenal activity such that if it were performed on that stage under normal conditions we would take the physical object proposition to be confirmed. For the most part, the most effective way to do this is to formulate conditionals whose antecedents rely heavily on a description of kinesthetic sensation together with a very general description of the occurrence of other sorts of sensation. Thus, if a phenomenalist were to analyze the proposition that there is a table before me now, he might employ the following conditionals: If I were to have the kinesthetic sensations of opening my eyes and looking directly in front of me and had a subsequent clearly defined visual experience, and if the causally relevant conditions of perception surrounding these sensations were normal, then I would have the visual sensation of seeming to see a table, and If I were to seem to initiate a certain grasping motion and consequently seem to feel something and if the causally relevant conditions of perception surrounding these experiences were normal, then I would seem to feel a doorknob. I must concede at this point that I am not extremely sanguine about the attempt to understand causally relevant conditions as those causally relevant conditions that usually surround certain sorts of visual, tactile, and kinesthetic experiences. (In a moment I shall consider and try to respond to what I take to be the most obvious objection to the view.) It is, however, terribly difficult to come up with anything more promising. Once again, if only we allowed ourselves reference-fixing definite descriptions, everything would be so much easier. We could claim that the reference of "causally relevant normal conditions" is fixed by definite descriptions referring to the causally relevant conditions that surround some paradigmatic sensation or sequence of sensations and let it go at that. As long as the reference fixer is not unlucky enough to have

156

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

chosen a non veridical experience as his paradigm, everything would go all right. But it is no use bemoaning the fact that we have no referential magic wand with which to dissolve our problem. And in any event, if we allow ourselves the concept of reference fixing, we should almost certainly abandon the complexities of a phenomenalistic analysis for the more straightforward referential causal theory discussed and rejected in chapter 5. It might seem, however, that this time we could at least profitably borrow from the reference fixers. We could, perhaps, take the normal conditions clause to mean the causally relevant conditions that surround some paradigmatic sensation or sequence of sensations. Earlier I warned the causal theorist against analyzing a propositIon asserting the existence of a physical object in terms of a proposition asserting the existence of a cause of certain actual sensations. Such an analysis appears to make the existence of an object logically dependent on the occurrence of those sensations. It might seem that the suggestion above for understanding the normal conditions clause commits the same error. But this time the issue is complicated by the fact that the definite description referring to actual sensations is embedded in the antecedent of a subjunctive conditional. One might argue that, since the subjunctive conditional has no existential import, one avoids the pitfalls of idealism. There are, I think, two closely related difficulties with this approach. Neither is decisive, but they are enough to make one prefer the early approach, everything else being more or less equal. The first difficulty is simply this. If we construe "under normal conditions of perception" as meaning "under those conditions that surrounded S (where S refers to some paradigmatic sensation or sequence of sensations that someone has actually had), then we must admit, I think, that strictly speaking no two people will assert the same proposition by "There is a table here now." When I make the assertion, the conditional I am asserting will have an antecedent protected by a definite description referring to the conditions surrounding some actual sensation that I have more or less arbitrarily selected. When you make the assertion, the conditional you are asserting will have an antecedent protected by a definite description referring to the conditions surrounding some other actual sensation you have more or less arbitrarily selected. The truth conditions of the two conditionals will be distinct.

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

157

Now it is not really that clear that this is a serious problem. The claim that assertions about the physical world vary in meaning from context to context has already been suggested by Roderick Firth in "Radical Empiricism and Perceptual Relativity" as a way of escaping the argument from perceptual relativity. 1 And in any event I suspect that to reach an adequate philosophical understanding of vagueness one must allow that language varies in meaning, at least subtly, from context to context, person to person, utterance to utterance. What is more, we must recognize, I think, that in many, perhaps most, contexts we arc not all that concerned with meaning in attributing assertions to people. If I say "George is a liar" and you say "Tom's brother is a liar" in a context in which the people we are talking to know that George is Tom's brother, we will almost certainly be described as having made the same assertion. Donnellan aside,2 however, I do not think our statements have the same meaning, nor do I think they express the same proposition. Ordinary people, however, do not usually worry about such subtleties, nor is there any reason they should. A more serious problem, I think, is that the decision to employ one definite description rather than another in capturing the reference to normal conditions seems so very arbitrary. It is difficult to maintain that in asserting the existence of a table here now I have in mind, occurrently or dispositionally, some actual sequence of past sensations. One could, no doubt, find some such sequence of sensations, but it would surely strike us as being more in the nature of a spur-of-the-moment decision, as opposed to the discovery of a different-level meaning rule. 3 If we do try to understand the causally relevant normal conditions in terms of conditions that usually obtain, then there will be a very close connection between this kind of phenomenalism and the analysis that Lewis proposed in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Lewis, you will recall, inserted a probability operator in the consequent of the conditionals he employed in his analysis. A physical object proposition P docs not assert simpliciter the subjunctive if S were the case then E would follow (where Sand E are sensations), according to Lewis. Rather, P asserts that if S then in all probability E would occur. Lewis originally included the probability operator because he did not want the fact that a person had sensation S that was not followed by E to conclusively falsify the physical

158

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

object proposition P. Just as it is impossible in principle to conclusively verify a physical object proposition, so Lewis thought it was impossible in principle to conclusively falsify a physical object proposition. In his original reply to Chisholm's argument from perceptual relativity, 4 Lewis apparently thought that his probability operator allowed him to escape the objection; but his reply was terribly unclear, and in any event Lewis seems not to have had enough confidence in it to pursue it. Moreover, Chisholm was confident that the probability operator did not really help. Remember, he asked Lewis to imagine that his hand was always anesthetized-it was usual that his sensations of seeming to see a doorknob and seeming to initiate a certain grasping motion were not followed by the relevant tactile sensations. In such a situation, Chisholm argued, despite the presence of a doorknob, it would not be true that if Lewis were to seem to see a doorknob and seem to be initiating a certain grasping motion the feeling of contacting a doorknob would probably follow. Now the most obvious reply for Lewis to make (a reply I do not think he did make) would be to broaden the reference class implicitly presupposed by the probability assertion. For there to be a doorknob there, it is not that my sensation or Lewis's sensation or your sensation of seeming to see a doorknob and seeming to initate a certain grasping motion needs to be usually followed by the sensation of contacting a doorknob. Rather, the probability of getting the relevant tactile sensation must be high relative to the class of all people having the appropriate visual and kinesthetic sensations in such a context. Similarly, the phenomenalist adding his normal conditions qualification to the antecedent of his conditional must make clear that the conditions in question are those that usually surround any sensation or sequence of sensations of a given kind. But is such a move sufficient to meet all variations on the argument from perceptual relativity? If my hand or Lewis's hand or your hand can be usually anesthetized, why cannot everyone's hands be usually anesthetized? IfI can be constantly subject to illusion, delusion, and hallucination, why cannot everyone be constantly subject to illusion, delusion, and hallucination? Indeed, could we not again invoke Descartes and argue that there might be an all-powerful deceiver who consistently deceives all of us with respect to all possible experience? If there were such a being, then surely there could be a table before me now even though under nor-

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

159

mal conditions (the deceiver is always practicing his deceit) neither I nor anyone else would have the sorts of experiences that would lead us to believe that there was a table before us. Since the hypothesis that there is such a deceiver is consistent with the proposition that there is a table before me, shouldn't we conclude that the latter does not entail any proposition about what experiences a subject would have were he to have others under normal conditions of perception? I think one must admit that the argument initially has considerable force. Further reflection, however, muddies the water. If the phenomenalist can force a proponent of the argument from perceptual relativity to rely on arguments like the one above, I think he might well argue that he has successfully defended his phenomenalism against the objection. The claim that it is logically possible for there to be a being who consistently deceives all of us with respect to all possible experience surely comes too close to being a simple denial of the phenomenalist's thesis to be a convincing arRument against it. From the phenomenalist's viewpoint, after all, it is not clear that a deceiver could make true an indefinite number of conditionals describing the. sensations we would have were we to have others under normal conditions in order to deceive us as to the real nature of the world. A phenomenalist would presumably view such a "deceiver" as the creator of our physical world, and as such no different from Descartes's God, who was supposed to be causally responsible for the initial and continued existence of substance. Illusion and hallucination clearly are possible. The phenomenalist will typically rely as I did in chapter 3, on the possibility of illusion and hallucination in rejecting epistemological naive realism. Though it is less clear, I think one should probably admit that it is possible for any given individual to be such that he consistently and constantly hallucinates. That this is a possibility is less evident because one might argue that the concept of a physical world allows us to "splinter" reality-allows us, that is, to posit a world that one person has access to but no one else can observe. It would not seem completely ludicrous to construe a constant, consistent "hallucinator" as someone who is observing such a private world. Still, in the final analysis I think we should admit that the concept of a physical world is intimately connected with the concept of a public world in such a way as to allow at least the possibility of constant, consistent hallucination on the part of individuals. 5 But even if we

160

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

grant that it is true of each of us that we could be constantly and consistently hallucinating, it would be illegitimate to infer that it is true that all of us could be constantly, consistently hallucinating. Possibly P and possibly Q clearly does not entail possibly (P and Q), and it is certainly open to the philosopher who employs the argument from the possibility of hallucination discussed in chapter 3 to deny the possibility of constant, consistent mass hallucination through time. Still, there is something compelling about the kind of argument that rests on the possibility of a deceiver, a conscious being deliber- . ately manipulating through time the sensations of other conscious beings so as to distort the sensations they would otherwise have had. As I argued, the phenomenalist might very well claim to have difficulty distinguishing such a "deceiver" from a creator, but if the phenomenalist shrinks at making this move, he is of course free to add certain restrictions to his phenomenalistic analysis. Specifically, he can insist that for a physical object proposition to be true it must not be the case both that the connections between sensations asserted by his conditionals hold as a result of the decisions or actions of a conscious being and that such connections would be different in the absence of such a being. (Reference to the "actions" of a conscious being could be construed broadly enough to include both direct manipulation of connections between sensations and interference through distorting artifacts created and placed by a "deceiver.") Such an addition might strike one as an ad hoc attempt to escape this Cartesian variant on the argument from perceptual relativity, but the charge of being ad hoc amounts to nothing in this context. The phenomenalist is surely free to qualify his analysis as he pleases if he becomes convinced that mere connections between sensations are not enough to ensure the truth of a physical object proposition, if he becomes convinced that the relevant connections must not have certain sorts of underlying grounds. Furthermore, I think it is, in fact, much more difficult to argue that one can simply replace the deceiver hypothesis with the hypothesis that there is some natural object that just happens to have constantly and consistently distorted people's sensations of the way the world really is. Here it really does seem to me clear that the phenomenalist can very plausibly argue that the idea of a natural object's constantly and consistently deceiving conscious beings with respect to the real nature of the physical world is unintelligible.

