teorema Revista internacional de filosofia CONSEJO EDITORIAL
J.J. ACERO, U. Granada
J. McDowell, U. Pittsburgh tF. MONTERO, U. Valencia 1. MOSTEIUN, CSIC, Madrid
R. BENEYTO, U. Valencia
tJ.L. BLASCO, U. Valencia R. BODEl, U. Pisa M. BUNGE, U. McGill,Montreal
C.U. MOULINES,U. Munich
C. MaYA. U. Valencia C.P. OTERO, UCLA
M. CACCIARI, U. Venecia J. CORBi, U. Valencia
D.F. PEARS, U. Oxford J.L. PRADES, U. Gerena
N. CHOMSKY, MIT i'D. DAVIDSON, DC Berkeley
D. QUESADA, U. Autonoma, Barcelona i'W.v.O. QUINE, u. Harvard
J. EqIEVERRfA, CSIC, Madrid
tJ.
FERRATER MORA, Bryn Mawr
College
J, FODOR, U. Rutgers-CUNY
I. REauERA, U. Extremadura M. SABATES, U. Kansas
tJ.D. GARdA BACCA, U. Caracas
M. GARcfA-CARPINTERO, U. Barcelona A. GARciA SUAREZ, U. Oviedo C.GARcfA-1RE~JANo,U.Comprurens~
Madrid M. GARRIDO, U. Complutense, Madrid P. GOCHET, U. Lieja C. G6MEZ, CSIC.Madrid A. GOMILA., U. La Laguna S. HAA.CK,U. Miami tS. HAMPsH:fRE, U. Oxford J. HIERRO, U. Antonoma, Madrid F. JARAUTA, U. Murcia M. JIMENEZ REDONDO, U. Valencia J. de LoRENZO, U. Valladolid
M,A. QUINTANILLA, U. Salamanca V. RANTALA, U. Tampere
tM. SANCHEZ-MAZAS, U. Pais Vasco J. SANMARTiN, U. Valencia J.R. SEARLE, UC Berkeley J. SEOANE, U. Valencia G. SOLANA, U. Autonoma, Madrid E. SOSA, U. Brown P.F. STRAWSON, U. Oxford C. THIEBAUT, U. Carlos III,Madrid Ch. THIEL, U. Erlangen R. TUOMF.LA, U. Helsinki A. VALCARCBL, U. Oviedo tG.H. von WRIGHT, Academia de Finlandia
DIRECTOR
L.M. VALDES, U. Oviedo SECRETARIO
A. GARCfA RODlUGlJEZ. U. Murcia
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I
INDICE ASPECTS OF TI:IE PlllLOSOPHY OF JOHN McDoWELL DIRECTOR INVITADO: .ANGEL GARCIA RODRIGUEZ .1
A. GARCiA RODRIGUEZ, Introduction
5
ARTICULOS J. M.cDoWELL~ The Disjunctive Conception ofExperience as Material for a Transcendental Argument
19
S. VIRVlDAKIS, On Mclsowell's Conception ofthe 'Transcendental'
35
J. McDoWELL, Response to Stelios Virvidiakis
59
J. VEGA ENCABO, Appearances and Disjunctions: Empirical Authority in McDowell is Space ofReasons
63
J. McDoWELL, Response to Jesus Vega Encabo
82
J. CHURCH, Locating the Space ofReasons
85
1. McDoWELL, Response to Jennifer Church
97
C. PAGONDIOTIS, Mclrowell's Transcendental Empiricism and the Theory-Ladenness ofExperience
101
J. McDoWELL, Response to Costas Pagondiotis
115
S. GONzALEZ Reasons
ARNAL~
Non-Articulable Content and the Realm of 121
J. McDoWELL, Response to Stella Gonzalez Arnal
132
J.-L. PRADES, Variettes ofInternal Relations: Intention, Expression and Norms
137
1. McDoWELL, Response to Josep Lluls Prades
155
W. CHlLD, On Having a MeaningBefore One's Mind
161
J.McDowELL, Response to William Child
176
S. SAWYER, The Role ofObject-Dependent Contentin 181
Psychological Explanation 1. McDoWELL, Response to Sarah Sawyer
193
D. L6PEZ DE SA, Values vs. Secondary Qualities
197
1. McDOWELL, Response to Dan Lopez de Sa
211
BIBLIOGRAFIA DE JOHN McDOWELL
215
LIBROS RECIENTES DE PENSAMlENTO
225
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D. MORENO MORENO, George Santayana y Bertrand Russell: 1
Un didlogo
NOTA EDITORIAL
El numero anterior de teorema (XXIV/3), dedicado monograficamente a conmemorar el primer centenario de la publicaci6n del celebre articulo de \ Bertrand Russell "On Denoting" no menciona por error ni en el indice ni en la contraportada que JORGE RODlUGUEZ MARQUEZE -autor de la "Preeentacion't--; es tambien el DIRECTOR INVITADO de dicho monografico, Pedimos disculpas a nuestrcs lectores y al Sr. Rodriguez Marqueze por esta importante omision que esta nota intenta subsanar. l
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--teorema Vol. XXVII. 2006, pp. 5-17
Introduction Angel Garcia Rodriguez In March 2004, under the general auspices of the Spanish Society of Analytic Philosophy (SEFA), the Department of Philosophy at the University of Murcia hosted a three-day workshop on the philosophy of John .McDowell. This issue ofteorema publishes the papers presented at the workshop, together with responses to each paper, speficically written for this issue by John McDowelL In addition, John McDowell has contributed a previously unpublished article. A local team including Manuel Hernandez Iglesias, Francisco Calvo Garzon, and Angel Garcia Rodriguez, led the organization of the workshop; but many other individuals and institutions provided necessary help. Special thanks are due, in the first place, to all participants in the workshop, particularly those who contributed papers for discussion. Among them, special acknowledgement must be made to John M.cDowell for his generous engagement in discussion with the other speakers. Thanks also go to. the members of the scientific committee involved in the selection of the papers presented at the workshop: Juan Jose Acero, Josep Corbl, Tobies Grimaltos, Josep Macia, Daniel Quesada, Luis Valdes-Villanueva, and Jose Luis Zalabardo. On the institutional side, formal acknowledgement and gratitude must go to the following bodies. They are the Fundacion Cajamurcia, both for the use of their premises and for liberal financial support; the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, for awarding a special grant (acci6n especial BFF 2002-11610-E) to help finance the event; and the University of Murcia, for further help with financing the workshop. The list of acknowledgements would not be complete without the names of those who have assisted with the preparation of this volume for publication. Thus, I would like to thank the editor of teorema for his unreserved support with the project; and Noreen Mabin, for her meticulous linguistic revision of some of the papers. The rest of this introduction will attempt to provide the background to the papers published here, paying special attention to those aspects of John McDowell's philosophy with which authors engage in their papers. Readers sufficiently familiar with the breadth and depth of the philosophy of John McDowell should simply skip the introduction, and move directly to the papers, and the subsequent responses.
5
6
Angel Garcia Rodriguez
In his article "The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument", JOEfN McDoWELL discusses the traditional problem of scepticism about the external world; or more precisely, the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the external world through perception. Arguments to the effect that something is a. condition of possibility for thought or experience can be labelled, in Kantian spirit, "transcendental". Recent analytic philosophy has been particularly concerned with the nature and anti-sceptical power of such arguments. Thus, it has become commonplace to distinguish between the following two types: one, ambitious transcendental arguments, to the effect that the world must be a certain way as a condition of thought or experience; two, modest transcendental arguments, to the effect that the world must be conceived to be a certain way as a condition of thought or experience. It has also become commonplace to note their different anti-sceptical power: ambitious transcendental arguments would prove the falsity of the traditional sceptical claim that there is no external world; whereas the conclusion of modest transcendental arguments would be compatible, for all we can (or must) conceive, with the non-existence of an external world. However, this has not led to a general endorsement of ambitious transcendental arguments, for as Barry Stroud has persuasively argued, they crucially involve independently problematic anti-realist premises allowing the move from how our thought or experience in fact is, to how the world must be. For this reason, it has been widely accepted that a modest conclusion might well be all we can hope for in a transcendental strategy against scepticism. In his article, McDowell proposes a new type of transcendental argument, different from the ambitious and modest types considered above. What sets McDowell's transcendental argument apart is that it does not aim to establish any theses, either about the large-scale layout of the world, or about the large-scale layout of our conception of the world. Rather, Mclrowell's transcendental argument is diagnostic in spirit, aiming to remove a prop upon which traditional scepticism about the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the external world through perception relies - namely, in McDowell's own words, "the thought that the warrant for a perceptual claim provided by an experience can never be that the experience reveals how things are". McDowell's transcendental argument takes as its starting-point the unproblematic idea that "experience purports to be of objective reality", and concludes that the intelligibility of that idea requires that "we ... be able to make sense of an epistemically distinguished class of experiences, ... those in which how things are makes itself ... available to one" in perceptual experience. McDowell then relies on his disjunctive conception of experience (as developed in his "Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge" and "Singular Thought and the Extent of Inner Space") to clarify the move from the starting-point to the conclusion; and ultimately to show how, once the prop is ren~bved, the traditional sceptical predicament simply "falls to the ground".
Introduction
7
McDowell's transcendental argument has encountered strong opposition. In his article, McDowell defends it from an attack recently mounted by Crispin Wright; an attack based on the assimilation of Mcfsowell's own argument to Moore's proof of an external world. In this volume, STELIOS VIRVIDAKIS also discusses the nature and effectiveness of McDowell's transcendental argument, in a paper entitled "On Mcfrowell's Conception of the "Iranscendental'". In the first part of his paper, Virvidakis takes issue with McDowell's claim that his is a new type of transcendental argument. According to Virvidakis, it is not new, for it must be seen either as an ambitious transcendental argument, implicitly assuming verificationist principles; or as a modest transcendental argument dealing with (in Virvidakis' own terms) "our own understanding of our epistemic predicament". In either case, the claim to novelty would be undermined. In the second part of his paper, Virvidakis puts forward a different, though related, challenge to McDowell's transcendental argument. The context for the challenge is provided by an examination of McDowell's general recourse to a transcendental strategy, as part of his philosophical method. In particular, Virvidakis explores the prima facie tension between the apparently substantial results of McDowell's transcendental strategy and his committed defence of a Wittgensteinian therapeutic conception of philosophical enquiry, and concludes on a sceptical note about McDowell's ability to avoid the tension. The challenge issuing from this is that, even if McDowell's transcendental argument above were genuinely novel, it remains prima facie problematic that McDowell can avail himself of it, for it is not clear how its diagnostic spirit can be squared with the substantial results of his transcendental strategy as a whole. JESUS VEGA ENCABO's contribution to this volume, entitled "Appearances and Disjunctions", is also obliquely related to McDowell's article, which presents the.transcendental argument above as inspired by Wilfrid Sellars' conception of-experience. Although Vega Encabo does not explicitly consider the effectiveness of McDowelPs transcendental argument, he does find a problem with the disjunctive conception of experience on which McDowell's transcendental argument crucially depends. Furthermore, this problem would affect the Sellarsian inspiration of McDowelPs transcendental argument. For McDowell, the disjunctive conception of appearances stands opposed to the "highest common factor" conception of experience, featuring in the argument from illusion in support of indirect perceptual realism. According to the highest common factor conception, it is a phenomenological fact that "the occurrence of deceptive cases [is] experientially indistinguishable from non-deceptive cases" [McDowell (1998a), p. 389]; which in turn supports the conclusion that, in deceptive and non-deceptive cases alike, the content of one's experience falls short of the facts: it is a mere appearance. Contrariwise, the gist of the disjunctive conception of appearances is that this
8
Angel Garcia Rodriguez
conclusion is not warranted by the phenomenological fact, for the phenomenological fact is a disjunction. In McDowell's own words, "an appearance that such-and-such is the case can be either a mere appearance or the fact that such-and-such is the case making itself perceptually manifest to someone" [(1998a), p. 386; cfr. (1998b), p. 242]. The significance of this distinction is that different conceptions of the nature of perceptual knowledge ensue. According to the highest common factor conception of experience, perceptually knowing that p involves an inference from the content of the experience to the wordly facts causing the experience. On the other hand, the disjunctive conception of appearance allows for direct perceptual access to the facts, in non-deceptive cases; and therefore makes the idea of direct (non-inferential) perceptual knowledge intelligible. Vega Encabo' s main concern is that, as considered in the disjunctive conception, non-deceptive appearances have an epistemically privileged status that clashes with the Sellars ian thought that "in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing ... we are placing it in tile logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says" [Sellars (1997), §36]. FOf, in Vega Encabo's own words, the Sellarsian thought means that "every entitlement within the space of reasons [is] inferential", in stark contrast with the epistemic standing of experience in non-deceptive cases, according to the disjunctive conception. For this reason, Vega Encabo concludes that, disjunctively (and ~herefore, asymme~~~ally) concei.ved, experiences cannot be part of "the .logical space of reaso~as characterized by Sellars. It would follow from here (something not explicitly considered by Vega Encabo) that a transcendental argument based on the disjunctive conception of experience cannot be claimed to be inspired by Sellars, pace McDowell. As Sellars' previous quote makes clear, the logical space of reasons is a space of normative relations, such as warrant (for states of knowledge) or correctness (for contentful states in general). McDowell makes use of Sellars' notion in the context of his defence of "minimal empiricism" [(1996), p. xi] - a view about the relation between thought (mind) and world as mediated by experience, The crucial idea is that experience is a "tribunal" to which our empirical (contentful) thinking is "answerable" [(1996), p. xii], For McDowell, this space of normative relations stands opposed, not to the space of natural relations simpliciter, but rather to a particular conception of nature, according to which natural relations "are different in kind from the normative relations that constitute the logical space of reasons" [(1996), p. xv]. McDowell calls it "the realm of law" [(1996), p. xv]. Ultimately, McDowell seeks to undermine that conception of nature by exposing it as a prejudice: there is an alternative conception where the relations proper to the space of reasons are natural relations. McDowell's crucial idea here is that one's initiation into the space of reasons is a maturation of one's natural abilities. But
Introduction
9
this naturalism of second nature does not entail a denial of the space of reasons versus realm of law dichotomy, for the former space is genuinely sui generis [(1996), p. xviii], Rather, what the exposure of the prejudice means is that the sui generis character of the logical space of reasons is not incompatible with naturalism, properly understood. McDowell's defence of the sui generis character of the logical space of reasons, in the context of his naturalism of second nature, is likely to cause frowning. For it is an alternative to a widespread conception, "bald naturalism", according to which "the logical space of reasons can be reconstructed out of" the realm of law [(1996), p. xviii]. Furthermore, frowning may 1.11rn into perplexity upon noticing that McDowell's position is also meant to be an alternative to what might look like the only option after rejecting bald naturalism, namely "rampant platonism" [(1996), p. 77]. Rampant platonism is a form of "supernaturalism" [(1996), p. 78], "picturing the space of reasons as an autonomous structure ... constituted independently of anything specifically human" [(1996), p. 77]. McDowell finds a common underlying assumption in bald naturalism and rampant platonism namely, the picture of nature mentioned above, where the equation between the natural and the realm of law means that normative relations cannot be natural. Jt is common to both because the difference between bald naturalism and rampant platonism lies ill that, once that picture of nature is in place, rampant platonism simply adds on the sui generis space of reasons. In opposition to this, McDowell's defence of the sui generis character of the logical space of reasons is an alternative to both, because it entails rejecting the underlying picture of nature. JENNIFER CHURCH's paper, "Locating the Space of Reasons", engages with this aspect of McDowell's philosophy; ie, with the relationship between , the space of reasons and the realm of law. As suggested, McDowell's view is one of stark contrast, for "the structure of the space of reasons can[not] be integrated into the layout of the realm of law" [(1996), p. 88]. But this may sound puzzling. One presumable source of the puzzle may lie in a sort of naturalist impulse, which McDowell's stark contrast would appear to put at risk. According to philosophers stirred by this impulse, the only way to save the reality of the space of reasons would require a reductionist move, connecting it appropriately to the realm of law - just what Molrowell's picture disallows. Ho this is not Church's viewpoint, for she explicitly endorses M well's anti-reductionist strategy. Rather, her concern is a residual puzzle about the relationship between the items in the space of reasons and the items in the realm of law, once realism and anti-reductionism are adopted. In opposition to Mclsowell's stark contrast, Church argues for (in her own words) "an ontology that is doubly constituting", in that "the very same facts can exist both within the space of reasons [...] and within the realm of law"; just like blushing or wincing are constituted by both the lawful and normative relations into which they enter.
