@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ A concern for realism motivates a fundamental strand of Oxford reflection on perception. Begin with the realist conception of knowledge. The question then will be: What must perception be like if we can know something about an object without the mind by seeing it? What must perception be if it can, on occasion, afford us with \emph{proof} concerning a subject matter independent of the mind? The resulting conception of perception is not unlike the conception of perception shared by Cambridge realists such as Moore and Russell. Roughly speaking, perception is conceived to be a fundamental and irreducible mode of sensory awareness of mind-independent objects, a non-propositional mode of awareness that enables those with the appropriate recognitional capacities to have propositional knowledge concerning that subject matter. -The difference between Oxford and Cambridge realism concerns the extent of this fundamental sensory mode of awareness. Whereas Oxford realists maintained that perception affords us this non-propositional mode of awareness, Cambridge realists maintained that this distinctive mode of awareness has a broader domain. Let experience be the genus of which perception is a species. Cambridge realists maintained that \emph{all} experience, and not just perception, involves this non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. Cambridge realists are thus committed to a kind of \emph{experiential monism}---the thesis that experience has a unitary nature. Specifically, all experience, perceptual and non-perceptual alike, involves, as part of its nature, a non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. Even subject to illusion or hallucination, there is something of which one is aware. And with that, they were an application of the argument from illusion, or hallucination, or conflicting appearances away from \emph{immaterial} sense data and a representative realism that tended, over time, to devolve into a form of phenomenalism. +The difference between Oxford and Cambridge realism concerns the extent of this fundamental sensory mode of awareness. Whereas Oxford realists maintained that perception affords us this non-propositional mode of awareness, Cambridge realists maintained that this distinctive mode of awareness has a broader domain. Let experience be the genus of which perception is a species. Cambridge realists maintained that \emph{all} experience, and not just perception, involves this non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. Cambridge realists are thus committed to a kind of \emph{experiential monism}---the thesis that experience has a unitary nature. Specifically, all experience, perceptual and non-perceptual alike, involves, as part of its nature, a non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. Even subject to illusion or hallucination, there is something of which one is aware. And with that, they were an application of the argument from illusion, or hallucination, or conflicting appearances away from immaterial sense data and a representative realism that tended, over time, to devolve into a form of phenomenalism. Framing the discussion is the fundamental realist (or anti-idealist) commitment common to Cook Wilson and Moore---that the objects of knowledge are independent of the act of knowing. Suppose that in seeing the pig Sid is in a position to know various things about it. The pig is the object of Sid's knowledge in the sense that Sid knows something about \emph{it}---that the pig is before Sid, or that the pig is black, say. According to the fundamental realist commitment, the pig is the object of Sid's knowledge only insofar as it exists independently of Sid's knowing. @@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ The evidence is not decisive. However, even if we were convinced that Cook Wilso Cook Wilson provides neither a theory of perception nor of the nature of appearances. However, Prichard's \citeyearpar{Prichard:1906gf,Prichard:1909yg} theory of appearing builds on some of Cook Wilson's insights. Following Cook Wilson, Prichard holds that the object of perception, like the object of knowledge, must be independent of the act of perceiving, and that an appearance is properly understood as an appearing of a mind-independent object to the perceiving subject. \citet{Prichard:1909yg} thus opposes any conception of appearance, such as Kant's, where appearances are states of a subject produced by external objects. However, from at least since ``Seeing Movement'' written in 1921, Prichard abandons the theory of appearing. Specifically, he comes to deny that the objects of perception are mind-independent objects located in space, coming to favor, instead, a Berkelean conception of perception where the objects of perception depend on our perceptual experience of them. At the heart of this change of mind is a doubt about whether perception could be a form of knowing. -The central argument occurs in Prichard's \citeyearpar{Prichard:1938ve} ``Sense Datum Fallacy''. His main target is the sense data theory of Cambridge realists such as Russell and Moore. Like their Oxford counterparts, the Cambridge realists held that the object of knowledge is independent of the act of knowing, and that perception is a form of knowing. Cambridge realism departs from Oxford realism in its adherence to a further thesis. Cambridge realists held, in addition, that there is something of which a subject is aware in undergoing sense experience whether perceiving or no. According to the theories of Russell, Moore, and Price, sense data are whatever we are aware of in sense experience. So understood, sense data are