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

161

I want to leave for the moment this kind of objection to the modification to traditional phenomenalism I have suggested and consider a different sort of objection. Even if we find a plausible analysis of a normal conditions clause that we can successfully add to the antecedents of the phenomenalist's subjunctive conditionals in order to escape the argument from perceptual relativity, one might wonder what kind of view we end up with. Surely, the critic might ask, the phenomenalist is at least implicitly committed to viewing the normal conditions locution as denoting a kind of thing other than minds, their sensations, and facts about what sensations would be followed by others, and doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of a phenomenalistic analysis, which is to avoid such ontological commitment? Well, what kinds of things can our phenomenalist think of the "normal conditions" clause as denoting? Among the causally relevant conditions we might think of as normal will be additional facts about what sensations a subject would have were he to have others when causally relevant conditions of perception are normal. Indeed, the phenomenalist might argue, it is because we believe that certain facts of this sort are causally relevant and that on some occasions they do not obtain that we often discount the testimony of our senses. But what does the "normal conditions" qualification in these conditionals denote? Among other things, still more conditionals asserting that certain sensations would be followed by others when the causally relevant conditions of perception are normal. Isn't this going to involve the phenomenalist again in a vicious conceptual regress? No. We are sketching the kind of fact denoted by "causally relevant normal conditions of perception." As I argued earlier, it is not necessary and would be a serious mistake, to include a description of this (possibly infinite) set of conditionals denoted by the phrase "normal conditions of perception" in our analysis of the meaning of an ordinary physical object proposition. Consequently, understanding the conditionals we employ in our analysis of a physical object proposition will not involve thinking oj an infinite number of other conditionals. Isn't there at least a vicious epistemic regress? Perhaps, but it is not obvious. No matter how many conditions are in fact denoted by "the causally relevant normal conditions of perception," whether I know what they are or not, it may be that in the absence of any other evidence I am justified in believing that they obtain. If normal

162

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

conditions are by definition those that usually obtain, then at any given time, in the absence of disconfirming evidence, I might be justified in believing that the conditions that usually obtain probably do obtain (I shall return to these epistemological issues in chapter 7). I said the phenomenalist could hold that amon,\? the facts denoted by "the causally relevant normal conditions of perception" will be indefinitely many conditionals whose antecedents are themselves protected by "normal conditions" qualifications. At this point, I suggest the phenomenalist abandon traditional phenomenalism. I suggest that the phenomenalist should allow that there may be other facts denoted. Because I think Hume was essentially correct in arguing that sensations will never give us knowledge of anything but the connections that hold among sensations, I think the nature of these facts, other than that they are causally relevant, is and must remain unknown. They could be facts about Hylas's unknown and unknowable matter or Kant's things in themselves. And if the phenomenalist decides against adding the restrictions discussed earlier, they could even be facts about the intentions of Berkeley's God or Descartes's great deceiver. 6 Ifwe have any justification for supposing that there are causally relevant facts that in a sense lie beyond experience, it is simply that we are justified in believing the world is deterministic and that we know that no sensation or sequence of sensations is, by itself, nomologically sufficient for any other sensation or sequence of sensations. Insofar as we are committed to a deductive-nomological model of explanation, we might feel obliged to posit something as an explanation for the fact that sensations come and go the way they do. A phenomenalistic analysis of propositions about the physical world of the sort we are now considering may contain expressions that denote something other than minds, their sensations, and facts about what sensations would follow others, but the analysis is still compatible with the spirit of traditional phenomenalism, for neither understandin,l? the expressions that may denote these other kinds of things nor, possibly, even justifiably believing that the sentences that contain such terms express truths involves knowing what the things denoted are. By relaxing his prohibition against the use in his analysis of terms that could denote something other than minds, sensations, and facts about what sensations would follow others, the phe-

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

163

nomenalist would have something to offer those philosophers who feci that the most implausible feature of the phenomenalist's ontology is that, though it includes facts about what sensations a subject would have were he to have others, it includes nothing that could ground or explain such facts. 7 Again, insofar as such philosophers can find a way of justifying their belief that there is a ground or an explanation for the order they encounter in experience, they may according to the account above suppose that there is a ground or explanation though they will never know what it is. This entails no skepticism with respect to the possibility of justifying belief in propositions about the external world, for on the view we have been considering such propositions neither assert the existence of, nor describe the nature of, such entities.

The Causal Theory Revised So far we have been exploring the ways a phenomenalist might modify his analysis to escape the argument from perceptual relativity. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, the causal theorist, committed to analyzing propositions about the physical world in terms of propositions asserting the existence of a cause of certain sensations, seems just as vulnerable to an argument from perceptual relativity as was the phenomenalist. I went on to suggest that this should not really be unexpected given the many similarities between the two views. It should now also be obvious that the ways a phenomenalist might escape the argument from perceptual relativity can easily be adapted by the causal theorist. Specifically, the causal theorist can make use of a normal conditions clause of precisely the sort available to a phenomenalist. Let me be more explicit. Like the phenomenalist, the causal theorist we were discussing was forced to turn to subjunctive conditionals. He could not view the proposition that there is a table in the room as equivalent to a proposition asserting the existence of a cause of certain actual sensations, for that would have the absurd consequence of making the occurrence of those specified sensations a logically necessary condition for the existence of the table. Rather, I suggested, the causal theorist must try to understand the existence of the table as equivalent to the existence of that which would cause certain sensations. An obvious objection immediately arose, however. That there is a

164

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

table in the room clearly does not entail that there exists something that would cause certain sensations, simpliciter. Indeed, such an analysis would strike us as being incomplete to the point of being unintelligible. The most the causal theorist could want to say is that the existence of a table entails that there exists that which would cause certain sensations under certain conditions. The causal theorist cannot without circularity substitute for "under certain conditions" a description of the physical world, for he is engaged in the task of reducing talk about the physical world to talk about the causes of sensation. Just as I suggested in my discussion of phenomenalism, it seems clear that the causal theorist must make use of expressions in his analysis, understanding of which is not parasitic upon understanding propositions about the physical world and does not involve knowing their denotation. Now the causal theorist cannot simply add a normal conditions qualification. It is hardly true that there being a table there entails that there exists that which would cause, for example, the sensations of seeming to see and feel a table under normal conditions. It is not even clear what that would mean. If normal conditions are to be understood in terms of what is usual, the proposed analysis is absurd. Since the vast majority of physical objects usually exist unperceived, it is hardly true that the existence of the table entails the existence of that which under normal (usual) conditions would produce certain sensations. In chapter 5 I tentatively suggested that to solve this problem the causal theorist might try to borrow a leaf from the phenomenalist's book. Rather than claim that the table's being there entails that there exists that which would cause certain sensations (for example, seeming to see and feel a table) under normal conditions, the causal theorist could try to set the relevant stage by adding to the antecedents of the conditionals employed. The table's existence entails the existence of that which (a) would cause certain tactile sensations if a subject were having the appropriate visual and kinesthetic sensations and if conditions were normal and (b) would cause certain visual experiences if a subject were having the appropriate tactile and kinesthetic sensations and if conditions were normal, and .... Everything hinges here on the force of "appropriate." I think it is fairly clear that the causal theorist needs the "appropriate" visual sensations to be sensations caused by the existence of the

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

165

table, but he cannot say that without circularity. He could, however, suggest that to assert the existence of the table is to assert the existence of that (whatever it is) which would cause certain tactile sensations provided it was already causing certain visual sensations and the subject were having certain kinesthetic ensations and the causally relevant conditions were normal. A difficulty with this approach is simply that it is not clear how to evaluate the truth of a subjunctive conditional when the antecedent refers to that which is causally impossible. I am in a room right now in which there is no table but in which there exist many causes of sensations. Is it true that there exists that which would cause the tactile sensation of seeming to feel a table if (per impossihilia) it were to cause the visual sensation of seeming to see a table and if I were initiating the relevant grasping motion when the causally relevant conditions of perception were normal? I am not even sure how to go about answering. It is a little like trying to answer the question, "Would this piece of plastic be metal if it were attracted by a magnet" There is an inclination to say yes, but perhaps as strong an inclination to simply shrug our shoulders and say that if plastic were attracted by a magnet the world would simply be so different that we would not know what would follow. There is, I think, a plausible, though somewhat complicated, solution to this difficulty the causal theorist faces. He ought to specifically include in his analysis of the proposition asserting the existence of a table the assertion that there exists that which could (nomologically) cause certain sensations under some set of conditions. He could then incorporate in his analysis conditionals of the sort sketched above. Thus we would end up with the following sort of analysis: There exists a table = Df There exists that which could (nomologically) cause in a subject the visual sensation of seeming to sec a table and is such that if it were causing such a sensation and if the subject were to have the kinesthetic sensation of initiating a certain grasping motion and if conditions of perception were normal, then it would cause the tactile sensation of seeming to feel a table;