10
Angel Garda Rodriguez
As noted above, McDowell's defence of the sui generis character of the logical space of reasons is part of his defence of "minimal empiricism", a view about empirical content where experience plays the role of a tribunal to which thought is answerable. The gist of McDowell's conception of perceptual experience is that, to satisfy such a role, experience must justify empirical thought, and therefore must belong within the logical space of normative relations. On the assumption that the space of normative relations is the space proper to concept-using creatures, perceptual experience must be thoroughly conceptual. Let us call this view "conceptualism". According to McDowell, conceptualism is an alternative to ~wo other possible views about the relation between thought and experience. One, a view that abandons the existence of rational (normative) relations between thought and experience, allowing only for causal relations a proponent of which is Donald Davidson. Two, a view that conceives of the rational relations between thought and experience as involving a crossing of the boundary of the conceptual - the Myth of the Given. Both Davidson's view and the Myth of the Given are attempts to preserve a role for experience in empirical thought; but neither manages to safeguard the desiderata implicit in the idea of a tribunal- namely, that the relationship between thought and experience must be both rational (normative) and conceptuaL Conceptualism is therefore central to Mclfowell's general project of showing that, despite belonging in a sui generis space, the notion of empirical content (and therefore some form of empiricism) is not philosophically problematic. It is, indeed, one of the theses that has received more attention from his critics. In this volume, two papers engage with it. COSTAS PAGONDIOTIS, in his paper "McDowell's Transcendental Empiricism and the Theory-Ladenness of Ex ience", discusses McDowell's notion of perceptual experience, and its rela] to belief. On the one hand, according to McDowell, perceptual experience is different from the belief it rationally grounds. On the other hand, ifhe is to avoid idealism, experiencing a fact must be distinguished from the sheer obtaining of a fact. An initially plausible suggestion might be that experience consists in an attitude to the facts, an attitude different from that of active endorsement typical of belief - namely, awareness. However, Pagondiotis rejects the idea that the difference between perceptual experience and belief is a matter of different attitudes to the same content (a fact). Instead, he suggests, it is a matter of different contents. On the assumption that the content of a belief is conceptual, the former might be expected to lead to the thesis that the content of perception must be nonconceptual. However, Pagondiotis argues that the difference between perceptual experience and belief is that the former involves more conceptual content, and explains this in terms of the fact that, in experience, the world is presented as affording active exploration,
Introduction
11
Unlike Pagondiotis, STELLA GONzALEZ ARNAL takes issue with conceptualism in her paper "Non-Articulable Content and the Realm of Reasons". In recent years, McDowell has defended conceptualism from two main attacks: one stemming from the fine-grained nature of perception; the other, from the similarity between the perceptual abilities of adults and those of animals and small children. In her paper, Gonzalez Arnal considers a different challenge to conceptualism, stemming from our experience as embodied, skilful agents in the world. Drawing on the work of Michael Polanyi, Gonzalez Arnal argues that our active engagement in the world necessarily includes a tacit dimension, one that cannot be the focus of our awareness, and therefore cannot be articulated linguistically. The challenge to McDowell can then be presented as a sort of paradox. On the assumption that the conceptual can be equated with the linguistic, the previous point about a tacit dimension in our experience as agents means that the latter must count as non-conceptual. However, given that our apprehension of the world as embodied, skilful agents is subject to normative constraints, our experience as agents belongs in the logical space of reasons. Now, Gonzalez Arnal submits, so conceived, our experience of the world as agents clashes with McDowell's view of the space of reasons as thoroughly conceptual. Gonzalez Arnal's solution to the paradox is to qualify McDowell's conception, allowing for a novel layer of experiential content, one that is not linguistically articulable, but is normative. As already noted, Mcfrowell's conceptualism is partly an attack on the Myth of the Given. But the Myth of the Given has also been McDowell's target in a different respect. According to his reading of Wittgensteins private language argument, "the 'private linguist' succumbs to a version of the dualism of scheme and given: his thought is ... that a stream of consciousness is made up of non-conceptual items that justify conceptualizations of them" [(1998c), p. 280]. This involves a conception of the mental, the "inner life", as "the 'in itself', brutely alien to concepts" [(1998d), p. 307]. That is, a conception of rr"ilJftal content which involves a non-conceptual item awaiting conceptualization by the mind. McDowell's influential commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations has sought to dislodge it. In this volume, William Child and Josep Lluis Prades take up Mcfrowell's reading of Wittgenstein's conception of the mental. The background is provided by what McDowell dubs "the master thesis" [(1998e), p. 270], according to which mental contents, like signposts, stand in need of interpretation, for the idea of accord between mental contents and extra-mental reality to apply. The reference to signposts tries to capture the relationship established by Wittgenstein between rule-following and the nature of intentional states (such as belief or expectation). For the relevant notion of accord is present at both levels: one, in the relation between a rule (eg, a linguistic rule) and its application; two, in the relation between an intentional state and its conditions of satisfac-
12
Angel Garcia Rodriguez
tion (ie, between the "that't-clause and a wordly state of affairs). Thus, what the master thesis asserts is that both rule-following and intentionality require an interpretation of the uninterpreted items in one's mind. With the master thesis in place, the following dilemma looks compulsory: either there is an unending regress of interpretations that makes the idea of determinate meaning (of a rule, or an intentional state). problematic; or there is a final interpretation connecting mental items with their meaning. According to Saul Kripke's celebrated reconstruction of Wittgenstein's argument, Wittgenstein accepts the dilemma, which in tum leads him to a paradox about meaning. For, as there is no final interpretation, any putative interpretation can be further interpreted, thereby jeopardizing the very idea of determinate meaning. Contra Kripke, McDowell's key contn\bution is that the dilemma is not compulsory: instead, he claims, Wittgenstein has shown a way of avoiding the dilemma, insofar as "there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation" [Wittgenstein (2001), §201]. On this basis, McDowell then goes on to undermine other aspects of Kripke's reconstruction. According to Kripke, once the dilemma is accepted, the only way out for Wittgenstein is to accept that grasping a rule correctly is (in McDowell's terms) a matter of "a social practice of mutual recognition and acceptance" [(l998e), p. 269]. Hence, Wittgenstein's insistence on the role played by the community in rule-following. Although McDowell also stresses the role of the community, he disagrees with Kripke.'s reconstruction. In the latter, the role of the conununity is consistent with the acceptance of the dilemma in the previous paragraph. However, for Mclzowell, there is a direct link between the thesis that following a rule is a communal practice and the thesis that following a rule is not a matter of interpretation - namely, following a rule is a matter of being initiated into certain communal practices. Therefore, contra Kripke, the role of the community is incompatible with the thesis that grasping a rule is a matter of interpretation, and ultimately with the master thesis on which that thesis is based. Against this background, JOSEP LLUis PRADES' paper "Varieties of Internal Relations: Intention, Express~:St and Norms" queries certain aspects of McDowell's reading of WittgensteiYf's account of rule-following and intentionality. In particular, he finds no parallel in Wittgenstein between the thesis that grasping a rule (eg, a linguistic rule) is not a matter of interpretation, and the nature of intentional states in generaL For McDowell, there must be such a parallel if the thesis that grasping a rule is not a matter of interpretation is to be invoked to dislodge the master thesis. But Prades finds a problem here, concerning the intentionality of creatures that are not part of a relevant (ie, linguistic) community, such as babies or isolated animals. It is beyond doubt that such creatures have some, albeit primitive, intentional states. But if McDowell's parallel between rule-following and intentionality is accepted, then, insofar as those creatures are not part of a relevant (linguistic) commu-
Introduction
13
nity, they must lack intentionality. In order to avoid this conclusion, the main thrust of Prades ~ paper is his development of an alternative Wittgensteinian account of intentionality, according to which (in Prades' own words) "expressive behaviour is the proto-phenomenon of intentionality". Moving further all, Mclrowell's critique of the view about mental COIltent embodied in the master thesis is not a rejection of the very idea of mental content. Therefore, how are mental contents to be understood, from a Wittgensteinian perspective, in accordance with the rejection of both the thesis that grasping a rule is a matter of interpretation and the master thesis? WILLIAM CHILD's paper "On Having a Meaning Before One's Mind" presents two different interpretations of Wittgenstein's account of mental content; in particular, of his account of what it is for the meaning ofa word to come to mind. First, a two-component view, according to which for the meaning of a word to come to mind is for someone to have an intentionalityfree, conscious experience, plus the ability to apply it on different occasions. Second, McDowell's anti-constructivist view, according to which Wittgenstein does not offer a positive explanation of what it is for the meaning of a word to come to mind, but rather attacks a misconception of the phenomenon in question, one in which what comes to mind must be an uninterpreted item. Against both these views, Child puts forward a Wittgensteinian middle-way, one that is different both from the commitment to the master thesis contained in the two-component view, and from the anti-constructivist view of the phenomenon as basic. In particular, contra Mcfrowell's anti-constructivism, Child presses the point that Wittgenstein offers "illumination" of the phenomenon, and therefore cannot take it as basic. As noted above, McDowell's conceptualism is arrived at in the context of his defence of "minimal empiricism" - to repeat, a view about the relation between thought and reality, where experience plays a justificatory role. It is in this context that, as he states in the opening sentence of Mind and World, "concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world" [(1996), p. 3]. In other words, the mediation provided by conceptual experience must be justificatory, and therefore normative. Now, this idea of mediation may suggest an indirect relation between thought and reality, where concepts act as intermediaries, surrogates of reality, adequately relating thought to reality when one's thoughts are true. But McDowell has resisted such a suggestion: the mediating role of concepts does not entail a denial of what we might call "direct realism", something he usually expresses through the image of openness to the way the world is. Indeed, he has emphasized that only a mediating role of concepts, in the justificatory and normative sense that he accepts, can guarantee a proper defence of the idea of "openness to the layout of reality" [(1996), p. 26]. Thus, he has argued that such alternative accounts of the relation between thought and experi-
Angel Garcia Rodriguez
14
ence as Davidson's causal (but not justificatory) mediation, cannot conceive of experience as "transparent" [(1996)~ p. 145], insofar as there is no account of how the contents of thought, supposedly the result of a "mere" causal relation, are correct. The notion of the conceptual used by McDowell is a Fregean notion: "the right gloss on 'conceptual' is ... 'belonging to the realm of Fregeau sense'" [(1996), p. 107]. Combined with the idea that a Fregean sense is a mode of presentation, the gist of minimal empiricism is, then, that empirical thought involves a mode of presentation of the world, where the mode of presentation is what is captured and embodied in the content of one's thought. But what more can be said about these modes ofpresentation? According to descriptivism, a mode of presentation is a descriptive speci"the fication of an object, something with the following linguistic form such-and-such". At first sight, it might look as ifMcDowell ought to be sympathetic to the descriptivist gloss on the Fregean notion of sense (itself a gloss on the notion of the conceptual), for McDowell has emphasized the close connection between the conceptual and the linguistic. But if this were the right way to understand McDowell's notion of the conceptual, then his defence of minimal empiricism as a form of direct realism would be in jeopardy. It is a lasting lesson of Russell's treatment of the semantic'features of descriptions (and the sentences containing them) that they are meaningful even when they do not refer; indeed, that their semantic role is not to refer to an object (the semantic role of names). The significance of this for McDowell's minimal empiricism would be that a thought that such-and-such is the case would be meaningful independently of whether it depicts reality. But then, far from allowing for an image of (conceptual) experience as openness to the world, the descriptivist gloss on the conceptual would make the relation between thought and reality problematic, contrary to McDowell's objectives. Now, in papers prior to Mind and World, McDowell has questioned the connection between descriptivism and Fregean sense. An upshot of the descriptivist gloss on the Fregean notion of sense would be that the latter is incapable of dealing with singular thoughts, thoughts "that would not be available to be thought or expressed if the relevant object, or objects, did not exist" [(l998f), p. 204]. For, insofar as (on the descriptivist account) the contentofa thought includes a description, and the logical form of descriptions is given by Russell's analysis, the content of a thought does not include an essential reference to objects. However, McDowell, together with Gareth Evans, has argued that the essentials ofFrege's notion of sense can be used in an account of singular thoughts. The of the vi~defended by Evans and McDowell is that Fregean senses are individuated de ie by reference to an object. SARAH SAWYER'S paper "The Role of Object-Dependent Content in Psychological Explanation" is a contribution to this area of McDowell's philosophy. The background to Sawyer's paper is provided by a contrast between two
re,
\0t~
Introduction
15
views of singular thought. One in which singular thought is explained as a function of two independent components: a conceptual content, plus a (nonconceptual) context (including objects). The other, in which the components of singular thoughts are fully conceptual, but de re (ie, exploiting the presence of a wordly object), contents. Sawyer's immediate concern is with the idea that the former, dual-component view is preferable, because it can better accommodate our intuitions about the psychological explanations of intentional action; for instance, the idea of a minimal set of sufficient conditions for action, operative across different contexts. Sawyer's paper criticizes this line of argument: according to her, minimal sets of sufficient conditions for intentional action support the dual-component view, only under a mistaken conception of a minimal set. It is mistaken in that it does not allow for the crucial idea that minimal sets include absences. But once this is properly acknowledged, Sawyer concludes, the Evans-McDowell view of singular thought, and its role in psychological explanations of action, is vindicated. A consequence of McDowell's defence of Fregean de re senses is that the Fregean notion of sense is not adequately glossed in descriptivist terms: the descriptivist cannot account for the semantic differences between sentences containing descriptions and sentences containing singular terms; whereas a Fregean can capture the semantic peculiarities of sentences containing singular terms in virtue of the de re individuation of senses. Therefore, there is no objection to McDowell's version of realism, stemming from his Fregean gloss on the conceptual ie, that which belongs in the realm of Fregean sense. Nonetheless, critics have often pointed out the difficulty in seeing McDowell's defence of "minimal empiricism" as a version of realism. In this volume, the issue of realism is explicitly considered by DAN L6PEZ DE SA; in particular, in relation to the nature of moral values. McDowell's writings on the nature of values (aesthetic or moral) can be taken as a defence of realism; although he prefers other, negative, labels, such as "anti-anti-realism" [cfr. the Preface to Mind, Value and Reality, p. viii], or "anti-non-cognitivism" [(1998g), p. 213], in view of the indirect character of his argumentative strategy, directed at the removal of misconceptions present in certain (popular) arguments and views. One such view of the nature of moral values is J. L. Mackie's error-theory. In McDowell's own terms, Mackie starts with the phenomenological claim that value "typically presents itself ... as something residing in an object and available to be encountered", but concludes that "the appearance is illusory: value is not found in the world, but projected into it, a mere reflection of subjective responses" [(1998h), p. 112J. The move to this conclusion relies crucially on relating the phenomenological claim to. a perceptual claim, in the sense that "values [are] brutely and absolutely there" [(1998i), p. 132],
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just as the primary qualities encountered in perception are conceived to be. once the reality of values is conceived as akin to the case of primary qualities, the obvious fact that values are not independent of human sensibility makes it plausible that the phenomenological claim must be corrected ie, values are not simply there, but are projections of our subjective responses. McDowell's counter-argument to Mackie has been to criticize the analogy between values and primary qualities; instead, secondary qualities provide a better model. For, although secondary qualities cannot "be adequately understood otherwise than in terms of dispositions to give rise to subjective states", this does not entail that they are "a mere figment of the subjective state", rather than being "there to be experienced" [(1998i), p. 136]. Thus, McDowell is employing a distinction between two different senses of the subjective, to the effect that the uncontroversial fact that values (like secondary qualities) are linked to certain human responses (subjective in the first sense) does not entail the controversial conception of values (and secondary qualities) as not being there (the second sense). On the basis of this distinction, McDowell claims that "[s]hifting to a secondary quality analogy renders irrelevant any worry about how something that is brutely there could nevertheless stand in an internal relation to some exercises of human sensibility" [(1998i), p. 146]. Lopez de Sa's paper "Values versus Secondary Qualities" fits here. The worry McDowell refers to in the pr~vious quote was voiced in Mackie's argument from queerness, according to which to avoid postulating such weird entities as values (weird in that they are both brutely there and internally related to human attitudes, for instance when they motivate us to take a certain course of action), the proposed projectivist correction of the phenomenological claim must be accepted. In this respect, the gist of McDowell's reply in defence of the reality of values is that a secondary quality analogy makes such worries irrelevant; it was only a mistaken conception of the idea that values are there that made such worries look definitive. However, Lopez de Sa, focusing on the moral case, claims in his paper that McDowell's argument for evaluative realism is too short. Building on recent work on the nature of response-dependent properties, Lopez de Sa argues that McDowell's conception of values as response-dependent properties cannot provide an adequate reply to the argument from queerness and at the same time amount to a defence of evaluative realism. * Departamento de Filosofia Universidad de Murcia Campus de Espinardo, E-30071 Murcia, Espana E-mail:
[email protected]
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Introduction
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NOTE
• Work for this introduction has been carried out under the research project BFF2003-08335-C03-02, awarded by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia.
REFERENCES
McDoWELL, J. (1996), Mind and World, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press. - (1998a), "Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge", in McDowell, J., Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 369"94. - (l998b), "Singular Thought and the Extent of Inner Space", in McDowell, 1., Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 228-59. - (1998c), "One Strand in the Private Language Argument", in McDowell, J., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 279~96. - (1998d), "Intentionality and Interiority in Wittgenstein", in McDowell, J., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 297-321. - (19980), "Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgensteiu's Later Philosophy", in McDowell, J., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 263-78. - (1998{) "Truth-Value Gaps", in McDowell, J., Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 197-213. - (1998g), "Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following" in Mcfrowell, 1., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 198-218. - (1998h), "Aesthetic Value, Objectivity and the Fabric of the World", in McDowell, J., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 112-30 - (1998i). "Values and Secondary Qualities", in McDowell, J., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, pp. 131-50. SELLARS, W. (1997), Empiricism and the Philosophy ofMind, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press. WITTGENSTETN, L. (2001), Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Blackwell.
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Vol. XXVIl, 2006, pp,
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The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument John McDowell
RESUMEN
En este articulo encuentro implicita en el tratamiento de Sellars del concepto de apariencia una concepcion disyuntiva de la experiencia perccptiva. Argumento que esta concepcion nos permite responder a un cierto tipo de escepticismo con un argumento transcendental, distinto de los discutidos recientemente en la filosofia analitica. La respuesta ataca una presuposicion del escepticismo, en lugar de responder directamente al reto esceptico sobre 1aposibilidad del conocimiento por percepcion, Trato de clarificar como funciona esta respuesta considerando una objeci6n de Crispin Wright. ABSTRACT
In this paper, I find a disjunctive conception of perceptual experience implicit in Sellars's treatment of the concept of appearance. I argue that this conception allows us to respond to a certain sort of scepticism with a transcendental argument, of a kind distinct from those discussed in a strand of recent analytic philosophy. The response attacks a presupposition of scepticism, rather than directly responding to its challenge to the possibility of knowledge through perception. I try to clarify how the response works by way of considering an objection by Crispin Wright.
1. In Individuals' and The Bounds ofSense.' P. F. Strawson envisaged transcendental arguments as responses to certain sorts of scepticism. An argument of the sort Strawson proposed was to establish a general claim about the world, a claim supposedly brought into doubt by sceptical reflections. Such an argument was to work by showing that unless things were as they were said to be in the claim that the argument purported to establish, it would not be possible for our thought or experience to have certain characteristics, not regarded as questionable even by someone who urges sceptical doubts. So the argument's conclusion was to be displayed as the answer to a "How possible?" question. That has a Kantian ring, and the feature of such arguments that the formulation fits is the warrant for calling them "transcendental". Barry Stroud responded to Strawson on the following Iines.' Perhaps we can see our way to supposing that if our thought or experience is to have certain characteristics it does have (for instance that experience purports to be
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of a world of objects independent of us), we must conceive the world in certain ways (for instance as containing objects that continue to exist even while we are not perceiving them). But it is quite another matter to suggest that by reflecting about how it is possible that our thought and experience are as they are, we could establish conclusions not just about how we must conceive the world but about how the world must be. Stroud writes: Even if we allow that we can come to see how our thinking in certain ways ncoessarily requires that we also think in certain other ways, and so perhaps in certain further ways as well, ... how can truths about the world which appear to say or imply nothing about human thought or experience be shown to be genuinely necessary conditions of such psychological facts as that we think and experience things in certain ways, from which the proofs begin? It would seem that we must find, and cross, a bridge of necessity from the one to the other. That would be a truly remarkable feat, and some convincing explanation would surely be needed of how the whole thing is possible."
According to Stroud, Kant's explanation is transcendental idealism. As Stroud reads it, transcendental idealism explains how that "bridge of necessity" can be crossed by saying that the world of which the transcendentally established claims are true is "only the 'phenomenal' world which is somehow 'constituted' by the possibility of our thought and experience of it"," Perhaps this might be better put by saying there is no bridge to cross. But then how satisfying a response to scepticism can be provided by such arguments? On this reading transcendental idealism does not so much respond to sceptical worries as brush them aside. Or perhaps it amounts to a concession that they are well placed. As Stroud puts it: [T]here is the challenge of saying in what ways idealism is superior to, or even different from, the sceptical doctrines it was meant to avoid. How it differs, for example, from Hume's view that we simply cannot avoid believing that every event has a cause, and cannot help acting for all the world as if it were true, but that it is not really true of the world as it is independently of \.18. 6
And even if Stroud does n~t succeed in raising our suspicions of transcendental idealism, Strawson is anyway suspicious of it. In The Bounds of Sense, Strawson claims to preserve fundamental Kantian insights, but outside the idealist frame in which Kant formulated them. So Strawsonian transcendental arguments are expressly not equipped with what Stroud identifies as the Kantian apparatus for explaining how that "bridge of necessity" can be crossed. Stroud suggests} accordingly, that the Strawsonian arguments can yield only conclusions on the near side of the bridge. They uncover structural connections within our thought or experience, enabling us to argue that our thought
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or experience must be a certain way as a condition for the possibility of their being a certain other way. That need not deprive the arguments of all force against scepticism. Suppose that whether things are a certain way comes within the scope of sceptical doubts. If we can establish that we must conceive things as being that way for it to be possible that our thought or experience has some characteristic that a sceptic would not or could not deny that it has, then we will have made some headway against that sceptical worry. This falls short of claiming to have shown that things must be that way for our thought and experience to be as they are. But with an argument of this more modest kind, we will have shown that, given the characteristic of our thought or experience that is the unquestioned starting-point of the argument, there is no possibility of our being rationally required to discard the conviction that the sceptical argument was supposed to undermine. Strawson has come to share Stroud's doubts about crossing that "bridge of necessity", It is not that he has given up the Kantian project, an inquiry into how it is possible that our thought and experience are as they are. But he has come to approach the project in something like the way Stroud recommends, as tracing connections within how we conceive and experience things, rather than between how we conceive and experience things and how things must be. The aim of the investigation, as Straws on more recently sees it, is to establish "a certain sort of interdependence of conceptual capacities and beliefs; e.g., ... that in order for self-conscious thought and experience to be possible, we must take it, or believe, that we have knowledge of external physical objects or other minds"?
