@@ -171,11 +171,11 @@ The first claim involves a commitment to a \emph{Lockean conception of knowledge \end{quote} The Lockean conception of knowledge is opposed to the Cook Wilsonian conception of knowledge as proof. According to Cook Wilson, knowing that P is akin to having a proof that P since a subject only knows that P when he is in a state that is absolutely incompatible with not-P. However, if knowledge only requires as much certainty as our frame can attain to and as our condition needs, then such certainty can, and most certainly will, fall short of proof (as Ayer acknowledges in conceding that material sentences do not admit of conclusive verification.) -The second claim involves a commitment to \emph{a form of foundationalism} according to which there are a subclass of sentences (observation sentences, in the present instance, sentences about sense data) that can be incorrigibly known to be true. Moreover, these sentences can serve as the basis of an inferential transition to less certain sentences (sentences about material objects) that can nevertheless be known to be true. However, foundationalism, so conceived, conflicts with fundamental claim in Cook Wilsonian philosophy of language, at least as extended and refined by Austin. +The second claim involves a commitment to \emph{a form of foundationalism} according to which there are a subclass of sentences (observation sentences, in the present instance, sentences about sense data) that can be incorrigibly known to be true. Moreover, these sentences can serve as the basis of an inferential transition to less certain sentences (sentences about material objects) that can nevertheless be known to be true on the basis of the evidence they provide. However, foundationalism, so conceived, conflicts with a fundamental claim in Cook Wilsonian philosophy of language, at least as extended and refined by Austin. -Suppose that Sid sees a pig in plain view. The pig that Sid sees is a material object, and for Ayer statements about material objects do not admit of conclusive verification. His thought seems to be this. Contrast Sid seeing a pig in plain view with a perfect matching hallucination---Sid seeming to see a pig but where there is no pig to be seen and where the Sid's seeming to see a pig is, at least in this instance, indiscriminable upon reflection from seeing a pig. While the statement ``There's a pig'' is true in the good case, it is false in the bad case. Since from Sid's perspective the bad case is a ringer for the good case, Ayer concludes that the possibility of Sid's mistakenly judging that a pig is before him in the bad case means that he cannot be certain that there is a pig before him in the good case. At most, he can have inconclusive evidence for there being a pig. But there is an incorrigible judgment that Sid can make in both cases, a judgment about how things appear to Sid in his experience. (For Ayer, this a judgment about sense data, but even philosophers who deny that there are sense data can, and do, accept the more general claim.) +Suppose that Sid sees a pig in plain view. The pig that Sid sees is a material object, and for Ayer statements about material objects do not admit of conclusive verification. His thought seems to be this. Contrast Sid seeing a pig in plain view with a perfect matching hallucination---Sid seeming to see a pig but where there is no pig to be seen and where the Sid's seeming to see a pig is, at least in this instance, indiscriminable upon reflection from seeing a pig. While the statement ``There's a pig'' is true in the good case, it is false in the bad case. Since from Sid's perspective the bad case is a ringer for the good case, Ayer concludes that the possibility of Sid's mistakenly judging that a pig is before him in the bad case means that he cannot be certain that there is a pig before him in the good case. At most, he can have inconclusive evidence for there being a pig. But there is an incorrigible judgment that Sid can make in both cases, a judgment about how things appear to Sid in his experience. (For Ayer, this a judgment about sense data, but even philosophers who deny that there are sense data can, and do, accept the more general claim.) And this incorrigible knowledge of appearances constitutes the evidence for the truth of material object sentences. -Austin regards this reasoning as simply confused. Against the claim that, independent of occasion of utterance, there is a sentence about how things appear in Sid's experience that can be incorrigibly known to be true, Austin insists that the truth of a claim is only determined by the standards in play on the occasion of utterance. Specifically, if as Austin maintains, a sentence is only true when uttered on an occasion, there could be no sentence, independent of an occasion of utterance, that is true. And if there could be no sentence that is true independent of the occasion of utterance, then no such sentence could be incorrigibly known to be true. +Austin regards this reasoning as simply confused. Against the claim that, independent of an occasion of utterance, there is a sentence about how things appear in Sid's experience that can be incorrigibly known to be true, Austin insists that the truth of a claim is only determined by the standards in play on the occasion of utterance. Specifically, if as Austin maintains, a sentence is only true when uttered on an occasion, there could be no sentence, independent of an occasion of utterance, that is true. And if there could be no sentence that is true independent of the occasion of utterance, then no such sentence could be incorrigibly known to be true. While no sentence can be incorrigibly known to be true independent of an occasion of utterance, that's not to say that there are no occasions of utterance where Sid can speak with certainty. But recognizing that there are occasions where things can be incorrigibly known undermines the thought that what can be incorrigibly known is restricted to reports about how things appear in sense experience: \begin{quote} @@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ The contrast that Austin draws between believing and knowing supports, in this w We are now in a position to see how Austin's emphasis on facts about Sid's circumstances highlights the emerging need for an anti-hybridist conception of perception. Ayer postulates appearances