whatever entities that play this epistemic role. This characterization of sense data is \emph{neutral} in the sense that it assumes nothing about the substantive nature of objects that play this epistemic role. Further argument is required to establish substantive claims about the nature of sense data. We have already noted how the sense data theory is committed to an experiential monism---all experience, perceptual and non-perceptual alike, involves, as part of its nature, a non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. A further commitment is presently important. So conceived, sense data are objects whose substantive nature is open to investigation independent of our acts of awareness of them. It is this consequence of the conjunction of the realist conception of knowledge, the conception of perception as a form of knowing, and the sense data theory that is Prichard's primary target. And Prichard's central thought is that perception could not make one knowledgeable of its object, since the object of perception depends on the subject's experience of it in a way that the object of knowledge could not. +The central argument occurs in Prichard's \citeyearpar{Prichard:1938ve} ``Sense Datum Fallacy''. His main target is the sense data theory of Cambridge realists such as Moore and Russell. Like their Oxford counterparts, the Cambridge realists held that the object of knowledge is independent of the act of knowing, and that perception is a form of knowing. Cambridge realism departs from Oxford realism in its adherence to a further thesis. Cambridge realists held, in addition, that there is something of which a subject is aware in undergoing sense experience whether perceiving or no. According to the theories of Moore, Russell, and Price, sense data are whatever we are aware of in sense experience. So understood, sense data are whatever entities that play this epistemic role. This characterization of sense data is \emph{neutral} in the sense that it assumes nothing about the substantive nature of objects that play this epistemic role. Further argument is required to establish substantive claims about the nature of sense data. We have already noted how the sense data theory is committed to an experiential monism---all experience, perceptual and non-perceptual alike, involves, as part of its nature, a non-propositional sensory mode of awareness. A further commitment is presently important. So conceived, sense data are objects whose substantive nature is open to investigation independent of our acts of awareness of them. It is this consequence of the conjunction of the realist conception of knowledge, the conception of perception as a form of knowing, and the sense data theory that is Prichard's primary target. And Prichard's central thought is that perception could not make one knowledgeable of its object, since the object of perception depends on the subject's experience of it in a way that the object of knowledge could not. Much of Prichard's case is a variant of Berekeley's critique of Locke. However, two arguments go beyond the familiar Berkelean critique. The first derives from a peculiar feature of the Cook Wilsonian conception of knowledge, the accretion, and the second is explicitly derived from \citet{Paul:1936kd}. Both present important morals for Oxford realism. The moral of the first argument is that the accretion must be abandoned if Oxford realism is to be sustained. The moral of the second argument is that the realist conception of knowledge and the conception of perception as a form of knowing requires abandoning the Cambridge realist's commitment to experiential monism (though it will take the work of \citet{Austin:1962lr} and \citet{Hinton:1973js} to begin to vindicate this). @@ -157,24 +157,48 @@ Ayer understands the argument from illusion to establish not that there are sens \begin{quote} For since in philosophizing about perception our main object is to analyse the relationship of our sense-experience to the propositions we put forward concerning material things, it is useful for us to have a terminology that enables us to refer to the contents of our experiences independently of the material things they are taken to present. \citep[]{Ayer:1958kx} \end{quote} + That project involved two central claims: \begin{enumerate} \item (non-analytic) sentences about material objects are empirically testable but do not admit of conclusive verification while \item (non-analytic) sentences about sense data are \emph{observation} sentences---\-they furnish evidence for other sentences and are themselves incorrigible. \end{enumerate} -Each of these claims are instances of more fundamental commitments that are independent of Ayer's positivism. Moreover, each stands opposed to fundamental strands of thought in Cook Wilsonian epistemology and philosophy of language, at least as extended and refined by Austin. +Each of these claims are instances of more fundamental commitments that are independent of Ayer's positivism. Moreover, each stands opposed to fundamental claims in Cook Wilsonian epistemology and philosophy of language, at least as extended and refined by Austin. -The first thesis involves a commitment to a \emph{Lockean conception of knowledge}: +The first claim involves a commitment to a \emph{Lockean conception of knowledge}: \begin{quote} I believe that, in practice, most people agree with John Locke that ``the certainty of things existing \emph{in rerum natura}, when we have the testimony of our sense for it, is not only as great as our frame can attain to, but as our condition needs.'' \citep[1]{Ayer:1958kx} \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 thesis 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, 