2. This territory has been much worked over. 8 I am not going to work over it any more; I have sketched this picture of the state of play, in a certain region of recent discussion of transcendental arguments, only to bring out a contrast. I am not going to consider transcendental arguments of either of the two kinds that have come into view so far: neither the ambitious kind, in which the aim is to establish the truth of general claims about the world; nor the modest kind, in which the aim is to establish only that we cannot consistently go 011 taking it that our thought and experience are as they are in the relevant respects while withholding acceptance of the relevant claims about the world. Instead I want to consider a different approach to one sort of scepticism. I want to suggest that this different approach can be pursued through a kind of transcendental argument that belongs to neither of those two types. The scepticism in question is scepticism about perceptually acquired knowledge of the external world. And the approach in question is diagnostic.
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The diagnosis is that this scepticism expresses an inability to make sense of the idea of direct perceptual access to objective facts about the environment. What shapes this scepticism is the thought that even in the best possible case, the most that perceptual experience can yield falls short of a subject's having an enviromnental state of affairs directly available to her. Consider situations in which a subject seems to see that, say, there is a red cube in front of her. The idea is that even if we focus on the best possible case, her experience could be just as it is, in all respects, even if there were no red cube in front of her. This seems to reveal that perceptual experience provides at best inconclusive warrants for claims about the environment. And that seems incompatible with supposing we ever, strictly speaking, know anything about our objective surroundings." The familial' sceptical scenarios Descartes's demon, the scientist with our brains in his vat, the suggestion that all our apparent experience might be a dream are only ways to make this supposed predicament vivid. Suppose scepticism about our knowledge of the external world is recommended on these lines. In that case it constitutes a response if we can find a way to insist that we can make sense of the idea of direct perceptual access to objective facts about the environment. That contradicts the claim that what perceptual experience yields, even in the best possible case, must be something less than having an environmental fact directly available to one. And without that thought, this scepticism loses its supposed basis and falls to the ground. It is important that that is the right description of what this response achieves. We need not pretend to have an argument that would prove that we are not, say, at the mercy of Descartes's demon, using premises we can affirm, and inferential steps we can exploit, without begging questions against someone who urges sceptical doubts. As I said, the point of invoking the demon scenario and its like is only to give vivid expression to the predicament supposedly constituted by its not malting sense to think we can have environmental facts directly available to us. But if it does make sense to think we can have environmental facts directly available to us, there is no such predicament. And now someone who proposes those scenarios can no longer seem to be simply emphasizing a discouraging fact about our epistemic possibilities. When we reject the scenarios if we choose to bother with them at all we need no longer be hamstrung by a conception of argumentative legitimacy controlled by that understanding of their status. An accusation of questionbegging need no longer carry any weight. We can invert the order in which scepticism insists we should proceed, and say as common sense would, if it undertook to consider the sceptical" scenarios at a11- that our knowledge that those supposed possibilities do not obtain is sustained by the fact that we know a great deal about our environment, which would not be the case if we were not perceptually in touch with the world in just about the way we ordinarily suppose we are.
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Similarly, there is no need to establish, without begging questions against scepticism, that in any particular case of perceptual experience we actually are in the favourable epistemic position that scepticism suggests we could never be in. That would similarly be to accept tendentious ground rules for satisfying ourselves in given cases that we have knowledge of the environment. If we can recapture the idea that it is so much as possible to have environmental states of affairs directly presented to us in perceptual experience, we can recognize that such ground rules reflect a misconception of our cognitive predicament. And then our practice of making and assessing claims to environmental knowledge on particular occasions can proceed as it ordinarily does, without contamination by philosophy. There need no longer seem to be any reason to discount the fact that in real life the assessment is often positive,
3. Perhaps most people will find it obvious that reinstating the sheer possibility of directly taking in objective reality in perception would undermine a scepticism based on claiming that perceptual experience can never amount to that. (I shall consider an exception later.) But what does this have to do with transcendental arguments? Well, it depends on how the undermining move is defended. And it can be defended by an argument that is broadly Kantian, in the sense in which the arguments I was considering at the beginning are broadly Kantian. The argument aims to establish that the idea of environmental facts making themselves available to us in perception must be intelligible, because that is a necessary condition for it to be intelligible that experience has a characteristic that is, for purposes of this argument, not in doubt. The relevant characteristic is that experience purports to be of objective reality, When one undergoes perceptual experience, it at least appears to one as if things in one's environment are a certain way. Consider Wilfrid Sellars's discussion of "looks" statements in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". 10 Sellars urges something on the following lines. In order to understand the very idea of the objective purport of visual experience (to single out one sensory modality), we need to appreciate that the concept of experiences in which, say, it looks to one as if there is a red cube in front of one divides into the concept of cases in which one sees that there is a red cube in front of one and the concept of cases in which it merely looks to one as if there is a red cube in front of one (either because there is nothing there at an or because although there is something there it is not a red cube). At least implicit here is a thought that can be put as follows. In order to find it intelligible that experience has objective purport at all, we must be
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able to make sense of an epistemically distinguished class of experiences, those in which (staying with the visual case) one sees how things are those in which how things are makes itself visually available to one. Experiences in which it merely looks to one as if things are thus and so are experiences that misleadingly present themselves as belonging to that epistemically distinguished class. So we need the idea of experiences that belong to the epistemically distinguished class if we are to comprehend the idea that experiences have objective purport. If one acknowledges that experiences have objective purport, one cannot consistently refuse to make sense of the idea of experiences in which objective facts are directly available to perception. The scepticism I am considering purports to acknowledge that experiences have objective purport, but nevertheless supposes that appearances as such are mere appearances, ill the sense that any experience leaves it an open possibility that things are not as they appear. That is to conceive the epistemic significance of experience as a highest common factor of what we have in eases in which, as common sense would put it, we perceive that things are thus and so and what we have in cases in which that merely seems to be so so never higher than what we have in the second kind of case. I I The conception I have found in Sellars can be put, in opposition to that, as a disjunctive conception of perceptual appearance: perceptual appearances are either objective states of affairs making themselves manifest to subjects, or situations in which it is as if an objective state of affairs is making itself manifest to a subject, although that is not how things are. L2 Experiences of the first kind have an epistemic significance that experiences of the second kind do not have. They afford opportunities for knowledge of objective states of affairs. According to the highest common factor conception, appe~rances can never yield more, in the way of warrant for belief, than do those appearances in which it merely seems that one, say, sees that things are thus and so. But according to the Sellarsian transcendental argument, that thought undermines its own entitlement to the very idea of appearances. The highest common factor conception is supposedly grounded on a claim that seems unquestionable: the claim that from a subject's point of view, a misleading appearance can be indistinguishable from a case in which things are as they appear. That might be taken as a self-standing claim about the phenomenology of misleading appearance, available to be cited in explaining the fact that subjects can be misled by appearances. 80 taken, the claim is open to dispute." But the right way to take it is as simply registering the fact that, on that interpretation, it is supposed to explain: the undeniable fact that our capacity to get to know things through perception is fallible. 14 The claim of indistinguishability is supposed to warrant the thought that even in the best case in which a subject, say, has it visually appear to her that there is a red cube in front of her} her experience could be just as it is even if there were no red cube in front of her. But we need a distinction here. When
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we say her experience could be just as it is even if there were no red cube in front of her, we might be just registering that there could be a misleading experience that from the standpoint of her experience she could not distinguish from her actually veridical experience. In that case what we say is just a way of acknowledging that our capacity to acquire knowledge through perceptual experience is fallible. It does not follow that even in the best case, the epistemic position constituted by undergoing an experience can be no better than the epistemic position constituted by undergoing a misleading experience} even one that would admittedly be indistinguishable. The acknowledgement offallibility cannot detract from the excellence of an epistemic position, with regard to the obtaining of an objective state of affairs, that consists in having the state of affairs present itself to 011e in one's perceptual experience. This is where the disjunctive conception does its epistemological work. It blocks the inference limn the subjective indistinguishability of experiences to the highest common factor conception, according to which neither of the admittedly indistinguishable experiences could have higher epistemic worth than that of the inferior case. And the transcendental argument shows that the disjunctive conception is required, on pain of our losing our grip on the very idea that in experience we have it appear to us that things are a certain way. IS
4. This transcendental argument starts from the fact that perceptual experience at least purports to be of objective reality, and yields the conclusion that we must be able to make sense of the idea of perceptual experience that is actually of objective reality. I have urged that that is enough to undermine a familiar sort of scepticism about knowledge of the external world. Now there may be a temptation to object that this argument assumes too much. Should it be left unquestioned that perceptual experience purports to be of objective reality? There is plenty of room to argue that it is proper to start there. The sceptical arguments Descartes considers, for instance, do not question the fact that perceptual experience yields appearances that things are objectively the case. Descartes's arguments question only our entitlement to believe that things are as they appear to be. The highest common factor conception owes its attractiveness to the subjective indistinguishability of experiences all of which can be described in terms of the appearance that things are objectively thus and so. This supposed basis for scepticism does not need a more mini. . mal picture of experience. But what if we do decide that we ought to confront a more wholehearted scepticism, a scepticism willing to doubt that perceptual experience purports to be of objective reality? Well then, the transcendental argument I have been considering cannot do all the work. But it can still do some of the
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work. If this is the target, we need a prior transcendental argument, one that reveals the fact that consciousness includes states or episodes that purport to be of objective reality as a necessary condition for some more basic feature of consciousness, perhaps that its states and episodes are potentially selfconscious. Strawson's reading of the Transcendental Deduction in Kant's first Critique might serve, or perhaps the Transcendental Deduction itself It would take me too far afield to go into this here. The point is just that we cannot dismiss an argument that pivots on the disjunctive conception of perceptual appearance, on the ground that it does not itself establish the characteristic of perceptual experience that it begins from.
5, In a recent paper, Crispin Wright argues that as a response to scepticism, replacing the highest common factor conception of perceptual experience with a disjunctive conception is "dialectically quite ineffectual"." Wright starts from a helpful account of why G, E. Moore's "proof of an external world" - at least if taken at face value - is as unimpressive as nearly everyone finds it. 17 Moore moves from the premise "Here is a hand" to the conclusion, which is indeed entailed by that premise, that there is an external world. Wright takes Moore to suppose that his premise is itself grounded on something yet more basic: something Moore could express by saying "My experience is in all respects as of a hand held up in front of my face", And Wright's diagnosis of what goes wrong in Moore's argument is that the warrant this ground supplies cannot be transmitted across the acknowledged entailment from "Here is a hand" to, "There is an external world", The warrant that "My experience is as of a hand" provides for "Here is a hand" is defeasible, and it is defeated if the sceptic is right and we are, for instance, at the mercy of Descartes's demon.. We can allow it to warrant the premise of Moore's entailment only if we ifteady take ourselves to be entitled to accept the conclusion of the entailment. So the whole argument is question-begging. Wright now turns to the disjunctive conception. He sums up his verdict on it as follows (346-7): In brief: whether our perceptual faculties engage the material world directly [the thesis that the disjunctive conception is aimed at protecting] is one issue and whether the canonical justification of perceptual claims proceeds through a defeasible inferential base is another. One is, so far, at liberty to take a positive view of both issues. And when we do, the I-II-III pattern [the pattern of Moore's argument, augmented with a formulation of the ground for the premise of Moore's entailment] re-emerges along these lines:
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I Either I am perceiving a hand in front of my face or J am in some kind of delusional state II Here is a hand
Therefore HI There is a material world. It is clear that this is a mere variation on Moore's argument as Wright reconstructs it. In this version too, the support I provides for II is defeasible. That we take it not to be defeated depends on our already taking ourselves to be entitled to accept III. So it would be question-begging to suppose the argument provides any support for Ill. But what does this have to do with the disjunctive conception? The point of the disjunctive conception is that if one undergoes an experience that belongs on the «good" side of the disjunction, that warrants one in believing indeed presents one with an opportunity to know - that things are as the experience reveals them as being. When one's perceptual faculties "engage the material world directly", as Wright puts it, the result - a case of having an environmental state of affairs directly present to one in experience constitutes one's being justified in making the associated perceptual claim. It is hard to see how any other kind of justification could have a stronger claim to the title "canonical". And this justification is not defeasible. If someone sees that P, it cannot fail to be the case that P, So .if one accepts the disjunctive conception, one is not at liberty to go on supposing that "the canonical justification of perceptual claims proceeds through a defeasible inferential base". In urging the contrary, Wright constructs an argument whose startingpoint is the whole disjunction. Of course he is right that the whole disjunction could provide at best defeasible support for a perceptual claim. But what he has done is in effect to cast the whole disjunction in the role in which the supposed case for scepticism casts the highest common factor. And the point of the disjunctive conception is precisely to reject the highest common factor picture of the justification for perceptual claims. I do not mean to suggest that a I-II-III argument starting from the "good" disjunct would be any more impressive as an augmentation of Moore's "proof' than the I-II-III argument Wright considers, starting from the whole disjunction. I shall come to that in a moment. The point for now is that Wright is wrong to claim that the disjunctive conception leaves one free to think perceptual claims rest on defeasible inferential support. What has gone wrong here? Wright apparently assumes that °a dialectically effective response to scepticism would need to be what Moore again, if we take his performance at face value tries to produce: that is, an argument that directly responds to the sceptic's questioning whether there is an external world. Such an argument would need to start from a premise available without begging a
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question against the sceptic, and it would need to transmit warrant legitimately from that premise to the conclusion that there is indeed an external world. And only the whole disjunction is non-question-beggingly available as a premise for such an argument. But the point of the disjunctive conception is not to improve our resources for such arguments. At one point (341) Wright acknowledges, in a way, that when [ appeal to the disjunctive conception I do not claim to be directly answering sceptical questions. The acknowledgement is backhanded, since Wright describes my disclaimer as "an official refusal to take scepticism seriously". It is worth pausing over this description. The wording would be appropriate if in order to take scepticism seriously one had to attempt direct answers to sceptical questions. But that seems simply wrong. Surely no one takes scepticism more seriously than Stroud. And Stroud thinks "the worst thing one can do with the traditional question about ow' knowledge of the world is to try to answer if,.18 Wright notes my suggestion that the disjunctive conception "has the advantage of removing a prop on which sceptical doubt ... depends", as he puts it. But he treats this as a mere lapse from the "official refusal", as if removing a prop could only be offering an answer to a sceptical question. Only on that assumption could noting the inefficacy of the re-emergent I-II-III argument, the argument that starts from the whole disjunction, seem relevant to the anti-sceptical credentials of the disjunctive conception. The disjunctive conception cannot improve on Moore in the project of proving that there is an external world. Wright is correct about that. This is not, as Wright has it, because the disjunctive conception allows us to go on holding that "the canonical justification of perceptual claims proceeds through a defeasible inferential base". As I have insisted, the disjunctive conception is flatly inconsistent with that thesis. The canonical justification for a perceptual claim is that one perceives that things are as it claims they are, and that is not a defeasible inferential base. The point is, rather, that if one lets the sceptic count as having put in doubt whether there is an external world in which things are pretty much as we take them 'to be, it becomes question-begging to take oneself, on any particular occasion, to have the indefeasible warrant, for a claim such as "Here is a hand", constituted by, for instance, seeing that there is a hand in front of one. In the dialectical context of an attempt to show that the sceptical scenarios do not obtain, the indefeasible warrant for "Here is a hand" constituted by seeing that there is a hand in front of one can no more be transmitted across the entailment to "There is a material world" than can the defeasible warrant Wright considers in his diagnosis of Moore. In Moore's argument as Wright reconstructs it, the fact that the warrant's support for "Here is a hand" is not defeated depends on our already taking ourselves to have grounds for the conclusion supposedly reached by entailment from there. In the argument I
The Disjunctive Conception ofExperience...
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am considering now, our conviction that we have tile warrant at all depends 011 our already taking ourselves to have grounds for the conclusion. This, incidentally, suggests a different account, which seems no less plausible than Wright's, of the implicit warrant for the premise Moore actually starts from. In any case,' whether or not it is what Moore has in mind, an argument that starts from one's seeing a hand in front of 011e would be just as useless for Moore's purpose - if, again, we identify his purpose by taking his performance at face value. But all this is irrelevant to the anti-sceptical power of the disjunctive conception. What the disjunctive conception achieves is indeed to remove a prop on which sceptical doubt depends. That is Wright's wording, but he does not allow it to carry its proper force. The prop is the thought that the warrant for a perceptual claim provided by an experience can never be that the experience reveals how things are, The disjunctive conception dislodges that thought, and a sceptical doubt that depends on it falls to the ground. There is 110 need to do more than remove the prop. In particular, as I explained before, there is no need to try to establish theses like the conclusion of Moore's argument, with the ground rules for doing so set by scepticism. The idea that such theses are open to doubt now lacks the cachet of simply emphasizing an epistemic predicament constituted by its being impossible for experience to reveal to us how things are. There is no such predicament, and now it is perfectly proper to appeal to cases of ordinary perceptual knowledge in ruling out the sceptical scenarios, or better in justifying a common-sense refusal to bother with them. Wright might be tempted to seize on what I have just said as vindicating his talk of my "official refusal to take scepticism seriously". But like Stroud) I hold that the way to take scepticism seriously is not to try to disprove the sceptical scenarios. We take scepticism seriously by removing the prop, thereby entitling ourselves to join common sense in refusing to bother with the sceptical scenarios. 19 Considering the form "Either I am perceiving thus-and-such or I am in some kind of delusional state", Wright offers this reconstruction of the sceptical reasoning that, according to him, survives the disjunctive conception
(346): [I]n this case it is our practice to treat one in particular of the disjuncts as justified - the left-hand one whenever the disjunction as a whole is justified and there is, merely, no evidence for the other disjunct! That's a manifest fallacy unless the case is one where we have a standing reason to regard the lack of any salient justification for a disjunct of the second type as a reason to discount it. And - the sceptical thought will be it's hard to see what could count as a standing reason except a prior entitlement to the belief that delusions are rare, But that's just tantamount to the belief that there is a material world which, at
30
John McDowell least on the surfaces of things, is pretty much revealed for what it is in what we take to be normal waking experience. 80, the Sceptic will contend, that broad conception once again emerges as a rational precondition of our practice, even after the disjunctive adjustment to the concept of perception; and on its warrantedness depends whatever warrant can be given for our proceeding in the way we do. Since it cannot be warranted by appeal to the warrant for specific perceptual claims - Moore's proof being no better in this setting than before - the Sceptic may now focus on the apparent impossibility of any kind of direct warrant for it, and the dialectic can proceed essentially as before.