166

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

and the thing that could cause the aforementioned visual sensation could cause a tactile sensation of seeming to feel a table, and if it were to cause such a sensation and the subject were to have the kinesthetic sensations of directing his eyes in the appropriate direction and if the causally relevant conditions of perception were normal, then it would cause the subject to have the visual sensation of seeming to see a table;

and . .. The normal conditions clause employed in the analysis above can be understood precisely as the phenomenalist we were discussing earlier suggested, and it is of course there for the same reason-to avoid arguments from perceptual relativity. I pointed out earlier that a phenomenalist who was worried about an argument from perceptual relativity that relied on the possibility of a being's constantly and consistently distorting everyone's sensations could place restrictions on the kinds of grounds that may underlie the connections between sensations asserted by his subjunctive conditionals. Specifically, I suggested that the phenomenalist could simply add to the subjunctive conditionals that analyze a physical object proposition the condition that the connections asserted by the subjunctive conditionals not be the result of the machinations of a conscious being if they would be quite different in the absence of such manipulation. Again, it is obvious that such a move is also available to the causal theorist who takes seriously this variant on the argument from perceptual relativity. The causal theorist can, if he thinks it desirable, simply conjoin to his analysis the condition that the thing in question (whatever it is) not be a conscious being manipulating sensations that would otherwise be quite different. Personally, I am not convinced that such a modification of either phenomenalism or the causal theory is desirable, for I am at least sympathetic with the claim that it is difficult to distinguish such a "deceiver" from a creator. But it is a difficult question, and it is important to point out that, however one decides the question whether such a deceiver is possible, both the phenomenalist and the causal theorist would have no difficulty amending their analyses to accommodate the decision.

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

167

The causal theorist (and for that matter the phenomenalist) can add other similar restrictions ifhe feels it is necessary. In chapter 4 I briefly touched on the possibility of a causal theory that requires some kind of isomorphism between the characteristics of sensations and the characteristics of their causes in order for the relevant physical object proposition analyzed in terms of a proposition asserting the existence of a cause of certain sensations to be true. As I indicated, I fear that the idea of such an isomorphism, if it is to avoid the pitfalls of representative realism, is so extraordinarily vague as to make it very difficult for any cause of sensation not to satisfy the requirement, but if one can develop a significant concept of such isomorphism it will be very easy to incorporate it directly into the causal theorist's analysis. Thus we could add to the causal theory suggested above in the following way: There exists a table

=

Df

1) There exists that which could (nomologically) cause in a subject the visual sensation of seeming to see a table and is such that if it were causing such a sensation and the subject were to have the kinesthetic sensation of initiating a certain grasping motion and if conditions of perception were normal then it would cause the tactile sensation of seeming to feel a table;

and (optional restrictions) 2. That thing is not a conscious being manipulating sensations and the connections between them that would otherwise be quite different;

and 3. There is an isomorphism between the characteristics of that thing and the visual and tactile sensations it produces. The important thing to remember about restrictions one places on the causes referred to (indirectly referred to by the existential quantifier) in the causal theorist's analysis of physical object propositions is that the more restrictions one imposes, the more severe the epistemological problems are going to be. If for the table to be

168

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

there the cause in question must not be a conscious being, then to know that there is a table there we must know not just that there exists that which could cause certain sensations and is responsible for certain connections between sensations, we must further know that it is not a conscious being. And if for the table to be there the cause in question must be isomorphic with certain sensations, then to know that the table is there we must know that the cause of certain sensations has this complex relational property. I am not arguing here that these additional epistemological problems would be insuperable. Nor, given my rejection of epistemological commonsensism, would I necessarily reject the analysis should they prove insuperable. Still, it is worth remembering that the metaphysical tinkering considered above carries with it important epistemological complications, and we can all agree, I think, that one should force epistemological problems upon oneself only if one is quite sure it is unavoidable. I hope it is unnecessary, but I do wish to eliminate a possible critical misunderstanding of causal theories of the sort sketched above. It is at the very best highly misleading to describe the causal theorist we have been discussing as holding that a physical object is identical with that which would cause certain sensations and would cause certain others under the appropriate conditions. If we say this and then (correctly) conclude that we can never know anything about the nonrelational qualities of that which satisfies the description, it will be all too tempting to reach the startling conclusion that we can never know what a table really is. In discussing philosophical analysis in chapter 1, I pointed out that the first step in providing a philosophical analysis is to make clear that what one is analyzing is that which has meaning. The first step in providing a philosophical analysis of physical objects is to make clear that what one is searching for is the .meaning of statements having the form such and such a physical object exists. The causal theorist discussed above holds that a proposition asserting the existence of a table is analytically equivalent to a proposition asserting the existence of that which could cause certain sensations and would cause certain others if. ... It is, I suppose, harmless enough to abbreviate this as the claim that the table is t~e potential cause of certain sensations. But if one does, one must remember that skepticism with respect to what the cause is has no implications vis-a-vis skeptism with respect to what the table is. On the analysis we have

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

169

been considering, we can know all the things we ordinarily think we know about such things as tables and chairs without having the slightest idea what the nonrelational properties of the causes indirectly referred to in the analysis are. Again, there is a remarkable parallel to the phenomenalism we discussed earlier. Just as I argued that skepticism with respect to the intrinsic nature of that which is denoted by the phenomenalist's normal conditions clause entails no skepticism with respect to knowledge of propositions describing the physical world, so skepticism with respect to the intrinsic (nonrelational) character of the causes indirectly referred to by the causal theorist entails no skepticism with respect to knowledge of propositions describing the physical world.

Decisions If I am right, both the phenomenalist and the causal theorist can escape the argument from perceptual relativity. Moreover, both theories satisfy the weaker analogue of the radical empiricist's criterion of meaningfulness for which I expressed support in chapter 1. Both theories understand terms referring to the physical world by relating such terms to the phenomenologically given and to connections that are found to exist between givens. I believe both theories can satisfy the weak epistemological criterion I suggested for evaluating proposed analyses. Both theories can plausibly account for the fact that we believe Uustifiably or not) what we do about the physical world (I shall return to this in the next chapter). In fact, I am convinced that one of these two approaches to analyzing the physical world is correct. But which is it? The answer is not going to be easy, for, as I have argued repeatedly, when modified to accommodate perceptual relativity the two views are remarkably similar. Both rely on reference to the qualitative character of sensations and connections between sensations (expressed by conditionals) to carry the bulk of the cognitive content of physical object propositions. Both allow ontological commitment to something beyond sensations, causally underlying their occurrence and the connections that exist between them-the causal theorist explicitly, the phenomenalist implicitly through the use of a normal conditions clause. When I briefly sketched the historical origins of classical phenomenalism, I suggested that Mill may have been the first classical phenomenalist, but I warned at the time that our subsequent

170

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

discussion of the causal theory might considerably complicate the exegetical question. By now the reader should see the difficulty. Was Mill a phenomenalist or a causal theorist of the sort we are discussing? That Mill used subjunctive conditionals in his analysis is inconclusive, for if I am right the causal theorist will find them as indispensable as does the phenomenalist. Indeed, Mill's "permanent possibility of sensations" fits rather nicely the way I suggested the causal theorist open his analysis of physical object propositions. However much alike phenomenalism and the causal theory are, however, they certainly do seem to be different, and it seems that we must choose between them. Having emphasized their similarities, we must begin to explore their differences. The most obvious difference between the two views is that the phenomenalist appears to be committed to viewing assertions about the physical world as fundamentally hypothetical in nature; the causal theorist seems committed to viewing propositions asserting the existence of physical objects as ultimately categorical in form. It may be a mistake, however, to stress this apparent difference too much. The causal theorist's analysis of physical object propositions does take the form of a categorical assertion, but, as I stressed, the categorical statements employed in his analysis must contain subjunctive conditionals. Moreover, while the phenomenalist's analysis of physical object propositions contains only conditionals, it may be that such conditionals imply categorical statements. As I pointed out in my discussion of subjunctive conditionals, the vast majority of subjunctive conditionals implicitly assert the existence of some set of conditions such that the antecedent under those conditions leads logically or nomologically to the consequent. Even a phenomenalist who includes a normal conditions clause of the sort we discussed could take the conditionals he employs in his analysis as implicitly asserting the existence of some set of standing conditions that ground the connection asserted by the subjunctive conditional. In fact, I think the conditionals available to the phenomenalist do carry with them such a presupposition, and after many years of loyalty to a theory that has been much maligned, I am finally inclined to think that we must either choose the causal theory straight out or make one further modification of phenomenalism that really does seem to me to collapse the distinction between phenomenalism and the causal theory. It is no accident that when phenomenalists like Lewis seek to