that can obtain independently of the material things they are taken to present. Moreover, what can be incorrigibly known is restricted to these appearances. Perception couldn't be appearance in Ayer's sense that meets further external conditions, if perception can, on occasion, afford proof about our external environment. After all, according to Ayer, only judgments about appearances can be incorrigibly known. Judgments about the material environment can only be inconclusively verified on the basis of appearances. If conceiving of perception as a hybrid state consisting of an internal experience or appearance that meets further external conditions is committed to a Lockean epistemology, then so much the worse for hybridism. There is, however, a more positive thought at work here. The positive thought is that nothing short of Sid's encounter with a pig in sight could make Sid knowledgeable of the pig if this akin to the availability of proof. It is the presentation of the pig as an object of awareness in perceptual experience, an object whose existence is incompatible with there not being a pig, that makes Sid knowledgeable. The Cook Wilsonian conception of knowledge as proof requires an anti-hybridist conception of perception if perception is to make the subject knowledgeable of a mind-independent subject matter. -Anti-hybridism or anti-conjunctivism about perception is a thesis about the nature of perception---that perception cannot be explained in terms of a reductive identification of perception with a hybrid state consisting of an internal mental component and an external non-mental component. Experiential monism, in contrast, is a thesis about the nature of experience understood as the genus of which perception is a species. According to this doctrine, experience has a unitary nature. Despite being conceptually distinct in this way, the emerging debate reveals a tension between these doctrines. Oxford and Cambridge realists each endorsed a conception of perception as an irreducible sensory mode of awareness of a mind-independent subject matter. Moreover, both Oxford and Cambridge realists held that perception was a form of knowing in the sense that perception makes the subject knowledgeable of its object. Cambrdige realists, however, further held that this sensory mode of awareness was not distinctive of perception but characterized sense experience more generally. If the distinctive sensory mode of awareness characterizes experience generally, and if the arguments from illusion, hallucination, or conflicting appearances lead one to conclude that the objects of awareness are not ordinary material things like pigs, then it would be increasingly difficult to retain a common sense realism according to which Sid's seeing the pig puts him in a position to know that there is a pig before him. It is, perhaps, no accident that Russell's commitment to sense data led him to a representative realism that devolved into a form of phenomenalism. While Austin is not explicitly committed to the denial of experiential monism, he may be implicitly committed to its denial insofar as experiential monism is in tension with the common sense realism that he sought to defend by defending anti-hybridist conceptions of perception and knowledge. It will take the work of \citet{Hinton:1973js} to make the explicit denial of experiential monism as a result of his reflections on the semantics and epistemology of perception--illusion disjunctions. +Anti-hybridism or anti-conjunctivism about perception is a thesis about the nature of perception---that perception cannot be explained in terms of a reductive identification of perception with a hybrid state consisting of an internal mental component and an external non-mental component. Experiential monism, in contrast, is a thesis about the nature of experience understood as the genus of which perception is a species. According to this doctrine, experience has a unitary nature. Despite being conceptually distinct in this way, the emerging debate reveals a tension between these doctrines. Oxford and Cambridge realists each endorsed a conception of perception as an irreducible sensory mode of awareness of a mind-independent subject matter. Moreover, both Oxford and Cambridge realists held that perception was a form of knowing in the sense that perception makes the subject knowledgeable of its object. Cambrdige realists, however, further held that this sensory mode of awareness was not distinctive of perception but characterized sense experience more generally. If the distinctive sensory mode of awareness characterizes experience generally, and if the arguments from illusion, hallucination, or conflicting appearances lead one to conclude that the objects of awareness are not ordinary material things like pigs, then it would be increasingly difficult to retain a common sense realism according to which Sid's seeing the pig puts him in a position to know that there is a pig before him. It is, perhaps, no accident that Russell's commitment to sense data led him to a representative realism that devolved into a form of phenomenalism. While Austin is not explicitly committed to the denial of experiential monism, he may be implicitly committed to its denial insofar as experiential monism is in tension with the common sense realism that he sought to defend with anti-hybridist conceptions of perception and knowledge. It will take the work of \citet{Hinton:1973js}, specifically his reflections on the semantics and epistemology of perception--illusion disjunctions, to make the denial explicit. % Both central strands of thought in Cook Wilsonian epistemology and philosophy of language are intertwined in, and form the basis, of Austin's \citeyearpar{Austin:1962lr}, at times, exasperated, criticism of Ayer. The root of the debate is diagnosed as a misconceived concern for \emph{incorrigibility}, and an illusory need to find some sentences that are incorrigibly known to be true which could act as the foundations for all empirical knowledge. perception.tex b20bf465f735295ea1fd95354dd1251385e107b6 PhilGeek eli@markelikalderon.com http://github.com/PhilGeek/oxford-realism/commit/2d51f6f3b85b036477c93c48f75a5c9beb044151 2d51f6f3b85b036477c93c48f75a5c9beb044151 2009-11-08T10:29:51-08:00 2009-11-08T10:29:51-08:00 Minor changes aa862309409d085086fbd6efe719953f28c82113 PhilGeek eli@markelikalderon.com