It is clearly correct that our practice of assessing the credentials of perceptual claims could not be rational if we were not entitled to the "broad conception" according to which the external world is pretty much the way we take ourselves to experience it as being. But it is tendentious to suppose it follows that the rationality of our practice is in jeopardy, unless the "broad conception" can be warranted in advance of the practice without begging questions against scepticism. And it is wrong to suppose the disjunctive conception leaves unchallenged the idea Wright here exploits, that the justification for a perceptual claim must go through the whole disjunction, exploiting some supposed standing reason for discounting the "bad" disjunct. The justification for a perceptual claim is an entitlement to the "good" disjunct. What entitles one to that is not that one's experience warrants the whole disjunetion, plus some supposed ground for discounting the "bad" disjunct. That would commit us to trying to reconstruct the epistemic standing constituted by perceiving something to be the case in terms of the highest common factor conception of experience, plus whatever ground we can think of for discounting the "bad" disjunct. I think Wright is correct that that is hopeless; if we see things this way, the sceptic wins. But the disjunctive conception eliminates the apparent need for any such project, because it contradicts the highest common factor conception. What does entitle one to claim that one is perceiving that things are thus and so, when one is so entitled? The fact that one is perceiving that things are thus and so. That is a kind of fact whose obtaining our self-consciously possessed perceptual capacities enable us to recognize on suitable occasions, just as they enable us to recognize such facts as that there are red cubes in front of us, and all the more complex types of environmental facts that our powers to .if perceive things put at our disposal, Of course we are fallible about the obtaining of such facts, just as we are fallible about the facts we perceive to obtain. I can tell a zebra when I see one - to take up an example Wright borrows from Fred Dretske (342-4). If what I believe to be a zebra is actually a cunningly painted mule, then of course I do not recognize it as a zebra, as I suppose, and I do not have the warrant I think I have for believing it is a zebra, namely that I see it to be a zebra. My
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The Disjunctive Conception ofExperience...
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ability to recognize zebras is fallible, and it follows that my ability to know when I am seeing a zebra is fallible. It does 110t follow - this is the crucial point that I cannot ever have the warrant for believing that an animal in front of me is a zebra constituted by seeing that it is a zebra. If the animal in front of me is a zebra, and conditions are suitable for exercising my ability to recognize zebras when I see them (for instance, the animal is in full view), then that ability, fallible though it enables me to see that it is a zebra, and to know that I do. My warrant is not limited to the disjunction "Either I see that it is a zebra or my visual experience is misleading in some way". That is the highest common factor conception, and fallibility in our cognitive capacities cannot force it 011 us?O
6. Transcendental arguments of Stroud's ambitious type aim to establish large-scale features the world must have for it to be possible that thought and experience are as they are. Those of his modest type aim to establish large-scale features we must conceive the world to have for it to be possible that thought and experience are as they are. The argument ] have considered belongs to neither of these types. It does not offer to establish anything about how things are, let alone must be, in the world apart from us, so it is not vulnerable to Stroud's doubts about arguments of the ambitious type. But the way it makes itself immune to those doubts is not by weakening its conclusion to one about structural features we must conceive the world to have. The conclusion is rather one about how we must conceive the epistemic positions that are within our reach, if it is to be possible that our experience is as it is in having objective purport. That [Tees us to pursue our ordinary ways of fmding out how things are in the world apart from us. The specifics of what we go on to find out are not within the scope of what the argument aims to vindicate. That might seem to distance this argument from much in Kant, who is presumably the patron saint of transcendental arguments. In sketching the argument, I have not needed to connect it with the question "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?", or with an investigation of the principles of the pure understanding. But there is still the fact that the argument displays its conclusion as a necessary element in the answer to a "How possible?" question about experience. Moreover, Sellars's account of how experience has its objective purport, which the argument exploits, is strikingly Kantian, in the way it represents the content of an experience as the content of a claim. Sellars links the fact that experience is of objective reality with the fact that to make a claim is to commit oneself to things being objectively thus and so. This talk of claims is Sellars's counterpart, after the "linguistic turn", to Kant's invocation of judgement. So perhaps the argument I have been considering can be
T John McDowell
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seen as belonging to a minimal Kantianism. In the argument's background is an explanation of the objective purport of experience in terms of the fact that
experience exemplifies forms that belong to the understanding. But in the argument as I have considered it so far, we exploit that Kantian thought without needing to concern ourselves either with how the world must be or with how we must conceive the world to be. Of course this is not the place to try to take this any further.
Department ofPhilosophy University ofPittsburgh 1001 Cathedral ofLeaming Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260 USA E-mail:
[email protected]
NOTES 1 Individuals:
An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959). London: Methuen, 1966. 3 See Stroud's 1968 paper "Transcendental Arguments", reprinted in his Understanding Human Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Several other papers in that collection are very helpful in clarifying the picture. 4 "Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and Invulnerability", in Understanding Human Knowledge, at 158-9. 5 Ibid., 159. 6 Ibid., 159-60. 7 Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985),21. 8 For a helpful survey, see Robert Stern, Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism: Answering the Question ofJustification (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). 9 Stroud regularly depicts scepticism about the external world as arising like this. See, e.g., "Epistemological Reflection on Knowledge of the External World", in Understanding Human Knowledge, at 131: "[The philosopher] chooses a situation in which anyone of us would unproblematically say or think, for example, that we know that there is a fire in the fireplace right before us, and that we know it is there because we see that it is there. But when we ask what this seeing really amounts to, various considerations are introduced to lead us to concede that we would see exactly what we see now even if no fire was there at all, or if we didn't know that there was one there." See also The Significance ofPhilosophical Scepticism (O.,ford: Clarendon Press, 1984). 10 §§10-23 (at 32-53 in the monograph reissue, with Introduction by Richard Rorty and Study Guide by Robert Brandom [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997]). 11 On the idea of the highest common factor, see, e.g., my Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 113. 12 On the disjunctive conception, see 1. M. Hinton, Experiences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Paul Snowdon, "Perception, Vision, and Causation", Proceedings of 2
The Disjunctive Conception ofExperience...
33
the Aristotelian Society 81 (1980-1); my Mind and World. loco cit.; and my"Singular Thought and the Extent of Inner Space" and "Criteria, Defensibility, and Knowledge", both reprinted in my Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998). 13 See 1.L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). 14 T have revised what I first wrote in this connection, partly in response to an objection from Costas Pagondiotis. I have been influenced here by Sebastian Rodl. \5 The essential thing is that the two sides of the disjunction differ in epistemic significance, whereas on the highest common factor conception the "good" disjunct can afford no better warrant for perceptual claims than the "bad" disjunct. This difference in epistemic significance is of course consistent with all sorts of commonalities between the disjuncts. For instance, on both sides of the disjunction it appears to one that, say, there is a red cube in front of one. In "(Anti-)Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G. E. Moore and John Mcl'iowell", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2002), at 341, n. 12 and associated text, Crispin Wright makes needlessly heavy weather ofthis. \6 "(Anti-)Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G. E. Moore and John McDowell"; the phrase quoted is at 331. 'hi 17 ~ may intend,something more subtle. But.I.shall ~ot consider this.possibility. ;~~: "tti~'sol1able Claims: Cavell and the Tradition", In Understanding Human Kno';;l~dge, 56. 19 In writing here of a common-sense refusal to bother with the sceptical scenarios, I am echoing a remark at Mind and World, 113 (in the passage Wright cites to document the "official refusal"): "The aim here is not to answer sceptical questions, but to begin to see how it might be intellectually respectable to ignore them, to treat them as unreal, in the way that common sense has always wanted to." Of course it takes work to reach such a position. This attitude can look like a "refusal to take scepticism seriously" only given the picture of what it is to take scepticism seriously that Stroud rejects. 20 A misconception of the significance of fallibility on these lines is the topic of the passage in my Mind and World (112-3) that Wright comments on at 341, n. 13. His remarks there seem to me to miss, or ignore. the dialectical context of the passage he is commenting on.
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PUBLICATIONS STANFORD
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Vol. XXVII, 2006, pp. 35-58
On McDowell's Conception of the "I'ranseendental" Stelios Virvidakis
RESUMEN
En sus escritos recientes, desde Mind and World, John McDowell ernplea a menudo el termino "transcendental". En este articulo, comienzo centrandorne en su reconstrucci6n del razonamiento de Sellars en "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", como incluyendo un interesante y peculiar tipo de argumento transcendental; y a continuaci6j::l".he aproximo a la obra anterior de McDowell, con el fin de examinar la evoluci6n de'~ concepcion mas general de 10"transcendental", Estey especialmente interesado en la defensa "transcendental" de 10 que McDowell denomina empirismo "mlnimo" (y "transcendental"), y en ultimo termino tratare de evaluar en que medida su estrategia argumentativa esta en armonla con su wittgensteiniano enfoque "terapeutico" de los problemas filosoficos. ABSTRACT
In his recent writings, since Mind and World, John McDowell often employs the term "transcendental", In this paper, I begin by focusing on his reconstruction of Sellars' reasoning in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", as involving a peculiar and interesting kind of transcendental argument, before drawing on McDowell's earlier work, in order to survey the evolution of his more general conception of the "transcendental". I am particularly interested in the "transcendental" defense of what McDowell calls "minimal" (and "transcendental") empiricism, and will eventually try to assess the extent to which his argumentative strategy is in harmony with his Wittgensteinian, "therapeutic" approach to philosophical problems.
I
There are different construals of the term "transcendental" and different conceptions of transcendental philosophy. Nevertheless, most philosophers would agree that the core meaning of the term goes back to Kant's suggestion that transcendental inquiry deals with "all cognition that is occupied not so much with 'objects, but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori" [Kant (1997), A121B25]. Thus, the epistemological inquiry undertaken in the first Critique focuses on the a priori conditions of possibility of our mode of knowledge of objects and, following the directives dictated by the Copernican tum, leads to the elaboration of the
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r I
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Stelios Virvidokis
peculiar positions of transcendental idealism. Now, moving on from Kant's original version of transcendental philosophy, and bypassing its many transformations through the centuries, we shift to the study of the revival and the adaptation of his methodological guidelines by Peter Strawson, who strives to disentangle them from all kinds of objectionable idealism. The key idea that is operative in Strawson's descriptive metaphysics is still that of a priori conditions of possibility (of identification and reidentification of particulars in human communication). His proposal involves the use of transcendental arguments, with a view to establishing certain basic facts concerning our knowledge and experience and, presumably, concerning the world of our experience, by proving that they constitute necessary conditions of intelligible communication." The success of his enterprise would enable us to silence sceptics who disputed such facts, and really "pretended to accept a conceptual scheme, but at the same time quietly rejected one of the conditions of its employment" [Strawson (J 959), p. 35]. Unfortunately, it was soon shown by Barry Stroud that, insofar as these arguments aspire to uncover essential features of the world and not of our conception of the world, they have to appeal to tacit and apparently questionable idealist or verificationist assumptions [cf, Stroud (1968)J. Strawson himself recognized the force of this criticism and opted for a more modest or weak construal of his transcendental arguments, which would be thus considered as sufficient to establish only necessary con. . concepts. 3 nections among our most basic Indeed, I believe that transcendental reasoning cannot be fully understood and cannot succeed in sustaining its conclusions, if it is considered apart from a complex set of goals and presuppositions that constitute the framework of an overall strategy," In this paper, I shall try to outline the framework of John McDowell's transcendental assumptions that permeate his argumentative stratand more particularly to egy. Now, if we turn to McDowell's recent work his writings since Mind and World, we will come across a new way to interpret transcendental argumentation that claims to dissociate it both from the obscure ventures of Kantian metaphysics and the ambitious tasks of the early Strawsonian project.' without however equating it with a simply inflated and upgraded form of conceptual analysis. His own version of transcendental inquiry is elaborated in his Woodbridge lectures of 1997; in a number of papers in which he engages in the study of Sellars, attacking the alternative reading put forth by Robert Brandom; and in his various replies to his critics. It leads to and supports his succinct reconstruction of an elementary, but presumably very effective form of reasoning that he attributes to the author of "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind".6 In what follows, I shall begin by focusing on this reconstruction of Sellars' argument, before drawing on McDowell's earlier work in order to survey the evolution of his more general conceptio~ of the "transcendental".
On Mclsowell's Conception ofthe 'Transcendental)
37
I am particularly interested in the "transcendental" defense of what McDowell calls "minimal" (or "transcendental") empiricism, and Twill eventually attempt to highlight the way in which his strategy is adapted to his Wittgensteinian, "therapeutic" approach to philosophical problems.
II
In fact, McDowell's reappraisal of Sellars' positions and especially of his argumentative methodology, that is supposed to correct his earlier construal leading to the objections put forth in Mind and World [McDowell (1994), pp. 140-6], lays emphasis on the Kantlan inspiration and the transcendental character of the Sellarsian project. According to his analysis, behind the cern with the problem of justification, which motivates the attack on yth of the Given", we may discern a "transcendental thought - perthe taining to conditions for it to be intelligible that our thinking has objective purport at an [...] that we need to be able to see how the spontaneity of the understanding can be constrained by the receptivity of sensibility" [McDowell (1998a), p. 365-6]. Sellars' empiricism, and more particularly his "senseimpressions inference", is characterized as transcendental in so far as "it is directed toward showing our entitlement to conceive subjective occurrences as possessing objective purport. [...] The explanation [he] envisages is transcendental, because it is needed, he thinks, in order to vindicate the legitimacy of the apparatus the talk of experiences as actualizations of conceptual capacities, which as such 'contain' claims, but in a distinctively sensory way in terms of which we enable ourselves to conceive experiences as ostensibly ofobjects at all" [McDowell(1998c), p, 445]. We shall have to come back to the conception of the transcendental account of empiricism attributed to Sellars and further developed by McDowell. At this point, we are going to examine McDowelPs construal of the argumentative methodology that is presumably essential to this account. What is at issue is the possibility and the anti-sceptical potential of a "third" kind of transcendental argument that he reconstructs from the Sellarsian texts. This kind of transcendental argument should not be described as either strong, since it does not aspire to derive the necessary structure of reality as it is from facts of our experience, or weak, since it does not cast light only on the necessary features of our conception ofreality. The necessary conditions it tries to establish rather pertain to "how we must conceive the eplstemic positions within our reach if it is to be possible that our experience is as it is in having objective purport" [McDowell (unpublished b); my emphasis]. Indeed, we could argue that "for it to be intelligible that experience has objective purport at all, we must be able to make sense of an epistemically
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distinguished class of experiences, those in which (staying with the visual case) one sees how things are - those in which how things are makes itself visually available to one" [Ibid.]. Here, McDowell draws our attention to "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind": Sellars urges something on these lines. The very idea of the objective purport of visual experience (to single out one sensory modality) is intelligible only if one appreciates that; among experiences in which, say, it looks to one as if there is a red cube in front of one; some are cases in which one sees that there is a red cube in front of one, and some are cases ill which it merely looks to one as if there is a red cube in front of one (either because there is no cube there at all or because, although there is a cube there; it is not red) [Ibid.].?
This is a crucial move, because it allows us to appeal to a disjunctive conception of the epistemic significance of experience which helps us remove a sceptical "prop", that is, the idea that the "warrant for a perceptual claim provided by an experience can never be that the experience reveals to us how things are", Hence, we may replace the "highest common factor" conception of perceptual experience, according to which "appearances may never yield more in the way of warrant for belief, than do those appearances in which it merely seems that one, say, sees that things are thus and so". We are thus able to dislodge a key assumption of a whole epistemological tradition which stood in the way of the notion "of a direct perceptual access to objective facts about the environment" and was the source of a pernicious scepticism [Ibid.]. It looks as if we could consider this type of argument as a "neglected methodological option"," first discovered and exploited by Sellars, which shows us how to limit the metaphysical pretensions of ambitious transcendental reasoning, while going beyond the simple elucidation of essential features of our mental constitution, or of necessary conceptual connections. It supposedly conforms with a "minimalist Kantianism" that does not bother to establish synthetic a priori truths [Ibid.]. However, I am afraid that this option is neither novel nor effective. If we attempted to cast the argument in question in the characteristic form of most transcendental arguments, according to a standard description [cf Moore (1999), pp. 270-1], we can isolate the following structure: 1) Our perceptual experience purports to be of objective reality. 2) We would not be able to comprehend the idea that our perceptual experience purports to be of objective reality if we could not make sense of an epistemical1y distinguished class of experiences, in which how things are makes itself available to us in perception.
On McDowell's Conception ofthe 'Transcendental>
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3) We must be able to make sense of a distinguished class of experiences, in which how things are makes itself available to us in perception. 4) There exists an epistemically distinguished class of experiences, in which how things are makes itself available to us in perception. 9 Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that the fact that we cannot avoid making sense of a "distinguished" class of experiences, in which how things are makes itself availa J <1 to us, guarantees that there is indeed such a non-empty class, unless, of co .-e, we subscribe to a kind of verificationist assumption that our best criteria for veridical perceptual experience must sometimes be actually satisfied, for us to be able to make sense of the very notion of objective content. 10 Now, it may be objected that my reading of McDowell's transcendental argument is not accurate insofar as the sceptic to whom it is addressed does not worry about the actual truth of our thoughts but about their very intelligibility. He does not dwell on the threatening possibility of massive error, but rather on our inability to make sense of the availability of environmental facts to our mind. Thus, we should not be concerned about the fallibility of our actual perceptual claims, but about the alleged impossibility of a direct access to the world to which they refer. This is why McDowell believes that what is essential is to establish only the intelligibility of such a direct access, in other words, of the availability of environmental facts, of the "openness" of our mind to the world, that is, premise (3) above. Having done so, we may be able to get rid of the "highest common factor" conception, presumably adopted by the sceptic, and to replace it by the "disjunctive conception" (of veridical and deceptive perception) which explains the possibility of a direct perceptual grasp of "environmental facts". Hence, as he put it in Mind and World, S
[w]e achieve an intellectual right to shrug our shoulders at sceptical questions, if they are asked with the usual philosophical animus, namely, to point up a supposed problem about whether our thought is in touch with its purported topics. Of course, we are fallible in and when experience misleads us there is a sense in which it intervenes between us and the world; but it is a crucial mistake to let that seem to deprive us of the very idea of openness - fallible openness - to the world, as if we had to replace that idea with the idea of emissaries that either tell the truth or lie. It is only because we can understand the notion of appearings constituted by the world's making itself manifest to us that we can make sense of the empirical content, embodied in the idea of a misleading appearance. When we are not misled by experience, we are directly confronted by a worldly state of affairs itself, not waited on by an intermediary that happens to tell the truth [McDowell (1994), p. 143].