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

171

illustrate the character of their analyses they choose as an example of a physical object proposition analyzandum a proposition that itself relates the object in question to a conscious being. Thus Lewis gives examples of phenomenalistic conditionals that are implied by the proposition that there is a doorknob in front of me and to the left. And the conditionals describe the experiences I would have were I to have certain others. Now Lewis is clear that on his view a physical object proposition also entails conditionals about the sensations others would likely have were they to have certain sensations, but he does not give examples of these. Nor would it be easy for him to do so. It is at least plausible to claim that if there is a doorknob before me now, that might imply that if I were now to have the experience of reaching out I would have the feeling of contacting a doorknob. But what conditionals describing the sensations you would have were you to have certain others would even seem to follow? It is fairly clear, I think, that Lewis is going to have to capture the sense in which the doorknob's being before me entails facts about sensations you would have by making reference to the conditions surrounding me-the settinR, as it were, in which I am placed. Thus the doorknob being before me might entail that if you were in my place or if you were in this situation and were to have the appropriate kinesthetic sensations, then in all likehood you would have the relevant doorknob sensations. The reason explicit reference to a setting does not seem to be required by the firstperson conditionals is that the physical object proposition being analyzed has already placed me in the appropriate situation, so to speak. But while no explicit reference to a setting is required, one can argue that the assertion of the conditional in this context carries with it the implicit assertion of a causally relevant context securing the required connection between antecedent and consequent of the experiential conditional. I have illustrated the point by reference to Lewis's analysis, but it should be obvious that the same difficulty arises for the phenomenalist who protects the antecedents of his conditionals with a normal conditions clause to handle perceptual relativity. I think I can emphasize the point I want to make if we force the phenomenalist to focus on physical object propositions that carry with them no explicit reference to a subject of experience. How would the phenomenalist analyze the proposition that there exists a table-not a table before me or you or someone else-but simply

172

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

the proposition that there exists a table? Without even worrying about perceptual relativity, what conditionals describing sensations might even seem to follow from the mere fact that there exists a table somewhere, someplace? The conditional that if someone were to have the kinesthetic sensations of looking around right now and conditions were normal he would have a visual sensation of seeming to see a table? Hardly. The table's existence does not entail that there is anyone so situated with respect to it that this conditional would be true. The causal theorist has no difficulty analyzing this kind of physical object proposition. Indeed, I illustrated the nature of his analysis with just such an example. He has an easier time than the phenomenalist owing to the aforementioned fact that the causal theorist takes statements asserting the existence of physical objects to be fundamentally categorical in form. The existence of the table is identified with the existence of that which could cause certain sensations and is further such that if it were to produce those sensations and the subject in question were to have certain others it would under normal conditions produce still more sensations of a specified kind. Again, the categorical form of the analyzans must not obscure the necessity of employing a subjunctive conditional, but in analyzing a proposition that merely asserts the existence of a physical object somewhere, the causal theorist enjoys the advantage of being able to "set the stage" presupposed by the required subjunctive conditionals with the categorical part of the analyzans. Now the phenomenalist need not simply throw in the towel when it comes to analyzing physical object propositions that do not relate the physical objects in question to a potential perceiver. There are at least two gambits he might try. The first is, I think, implausible, if not obviously mistaken. The second really does seem to me to finally collapse the distinction between phenomenalism and the causal theory. The move I think is implausible consists in trying to capture the mere existence someplace of a table by reference to a subjunctive fact referred to by a conditional whose antecedent describes the phenomenal counterpart of looking everywhere. Thus the phenomenalist could claim that when one asserts the existence of a table one asserts that if a subject were to have the visual and kinesthetic sensations of seeming to look everywhere under normal conditions, he would eventually have the sensation of seeming to see a

Some Solutions and Some Decisions

173

table, and if he were to have such a visual experience and were to seem to reach out under normal conditions he would seem to feel a table, and so on. The most obvious difficulty with such an analysis concerns the interpretation of the antecedent. Making good the claim that "seem to see a table" can be used to describe the qualitative character of a visual sensation is hard enough, but what exactly is the cognitive content of seeming to look everywhere? Given that the concept of space is the concept of infinite space, the sequence of sensations purportedly described by the antecedent of the conditional is, one assumes, an infinitely long sequence. This presents no real difficulty, however, for there is no reason to suppose that the concept of there being such a sequence involves a vicious conceptual regress. But a more serious problem concerns the cognitive content of "seeming to looking everywhere." The locution obviously needs to pick out visual and kinesthetic sensations. But as anyone who has been hopelessly lost in downtown Mexico City will tell you, it is not clear that there is a phenomenological distinction between the experiences that would correspond to systematically covering every square inch of the universe and the visual and kinesthetic sensations that would result from getting turned around somewhere so as to miss a few square yards. Yet unless one is sure there really is such a difference, one obviously cannot rely on the antecedent of the conditional in trying to understand the existence of a table somewhere. It is so tempting for the phenomenalist at this point to solve the problem by adding the relatively innocuous "There are conditions somewhere such that ... ," but as I indicated earlier, it seems to me that, as soon as he does, there is really no distinction between his view and the causal theorist's. The phenomenalist is simply trying to disguise the reference to conditions causally underlying connections between sensations by employing as ambivalent a quantifier as he can. But we all know what the categorical clause is there to do, and when we realize what its function is, there seems to me no point in trying to pretend that such a modified phenomenalism is a genuine alternative to the causal theory.

Chapter 7 Epistemological Questions

At the end of chapter 3 I broke off the attempt to discover what, if anything, justifies our beliefs in propositions about the physical world in order to address the logically more fundamental metaphysical questions concerning the content of our beliefs about the physical world. We must now return to matters epistemological. I should remind you that I shall not let a drive to refute skepticism shape my metaphysics. In chapter 1 I argued that the most one should require of an analysis of physical object propositions is that it account for the fact that we believe, and take ourselves to be justified in believing, propositions about the physical world. An analysis could accomplish this without allowing those beliefs to be justified. In what follows, I shall try to separate the question whether the analysis presented in the previous chapter is consistent with our beliefs about the physical world's being justified from the question whether such an analysis can account for the fact that we believe, and take ourselves to be justified in believing, propositions about the physical world. In addressing these questions I think we should begin by trying to isolate the epistemic gaps that must be bridged given my analysis of the physical world.

The Problematic Epistemic Gaps On the analysis of physical object propositions I suggested, in believing that there is a table here now I am committed to the exis-

176

Epistemological Questions

tence of something that could cause certain sensations (e. g., the sensation of seeming to see a table) and is such that if it were to cause those sensations in a subject it would, were the subject to have other sensations (e.g., the sensation of seeming to reach out and touch a table), cause the subject to have still other sensations (e. g., the tactile sensation of seeming to feel a table). Well, suppose we seem to see a table. How do we get to the table? The first step in bridging the relevant epistemic gaps seems to involve referring that sensation to an external cause. But if my earlier arguments were correct, belief in the table's existence involves far more than belief in the existence of a cause of that sensation. Rather, it involves belief in the existence of something occupying a place in a complex nomological network, something that underlies and explains not a sensation in isolation but complex connections between possible sensations. So when we (unreflectively, spontaneously) take for granted the existence of a table upon seeming to see a table, that conclusion represents our referring the sensation to a cause that would, were we to to have other sensations (under normal conditions), result in further modifications of our sensory mental states. No doubt when we bridge this epistemic gap we implicitly rely on evidence that goes far beyond the particular sensation that is the proximate cause of our conviction that there is a table there. We no doubt rely on past correlations of sequences of sensation that led us to posit a common cause for the sensations of seeming to see an object and the tactile sensations that followed certain kinesthetic sensations. If the assertion above is correct, then the moves we implicitly make when, upon seeming to see a table, we take for granted the existence of a table are these: 1. A move from present visual sensation to a cause of that sensation. 2. A move to past connections between visual sensations of seeming to see tables and other objects that when followed by certain kinesthetic sensations were followed in turn by certain changes in visual and tactile sensations. 3. A move to a common cause for those past visual sensations and the modifications of sense experience that followed. 4. A move from those conclusions about the past to the prediction that this present sensation of seeming to see a table occurs under conditions similar to those standard conditions that

Epistemological Questions

177

have obtained in the past, conditions that will nomologically ensure that the appropriate modifications of sense experience would again occur given the relevant sensory cues. Earlier, after considering Cartesian evil demon variations on the argument from perceptual relativity, I raised the possibility of incorporating into one's causal theory further restrictions on the characteristics a cause of a given sensation must Hot have if one is to veridically perceive a physical object. Specifically, I suggested that one could analyze physical object propositions in such a way that, for there to be a table there, there must be a potential cause of certain sensations that is llOt a mind manipulating (directly or through artifacts) sensations that would otherwise be quite different. If one were to adopt this suggestion, then obviously there would arise an additional epistemic gap to be bridged. One must move from sensory data to the existence of a potential cause that is not of the specified kind. Similarly, I also suggested that those who wanted to retain vestiges of the old representative realism might try to define certain relations of isomorphism and incorporate reference to them in their causal analysis of physical object propositions. Specifically, I suggested that one might try to define the existence of physical objects in terms of the existence of a potential cause of certain sensations, which cause is isomorphic with the sensations it would produce under certain conditions. Again, such metaphysical tinkering will bring with it additional epistemological problems. If such an analysis were correct, then in taking for granted the existence of a physical object that one seems to see, one must implicitly move from sensory data to a cause isomorphic with certain elements of that sensory data.

The Problematic Inferences So far I have tried only to characterize the nature of the gaps that must be bridged given a causal theory of physical objects. And I have done this only in a very sketchy way. I have said, for example, little by way of characterizing the data from which one must move in bridging the relevant gaps. Nor have I said, or even implied, much by way of characterizing the implicit inferences involved in bridging these gaps.