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. Moreover, perceptual knowledge, knowledge made available by perception, need not be inferential or otherwise based on evidence. Propositional knowledge about the material environment need not be formed on the ``evidence of the senses'' literally construed. Sid's seeing the pig is not evidence for the pig's presence; rather, in seeing the pig, the pig's presence is merely evident to Sid. +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. + +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.) + +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. + +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} + \ldots\ it may be said, even if such cautious formulae are not intrinsically incorrigible, surely there will be plenty of cases in which what we say by their utterance will in fact be incorrigible \ldots\ Well, yes, no doubt this is true. But then exactly the same thing is true of utterances in which quite different forms of word are employed \ldots\ if I watch for some time an animal a few feet in front of me, in a good light, if I prod it perhaps, and sniff, and take note of the noises it makes, I may say, `That’s a pig’; and this too will be `incorrigible’, nothing could be produced that would show that I had made a mistake. +\end{quote} +If circumstances are propitious, Sid can know that there is a pig before him by seeing the pig. Seeing the pig and recognizing as a pig the animal that he sees is incompatible with the pig's absence and so tantamount to proof of a porcine presence. So Sid can know there's a pig and can express this knowledge by saying ``That's a pig''. This is not undermined by there being other circumstances and other occasions where the very same sentence could be used to say something false and so fail to express knowledge. That there are other possible circumstances where Sid would speak falsely and fail to express knowledge is consistent with Sid, in the present circumstances, speaking truly and expressing knowledge of a pig before him. + +Relatedly, Sid in knowing that there is a pig before him does not know this on the basis of perceptual evidence. +\begin{quote} + The situation in which I would properly be said to have evidence for the statement that some animal is a pig is that, for example, in which the beast itself is not actually on view, but I can see plenty of pig-like marks on the ground outside its retreat. If I find a few buckets of pig-food, that’s a bit more evidence, and the noises and the smell may provide better evidence still. But if the animal then emerges and stands there plainly in view, there is no longer any question of collecting evidence; its coming into view doesn’t provide me with more evidence that it’s a pig, I can now just see that it is, the question is settled. +\end{quote} + +Here we have an application of Austin's \citeyearpar{Austin:1961kl} idea in ``Other Minds'' that there is a contrast between believing and knowing. In the case of belief, one can ask ``Why?'' In the case of knowledge, one can merely inquire about the means by which one came to know, by asking ``How?'' In suffering a perfect matching hallucination and mistakenly judging that there is a pig before him, Pia may ask of ``Why does Sid believe that?'' And an adequate answer may be that it looked to Sid as if there was a pig before him. Looking as if there was a pig before him would be evidence for the perceptual belief. But if Sid just knows that there is a pig before him in the propitious circumstance of pig made manifest in his experience, then Pia cannot ask why Sid knows this. And, correlatively, Sid could not adequately answer her by citing as a evidence that it looked to him as if there was a pig before him. + + + + + +% 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. -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. +% Austin is certainly right that the root of the debate with \emph{Ayer} is a concern for the incorrigibility of a certain class of sentences. However, it is less clear that this diagnosis applies more generally to other sense-data theorists. For example, \citet{Price:1932fk}, who Austin cites as keeping bad company with Ayer in this regard, simply does not have Ayer's epistemological motivations. Price's concerns are phenomenological---experience manifestly presents objects to us, and his commitment to sense data is a piece of substantive metaphysics that Ayer would reject \citep[see][for discussion]{Burnyeat:1979mv,Martin:2000nx}. -Austin is certainly right that the root of the debate with \emph{Ayer} is a concern for the incorrigibility of a certain class of sentences. However, it is less clear that this diagnosis applies more generally to other sense-data theorists. For example, \citet{Price:1932fk}, who Austin cites as keeping bad company with Ayer in this regard, simply does not have Ayer's epistemological motivations. Price's concerns are phenomenological---experience manifestly presents objects to us, and his commitment to sense data is a piece of substantive metaphysics that Ayer would reject \citep[see][for discussion]{Martin:2000nx}. + % Second, in both the good and bad cases there is a judgment that Sid can make with certainty, a judgement about how things appear in his experience. % section perception (end) perception.tex 2b65425e0d9f72edcd3a4aa133ed36d0fc4d6121 PhilGeek eli@markelikalderon.com http://github.com/PhilGeek/oxford-realism/commit/9317244772f71b38ba476084997fc6a4b7e7a2df 9317244772f71b38ba476084997fc6a4b7e7a2df 2009-11-07T18:03:47-08:00 2009-11-07T18:03:47-08:00 Added material on Austin 68b3695000c16a449334c246ba82613c794b7f9a PhilGeek eli@markelikalderon.com