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The trouble is that most sceptics will remain unimpressed by such a rebuttal. To begin with, those who stick to a more "whole-hearted" sceptical stance will probably reject the initial premise, according to which "our experience purports to be of objective reality". Indeed, McDowell acknowledges that we may have to appeal to a more basic, Kantian or Strawsonian transcendental argument, "one that reveals the fact that consciousness includes states or episodes that purport to be of objective reality as a necessary condition for some more basic feature of consciousness, perhaps that its states and episodes are potentially self-conscious" [McDowell (unpublished b)]. However, even if such an argument holds, they could insist that, although they recognize the need to make sense of the objective purport of experience, they may still find the very idea of the "availability of environmental facts in perception" unintelligible. McDowell would have to convince them about the meaningfulness of perceptual experiences construed as claims (already suggested by Sellars), and eventually try to sustain his account through his further arguments concerning the conceptual character of empirical content. His "minimally" Kantian ll transcendental move, pertaining to the necessary conditions of the objective purport of experience, would not suffice by itself, and if' he were able to impose his common sense criteria of meaningfulness of ordinary perceptual claims on independent grounds, it would probably prove redundant. 12 Moreover, it seems that one does not have to resort to extreme scepticism about objectivity or intelligibility in order to dispute the anti-sceptical force of the disjunctive conception. As it was recently pointed out by Glendinnig and de Gaynesford, [w)e are to suppose that the subject's best theory of his or her current perceptual standing (the appearance that such and such is the case), is either a mere appearance or the fact that such and such is the case making itself perceptually manifest. But no sceptic need deny this. The sceptic's conclusion is only that in every case one must suspend judgment as to which ... For on the basis of any given subject's perceptual standing there is no way for it to provide any adequate grounds for insisting that either option is true or false [Glendinnig & de Gaynesford (1998), p. 29].13
To be sure, I do not want to imply that the Sellarsian transcendental argument is uninteresting or totally useless in the effort to disarm some sceptics. All I am saying is that it does not constitute a really "neglected" distinct option, and that it does not establish in a conclusive way that the world "makes itself available", "presents", or "opens itself' to us in perceptual experience. The "class of distinguished experiences", may be intelligible as a possibility ~ contrary to the most hyperbolical sceptical worries but may
~. I I
On Mclrowell's Conception ofthe 'Transcendental'
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always remain empty, despite transcendental reassurances." Moreover, the question is whether the- disjunctive conception is "transcendentally" forced upon us a necessary position and not just as a plausible and perhaps preferable alternative, or, more particularly, whether the argument appealed to by McDowell manages to persuade us to adopt it, without support from other, independent considerations. After all, transcendental arguments, however ambitious or modest, are supposed to lead to the clear elimination of incoherent notions and their conclusive replacement by correct ones." In any case, [ think we could acknowledge that we may have established, by endorsing Sellars' and Mclrowell's reasoning, what Stroud has described as of the claim the peculiar indispensability and invulnerability - not the truth that there must be such a privileged class of experiences in which the world makes itselfavailable to us. This is so because our belief that the world makes itself available to us, in some "excellent" or "distinguished" experiences, cannot be consistently abandoned with our having a conception of objective content at alL. 16 It is, I think, plausible to qualify such a result as rather modest, insofar as one talks about our own understanding of .our epistemic predicament, rather than the predicament itself, unless, of course, one subscribes to a view that rules out a priori the logical possibility of a radical discrepancy between the way the world actually relates to our minds and our conception of this relation. As McDowell himself puts it, the conclusion we have reached pertains to "how we must conceive the epistemic positions that are within our reach, if it is to be possible that our experience is as it is in having objective purport" [McDowell (unpublished b)]. However that may be, it is obvious that McDowell's appeal to transcendental argumentation is part and parcel of his more general strategy of a defense of "minimal empiricism, transcendentally slanted", that is "a conception in which experience lets objective reality come into view" [McDowell (2002), p. 287]. This defense is not directed only against extravagant sceptical possibilities of Cartesian origin, but also against all those philosophers who, anxious to correct the mistakes of crude, foundationalist empiricism, do not hesitate to throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up without any proper account of the role of (perceptual) experience in the grasp of objective content. In the next part of this.paper, I shall turn to McDowell's implementation of a large scale philosophical enterprise and try to determine some of the implications of his commitment to a transcendental methodology.
III Now, I have argued elsewhere that, even if we cannot come up with a univocal and clear definition of the term "transcendental", we could perhaps
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isolate some of the main features of a distinctive philosophical stance that we may characterize as transcendental, and that we encounter in the work of several thinkers since Kant." Thus, we may describe specific senses or rather aspects and nuances of the notion of the "transcendental" - according to different or even conflicting interpretations to which these philosophers are apparently committed. We can easily understand that most of these aspects are interconnected, although they may be considered and developed separately. They are the following: a) The first, most elementary mark of a transcendental enterprise, that we have already emphasized in the introduction of this paper, is the inquiry into a priori conditions of possibility of knowledge and intelligible experience. All the other features that we think we can identify are somehow related to this endeavour, which determines the selection of premises and the conclusion aimed at. b) Transcendental approaches in most cases undertake to overcome or avoid untenable oppositions and dualisms by neutralizing their mistaken presuppositions. They often point to a "third solution", achieving a deeper synthesis of conflicting insights. The original model of such approaches is, of course, the attempt at a combination of realism and idealism in Kant's critical philosophy. The result is not a superficial compromise, but a novel, complex position. 18 c) "Transcendental" is usually distinguished from "empirical", and it is crucial to learn how to keep the two separate, as one proceeds in a transcendental enterprise, even though this distinction does not entail any permanent epistemological split. What should be noted is that when we adopt the transcendental stance, we operate at a philosophical level which leaves the ordinary, empirical dimension unaffected. In fact, according to Kant, if we intend to protect our conception of the latter from the distortions of misleading philosophical hypotheses, we must reinterpret our more or less substantive metaphysical assertions from a transcendental standpoint that eventually provides a vindication of our empirical beliefs. Thus, transcendental idealism goes along with empirical realism - the realism supposedly taken for granted by common sense and by science. Of course, it is rather difficult to understand the kind of idealism involved, as well as the relations - of parallel existence, or interaction - of the two levels, engaging two standpoints, rather than two different ontological dimensions. [9 d) The attempt at an overcoming of oppositions, or at a reconciliation of antithetical views and the coexistence of different levels or standpoints creates
~!
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serious problems of stability and coherence. Indeed, following a transcendental reading of Wittgenstein and a particular Wittgensteinian realignment of transcendental philosophy, transcendental truths are paradoxical, in so far as they cannot be properly expressed within our language. They reveal the limits of our language, which can only be shown in away, but not said correctly in conformity with the rules of logical grammar. e) A transcendental account would aspire to establish necessities of a peculiar, anthropocentric kind, to be distinguished from both strict, logical necessity and purely contingent, natural or social/conventional, relative "necessities". Traditional metaphysicians pursued transcendent knowledge, hoping to discover necessary propositions, true in all possible worlds, and tried to explore reality conceived sub specie aetemiiatis, from a "God's eye point of view", or from "nowhere". Transcendental philosophers are content with propositions true in all possible worlds intelligible to us or to rational beings like us - the understanding of which is inescapably dependent on our human "mindedness" . This dependence on the human mind seems to point to an irreducible dimension of reflexivity or self-referentiality of transcendental thinking. Here, we cannot embark upon a detailed critical analysis of the above characteristics of most self-styled transcendental approaches, particularly regarding their idealist, or anti-realist and verificationist implications, alluded to in (c), (d) and (e).20 We should rather turn to McDowell's uses of the term "transcendental", with a view to detecting the presence of such more or less traditional aspects of transcendental philosophy in his argumentative strategy and in his conclusions, More specifically, our aim is to point to the degree of mutual attunement, but also to some of the tensions among his metaphilosophical presuppositions, his methodological choices and his substantive commitments, provoking the ongoing tranformation of his conception of transcendental inquiry. Indeed, a close study of McDowell's work shows that most of these features can be traced in one form or another in his thinking, as it evolves from the early eighties to the present. To begin with (a), the main transcendental query or concern, that preoccupies him and that he considers as clearly Kantian in spirit, is how it is possible for "our thought to be directed at the objective world". This takes the more particular form of the question, "how is empirical content possible?" [McDowell (2000a), pp. 3-4]. It necessitates a particular philosophical investigation of experience that soon shows that traditional forms of empiricism do not provide a satisfactory account, insofar as they cannot show how experience can be "answerable to the world" and can constitute a "tribunal?" for our world views. Sellars helped us realize that we cannot be satisfied with
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the mere causal impact of the deliverances of the senses that were previously supposed to provide a "given" element, capable of playing a justificatory role. However, many philosophers who endorse Sellars' criticism of the Myth of the Given and adopt a form of coherentism, tend to jettison empiricism altogether, to the extent that they do not pay proper attention to the need for answerability to the world through a "rational friction", made possible by the empirical content grasped by our sensibility. They seem content with what Davidson dubs a "pallid claim" for experience (and empiricism), according to which "all knowledge of the world comes through the agency of the senses".22 Now, McDowell purports to restore a well-balanced and harmonious conception of the relations between mind and world, and by the same token to defend a "deeper" empiricism of Sellarsian inspiration, which is not "narrowly epistemological", but "transcendental" [McDowell (1998c), p, 436]. Indeed, such an empiricism would provide a response to our "transcendental anxiety" about empirical content and could be seen as simply "a way of not being beset with a mystery over the fact that there are world views at all" [McDowell (1999), p. 97]. It is minimal, presumably because it does not involve any detailed claims about the precise operation of our sensory apparatus in the acquisition and justification of knowledge of the world, but it is still quite robust and transcendentally significant, since without it we would be left with a deficient understanding of the possibility of an epistemic access to objective facts. Thus, if we return to our list of the characteristic marks and implications of the transcendental stance, we notice that McDowell's project does aim at deconstructing well-entrenched dualisms and dichotomies (both epistemological and metaphysical) by undermining their erroneous common presuppositions [feature (b) above] : naive foundationalism - relying on the myth of the given - and coherentism; bald naturalism and rampant platonism; and emphasis on the irreducibility of reason and limitation to the lawlike natural regularities, should all be replaced by "deeper" or "higher" positions that do not simply dismiss, but take seriously, the motivation of the claims on both sides and acknowledge the force of the conflicting intuitions in each case. Of course, one may wonder whether it is advisable to follow McDowell on the Hegelian rather than Kantian - road of overcoming such dichotomies without worrying about the counterintuitive implications of the positions reached. In fact, before any attempt to assess his general approach, it is worth remembering some earlier instances of his adoption of the transcendental strategy we are trying to describe. The synthesis proposed in Mind and World may be considered as the result of the implementation of a more comprehensive, advanced and elaborate version of this strategy:
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From the very beginning 'of his philosophical enterprise, McDowell seemed to be interested in striking a middle course, or finding a "third way", between the anti-realism in the theory of meaning espoused by Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright and forms of traditional Platonism. In his "Anti-realism and the Epistemology of Understanding", McDowell responded to charges that his acceptance of a possibly verification-transcendent world was a "mere reflection of grammar", by advancing a view very close to the neo- Wittgensteinian account of transcendental truths referred to above (d): if the "reflection" thesis is a truth, then it is a transcendental truth, the sort of thing which shows, but cannot be said. For there is no standpoint from which we can give a sense-making characterization of linguistic practice other than that of immersion in the practice; and from that standpoint our possibly verification-transcendent world is certainly in the picture. If the reflection thesis licences an anti-realism, then it is a transcendental anti-realism, one which need not clash with the conviction of the ineradicable necessity of [the thesis of realism] R in our making sense of ourselves [McDowell (198l)s p. 342].
And in criticizing his opponents, to whom he attributes an unwarranted, excessive epistemological demand for solid foundations, he describes their position as, a meaning-theoretical anti-realism which stands to the misperceived deep doctrine as a shallow empirical idealism would stand to an analogous transcendental idealism. The transcendental realist claims that from the cosmic exile's perspective one would be able to discern relations between our language and a realistically conceived world. Anti-realists justifiably recoil, but in different ways. The meaning-theoretical anti-realist recoils into giving a different picture of how things would look form that perspective; but the right course is to set our faces against the idea of a cosmic exile [Ibid., pp. 342-3].
A similar commitment to an anthropocentric notion of realism very close to what Putnam dubs "realism with a human face' - was underlying Mclfowell's critique of non-cognitivism in ethics and his defense of moral objectivity ~ appealing to an analogy between values and secondary properties." More generally, he wanted to criticize the "absolute conception of reality" adopted since the time of Descartes, which has given rise to the gradual scientistic impoverishment of the modern world view. In his paper "Wittgenstein on Following a Rule", he attacked sceptical and anti-realist construals of Wingenstein's analysis of rule-following (put forth by Kripke and Wright) and once more tried to show the plausibility of a robust, realistic sense of objectivity; this sense of objectivity allowed us to retain a truth-conditional conception of meaning, but without relying on some
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transcendent viewpoint. He found cogent a "transcendental argument" against anti-realism, to the effect that "a condition for the possibility of finding real application for the notion of meaning at all is that we reject antirealism", and tried to supplement it by a "satisfying account of how antirealism goes wrong" [McDowell (1984), pp. 3511]. To be sure, his attribution to Wittgenstein of a kind of anthropocentric realism (with a small "r") was no longer accompanied by an eagerness to recognize the legitimacy of any peculiar transcendental claim, the logical status of which would turn out to be paradoxical. He did not insist on the idea and on the terminology of a combination of empirical realism and transcendental anti-realism" Henceforth, his construal of the transcendental apparently retained only partly the aspects we have summarized under (d) (and (e) above. Nonetheless, McDowell is still ready to endorse "transcendental postulations" and to appeal to the "transcendental role" of one or another concept, thought, or account, in order to seek "transcendental clarification" and "vindication" [McDowell (1998c), pp. 471, 447, 457, 473; (1998a), p. 366]. It should be remarked that he does not use the term "transcendental" so often in Mind and World, probably because his references to Kant include a very dismissive account of the metaphysical results of the original transcendental enterprise of the Critique of Pure Reason. Following to an important extent Strawson's two-worlds interpretation of transcendental idealism, he criticizes Kant on several points, including his conception of the transcendental self [cf Thomas (1997)]. It is clear to him that transcendental philosophy leads to a dead end if we attempt to pursue it from an external, transcendent standpoint, from "sideways on", as he puts it. 25 Otherwise, it could presumably be considered as a fruitful and interesting endeavour, in which he urges us to engage, In fact, as we have already pointed out, McDowell distinguishes between the more "shallow" epistemological inquiries and the "deeper" transcendental ones, dealing with conditions of possibility. When one reads his most recent papers one is tempted to speak of a kind of re-transcendentalization of analytic philosophy,26 after so many pronouncements on the de-transcendentalization of analytic as well as of other forms of'philosophising." However, we must realize that transcendental thoughts and the transcendental tasks to which they give rise are supposed to be "innocent", provided they do not saddle us with metaphysical mysteries. Sellars' transcendentally motivated empiricism is presumably innocent in this respect, and should be recognized as a profound and important analysis of our experience that shows how it can have objective purport We should simply disregard his frequent lapses castigated by McDowell into the interpretative quest for an incoherent, "sideways on" approach in his reading of Kant's work. One assumes that McDowell's own transcendental approach is also innocent and legitimate and in no way commits him to any problematic metaphysics.
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IV It is at this point that we must take into consideration McDowell's insistence on the therapeutic character of his enterprise. His conclusions are supposed to be regarded as Wittgensteinian reminders that will take us back to the bedrock of our language-games and not as philosophical theses. Actually, the notion of the transcendental itself is quite often interpreted in the light of quasi-medical metaphors, something which would have pleased the later Wittgenstein. We begin our "transcendental job", when we suffer from some form of "transcendental anxiety" or "discomfort", and the attainment of our explanatory, or rather justificatory goal shall offer us "transcendental relief' [McDowell (1998a), pp. 366-7]. The question is then how we should interpret the status of the substantive results of our inquiry, if we do believe that there are any such results. Indeed, what distinguishes McDowell's conception of his transcendental strategy from almost all his predecessors (from Kant to Strawson) is the fact that he does not seem to aspire to some kind of philosophical truth, let alone a strong, and transcendentally necessary uniqueness claim to be derived from valid transcendental arguments. In any case, he hastens to disown such a uniqueness claim. As he points out in his rejoinder to Brandom, whom he accuses of ignoring the "dialectical organization of his book", I recommend a picture in which experience is actualization of conceptual capacities in sensory consciousness, not as the only theory ofperception [my emphasis] that meets requirements we can impose on any such theory independently of any particular context, but as the way to relieve the specific philosophical discomfort that I consider [...] The discomfort involves wanting to preserve the thought that actualizations of conceptual capacities belong in a sui generis logical space of reasons, in the face of a transcendental anxiety it can easily help to generate, Relieving the discomfort in the sense I mean, requires seeing how the thought can be preserved without generating the transcendental anxiety. Embracing bald naturalism would be a way to avoid the discomfort but not a way to relieve it [McDowell (1998b), pp. 403-4].28 -
Now, going back to McDowell's reconstruction of the Sellarsian transcendental argument, based on the intelligibility of the objective purport of experience, we realize that we cannot appreciate his interpretation of its use, unless we understand his general attitude to scepticism as a source of transcendental discomfort. The limitations in its scope and in its demonstrative force that we have tried to point out are not considered as a serious defect. We must have already understood that, according to McDowell, sceptical queries cannot be answered in a direct way but should rather be diagnosed as misguided philosophical departures from common-sense, to which we shall
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eventually return. "The aim here is not to answer sceptical questions, but to begin to see how it might be intellectually respectable to ignore them, to treat them as unreal, in the way that common sense has always wanted to." This is why, as we saw earlier, our aim was supposed to be just to "achieve an intellectual to shrug our shoulders at sceptical questions" [McDowell (1994), pp. 113, 143]. Hence, the idea of a neglected argumentative option could perhaps be conceived as involving an implicit allusion to the diagnostic and therapeutic employment of transcendental reasoning for the treatment of various kinds of scepticism." Pace Wright, this is not a question-begging and dogmatic rejoinder, based 011 "a refusal to take scepticism seriously" [Wright (2002b), p. 341]. "Of course, it takes work to reach such a position", and we may thus be justified in claiming that we have "entitled ourselves to join common sense in refusing to bother with the sceptical scenarios" [McDowell (unpublished b)]. We may also remark that the correct understanding of McDowell's general metaphilosophical outlook is probably the key to the proper assessment of some of his responses to frequent charges of idealism. Of course, an adequate discussion of this issue would require a detailed analysis that could be the topic of another papet.'" Here, we will limit ourselves to some observations regarding the construal of the views put forth explicitly or implicitly in Mind and World. The notion of the "unboundedness of the conceptual", the conceptual character of the content of perceptual experience, the "reenchantment of the world", and the endorsement of an identity conception of truth expressed by the thesis '~A true thought is a fact", could indeed be interpreted as coming perilously close to theses akin to a form of Hegelian objective idealism, or anti-realism." It may be feared that we are asked to jettison the mind independence of reality. However, McDowell insists that his account in no way threatens our belief in the independence of the world. e is described as the "passive actualization of conceptual capacities in ceptivity", and its content does not involve dependence on the activity of our "spontaneity" [McDowell (2002), p. 273; (2005), p, 84]. Moreover, as he puts it in his reply to Pascal Engel's criticism, concerning his adoption of the identity theory of truth, there is no risk to identify facts with items in the mind, or mental entities: neither side of the identity thesis should be supposed to be intelligible in advance of understanding the other, as if it could be used to explain the other. True thinkables already belong just as much to the world as to minds and things that are the case already belong to minds as to the world ... It should not even seem that we need to choose a direction in which to read the claim of identity, A Fregeau sense is also something that is the case and hence in the world. It bea thinkable does not imply that it is somehow primarily "mental" and so able to be conceived as an element in the world only on some idealistic C011-
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strual of the world ... Conceiving the world as everything that is the case, and so as located in the realm of sense in no way sleights the reality of the inhabitants of the realm of reference [McDowell (2005), pp. 83~5].