178

Epistemological Questions

Part of the difficulty in describing the "premises" we move from in forming beliefs about the physical world, or the "inferences" we implicitly accept in moving from these premises, is that any attempt at such a description inevitably suggests a highly implausible picture of the way we form beliefs about the world around us. As I admitted in chapter 2, when we judge or, better, take for granted that we (veridically) see a table, it is hardly true that we formulate to ourselves some set of premises from which we infer, in accordance with rules of inference we accept, the appropriate conclusions. That so many critics of epistemological naive realism have seemed to embrace this picture no doubt contributed greatly to the backlash against radical empiricism and against foundationalism in general. An attempt to "rationalize" our epistemic relation to the physical world will obviously fail to capture the undeniable spontaneity and unreflective character of our beliefs about the world-a spontaneity that is, naturally enough, sometimes described in terms of immediacy. Our beliefs about the physical world are not mediated by consideration of propositions about sensations that are formulated as premises, then employed in deductive and non deductive argument. While these observations are quite correct, they are nevertheless irrelevant to the philosopher concerned with .fllldillX justification, in the philosophically relevant sense of justification discussed in chapter 2, for his beliefs about the physical world. I emphasize the word "finding" for a reason. There is a sense in which the philosopher is looking for a kind of justification most people do not have, which he himself would not have in the absence of an adequate metaphysics and epistemology. While he may admit that he is an animal among animals-a creature conditioned to respond to certain stimuli, the philosopher concerned with traditional epistemological questions wants something better. He wants to find for the beliefs he unreflectively accepts some set of premises knowledge of which depends on knowledge of no other truths, which premises allow him to justifiably infer that which he unreflectively accepts. There are, I conceded, other derivative concepts of justification that would allow for the possibility of my beliefs' being justified without satisfying the conditions of what I have called ideal philosophical justification. While I shall, of course, be concerned primarily with the concept of justification that meets the philosophical ideal, I shall comment in subsequent discussion on these derivative concepts of justification.

Epistemological Questions

179

Since I admit that in cases of "immediate" perception we do not consciously infer "conclusions" about the physical world from "premises" about sensations, what sense can I attach to the question of what infi'renccs Uustifiable or not) we do in fact make when taking for granted what we do about the world around us? Well, I have already relied heavily on subjunctives in this book, so it seems foolish not to let them do some more work. We can describe the stimuli that lead us to believe what we do about the world and ask whether we would take the propositions that describe the occurrence of these stimuli as making likely the truth of that which the stimuli lead us to believe, if we were to reflectively consider the question. And we can ask if these particular inferences can be subsumed under more general rules of inference that we dispositionally accept. Our acceptance of these rules may, of course, consist in no more than our disposition to believe one proposition when we take for granted the truth of another. As I have suggested, it is highly plausible for the causal theorist (of the sort I have defended) to argue that it is never awareness of a given sensation, simpliciter, that gives rise to belief in the existence of a physical object. The causal theorist will surely want to claim that it is awareness of a given sensation against a background of past sensations that gives rise to the complex expectations that constitute belief in the existence of a physical object. Assuming that knowledge of the content of present consciousness is unproblematic, how do we "get" from knowledge of what is present to complex connections between past sensations? The obvious answer, of course, is that we rely on memory. We seem to remember certain kinds of sensations as inextricably connected in the past, and consequently we take it for granted that they were. The epistemological problems connected with knowledge of the past have kept a rather low profile in the history of philosophy. And in a way this is surprising given the logical priority of the problem. The problem of knowing the past has received far less attention than the problem of induction, for example, despite the fact that knowledge of the past is presumably necessary in order to employ inductive reasoning. This suggests, of course, that we should not think of our "inferences" about the past as reasoning in accord with the rules of enumerative induction. It is hardly true that we accept memory as a reliable indicator of the past because we believe that in the past memory has been by and large reliable. Our belief that in

180

Epistemological Questions

the past memory has been generally reliable obviously rests ultimately on a prior acceptance of the reliability of memory. A full discussion of the nature of our move from present to past would obviously involve a detailed discussion of the nature of memory-something I am not prepared to do in this context. I suggest, however, that the relative scarcity ofliterature on the problem of memory has something to do with the fact that so few moves seem even remotely plausible. Indeed, one is sorely tempted to suggest that the "inference" involved in taking for granted that what we seem to remember having happened, happened is sui generis. It is an inference we make (if only in the sense that when we do seem to remember X we do take for granted X), but it is difficult to see how the "rule" "Infer X from your seeming to remember X (ceteris paribus)" can be subsumed under some more general rule or pattern of inference. Assuming that we get access to past sensation, the next problematic move for the causal theorist involves positing a common cause for sequences of sensation that seem noncoincidentally related. Before we try to subsume this "inference" under some rule, it might be helpful to try to formulate more clearly the nature of the inference I am suggesting we do in fact make. Let us suppose we remember seeming to see a table, seeming to move our heads from side to side, and the familiar sequence of subtle sensory changes that follows. We also remember seeming to reach out and touch the object and the subsequent tactile sensations that occurred. Moreover, these sensations and the connections between them are directly analogous to all kinds of other similar sequences of sensations we remember having. While the correlations are impressive, however, we do not take them to be universal. We believe, so to speak, that things can change so as to interrupt the usual sequence of sensations. While the correlations between seeming to see and to reach out and touch a table and the subsequent familiar tactile sensations are impressive enough to lead us to rule out the possibility that the correlation is coincidental, at the same time the correlations are not universal enough to allow us to think of the preceding sensations as nomologically sufficient for the subsequent sensations. What do we do? I am suggesting that we posit an underlying mechanism or structure that when present accounts for the correlation but that could be absent and is such that its ab-

Epistemological Questions

181

sence would interfere with the usual correlations. I am at the moment saying nothing whatever about our justification for reaching such a conclusion. I am merely suggesting that it is a kind of inference we do implicitly make. Let me try to illuminate this claim by asking you to consider some analogies involving less abstract matters. Consider, for example, our epistemic relations to the many familiar, easily manipulated appliances and machines whose internal workings are largely a mystery to most of us. I turn the knob on my television set and the set almost always goes on. I am, of course, quite convinced that the correlation between the knob's being turned and the set's going on is not accidental. Nor, however, am I in the least inclined to think of the knob's being turned as nomologically sufficient for the set's going on. Indeed, to my financial distress, I have on some occasions experienced the one without the other. How do I reconcile my belief that the past correlation of my turning the knob and the set's going on is not coincidental with my realization that something can happen that interferes with the correlation? Well, obviously I suppose the existence of an underlying mechanism such that, if it is present and working normally, then when the knob is turned the set will go on. But surely, one will argue, an analogy between this case and the epistemic problems we face when we encounter non coincidental but nonuniversal connections between sensations is strained. After all, we have independent evidence for supposing that a television set is a complex piece of apparatus whose mechanism involves far more than the knob and the appearance of a picture on the screen. Indeed, we at least have the possibility of independent access to the other elements in the apparatus. To reply to this concern, let us consider a somewhat more fanciful hypothetical situation. Suppose that on a distant planet a space traveler finds a black box with a button on its side. Every time he pushes the button the box lights up. He performs this test, one, two, three hundred times, and the box invariably lights. But on the four hundredth try and the next fifty tries, the box does nothing when the button is depressed. After the fifty failures, his depressing the button is again followed by the box's lighting up. What would we conclude? Well, again the most natural conclusion I think (and I again emphasize that I am not saying it is justified) would be that the box contains further ele-

182

Epistemological Questions

ments that can change such that it is only when these elements are arranged in a certain way that depressing the button results in the box's lighting. Still, the critic will argue, the hypothetical situation is hardly analogous to the epistemic relation we have to the physical world given my analysis of the physical world. Again, even if we have no access to the hidden elements in the box, even if it is causally impossible to gain such access, we can at least understand what gaining such access would involve. But if my conclusions in chapters 2 through 6 were correct, we could in principle know nothing about the nonrelational character of that which underlies and explains sensation. Frankly, however, I fail to see the significance of this observation. Unless one accepts a most extreme and hence implausible version of verificationism, one will not insist that meaningful assertions be capable of direct confirmation. I see nothing implausible in the suggestion that we try to account for nonaccidental, nonuniversal correlations between sensations by positing hidden causally relevant variables whose nonrelational character we could never have any direct access to. If it is plausible to claim that we often try to account for nonaccidental, nonuniversal correlations between events by positing the existence of unobserved but nomologically relevant conditions, I think we can make plausible the claim that we do implicitly make the inferences a causal theory requires of us if we are to believe physical object propositions. Having posited the relevant causes vis-ii-vis past sensations, the only move required in order to get from a present sensation of seeming to see the table to the existence of a table is an inductive conclusion from past observations. Just as past seemings to see tables were caused by that which typically would produce certain other sensations given the appropriate sensory cues, so this present seeming to see a table can be expected to have a cause that would operate in a similar fashion. This last inference seems no more unusual that my expectation that the next time I turn the knob on my television set it will, if conditions are normal, result in the set's going on. Since I think we do implicitly accept inferences of the kind discussed above, I think a causal theory of the sort proposed in chapter 6 satisfies the only epistemological criteria it is reasonable to expect a metaphysical analysis of the physical world to satisfy. Such a causal theory is compatible with

Epistemological Questions

183

the fact that we believe and take ourselves to be justified in believing propositions about the physical world. In the preceding discussion I have tried to avoid any questions concerning our justification for believing physical object propositions given a causal theory of the physical world. I have claimed that we do find "natural" certain inferences, but I have not claimed these inferences are justified. And since I do not accept epistemological commonsensism, I do not take the fact that we unhesitatingly make such inferences to be a reliable indication that the inferences are justified. How shall we decide which of our beliefs admit of philosophical justification? To answer this question, we might remind ourselves of some of the conclusions reached in chapter 2. I defended there a radical foundationalism. All justified beliefs owe their justification ultimately to noninferentially justified beliefs grounded in direct acquaintance with facts. Since I hold that we are directly acquainted with the contents of present consciousness, I take as unproblematic the justification for at least some propositions describing the content of those experiences. The philosopher with the correct analysis of truth and noninferential justification can satisfy himself that he knows the content of his present sensation. The philosophically more problematic beliefs are those that move beyond present consciousness via nondeductive inference. In chapter 2 I presented and defended the principle of inferential justification in setting forth the conditions an inferentially justified belief must meet in order to be justified. The principle stated that in order for someone to be justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of another E that person must be (1) justified in believing E and (2) justified in believing that E makes probable P. In rehearsing a traditional argument for foundationalism that implicitly relies on the principle of inferential justification, I noted that if the principle were correct we would seem to need noninferential justification to block not one but an infinite number of infinite regresses. If, from the philosophical perspective of foundationalism, we are trying to justify our belief in one proposition P on the basis of another E, we must ground our justification for believing E and that E confirms or makes probable P. Let us focus on this latter proposition. If we are not noninferentially justified in believing that E confirms P, we must find some proposition F from which to infer that E confirms P. And for us to