Now, I would like to argue that the crucial move in Mcljowell's reasoning consists in his refusal to consider the identity thesis as more than an obvious "truism", as a substantive claim with metaphysical implications. To quote McDowell, once more, "the word theory is a poor fit for something that is beyond dispute" and this is why he uses the expression "the identity conception of truth", which he substitutes for "the identity theory of truth" in the title of his paper [Ibid., p, 83]. Actually, he could pursue his Wittgensteinian approach in a more pronounced way, by refusing to grant the statement that "true thoughts are facts" even the status of a "thesis", or a "position", in other words, of an assertion that could be disputed and needs defense. One may, of course, follow Engel in continuing to worry about the implications of the "bipolarity" of propositions that ate supposed to express the facts in question and about the way to interpret their identification with our thoughts [cf. Engel (2005)]. However that may be, the above debates on the proper understanding of Mclrowell's views allow us to realize the peculiarity of his novel use of the concept of the transcendental. The term does seem to invoke, not just any inquiry into conditions of possibility, but also a complex argumentative process of legitimation of our notion of objective experience.f One could perhaps recall the Kantian idea of a transcendental deduction understood in a broad sense." Nevertheless, this "deduction" is undertaken basically in order to deal with a peculiar philosophical "anxiety", which requires dialectical treatment/" And the results of this treatment do not constitute new knowledge let alone necessary or paradoxical knowledge of any kind, apart from a recovery of plain, common sense knowledge we may already possess. The questions which remain open involve the nature of philosophical thinking itself. Is transcendental discomfort nothing more than discomfort caused by "an image that kept us captive", to be replaced by another (correct or legitimate) image which shall give us (transcendental) relief by allowing us to return to the beliefs of common sense? In other words, is it impossible to assimilate the urge to philosophize to a "healthier" mental condition, such as pure intellectual curiosity, capable of generating a quest that would lead to positive, cognitive or quasi-cognitive results? Are the elaborate arguments employed in the process of curing us from the discomfort and, more particularly, their conclusions, simply reminders that are supposed to take us back to the sanity of common sense, or of our language-games? Or is it rather the case, as Strawson suggested in his review of MeDoweIPs book, that we are being offered a very interesting piece of benign, however sophisticated and ambitious, constructive philosophy - perhaps an example of a new descriptive metaphys-
··r,~q-· .,
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ics [cf. Strawson (1994)]? Or should we compare this conception of philosophizing to Robert Nozick's (non scientistic but also non-therapeutic) metaphilosophical proposal in Philosophical Explanations, to the effect that we should substitute explanation for proof in philosophy and that in our effort to explain "how something is possible" we should accept more than one admissible view, which in any case abandons the uniqueness claims of traditional transcendental accounts?35 Could "minimal empiricism" which does sound like a philosophical thesis after all be nothing more than the ordinary, everyday acceptance of a non-problematic relation between mind and world? And if so, does it require a "transcendental defense" rather than integration within a more straightforward - however complex and subtle piecemeal pursuit of a Wittgensteinian Ubersicht of our linguistic practices? Undoubtedly, the above questions are very difficult to answer and cannot be addressed properly in the context of this paper. 1 would like to submit that McDoweWs effort to provide a therapeutic dissolution of transcendental tendencies does not seem to be fully succesful, in so far as the implementation of his Wittgensteinian approach does not always seem to be consistent with the appropriation of philosophical techniques and positions coming from a variety of historical sources, and thesea." I cannot expand on the assessment of the accusations of idealism and of his rejoinders. I would simply like to express my agreement with Michael Friedman's doubts about the attainment of his "quietist" goals through his Hegelian tour de force? 7 In any case, if we return to the short transcendental argument that he reconstructs from the materials provided by Sellars, we could perhaps agree that this elementary move in defense of minimal empiricism does work at the end of the day, but only if it is interpreted either along the Stroudian lines suggested above, or as a simple and very limited therapeutic gambit. However, McDowell does not rest after having secured its conclusion, construed not as a thesis, but only as a "reminder", as metaphysically innocent as possible. McDowell's reconstructed argument could thus be regarded as constituting the first step of an extensive "transcendental deduction", not only of objective content, but also of the cooperation of sponta . y and receptivity, of the e normativity of second unboundedness of the conceptual and eventually nature. Unfortunately, it is in the process of developing this "deduction" of claims, sounding much more like substantive positions rather than as "reminders" of common sense views, that McDowell's methodology fails to convince us about its conformity with the Wittgensteinian model of philosophizing, which in its more orthodox instances is supposed to cure us of metaphysical knots and provide us only with an Ubersicht of our various language-gamea" It is while examining this more advanced and more speculative part of his work that one wonders if one is not after all justified in feeling that, to put it in David Bell's words, "a transcendental argument ought, as such, to have something transcendental about it, according to which such an
~
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argument will be non-local in scope, non-naturalistic in intent, and anti-realist in import.H39 The final question that we must ask ourselves is whether we can avoid the commitments of a more widespread re-transcendentalization of our thinking, probably resulting from our attempts to alleviate transcendental discomfort that may persist or re-emerge even after the adoption of minimal em-
piricism. Department ofPhilosophy and History ofScience University ofAthens Panepistimioupolis, Ano Ilissia, Athens 171 21, Greece E-mail:
[email protected]
NOTES I This paper is based on the elaboration and further development of much shorter texts presented at the Third International Conference of the ESAP in Maribor (June 1999) ['Transcendental Philosophy in a New Guise"], at the Fourth AthensPittsburgh Symposium (June 2003) ["Transcendental Arguments Old and New" (A Comment on John McDowell's "Twentieth Century Transcendental Arguments: A Neglected Option?")}, at the Second Colloquium at the Latin Meeting of ESAP in Aix-en-Provence, November 2003 (with Pascal Engel as commentator) and at the XIV Inter-University Workshop 011 Philosophy and Cognitive Science which took place in Murcia (March 2004). I would like to thank the participants in these events for their questions and remarks, Costas Pagondiotis for our frequent exchanges on a variety of related philosophical issues, and particularly Professor McDowell himself for his replies to my comments, I am also indebted to Miltos Theodosiou's reading of Mcffowell's account of a "neglected" kind of transcendental arguments based on his reconstruction of Sellars. See the discussion below, section II and note 12. 2 It should be noted that the term Kant employed in the CPR was not transcendental "arguments" but transcendental "proofs" (Beweise) and "deductions", 3 See Strawson (1985), pp. 21-3. See also the distinction introduced by Quassim Cassani between "world-directed" and "self-directed" transcendental arguments, which is somewhat analogous to the one between what, following Stroud, we may describe. respectively, as "strong" or "ambitious" and "weak" or "modest" arguments [cf Cassani (1999)]. 4 I will come back to this point in the discussion below (section II). See also Stroud (1999), Bell (1999). 5 As presented in Strawson (1959) and (1966). 6 See McDowell (1998a), (1998b), (19980), (1999), (unpublished a), (unpublished b). Here, I am not going to dwell on exegetical issues concerning the propel' interpretation of Sellars. I am inclined to think that, although both McDowell's and Brandorn's alternative readings correctly emphasize different aspects of Sellars' thought, which are in tension with one another, McDowell pays closer attention to Sellars' texts and displays a better understanding oftheir important transcendental thrust. 7 See Sellars (1963), §§1O-23.
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r i
(
The expression "neglected option?" occurs in the title of the earlier version of one of Mclfowcll's recent papers (unpublished b). 9 This way of reconstructing McDowell's rendering of Sellars' argument [ill McDowell (unpublished b) passim] may allow us to dispense with the reference to a "distinguished class of experiences" and go directly to the idea that "how things are makes itself available to us", although, of course, a careful analysis would have to take into account this "distinguished class" which ensures the "availability" of "environmental facts" or "states of affairs". 10 According to A. Moore's brief summary of the most common objections to any transcendental argument conforming to the pattern we have just applied in the construal of McDowe1J's account of Sellars' reasoning, the worries about their validity focus among other things: on the question-begging presuppositions of the way we interpret premise (1); on the truth of premise (2); on the modality involved in (2) and the first conclusion (3), more particularly on the eventual conflation of conceptual with psychological modalities; on the self-referential or first-personal element in (2) and (3); and on the possibility of a modal fallacy of confusing the necessity of the hypothetical with the necessity of the consequent [(2) - (3)] [cf. Moore (1999)]. However, critics following Stroud usually dispute the legitimacy of the transition from (3) to (4) - allowing us to move from a more modest to a more ambitious claim. On this, sec Stroud (1968), pp. 247-8£f. II McDowell describes his Sellarsian transcendental argument as "belonging to a minimal Kantianism" (unpublished b). 12 At this point, one may be reminded of Stroud's criticism of Strawson in Stroud (1968). See also Theodosiou (unpublished) who draws on McDowell's views concerning the content of perceptual experience, from the earlier formulations in McDowell (1982) to the more recent account in McDowell (1994) and (1998c). IJ See also de Gaynesford (2002), p. 329. I believe this objection underlies Crispin 'Wright's criticism to the effect that McDowell's appeal to the disjunctive conception is nothing more than a new version of G. E. Moore's notorious dogmatic response to scepticism. See Wright (2002b) and McDowell's attempt at an answer [McDowell (unpublished b)]. Here, it should be noted that Glendinnig and de Gaynesford (1998) criticize McDowell for not being consistent and radical enough in his attack on the Cartesian conception of subjectivity and point to the alternative approach elaborated by Heidegger. 14 Of course, one may insist that the very understanding of the idea of an epistemically distinguished class of experiences presupposes acquaintance with actual instances of its members. However, this assumption seems to involve the verificationism detected by Stroud (see above, notes 10 and 12). One coul~~lso compare such reasoning to "paradigm 'case" arguments, to the effect that we '~ot understand a distinction such as the distinction between "appearance" and "reality", unless we are familiar with actual examples of real, veridical perception. 15 Here, one could perhaps agree with de Gaynesford's claim that "the term 'transcendental' may be an unfortunate (because misleading) label for McDowell's response" insofar as his purpose is to "ground his contentions in intentionality rather than epistemology, and to show how apparent rival positions like scepticism may be dissolved only if one refuses to confront them on the ground they choose" [de Gaynesford (2004), p. 20]. However, de Gaynesford seems to rely on a very narrow conception of 11
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transcendental arguments and to miss the similarities between McDowell's strategy and the goals of any transcendental approach since Kant, aiming at undermining the false presuppositions of rival positions. See the discussion that follows (section Ill), concerning the characteristics of the transcendental stance and their Wittgensteinian transformation, 16 See Stroud (1999), pp. 214-8 and passim, especially p. 216, on the relation between the "indispensability" and the "invulnerability" of beliefs. Stroud applies this idea to some of the well known transcendental arguments put forth by Strawson, and more recently by Davidson, and he develops it in his antireductionist defense of beliefs about the reality of colours, which cannot be consistently "debunked", in Stroud (2000). 17 Variants of this account of the transcendental stance are elaborated in Virvidakis (1984), (1990). For an alternative, though in many ways similar analysis of the characteristics of transcendental enquiry, see Bell (1999), pp. 198-202. III The emergence of Hegel's dialectic is also related to a further elaboration and development of this attitude, aiming at overcoming untenable oppositions, although it follows a different direction, Thus, Kant would probably insist on the distinctness of cognitive elements and faculties, even at the cost of confronting unresolvable tensions that he would try to deal with in the spirit of his critical philosophy - , rather than embrace a problematic epistemological or ontological holism. He would repudiate the Hegelian "mediations" and "syntheses". 19 I am here alluding to the difference between the "two-worlds" and the "twoaspects" interpretation of Kantian transcendental idealism. For a forceful defense of the latter, also presented to an important extent as a viable philosophical option, see Allison (2004). 20 See Stroud (1968) and Virvidakis (1984), See also Bell (1999), pp. 189-210. 21 A "'~.ntian expression curiously appropriated by Quine, who, according to McDowell, is unable to do justice to the notion of this "rational" tribunal, since his "bald naturalism" confines his justificatory moves to the "realm of law" and lacks the indispensable reference to the "space of'reasons". Sec McDowell's argumentation in (1994). 22 Davidson, "Meaning, Truth and Evidence", quoted in McDowell (1999), p, 88. 23 For an interpretation of McDowell's positions in this area in the light of his more general transcendental approach, see Virvidakis (1996), pp. 151-8. 24 In, fact, he openly criticizes Jonathan Lear, who does try to defend a form of paradoxical, transcendental idealism of Wittgensteinian origin, in McDowell (1994), pp. 158-9. Furthermore, his recent sympathy for the new, resolute reading of the Tractatus, proposed by Cora Diamond and James Conant, seems to renew and reinforce his reluctance to accept the intelligibility of paradoxical metaphysical truths that can be shown but not said meaningfully. If we do accept this reading we should reject the idea of any "significant" or "important" nonsense. For a detailed presentation of this approach, see the essays in Crary & Read (2000). 25 He is now ready to acknowledge that the discussion ofKant in Mind and World was flawed because it mistakenly relied on such an interpretation of the Kantian project [McDowell (1998c). p. 446]. For a succinct assessment of the importance of Kant's insights concerning the relations between reason and nature and for an interesting proposal for a reinterpretation see also, McDowell (1995), pp, 159-67.
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26 This description is, strictly speaking, accurate, provided one agrees, pace Crispin Wright, that McDowell's writings should still be regarded as analytic philosophy. See Wright (2002a) and McDowell's rather ironical reply [(2002), p. 291]. 27 Sec among others, Habermas (200la), (2001 b), and Niquet (2000). For a different attempt at a re-transcendentalization, also partly inspired from Sellars, see also Haugeland (1998), pp. 298-9ff. To quote the main idea presented in the blurb of the book, "What is objective knowledge and how is it possible? The answer broached in an explanatory way, amounts to a contemporary revival of transcendental constitution - an idea prominent in the history of philosophy, but largely absent from the recent literature." (my emphasis). 28 Here it is perhaps worth contrasting McDowell's position with Kant's constraints on transcendental proofs, "Every transcendental proposition ... proceeds solely form one concept and states the synthetic condition of the possibility of the object in accordance with this concept. The ground of proof can therefore only be unique, since outside this concept there is nothing further by means of which the object could be determined, and the proof can therefore contain nothing more than the determination of an object in general in accordance with this concept which is also unique" [ Kant (1997), A788/B816]. 291nfact, McDowell's anti-sceptical use of transcendental argumentation could be profitably compared and contrasted to Strawson's Humean reinterpretation of the goals and the scope of his own transcendental arguments, which could presumably help us show the idle character of scepticism [Strawson (1985), pp. 18-9ffJ. As we pointed out earlier, this reinterpretation was instigated by Stroud's critique. above, note 3.) In any case, the arguments we are considering address modern and not ancient scepticism. 30 For an interesting account, see Thornton (2004), pp. 209-44. 31 For some of the most eloquent expressions of this way of interpreting McDowell, see Friedman (2002), Dodd (1995), and Engel, (2000), (2001), (2005); and for a more positive assessment of his appropriation of post-Kantian idealism, Bernstein (2002), and Pippin (2002). See also the responses provided in McDowell (2002), (2005). 32 See also his paper on Rorty [McDowell (2000b)]. See Thornton (2004), pp. 209A4. 33 See Dieter Henrich's analysis of the original legal meaning of"Deduktion" in German, in Henrich (1989). 34 It must be admitted that if deduction is broadly construed here, just as an argumentative procedure of legitimation or justification, "transcendental" in the broadest possible sense could also be taken to mean simply whatever involves genuine "philosophical" reflection, as opposed to empirical scientific explanation. McDowell sometimes does speak in a way that implies such an understanding of the term: "we ~~ have to reconceive it transcendentally, or speaking as philosophers" [McDowell (1998), p. 469]. Unfortunately, this rather loose interpretation of the term "transcendental" seems to amount to a trivialization of its meaning. 35 In Nozick's words, "The explanations to follow are put forward not as the sole correct view on their topics, but as members among others of admissible classes, with the hope that they will be ranked first, or at least highly. On the view presented here, philosophical work aspires to produce a highest ranked view, at least an illumi-
T to
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On Mcliowell's Conception ofthe (Transcendental'
55
nating one, without attempting to knock all other theories as inadmissible" [Nozick (1981), pp. 23-4]. See also the discussion of his proposal at pp. 21-3. 36 In private conversation McDowell assured me that his Hegelian construction is nothing but a roundabout and complicated way of treating transcendental anxiety, which, however, is indispensable, in order to take care of all the knots and tangles accumulated by the modern philosophical tradition. In order to untie the knots we may have to imitate the moves that led us to them in the first place. A Rortian pragmatist dismissal, amounting to the replacement of one philosophical "vocabulary" by another would not work, in so far as it would not constitute a proper therapy for confusions that are bound to arise again and again when we philosophize. 37 See Thornton (2004), pp. 21, 244. As Friedman puts it, «For it is characteristic of Wittgenstein's own method ... to deliberately Set back from any explicit engagement with the philosophical tradition at all and to concentrate, instead, on particularistic and self-consciously non-theoretical investigations of imaginary 'language-games'. It is this method of exploring the limits of om' language from within that is then Wittgenstein's replacement for traditional philosophy. In light of the historical-philosophical tangles produced by McDowell's attempt to bring Wittgensteinian 'quietism' into some kind of explicit relation with the philosophical tradition nonetheless, one can only conclude, in the end, that Wittgensteinian quietism may itself only make sense in the con~ text of Wittgensteinian philosophical method" [(20&1). p. 48]. It should be noted that McDowell himself has recently voiced his worries about the use of the term "quietism", which however is interpreted in a sympathetic spirit in Mind and World [McDowell (1994), pp, 175-80]. For a criticism of the attribution of the stance of quietism to Wittgenstein himself, see Schulte (2001). See also Virvidakis (unpublished). 38 It should be noted that Robert Brandom also talks of an alternative "expressive transcendental deduction of the necessity of objects" that could be contrasted with McDowell's argumentation [Brandom (2000), p. 41J. This "deduction" is elaborated mostly on the basis of semantic considerations. Brandom's purely pragmatist rationalism, despite its partly Kantian starting point, is more explicitly Hegelian. 39 See Bell (1999), p. 209. Bell, who quotes McDowell's "Anti-Realism and the Epistemology of Understanding" (1981), distinguishes between such arguments. conceived as transcendental in the proper sense of the term, and most current analytic antisceptical "transcendental-arguments", to which he assimilates Kant's "Refutation of Idealism" - that he does not regard as properly transcendental,
REFERENCES
Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense. 2nd ed., New Haven and London, Yale University Press. BBLL, D. (1999), "Transcendental Arguments and Non-Naturalistic Anti-Realism", in Stern, R. (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Prospects and Problems, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 189-210. BRANDOM, R. (2000), Articulating Reasons, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
ALLISON, H. (2004),
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CASSAM, Q. (1999), "Self-Directed Transcendental Arguments", in Stern, R. (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Prospects and Problems, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp.83-11O. CRARY, A & READ, R. (eds.) (2000), The New Wittgenstein, London and New York, Routledge. DE GAYNESFORD, R.M. (2002), "Blue Book Ways of Telling: Openness and Other Minds", Philosophical Investigations, vol. 25, pp. 319-30. (2004), John McDowell, Oxford, Polity Press. DODD, 1. (1995)"McDowelland IdentityTheoriesof Truth", Analysis, vol. 55, pp. 160-5. ENGEL, P. (2000), "L'cspace des raisons est-il sans limites?", in Apel, rco. et al., Un steele de ph ilosophle 1900 -2000, Paris, Gallimard, pp, 231~76. - (2001), "The False Modesty of the Identity Theory of Truth", International Journal ofPhilosophical Studies, vol, 9, pp. 441-58. - (2005), "The Unimportance of Being Modest: A Footnote to Mclfowell'a Note", International Journal of Philosophical Studies, voL 13, pp. 89-93. FlUEDMAN, M. (2002), "Exorcizing the Philosophical Tradition", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp. 25-57. GLENDINNIG, S. & DE GAYNESFORD, R.M. (1998), "John McDowell on Experience: Open to the Sceptic?", Metaphilosophy, vol. 29, pp. 20~34. HABERMAS, J. (2001a), "Manieres de dctranscendcntaliser: De Kant a Hegel et retour", in Verite etjustification; transl. by Rainer Roschlitz,Paris, Gallimard. (200lb), Kommunikatives Handeln und detranszendentolisterte Vernunft, Stuttgart, Reclam. HAUGELA1\D, 1. (1998), Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. HENRICH, D. (1989), "Kant's Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique", in Forster, E. (ed.), Kant's Transcendental Deductions, Stanford, Stanford University Press, pp. 29-46. KANT, L (1997), Critique of Pure Reason) transL and ed. by P. Guyer and A. Wood, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. McDOWELL, J. (1981), "Meaning and Understanding", in Parret, H., and Bouveresso, L, (eds.), Meaning and Understanding, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, pp, 225-48. (Reprinted in Mcl.iowell, J.~ Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, Cambridge) Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 314-43). - (1982), Defeasibility and Knowledge", Proceedings a/the British Academy, voL 68, pp. 455-79. (Reprinted in McDowell, J., Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 369-94). - (1984), "Wittgenstein on Following a Rule", Synthese, vol. 58. pp. 325-63. (Reprinted in Mcljowell, J., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 221-62). - (1994), Mind and World, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. - (1995), "Two Sorts of Naturalism", in Hursthouse, R., Lawrence, G. and Quinn, W. (eds.), Virtues and Reasons;' Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 149~80. (Reprinted in McDowell, 1., Mind, Value and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 167-97). (1998a), "Precis of Mind and World" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research) vol. 58, pp. 365-8.
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(1998b), "Replies to Commentators", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 58, pp. 403~31. - (1998c), "Having the World in View: Sellars, Kant and Intentionality", The Journal ofPhilosophy, vol. XCV, pp. 431-91. - (1999), "Scheme-Content Dualism and Empiricism", in Hahn, L.E. (ed.), The Philosophy ofDonald Davidson, Chicago and Lasalle, TIlinois, Open Court, pp. 87103. - (2000a), "Experiencing the World", in Willaschek, M. (ed.), John McDowell: Reason and Nature, MUnster, MUnster, Lit Verlag, pp. 3-18. - (2000b), "Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity", in Brandom, R. (ed.), Rorty and his Critics, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 109-23. - (2002), "Responses", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp. 269-305. - (2005), "The True Modesty of an Identity Conception of Truth: A Note inResponse to Pascal Engel (2001)", International Journal of Philosophical Studies, ''Vol. 13, pp.83-8. - (unpublished a), "Transcendental Empiricism". (Paper presented at the third Athens-Pittsburgh Symposium, Rethymnon, October 2000; Greek translation in Deukalion, vol. 21, 2003). - (unpublished b), "Twentieth Century Transcendental Arguments: A Neglected Option?" (Paper presented at the fourth Athens-Pittsburgh Symposium, Delphi, June 2003. It is an earlier version of "The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument", included in this volume). MOORE, A.W. (1999), "Conative Transcendental Arguments", in Stern, R. (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, Oxford, Oxford University Press, NIQUBT, M. (2000), Transzendentale Argumente: Kant, Strawson und die Aporetik der Detranszendentalisierung, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp. NOZICK, R. (1981), Philosophical Explanations, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. SCHULTE, 1. (~), "Wittgenstein's Quietism", in Meixner, U. (ed.), Metaphysik in postmetapysischen Zeitalter, Wien: Obv&htp, pp. 37-50. . SELLARS, W. (1963), "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", in Sellars, W., Science, Perception and Reality, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 127-96. (Reprinted as a monograph, with an introduction by Richard Rorty and a study guide by Robert Brandom, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1997). STRAWSON, P.F. (1959), Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, London, Methuen. - (1985), Scepticism and Naturalism, London, Methuen. - (1994), "At Home in the Space of Reasons", Times Literary Supplement, 25/11/1994. STROUD, B. (1968), "Transcendental Arguments", The Journal of Philosophy, vol. LXV, pp. 241-56. (Reprinted in Stroud, 8., Understanding Human Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 9-25). - (1999), "The Goal of Transcendental Arguments", in Stern, R. (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Prospects and Problems, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 111-47. -
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(Reprinted in Sroud, B., Understanding Human Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 203-23). - (2000), The Quest for Reality, Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour, Oxford, Oxford University Press. THEODOSIOU, M, (unpublished), "A Note on McDowell". THOMAS, A. (1997), "Kant, McDowell and the Theory of Consciousness", European Journal ofPhilosophy, vol, 5, pp. 283-305. THORNTON, T (2004), John McDowell, Chesham, Acumen. VIRVlDAKlS, S, (1984), Transcendental Arguments, Transcendental Idealism and Scepticism, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University. - (1990), "Wittgenstein and the Development of Transcendental Philosophy", in Haller, R. & Brandl, J. (eds.), Wittgenstein; Towards a Re-Evaluation, Wien, HolderPichler- Tempsky Verlag, pp. 144-6. - (1996), La robustesse du bien, Nimes, Editions Jacqueline Chambon. - (unpublished), "Varieties of Quietism". WRIGHT, C. (2002a), "Human Nature?", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp. 140-73. - (2002b) "(Anti-)Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G. E. Moore and John McDowell", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 65, pp. 330-48.
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teOFelna Vol. XXV11, 2006, pp. 59-62
Response to Stelios Virvidakis
1. In a certain strand of analytic philosophy, there has been an interest in arguments of a kind called "transcendental". An argument of this kind purports to establish that something is the case, on the ground that its being the case is a condition for the possibility of something whose actuality those at whom the argument is directed will not dispute. A common starting point for such arguments is experience that purports to reveal how things are in the environment. In a version I once offered, the starting point was mutual understanding on the part of speakers of a language. Since Mind and World, as Virvidakis notes, I have also found it useful to attach the label "transcendental" to a kind of philosophical activity specified in terms of its aim. The aim is to remove supposed problems about the possibility of objective purport. Such philosophy need not take the form of transcendental arguments in the sense I have just sketched. I doubt that there is much, if any, connection between these two uses of the term, except perhaps a roughly Kantian parentage. I think my conception oftranscen_l philosophy, as opposed to transcendental arguments, is pretty much exhausted by that specification of its aim, which is close to the first item in Virvidakis's catalogue of features of transcendental philosophy. As Virvidakis in effect surmises (see his n. 24), I regret having once attached the label "transcendental" to uses of words that are supposed to gesture towards things that are somehow correct, but cannot be said (his fourth item). It is true that I often find it helpful to be suspicious of supposedly forced choices between pairs of options (his second item). But I think of this as good philosophical practice in general, not as characteristic of transcendental philosophy, philosophy concerned with objective purport} in particular. As Virvidakis notes, this suspicion of dualisms naturally opens into a Hegelian search for ways of thinking that preserve, in larger syntheses, insights from both sides of supposedly irreconcilable antitheses. I do not understand why he thinks this involves, in Hegel and in me, an insouciance about counterintuitive implications. An irremediably counterintuitive synthesis would be useless. There is no point in aiming at synthesis for its own sake, with no concern for things like plausibility.
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2. I have claimed to find in Sellars material for a transcendental argument against a kind of scepticism about perceptual knowledge. The argument turns on a disjunctive conception of perceptual experience. The claim is that the very idea of perceptual experience requires us to make sense of the idea of experiences in which how things are makes itself manifest to experiencing subjects. Of course Virvidakis is right that, from an insistence that we can make sense of the idea of experiences in which how things are reveals itself to experiencing subjects, we cannot infer that there actually are any such experiences. But the argument I consider is not supposed to take that inferential step. The argument is meant to show only that, from the acknowledged fact that we can be misled by experience, it does not follow that experience as such can never yield more, in the way of epistemic credentials for beliefs about the environment, than misleading experiences do. The point is just that when we concede that our capacity to find out how things are by, say, looking is fallible, as of course we must, that yields no reason to suppose the idea of an experience in which how things are reveals itself to us cannot have application. That is, the argument is not supposed to go beyond (3)) in Virvidakis's regimentation. I think Virvidakis underestimates how much headway this can make against scepticism. Why should the possibility of perceptual knowledge seem to be open to question? My answer is: because of the temptation to think the concept of experience that reveals to us how things are is guaranteed not to have instances. Once that temptation is cleared away, we can recapture the significance of common-sense ways of guarding, of course fallibly, against errors in perceptually grounded beliefs. If someone points to a determinate possibility of something that may be leading one astray, one can take steps to investigate whether one would indeed be mistaken in that way, if one formed the belief one is inclined to form. Suppose it looks as if there is water on a sunlit rise on the road ahead, and someone says: "Perhaps there is no water there, and your visual experience is due to a mirage." One can in principle go to the place where it looked as if there was water and check. If this investigation is for some reason not feasible, perhaps the possibility of a mirage should lead one to suspend judgement as to the presence of water there. A determinate ground for suspecting error has been raised, and one has not been able to rule out the possibility that the prospective belief would be wrong in the way that has been suggested. In contrast, a bare reminder that one is fallible, in the general capacity for knowledge-acquisition one purports to be exploiting, does not point to a determinate ground for suspecting error in a particular case. It would be rational to respond to such a general reminder of fallibility) as opposed to a specific ground for thinking one might be wrong in this case in particular, by
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shrugging and sticking to one's knowledge claim. Of course one would need to acknowledge that in doing so one runs, as always, a risk of turning out to be wrong. That is no more than agreeing that one's knowledge-acquiring powers are fallible. Suppose one accepts that visual experiences may be cases of that things are thus and so. Why should one then think that whenever one seems to see that things are thus and so, rationality requires one to suspend judgement as to whether one is seeing that things are thus and so or merely seeming to see that things are thus and so? Why should it not sometimes be rational, though admittedly risky, to suppose one's experience is a case of seeing that things are thus and so? Ex hypothesi, we are considering someone who wledges a possibility that she would be right if she took that risk. The 8 icism Virvidakis cites from Glendinning and de Gaynesford, who offer it as consistent with the disjunctive conception of experience, is a mere refusal to run the risk of turning out to be wrong in perceptually based knowledge claims. This counsel of timidity no longer has the character of a genuinely challenging scepticism. A genuinely challenging scepticism is a line of thought purporting to establish that knowledge claims, of some particular sort, stand no chance of being true. 3. I conceive my transcendental activity as unmasking illusory obstacles that would, if not unmasked, prevent us from taking the idea of objective purport 111 stride. I do not purport to propound substantive philosophical theses, with a view to answering questions understood as giving expression to genuine problems. Virvidakis doubts that this "therapeutic" stance is consistent with the way I appropriate elements from the philosophical tradition. [ shall make two points about this. First, about "minimal empiricism". (The point of the label might equally be put by stressing the lower case: "empiricism" as opposed to "Empiricism'") Virvidakis suggests that this sounds like a philosophical thesis. But I claim that " if it were not for the avoidable influence of bad philosophy, there would not seem to be room for disputing the thought that experience does not merely cause empirical beliefs but provides warrants for them. To regain that piece of mere sanity is, of itself, to dissolve the apparent difficulty about the very possibility of empirical objective purport that I aim to reveal as illusory in Mind and World. So regaining that piece of sanity is a bit of transcendental philosophy as I aim to engage in it. When I clear away the illusory obstacles that make a minimal empiricism seem problematic, I am defending a minimal empiricism in the course of doing transcendental philosophy. The point is to make empiricism available for a transcendental purpose. But this is not, as Virvidakis suggests, offering a transcendental defence of empiricism, in a sense that would imply that the basic empiricist thought is, apart from bad philosophy, open to
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dispute, so that positive arguments are required in order to persuade people to accept it. My claim is that it stands revealed as truistic when the bad philosophy that obscures its nature is cleared away. Second, Virvidakis endorses, without discussion, Michael Friedman's, version of the thought that I do not succeed in combining a "therapeutic" stance with exploiting the tradition in the way I do. This seems unfortunate. Friedman's negative verdict turns on his claim that my attempt at the combination leads to certain "historical-philosophical tangles". (See the passage quoted in Virvidakis's n, 37.) But as 1 have explained in commenting on Friedman, there is nothing to the supposed "historical-philosophical tangles" but a series of misreadings of me. Friedman's argument is a poor basis for Virvidakis's judgement. JOHN McDOWELL
NOTE 1 See my "Responses", in Nicholas H. Smith, ed., Reading McDowell (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), at pp. 270-4.
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teorema VoLXXVII, 2006, pp. 63-81
~ Appearances and Disjunctions: Empirical Authority in McDowell's Space of Reasons Jesus Vega Encabo'
RESUMEN
En este articulo presento una tension filosofica en la caracterizacion que McDowell propene del espacio de las razones. POl' un lado, McDowell insiste en la imagen sellarsiana del conocer como posicionamicntos en el espacio de las rezones; cada posicionamiento requiere un apoyo racional. Por otro lado, las autorizaciones emplricas son contempladas desde la perspectiva de una concepcion disyuntiva de la experiencia, segun la eual considerar un contenido de experiencia no implica ni una aceptacion por parte del sujeto ni credenciales para que se sinie en el espacio de las razones. Argumcntare que esta tension, entre una concepcion epistemicamente simetriea del espacio de las razones y la asimetria cpistemica implicita en la tesis disyuntiva, hace diflcil ofrecer una interpretacion unificada de la autoridad emplrica en el espacio de las razones propuesto por McDowell. ABSTRACT
In this paper, I will present a philosophical tension in McDowell's characterization of the space of reasons. On the one hand, McDowell insists on the Sellarsian image of knowings as standings in the space of reasons. episternic positions requiring rational support. On the other hand, empirical entitlements are viewed from the perspective of the disjunctive account of experience, in which entertaining an experiential content does not involve either acceptance by the subject or credentials to stand in the space of reasons. I will argue that this tension. between all epistemically symmetrical account of the space of reasons and the epistemological asymmetry implicit in the disjunctivist thesis> makes it difficult to give an unified interpretation of empirical authority in McDowell's space of reasons.
I
Traditional epistemology has been an inexhaustible source of philosophical anxiety. Sceptical scenarios and motivations have provoked odd diseases and nervous reactions in the philosophical community. Ancient sceptics intended to give the human mind back its health, a health ruined by philosophical excesses. But nowadays we need to recover from sceptical oddities; we need an adequate therapy to calm our fears and anxieties. McDowell's philosophy represents a valuable aid in this task. 63 .1
Jesus Vega Encabo
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Sceptical scenarios cause a real fear of losing the world. I am not very sure about the urgency of sceptical problems, nor about the best way to confront the challenges they raise. Obviously, refusing to argue against them is a clear way of limiting their value and interest. I do not think that therapy can simply consist in diagnosis; healing is something distinct from prevention. If we limit ourselves to the diagnostic task, then we are viewing the sceptical illness, once we have contracted it, as hopeless. The only solution would seem to be philosophical prophylaxis. Anxiety has to be relieved with good arguments.~ One of the most treacherous kinds of scepticism is the claim that the subject is out of touch with the world. If perceptual experiences do not provide us with direct access to the world, we have a version of scepticism about the external world in which the sceptic puts pressure on the difficult task of giving a clear account of epistemic authority at the most sensitive points in our cognitive access to the world. McDowell relies on the diagnostic strategy to overcome sceptical temptations. He claims that it is sufficient to reject the assumption causing the illness: the idea that perceptual experiences never put us in touch with the world. Otherwise, the role played by experience in the structure of empirical entitlements would remain problematic. His position adopts the following two sources of inspiration: first, the Sellarsian characterization of knowings as standings in the space of reasons; second, the Wittgensteinian intuitions in On Certainty concerning the value of sceptical arguments and the special authority of some of our beliefs. The resulting epistemological framework, that corrects Sellars with Wittgenstein, is particularly stimulating as regards the role played by experience in grounding observational knowledge. Empirical knowings are standings in the space of reasons "grounded" by experiencing that such and such is the case. In this paper, I will argue that the account of experience that coheres better with this twofold inspiration, the so-called disjunctive view, introduces an odd asymmetry in how we account for the empirical authority of our empirical beliefs. But an asymmetric account does not agree with a Sellarsian conception of the space of reasons. And, on the other hand, trying to restore the symmetry by defending the disjunctive view does not prevent us from catching the sceptical illness. T
II
What is the cause of our ills? McDowell contends that it is a suspicious move of interiorization in characterizing the -space of reasons. By this move the subject becomes persuaded by the fantasy of a realm under her absolute control [McDowell (1998a)]. We could describe the "internal" facts belonging to this realm as absolutely independent of the world itself. This "reality"
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would be such as it is independent of how things happen to be in the external world. The facts in this realm are self-standing [McDowell (1998b)]. But the move of recoiling to an inner space of facts is advantageous only in appearance. In trying to secure the infallible knowing of these facts, the interiorization move cuts definitively any rational tie with the world. The anxiety provoked by the traditional epistemological outlook comes from the confidence that, once we have retreated to this realm of fantasy, we could recover the world at a later time. But our confidence is always frustrated. The sceptics will always win. To show whether we have real access to the external world, these infallibly knowable facts are not enough; the only thing that can contribute to our success is that the world itself does us a favour. The only epistemic entitlements we can acquire without fear of error concern these internal facts. And it is the world, as external to any rational requirement, which explains the possibility of being mistaken. In other words, being lucky is essential to our knowings, So my entitlement to the world being thus and so is nothing but a "guess", because whatever my epistemic efforts are it could always turn out that the world was not doing me a favour. Again, if we surrender to the interiorization move, the sceptic will have a definitive advantage in the game. Some standings in the space of reasons, the starting-points within it, are privileged. Experiences used to play this role in the empiricist tradition. The interiorization move affects them in a special way: they begin to be conceived as an inner realm of subjective appearances. So, now, the point is how to understand the infallibly knowable facts concerning appearances ("the seeming to one that things are thus and so"). The error lies in viewing them as knowings in an interiorized space of reasons, which means that the appearance serves as a starting-point by yielding a premise in a cogent argument to recover the world. As we have seen, to the extent that the argument itself could never secure us against error concerning the external world, the alternative between the sceptic's triumph and the world doing us favours is still in place. The whole debate concerns how appearances are epistemically working within the space of reasons. The interiorization move conceives them as epistemic intermediaries between us and the world. They are immediate standings in the space of reasons, a point of departure for the justificatory arguments that would support with authority our empirical beliefs. In this realm of fantasy, the neutral starting-points, the appearances as "the highest common factor" in veridical and deceptive cases, are the prime movers in the arguments to recover the world. The temptation to consider these startingpoints as absolute and immediate is very strong. This is the temptation of a foundationalist picture committed to the Given. As we have seen, McDowell detects two dangers in this move of interiorization: first, losing the world as something into which our experience is open; second, deforming the space of reasons in such a way that the truth
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condition in knowing is never secured. The dangers come from the same assumption: the idea that appearances work as epistemic intermediaries within the space of reasons.