184

Epistemological Questions

be justified in believing that E confirms P on the basis of F, we must be justified in believing F and that F confirms that E confirms P. Again let us focus on this second proposition. Our justification for believing it either will be noninferential or will rest on our justifiably believing some other proposition G and that G confirms that F confirms that E confirms P. If we are to end the regress, if we are to ground our justification for believing that one proposition E confirms another P, it seems there must be some proposition of the form X confirms Y in which we have noninferentially justified belief. Put another way, every justified inference seems to presuppose a principle of inference that we are noninferentially justified in believing. For a foundationalist, the task of deciding which inferences described above are justified seems to reduce to the problem of deciding whether these inferences can be either (a) subsumed under principles of reasoning in which we have a noninferentially justified belief or (b) inferred from some other set of truths via noninferentially justified beliefs in some other principle of reasoning. And unless nondeductive reasoning can be ultimately reduced to deductive reasoning, it also seems that if a foundationalist is to allow justified nondeductive inference he must find at least some nondeductive principles of reasoning that he can claim to be noninferentially justified in believing. The view that a foundationalist must embrace noninferentially justified beliefs in nondeductive principles of evidence if he is to sanction nondeductive reasoning is not new, of course. While Russell is justifiably recognized for one of the clearest restatements of Hume's problem of induction, philosophers sometimes overlook the fact that Russell also offered a solution to the problem. The solution Russell offered was the statement of an inductive principle that he claimed was self-evident. Indeed, he was quite explicit in claiming that either one takes an inductive principle to be foundationally justified or one gives up on the possibility of allowing for inductively justified beliefs. More recently, the foundationalist epistemology of R. M. Chisholm reflects the awareness that, as a foundationalist seeking to avoid skepticism with respect to a conclusion reached nondeductively, he must come up with principles of evidence belief in which owes its justification to awareness of no other truths. And to answer the skeptic, Chisholm does just what one would expect from a defender of epistemological commonsensism. To bridge various epistemic gaps, he comes up with a series of

Epistemological Questions

185

appropriate epistemic principles. While Chisholm is not as explicit as Russell, I think it is clear that he is committed to the view that our justification for accepting these principles does not rest onjustifiably accepting any other truths. I am convinced that the following conditional is true: If we are to find philosophically satisfying justification for our commonplace beliefs about the past, the future, and the physical world, if we are to find justification that satisfies the conditions set forth in the principle of inferential justification, we must be noninferentially justified in believing at least some nondeductive principles of evidence. Are we justified in believing any nondeductive principles of evidence? Unfortunately, to answer this we need a prior answer to the question raised in chapter 2 concerning the analysis of epistemic probability. You will recall that the search for an adequate analysis of epistemic probability ended on a rather unsatisfactory note. While the concept of relative frequency might provide an adequate basis for a concept of probability, it did not seem possible to capture the concept of epistemic probability relevant to the justification of belief in terms of frequency. While I found dialectically attractive the view that epistemic probability is directly analogous to logical entailment and should be thought of as a sui generis internal relation between propositions, I had to admit that I am not comfortable with the claim that I am directly acquainted with any such relation. I was unable, however, to come up with any more plausible analysis of epistemic probability that would make the concept cognitively significant. With so little confidence that I have an adequate analysis of epistemic probability, then, I can hardly be too confident in claiming that I am noninferentially justified in believing principles that invoke the concept. Let us consider again the problem of memory, for it is here the problem seems so stark, the available solutions so limited. Noninferential knowledge of what epistemic principle will allow us to justifiably infer propositions about the past from what we know about present consciousness? In characterizing the move we seem to make, I suggested that when we seem to remember doing X we usually take it for granted that we did X. I did not try to analyze seeming to remember, but as one would expect I am inclined to analyze such states on the same model as the appearing analysis of sensation. The fact that we do move from what we seem to re-

186

Epistemological Questions

member to what has happened and the fact that it seems difficult to subsume this inference under some more general principle of inference (e.g., inductive reasoning) suggest that we implicitly accept some such sui generis epistemic principle as that the fact that I seem to remember X makes probable (other things being equal) X. And I am strongly inclined to the view that unless we are noninferentially justified in believing such a principle we have no (philosophically relevant) justification for believing propositions about the past. I am further convinced that, unless we are justified in believing propositions about the past, we have no justification for believing propositions about the future or propositions expressed by contingent subjunctive conditionals. And since I believe that propositions expressed by contingent subjunctive conditionals must be employed in the analysis of physical object propositions, I am strongly inclined to the view that, unless we are noninferentially justified in believing a sui generis epistemic principle of memory, we have no (philosophically relevant) justification for believing ordinary propositions about the physical world. But it is not at all clear to me that I am noninferentially justified in believing that my seeming to remember doing X makes probable my having done X. I have the uneasy suspicion I talked about in chapter 1 that we are simply programmed to believe certain things about the past given the relevant memory "cues." This suspicion, I again emphasize, is not one I claim to be justified (in the philosphically relevant sense) in holding-it is simply a suspicion I report having. And if it should turn out to be true, it may be that it is impossible to discover any philosophically relevant justification for believing propositions about the past and, hence, the physical world. Even if we have no philosophical justification for inferring propositions about the past from what we know about present memory experience, such inferences could be justified in one of the derivative senses of "justification" discussed earlier. It could be the case, for example, that beliefs about the past are produced by a "reliable mechanism," at least if "reliable" is to be defined statistically. Indeed, we all believe that the vast majority of beliefs about the past that result from the "mechanism" of memory arc true. None of this, however, has the slightest relevance for the philosopher interested in refuting philosophical skepticism. 1 I have focused on memory in part because the problem seems so

Epistemological Questions

187

clear-cut and in part because it is a problem that is logically prior to the others involved in finding justification for ordinary beliefs about the physical world. But similar dilemmas face us when we seek to formulate epistemic principles to rationally bridge the other gaps we cross in taking for granted what we do about the world around us. The inference to an underlying nomologically relevant condition to account for non accidental, nonuniversal connections between sensation and, indeed, the prior inference involved in rejecting long strings of connections between kinds of sensation as accidental, may rest on something like a principle of determinism modified to read as an epistemic principle: When A and B have been found associated in uninterrupted sequences, but when failures of association are also known, it is probable that there is some underlying structure, X, that together with A leads to B. The inductive inference necessary to get from these conclusions about the past and our awareness of present sensory information to the relevant subjunctive "predictions" may represent implicit acceptance of a principle such as the one Russell offered in The Problems of Philosophy: When a thing of a certain sort A has been found to be associated with a thing of a certain other sort B, and has never been found dissociated from a thing of the sort B, the greater the number of cases in which A and B have been associated, the greater is the probability that they will be associated in a fresh case in which one of them is known to be present; ... The greater the number of cases in which a thing of the sort A has been found associated with a thing of the sort B, the more probable it is (if no cases of failure of association are known) that A is always associated with B.2 About these principles I would say the same thing I said about an epistemic principle of memory. However much our behavior indicates implicit acceptance of some such principles, it is difficult to claim that we are noninferentially justified in accepting them. Again there is the possibility that our implicit acceptance of these principles simply reflects the fact that we have been evolutionarily "programmed" to react to certain stimuli with certain expectations (where, again, the program could be "reliable" in the philosophically irrelevant sense of usually producing true beliefs).

188

Epistemological Questions

You no doubt wonder why I would not let these suspicions lead me to abandon the foundationalist framework within which I raise epistemological questions. Since Quine's "Naturalistic Epistemology," it has been commonplace for a philosopher to reject a philosophical perspective if that perspective docs not enable him to answer the questions that interest him. But it is just this manifestation of the epistemological commonsensism against which I argued in chapter 2 that seems to me such a non sequitur. I cannot make the epistemological questions that interest me go away by refusing to raise them, by changing the subject. If the search for a philosophically relevant justification within a foundationalist epistemology inevitably leads to philosophical skepticism, then so be it. Some philosophers might argue that all the inferences discussed above can be subsumed under, and justified in terms of, reasoning to the best explanation. We take memory to be veridical, by and large, because that supposition best explains the fact that we have memory experiences in the first place. We posit an underlying structure causally responsible for the ncar universal connections we find between certain sensations because that is the easiest way to explain such connections. Even inductive inference might be viewed as a species of reasoning to the best explanation. J We assume that most A's are B's when most of the A's we have observed are B's because this is the most natural explanation of the fact that we have run across so few A's that are not-B's. I have argued elsewhere, however, that reasoning to the best explanation is not even taken by us to constitute a genuine alternative to inductive reasoning.4 Let me briefly summarize that argument. When one presents an argument to the best explanation in ordinary discourse, it often has the following form: 5 1. Q is the case. 2. If P were the case Q would be the case. Therefore (in all probability)

3. P is the case. To consider a very simple example, we might, upon coming across some footprints on a beach, employ the following argument in reasoning to the conclusion that a man walked on the beach recently.

Epistemological Questions

189

1. There are footprints on the beach. 2. If a man walked on the beach recently there would be such footprints. Therefore (in all probability) 3. A man walked on the beach recently. Now it goes without saying, I suppose, that if the inference from premises to conclusion in arguments having the form above is legitimate, the conditional employed in the premises must be other than material implication. The principle that if Q and (P materially implies Q) then in all probability P is as fallacious a nondeductive principle as its deductive counterpart. But even if the conditional is subjunctive, the inference above is hardly unproblematic. Consider the following argument: 1. There are footprints on the beach. 2. If a cow wearing shoes had walked on the beach recently, there would be such footprints. Therefore (in all probability) 3. A cow wearing shoes walked on the beach recently. This argument would certainly not strike us as a paradigm of legit imate reasoning, even though it has preceisely the same form as the first argument and true premises. Why is it that we have such different intuitions about these two arguments, even though they have the same form and true premises? The answer, I suggest, is that we accept the first argument because it is an enthymeme. We accept a crucial but unstated premise from which we can legitimately infer the conclusion. That premise is the obvious one: (2a) In the vast majority of known cases footprints are produced by men (not cows wearing shoes). But if (2a) is an essential part of the evidence from which we are willing to infer that a man walked on the beach recently, it seems clear that the so-called argument to the best explanation is really

190

Epistemological Questions

just an inductive argument whose form would be more perspicuously represented this way:

1. In all (or most) cases in which we have observed footprints on the beach there were men present just before the existence of such footprints. 2. Here is another case of footprints on the beach. Therefore (in all probability) 3. A man was present just before the existence of these footprints. There are, no doubt, circumstances in which I might reason to the presence of a cow wearing shoes walking on the beach. IfI lived in a bizarre community in which the people liked to put shoes on their cows and restricted access to the beaches to such animals, and I knew all this, I might well conclude from my observation of the footprints that those cows must have been walking the beach again. Here, of course, I am inferring the relevant inductive conclusion from my knowledge of the statistical frequency with which footprints were produced by cows in this area. Consideration of examples like these inclines me to the general conclusion that when we accept an "argument to the best explanation" we do so only because we implicitly accept premises that when made explicit reveal the reasoning to be inductive. Consequently, it seems to me more plausible to argue that reasoning to the best explanation can be understood in terms of inductive reasoning than vice versa. One might well argue at this point that the conception of reasoning to the best explanation I have been considering is too simplistic. Part of what reasoning to the best explanation involves is careful employment of criteria for choosing between the (always indefinitely large number of) alternative possible explanations. One might argue that the following more adequately represents the nature of reasoning to the best explanation:

1.Q 2. Of the set of available competing and incompatible hypotheses P1, P2, ... , Pn capable of explaining Q, P1 is the best explanation of Q.

Epistemological Questions

191

Therefore (in all probability)

3. Pl. To evaluate this suggestion we need to know, of course, what the criteria are for choosing the "best" explanation. (, Two of the most natural criteria to suggest are simplicity and comprehensiveness. Other things being equal, one ought to choose the simpler of two competing explanations. And other things being equal, one ought to choose the explanation that would explail: either more particular facts or more kinds of facts. It is important to emphasize that in the present context our concern is not whether it is true that for the most part simpler, more comprehensive explanations are correct. The crucial question for us is whether one can be noninferentially justified in believing (a) that the relevant phenomena have an explanation and (b) that the correct explanation is likely to be the simplest, most comprehensive one. If inductive reasoning were legitimate, one might have good inductive grounds for reaching the conclusion that, by and large, simpler, more comprehensive theories are more likely to be true. But the suggestion that concerns us at present is that reasoning to the best explanation constitutes an independent kind of reasoning, a kind that will bridge the problematic epistemic gaps involved in justifying beliefs about the physical world. It is very difficult to deny that even if it is true that the simplest, most comprehensive of competing explanations is usually the correct one, it is a contingent fact that this is so, a contingent fact that could be established only through experience (and thus by employing other nondeductive principles of reasoning). 7 And if this is true, it is hardly plausible to claim that all other nondeductive principles of reasoning are parasitic upon reasoning to the best explanation. Because so many philosophers have endorsed the legitimacy of appeals to simplicity, I should add to these remarks the observation that there is a sense in which I think it is plausible to employ a criterion of simplicity in choosing between alternative hypotheses. Suppose I am considering two incompatible theories Tl and T2 that, relative to my evidence, are equally likely to be true. Suppose, further, that after acquiring some additional evidence (let us call my new total body of evidence E) I find it necessary to add a hypothesis Hl to T2. Provided the epistemic probability of Tl and T2 relative

192

Epistemological Questions

to E remains the samc, and assuming that thc probability of H1 relativc to E is lcss than 1, it docs seem rcasonable to infcr that, relativc to E, T1 is morc likely to be true than the morc complex thcory (T2 and H1). Intuitively, T2 by itse[f ran thc samc risk of error as Tl, so with thc addition of another hypothcsis that might be false it runs a greater risk of crror than Tl. This usc of simplicity in making cpistemic dccisions is obviously not going to do thc morc comprehensivc work requircd by a principle of reasoning to thc best explanation of thc sort sketchcd abovc. Anothcr analogous approach to bridging the problematic cpistcmic gaps involvcd in knowledgc of thc physical world involvcs subsuming thc relcvant infcrcnccs undcr thc following nondcductive principle: If P makes probable Q, and not-Q, thcn probably not-Po The principle is simply thc nondcductivc countcrpart of modus tollens. Thus one might try to arguc that I can rely on thc veridicality of memory becausc I know that if what I sccmed to remcmber had not happencd, I probably would not scem to rcmcmber it. Sincc I do sccm to remcmber it, it probably happcncd. Again, I might arguc that thc ncar univcrsal correlation betwecn scnsations A and B probably had somc underlying causc, for if there wcrc no undcrlying causc, there probably would not havc been this correlation. And finally, induction itself could bc subsumcd under this more gcncral sort of rcasoning. If it wcrc not thc casc that most A's are B's, thcn in all probability I would havc run across a few A's that wcre not B's. I havc not, so it is reasonable to conclude that most A's arc B's. Now cvcn if this nondcductivc analoguc of modus tollens wcrc a principle wc could be noninfercntially justified in accepting, to employ it in bridging thc epistcmic gaps wc have discusscd, wc would have to bc cithcr infcrcntially or noninfcrcntially justified in bclieving the problematic conditionals: if what I sccm to rcmcmber having occurrcd did not occur, I probably would not havc seemcd to rcmcmber it; if thcre werc no undcrlying causc of thcse near univcrsal correlations between sensations, thcrc probably would not havc been such correlations; if it wcrc not truc that most A's arc B's I probably would have observed more A's that were not B's. If our justification for accepting thc conditionals is infcrential, thcn wc must find that justification in order to answer our cpistemic questions. And it seems no less difficult to make plausible the claim that we are noninJerentially justified in belicving thesc conditionals than it

Epistemological Questions

193

was to argue that we are noninferentially justified in believing the more straightforward epistemic principles of memory, determinism, and induction discussed earlier. Moreover, while it seems initially reasonable, I am not sure the nondeductive analogue of modus tollens represents a principle we would even accept (let alone take ourselves to be noninferentially justified in accepting). Consider just one example. Jones enters a lottery with a great many other people and is lucky enough to win. I reason as follows: if the lottery really was fair Jones would probably have lost. Since he did not lose, the lottery probably was not fair. The reasoning seems to employ the principle discussed above but does not strike us as remotely plausible, and I have not been able to formulate any revision of the relevant epistemic principle that would disallow this obviously illegitimate inference. I conclude then that there may be no plausible alternative to the view that to be justified in believing what we do about the physical world we must be noninferentially justified in believing epistemic principles of memory, determinism, and induction of the sort discussed earlier. And I observe again that it is very difficult to accept the conclusion that we have noninferentialjustification for believing such principles.

Conclusion Although I have ended with a discussion of epistemological matters, I wish to stress that I do not view the metaphysical analysis presented earlier as in any way secondary to these epistemological conclusions. I think it is a mistake to view the significance of metaphysical conclusions in terms of the role they can playas premises in arguments for or against skepticism. As I pointed out in chapter 1, the plausibility ofa metaphysical analysis does not depend on the ease with which its proponent can use it to withstand the skeptic's attack. I have argued that the analysis of physical objects I offered is plausible whalellcr one decides with respect to the epistemological questions discussed in this chapter, for I have argued that it can account perfectly well for the fact that we believe what we do given the inferences we explicitly or implicitly endorse. Note also that in the premises of my arguments for and against various analyses of the physical world and our relation to it I have nowhere presupposed that skepticism with respect to the physical world was false

194

Epistemological Questions

(or true). I did not presuppose knowledge of the physiological causes of sensation, for example, in arguing against versions of direct realism. My arguments rested, as philosophical arguments of this sort should, on claims about conceptual possibilities. On epistemological matters I have urged philosophers not .to let their views on the conditions required for philosophically relevant justification be molded by a desire to refute skepticism. I said earlier that while the traditional epistemologist may recognize that he is a creature among creatures, conditioned to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, he wants something better. For those beliefs and expectations that unreflectively result from various stimuli he wants to find a justification, a justification that either is noninferential or will satisfy the conditions set forth by the principle of inferential justification. Wanting this escape, however, may not make it possible. The philosopher who takes traditional epistemological questions seriously may find that he is, after all, a prisoner of a world that finds no special need for its inhabitants to have rational beliefs and expectations.

Notes

CHAPTER 1 1. Descartes Illay not speak explicitly of beliefs' being hased on perception or sensation. III describing his view this way I alll not asserting (nor alll I denying) that he viewed beliefs about physical objects as conclusions involving conscious il~fi.'rCII(f from knowledge of something nonphysical. I am merely pointing out that ill sOllie SfllSf Descartes viewed beliefs about the physical world as prompted by sense perception, where perceptions arc the sorts of things that can occur in both veridical and non veridical experience. I shall say Illore about different sense of "basing" later in the book. 2. It is clear that Descartes intends to rest the demon argument on a mere possibility, less clear that he views the dream argument the same way. Still, he docs employ the crucial modal operator when he presents the dream argument in the Discollrse 011 A1cthod. Sec Descartes (1960, 24). 3. Hume (1888,212). 4. This interpretation of Descartes is not noncontroversial. I base it primarily on remarks he makes in the sixth meditation by way of distinguishing primary and secondary qualities. Sec Descartes (1960, 133-37). If Descartes did subscribe to representative realism, his concept of the relevant rclation of representation and his views about what docs the representing would require considerable exegesis. For discussion of the relation between Descartes's ideas (whether of sense or imagination) and what they are ideas of, see Lennon (1974), Yolton (1984), and a recent unpublished paper of Monte Cook's, "Descartes' Alleged Representationalism." 5. I usc "logically necessary condition" in the broadest sense. I include tautologically, analytically, and, if there arc any, synthetically necessary

196

Notes to Pages 11-37

conditions. I do not, of course, include causally or nomologically necessary conditions. 6. See Chisholm (1976, chap. 4). 7. Moore (1959,6). 8. C. I. Lewis presents a clear, concise version of this argument in All Analysis of Kllowledge and VcJ/uatioll (1946, 140-43). 9. Hume (1888, 147). 10. This assertion may require explanation, since the positivists were famous for their rejection of metaphysics. I use the term "metaphysical analysis" to refer to meaning analyses of the sort discussed earlier, and in this sense the positivists obviously did otfer metaphysical analyses. Of course I do not claim that all (or even any) of the positivists would endorse my specific conception of meaning analysis. Some positivists seemed to think of analysis as consisting in the attempt to reduce one level of linguistic expression to a more fundamental or perspicuous level of linguistic expression, where this is not to be understood in terms of the discovery of different-level meaning rules in my sense. One might also object to the claim th:'t the positivists were fighting skepticism, but it is certainly tempting to construe verificationism as a commitment to understanding statements in a way that allows at least the possihility of answering the skeptic. To be more cautious, however, one should probably acknowledge that positivism was a diverse movement represented by philosophers with many different motives and concerns. In "Schlick and Skepticism" Richard Popkin discusses in some detail the connection between positivism and skepticism. 11. This seems to be A. J. Ayer's approach in Lall,l!lIage, Tntth alld Logic (1952, chaps. 7 and 8). 12. Again, Ayer seemed to make this suggestion in Lallgllage, Truth alld Logic (though he retracted it in the introduction to the second edition). 13. See Plantinga (1981). 14. Foley (1983). 15. Hume (1888, 187). 16. As will become evident later, I usc the term "inference" in a very broad sense. 17. These points were made by Carl Hempel in "The Empiricist Criterion of Meaning." 18. All kinds of passages suggest otherwise, but the exegetical question is severely complicated by Hume's love of hyperbole. CHAPTER 2

1. See Sosa (1974) and Chisholm (1977, chap. 6) for two plausible attempts to provide such an analysis.

Notes to Pages 38-53

197

2. This question must be distinguished from the question, Can youjustify this belief (to me, in this context)? At this point I shall leave open the possibility that one might not be able to justify a belief to someone even though one is justified in holding the belief. Recognizing the distinction between being justified and justifying should not prevent us from looking at how people argue over justification for clues to what they take being justified to involve. 3. As I shall make clear, I do not mean to imply by using the expression "inferential justification" that having inferential justification entails the occurrence of some actual process of inference. 4. In answering this question I found helpful a discussion I had with Gilbert HarmJn in an American Philosophical Association symposium, 30 December 1976. Harman commented on my paper "Inferential Justification and Empiricism." An abstract of Harman's reply appears in the same issue as my paper, but for a detailed exposition and defense of his positive views on inferential justification one should turn to Harman (1973). 5. Sec, for example, Harman (1970) and Lehrer (1970). Lehrer has since repudiated the view he defended here. 6. Lehrer raises this question in his discussion of explanatory coherence theories in Kllowledge (1974, 1(1). 7. Note that P may be justified for S on the basis of E even if 5 is not justified in believing P because he possesses other relevant evidence. 8. A very crude theory of this sort might try to understand justified beliefs as those that are caused in part by the truth of that which is believed or by something that would usually result in belie[~ of the relevant sort's being true. The latter theory is a version of reliabilism, which I shall say more about later. 9. For an attack on the view that inferential justification requires a basing relation of the sort defended above, sec George Pappas's "Basing Relations." Pappas argues that for E to justify S in believing P it is enough that (1) E confirms P, (2) 5 believes E, (3) 5 is justified in believing E, (4) 5 takes himself to believe P as a result of believing E, (5) 5 is justified in taking himself to believe P as a result of believing E, and (6) 5 would not be justified in believing P if he were not justified in believing E. For a detailed defense of a causal "sustaining" requirement of what he calls personal (inferential) justification, see Audi (1983). 10. To say that 5's justification precludes the possibility of P's being false is not simply to say that it entails the truth of P. If it were, my belief in a necessary truth would be infallible no matter what the nature of my evidence was, even if, for example, such evidence consisted of the testimony of some authority. Intuitively, a belief justified in this way would not be infallible, and the reason is that it is not my justificatioll that guarantees for me the truth of the proposition. It may be that to adequately define the

198

Notes to Pages 54-77

relevant notion of justification's precluding error we need to develop a relevance logic. 11. Chisholm (1977, 22). 12. As discussed in Russell (1959, chap. 5). 13. This is intended to be a metaphor. 14. The most detailed defense of his philosophy of mind is by Bergmann (1964, 1967). 15. It is highly misleading to refer to this simply as a relation. For Bergmann's views on the meaning "relation" or nexus I must refer readers to the works cited above. 16. I said earlier, and will emphasize again below, that it is not merely acquaintance with the fact that P that justifies my belief that P. I must also be acquainted with my thought that P and the fact that the thought corresponds to the fact. Because it is so cumbersome to refer to all three acts of acquaintance in characterizing noninferential justification, I will sometimes allow myself the liberty of speaking as if it were a single act of acquaintance that yields noninferential justification. 17. Ja'~gwon Kim discusses the general notion of superveniCllce in "Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables" and "Causality, Identity, and Supervenience in the Mind-Body Problem." The possible application of this concept to a defense of versions of foundationalism is discussed by Ernest Sosa in "The Foundations ofFoundationalism" and by James Van Cleve in "Epistemic SupervClliCllce and the Circle of Belief." 18. Russell (1956) raised a similar argument against attempts to substitute resemblance for universals. 19. I shall return to this question in chapter 7. CHAPTER 3 1. In Perception, Commol! Swse, and SciCllce James Cornman presents a similar, though more sophisticated, nonepistemic definition of direct realism. Given Cornman's analysis, the direct realist holds that "It is false that S would perceive p at t only if at t he were to experience something x which is different from p, which neither is a constituent of p nor has p as a constituent, and which S experiences at t because of the stimulation of a sense organ of S by p" (where p is a physical object) (1975, 10). As will become clear, given Cornman's analysis of direct realism I would be a direct realist. As Cornman also makes clear in the conclusion of his book, being a direct realist in this sense is perfectly compatible with the epistemological conclusions I shall be defending. 2. "Reasons for believing" can also refer to practical reasons-for example, prudential reasons-for believing, where believing is treated as an action like any other.

Notes to Pages 77-118

199

3. Quinton (1965, 525). 4. In Perceptual Knowledge Georges Dicker (1980, 163) seems to suggest that in veridical experience appearing is a relation between an object and a perceiver, whereas in non veridical experience it presumably is not. Such a view is, I think, incompatible with all the arguments I shall be presenting in support of the conclusion that there is a common element to veridical and nonveridical experience. I think this confusion affects Dicker's account of our perceptual relation to physical objects, an account with which I am in many ways sympathetic. 5. Putnam (1981, chap. 1). 6. Price (1950, 36-37). 7. Sec, for example, Austin (1968, chap. 4) and Quinton (1965, 501). 8. See, for example, Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." 9. To make this possibility look plausible, one can appeal to situations in which one momentarily "forgets" about one's pain when concentrating on something else. 10. Chisholm (1957, 50-53) first introduces the use of "appears" upon which I shall be relying. He calls it the noncomparative use of "appears." 11. The question could be construed as asking whether we could be appeared to in a certain way without being acquainted with the fact that we arc being appeared to in that way. This question is much more difficult to answer, and I shall return to it in a moment. 12. Sec Jackson (1977, 102-3). 13. If ways of being appeared to can be complex, then there is no reason to deny that a complex way of being appeared to can be broken down into "constituent" ways of being appeared to. 14. In correspondence. 15. Jackson (1975). 16. The solution offered in broad outline by Tye (1975) and developed in some detail by Sellars (1975). For a criticism of Sellars's position that emphasizes its connection with Sellars's other metaphysical views, see Vinci (1981). CHAPTER 4 1. Fumerton (1976b). 2. Anscombe, for example, argues this in "Causality and Determination." 3. The relevance of this is stressed (overstressed) by proponents of socalled activity theories of causation. See, for example, von Wright (1975). 4. Stevenson (1944, 111-15). 5. Hume (1888, 212).

200

Notes to Pages 120-57

6. See Berkeley (1954, 60). 7. Berkeley (1954, 60). This is also the general approach endorsed by Bertrand Russell in Human Kllowle~'