III The Sellarsian space of reasons is the logical space "of justifying and being able to justify" [Sellars (1997), §36, p. 76]. To adopt a position within it requires, at least, to be able to justify the standing. Every position within the space of reasons needs some credentials. But are all credentials of the 'same kind? And what do authoritative credentials consist in? I will assume that the following two points are not controversial in trying to spell out the conditions that an epistemic standing must meet (i) every authorized state must be able to contribute to supporting the relevant inferences needed to spread justification within the whole space of reasons;
(ii) every authorized state has to be subject to fallibility conditions in two different ways: either by faUing short of the facts or by being doxastically blameworthy. So, if appearances are positions in the space of reasons, it has to be because they can contribute to some kind of inferences and be subject to fallibility conditions, that is, they may deceive us and we could be blameworthy in accepting what the appearances "tell" us.
IV In empirical knowledge, for a state to be a standing in the space of reasons it is necessary that it can be inferentially articulated and answerable to the world. First, experiences yield us genuine standings by being indebted to the world [McDowell (1998a), p. 396]. The indebtedness to the world is not an extra to the person's standing in the space of reasons; experience itself works as a rational constraint. And, second they are sensitive to other rational considerations. In order to provide the inferential capacities and extend the epistemic authority to other epistemic states, experiences must be conceptually structured. As Sellars would say, experiences contain "propositional claims" [Sellars (1997), §16, pp. 39-40]. And conceptual episodes are seen according to the model of linguistic performances. Thus, to enter into the space of reasons is to be initiated into language. Nonetheless, this is not the decisive thesis in the defence that McDowell
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mal~of experiences as starting-points in the space of reasons. And it is not becaufe it does not capture where the epistemic authority of experiences stems from. It is not enough to be conceptually structured in order to acquire depends on "the cpistemic credentials. The epistemic authority of in such a position to the fact cogency of the inference from someone's that things are thus and so" [McDowell (l998c)~ p. 432].2 To be a standing in the space of reasons necessarily involves some sensitivity to the inferential linkages, but the satisfactory epistemic status of some standings is 110t accountable in terms of an argument based on immediately satisfactory positions. Inferential 1inkages, in these cases, only conform some kind of background; they. are not constitutive of epistemic authority. In these cases, McDowell would argue that factiveness and conceptuality are intimately tied. Factiveness is possible only for beings endowed with conceptual states and a linguistic framework. 3 The conceptual content of an experience, in non-deceptive cases, is a "perceptible fact".4 And this does not depend on any rational considerations that would lead the subject to take the experience "at face value". As he has declared in clear and emphatic terms, "factiveness takes care of itself' [McDowell (1998c), p. 433]. If the experience is veridical, then we do not need any other rational consideration to give epistemic credentials to our seeing that p. Not only are inferential linkages insufficient to ensure factivencss; furthermore, they are not constitutive of epistemic authority in the empirical starting-points in the space of reasons. In this (the veridical) case, epistemic credentials do not consist in the rational force of the considerations that would help the subject to fufill her epistemic responsibility. First, it is clear that the standings in the space of reasons enable inferential articulation because they are conceptually structured, but this does not entail that the space itself is inferentially accountable. Not every proper move in the space of reasons is an inferential one. As McDowell puts it in his debate with R. Brandom, "[t]he point just brings out the insufficiency of a conception of justification that limits itself to inferential inheritance on entitlement" [McDowell (2002a), p. 100]. Second, the centrality of'factiveness in empirical knowledge does not entail that we are confronted with absolute standings and states endowed with unmediated credentials. McDowell defends a version of "mediated" standings in the space of reasons that excludes absolute startingpoints: every epistemic position involves being "responsive to the mediating considerations", to the "rational force of surrounding considerations" [McDowell (1998c)~ p. 430]. The thesis could be stated in the following terms: it is essential for being an (authoritative) epistemic position in the space of reasons to be subject to doxastic responsibility and rational criticism; but this rationally mediated force is not always constitutive of being epistemically authorized. Two aspects need some explanation if we want to talk about experiences as starting-points in the space of reasons:
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The disjunctive view of experience is designed to explain both points: the possibility of being fallible while preserving the idea that in experience we are in cognitive touch with the world. Fallibility is something implicit in the very idea of knowing: knowledge involves both a truth requirement and a condition of doxastic responsibility. Either requirement may not be fulfilled. In the first case, I could entertain the experience as if p while it is the case that not-p; in the second case, even if really p, I fail to be justified in claiming that p by appearing to me that p, because the "rational surroundings of my experience" lead me to withhold that p. How does the disjunctive view accommodate both possibilities of fallibility?
v The disjunctive view is designed to resist the charms of the "highest common factor" model of experience. The latter tries to accommodate two features of the experience: (l) a phenomenological fact concerning the indistinguishability of veridical and deceptive experiences; both kinds of cases involve a "seeming to someone as if p"; (2) the epistemic significance of experience, that is, how experience contributes in grounding rationally empirical beliefs. The way the "highest common factor" model answers both requirements is a cause ofphilosophical anxieties. The defender of the "highest common factor" defender argues as follows: experiences, veridical or deceptive, are intrinsically indistinguishable; from the subject's point of view, it is impossible to distinguish which one is veridical or which one is not. From this "fact", she draws the conclusion that in both kinds of cases the experiential intake has to be the same, an appearance. But,
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in talking about the epistemic significance of experience, it is necessary to accommodate the possibility of being misled. Fallibility considerations compel us to view appearances in non-deceptive cases as intermediaries between the experiencing subject and the world. Appearances would provide defeasible reasons to infer how the world is in fact; they must be supplemented with a cogent argument if they are going to serve as groundings for empirical beliefs about the environment. I am credited with empirical knowledge only when the availability of the appearance is supplemented with an inference to secure that it is a veridical appearance. The disjunctive view tries to block both inferences, from "indistinguishability" to the "highest common factor", and from "fallibility" to the "veil of ideas" as epistemic intermediaries. Nevertheless, the key point in the argument is not the incoherence in talking about both kinds of cases (veridical and deceptive) as indistinguishable, but the picture the "highest common factor" view introduces to account for the role played by appearances in the epistemic game of "giving" reasons. There is nothing wrong with the idea that both cases involve "an appearance that things are thus and so", to the extent that it "leaves it open that whereas in one kind of case [the deceptive one] what is given to experience is a mere appearance, in the other [the veridical one] it is the fact itself made manifest" [McDowell (1998d), p. 396]. Freeing ourselves from a mistaken conception of empirical authority, that is, a mistaken account of experiences as proper moves in the space of reasons, we could yet accept the phenomenological fact that any experience is characterized by how things look or appear to the subject. The idea that appearances (understood as appearings, not as a kind of object) playa role in characterizing experience is not questionable,' only the idea that they can function as premises in an argument to recover the world at a later time." So, what would be the best characterization of experiences if we don't want to be committed to this self-standing realm of appearances? Suppose we say not at all unnaturally that an appearance that such-andsuch is the case can be either a mere appearance or the fact that such-and-such is the case making itself perceptually manifest to someone. As before, the ob-, ject of experience in the deceptive cases is a mere appearance. But we are not to accept that in the non-deceptive cases too the object of experience is a mere appearance, and hence something that falls short of the fact itself [McDowell (1998d), pp. 386-7].
VI But the disjunctive view does not follow directly from the denial of the "highest common factor" account. They are not the only "theories" in town.
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The so-called epistemic conception of experience seems to satisfy the requirements without assuming the disjunction. ln fact, McDowell's account of experience is very close to some versions of the epistemic view. The classical epistemic model claims that to perceive that p is to be disposed to believe that p. Nevertheless, McDowell does not accept this thesis and argues for the belief-independence of experiential states; belief involves spontaneity and rational control by the subject in a way that is not available to experience. "In a picture in which all there is behind the judgement is a disposition to make it, the experience itself goes missing" [McDowell (1996), p. 61]. What motivates the rejection of the epistemic view is its inability to accommodate the phenomenological character of experience, the role played by how things appear in experience. Appearing that p would have to be epistemically relevant to ground the judgement that p. And it would also have to be relevant in cases in which there is no fact p that would make the judgement that p true. My conviction of being correct in applying an empirical concept would have to be the same in veridical and deceptive cases if it is the phenomenology of the experience that counts as a relevant feature in grounding my epistemic entitlements. But it is not cle.~r whether McDowell would accept that in deceptive cases phenomenology - ' f gives any epistemic credentials to the fact that p. But this is not the point I want to raise regarding McDowell's conception of empirical authority. Even if we assume the belief-independence of experiential states, there is yet another way to defend an epistemic conception of experience. Perceiving that p is a matter of accepting that p, and accepting that p is like "making an assertion", 7 McDowell also rejects this version. In his response to B. Stroud," he argues that there is no need to assume that in having the experience that p, in the sense of having the impression that p, the subject is accepting the proposition that p.9 McDowell insists that experiences are not acceptings, but "invitations" to accept or withhold the propositional content involved in the experience. But what is the difference between an invitation to judge that p and a disposition to do so? The difference could be explained as follows: to be disposed seems to involve simply "causal relations", whereas an invitation leaves the decision to accept or withhold the proposition up to the subject. An invitation seems to involve rational considerations. To accept or withhold the invitation is "up to me". Nevertheless, we could still ask whether it is the appearing itself or the acceptance or withholding of the invitation that the experience offers to me that constitutes a standing in the space of reasons. In what sense does the appearing itself belong to the space of "justifying and being able to justify"? How things appear to me in having the impression that p is not "up to me", if we try to preserve the passive dimension of our sensibility. The appearing as such is not revisable and it is doubtful that we could offer any rational consideration that allows me to experience things in a different way. It seems
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that it is my acceptance that things appear to me as being thus and so that is subject to my responsibility. Another option would be to argue that rational sensitivity is explained by the fact that the experience actualizes the same conceptual capacities that would be present in the acceptance of a proposition about the objective world. But it is clear that entertaining the same content is not sufficient to explain how the experience can rationally ground an empirical judgement; we also need to specify what kind of "rational linkage" exists between the content of the experience and the content of the belief. McDowell talks about "being aware tbat.;." as the reason constituting state. Now we need to clear up what we understand by the state of awareness that constitutes the authoritative rational relation between the experience and the corresponding belief. We have two different ways of conceiving "being aware H • In the first, we identify awareness with "noticings"; we are intellectually aware that something is present in experience, such that one has the occurrent belief that it is so. Surely, this interpretation takes us back to experiencing as "accepting". The second way is better suited to McDowell's purposes: we talk about "experiential awareness" as being directly aware of 111e experience in virtue of having it. IO But it seems to me that in the justificatory task the unnoticed features could not enter in the actual grounding of the empirical belief. Every epistemically relevant feature has to be noticed by the experiencing subject. Ifnot, there would be no clear difference between experiential and intellectual awareness. It seems as if the only way-out is to suppose that it is the fact itself, in so far as the subject is aware of it, that justifies the belief. I I But, in this case, if we don't want to take "appearances" as singular facts in a realm of fantasy, we are not acquainted with appearing-facts but with the very facts in the world that would make the empirical belief true. The possibility of being misled is not open, because it is the truth that p as experientially given that justifies the beliefthat p. One should resist such temptation. It does not seem to be very far from some versions of the Myth of the Given. Remember that Sellars was worried about the knowings in presence and 110t only about the non-defeasible character of empirical knowledge. So it is not only the idea that there are no absolute standings in the space of reasons that is at stake, but also the possibility that the awareness of the fact be the only feature in explaining the satisfactory epistemic standing of our empirical beliefs, their credibility and authoritative status. One could argue that it is because we don't take the disjunctive conception of experience seriously that we have such tempting inclinations. McDowell insists on the idea that, in the best cases (veridical cases of experience), "entitlement and truth do not come apart" [McDowell (2002a), p. 99]. Being aware that thus and so in experience makes the presence of p manifest to someone. The very fact of seeing entitles the subject to a rational taking that p (judging, believing or accepting). In the unhappy cases of deception, the very "fact" of mere seeming is compatible with there being no p. But is
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the subject not entitled to a rational taking that p? Of course, she is not, because in this case she would be irresponsible in accepting that p: rational considerations and truth would come apart. McDowell characterizes experiences as conceptual states consisting in the appearing to a subject that the world is thus and so. To this extent, they can play the role of reasons to ground the "convictions" that the world is thus and so, but they are not conceived as rational takings of the content that would justify the corresponding belief. It is this difference that McDowell tries to accommodate in his discussion by introducing the disjunctive view of experience. But we suspect now that the appearing does not make the same epistemic contribution in veridical as in deceptive cases. VIJ
Following the disjunctive thesis, the priority in the explanation of experience is not on the side of deceptive cases, but on the side of veridical ones. It is necessary to reverse the order of explanation: the privilege corresponds to the cases in which the subject is not fallin~i~,~hort of the facts [Child with the possibility of (1992)]. If the "highest common factor" theory delusion and has problems explaining the possibility of a true openness to the world, then the pressing question becomes the characterization of a mere appearance. What does a disjunctivist understand by mere appearance? It is an appearing in which the fact that was supposed to appear is not really making itself manifest to someone. We could say that it is as if the fact is making itself manifest to a subject despite there being no manifesting fact. But this difference cannot be decided by phenomenologically inspecting the content of the experience. Surely, the appearing is not missing in this case and is contentful, because otherwise it would not be easy to explain how the disjunct "mere appearance" can make true the claim that someone has the appearance that such-and-such is the case. But, when the objective fact itself is not present, can we say anything about such appearings? It is certainly difficult to express what "mere appearance" could mean, because, on the one hand, it sounds highly paradoxical to claim that it is a fact of appearing in which no fact appears (remember that we don't want to postulate appearing-facts), and, on the other hand, it is an empty characterization to claim that it is a case in which a fact is not perceptually manifest or apparent. If we follow this line of reasoning, it would lead us to a mere stipulation: the difference between the case in which it merely appears to the subject that there is a dagger before his eyes and the case in which the dagger is infact appearing before the subject's eyes lies in that, by the very construction of the argument, in the first case there is no dagger before his eyes and ill the second there is. But if this is the best interpretation of the disjunction, the difference is external to the very ap-
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pearing itself, to the experiential state. And again this is the image that McDowell is trying to reject, because it is the world, externally conceived, which would do us the favour (or not) in order to know the facts. Nobody would deny that in the veridical case our epistemic position is "excellent", but to what else could we appeal in veridical and deceptive cases, except the very fact itself, to decide whether we are in this privileged epistemic position?
VIII
The only way to accommodate the role of mere appearances in McDowell's account is to give an asymmetric treatment to each disjunct. But what reason do we have to follow this asymmetric strategy? One way to understand the disjunctive view symmetrically would be to think that, given the indistinguishability thesis, we are ipso facto entitled to endorse the disjunctive claim that either I am that p or I am merely in a seeming state. This would be to promote a very cautious attitude regarding our experiences. Given the way things appear to me, I would be entitled to accept the proposition that either it really appears that p or it is a mere appearance that p. We know that one of the disjuncts has to be true; and so we would have a reason to accept the disjunction as justified. But the question is in what sense the disjunct that would support our entitlement to the whole disjunction would be in its turn justified. The disjunctivist would claim that each disjunct has a different epistemic significance. The cautious attitude is not the way experience works in connection with the possibility ofjudging how the world is. To think that experiencing that such and such is thus and so only entitles us to the disjunctive claim is to reproduce the strategy of the "highest connnon factor" view. Remember that the objection against this model is less the denial that there is 110 common factor than the way in which it performs the epistemic role. It is of no help to argue from a "highest common factor" disjunctively characterized; this strategy distorts how the epistemic standings in the space of reasons are to be understood. We would require, if it were so, a cogent argument to eliminate some of the disjuncts. The disjunctive view cannot be but a thesis about the different epistemic significance of each disjunct. 12 Now the asymmetry in the epistemic authority of the experiential intake seems more pressing. The left side of the disjunction provides a non-defeasible epistemic entitlement to the claim that p. The right hand disjunct works very differently. We don't "immediately" acquire the conviction that it merely appears that p, In the first case, experiencing is taking in the world as being thus and so, and is not characterized by any state of acceptance or judgement; in the second case, the passage through a state of acceptance is required even to make it true that I have an experience that p by merely appearing to me that p. Even if McDowell sometimes talks about an inference from "seeing that p"
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to things being thus and so, there are two different epistemic "entitlements" present in the very building of the disjunction: in veridical cases, where "to appear" is really conceived as factive, justification and truth cannot be separated; in deceptive cases, it is plain that I am not justified in accepting the mere appearance that p by any fact being present in my experience; if I am entitled to accept the right hand disjunct is because I have an argument, i.e, good reasons, to withhold my inclination to believe that p.13 McDowell talks in one case of non-defeasible entitlements; in the other, we are confronted with defeasible entitlements. The question then is about what it is that makes the left hand side of the disjunction so special.
IX We are now ready to explain how the disjunctive account of experience requires an odd asymmetry in epistemic entitlements. The acceptance that p by seeing that p requires being rationally sensitive to how things appear to us. We might have good reasons not to accept that p although it appears to me that p. But this is expressed, in the disjunctive conception, by taking into consideration the right hand side of the disjunction. At the same~e, the acceptance that p by appearing to us that p does not involve any argti'i1il'nt to the conclusion that p, any argument excluding the possibly good reasons not to accept it. Nevertheless, to conclude that it merely appears that p we need to build an argument and consider the rational circumstances of the experience. In the veridical case, we don't need any credentials apart from the experience that p. It is the experience itself which provides credentials and reasons to accept that p. To have an experience in this sense does not require any acceptance Of withholding. But we cannot give any account of "mere appearing" that p without involving some argumentative reasons to hold that "normal conditions" are not working properly. McDowell likes to mention a case in which we could have good reasons to distrust our senses, although we are really seeing that p, because as a matter offact our faculties are functioning perfectly [McDowell (1998c), p, 430, n, 25; McDowell (2002b), pp. 277-8]. In this case, we could be entitled (in one sense), to withhold the judgement that p and even endorse the claim that it is a mere appearance. 14 Nonetheless, does not the very fact that I was really seeing that p provide us with an entitlement to p? Of course, if I "realize that I was seeing" that p. But McDowell contends that if I have reasons to distrust my senses, then I was not seeing that p. Why not say at the same time that if I was seeing that p, then I have no reason to distrust my senses? This fact reflects the asymmetry. But what happens when I "realize" that I was seeing? How is the entitlement to p restored? . McDowell's case seems to be better when reconstructed in the following way:
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1. I have a visual experience that p. 2. I withhold that p, because I have reasons to suppose that there is a failure in the normal conditions. 3. Then I am entitled to conclude that it merely appears that p to me; and this entitlement is grounded argumentatively in the rational assessment of my acceptance. 4. Suppose that I realize that I was really seeing that p. In this case, it is not enough to mention my previous experience; I have to be convinced that r was wrong in my previous argument and reject my withholding and the idea that I was confronted with a mere appearance. I assume that I was doxastically blameworthy in withholdingp. Or is it possible that, after arguing against my previous undefeasible entitlement, there is a mysterious restoration of it? In this case, if r was seeing that p, I was at the same time undefeasibly entitled to the belief that p. But the right hand side disjunct leaves open the rational possibility of my entitlement being defeated and not seeing that p (or thinking that I was not seeing that p ).15 The restoration of my confidence in that I was seeing that p involves the acceptance that p by a cogent argument available to the perceiving subject. To realize now that I was seeing that p explicitly involves the thought that I do not consider that my faculties are not working properly. Why not say at the same time that my accepting that p~ by seeing that p, is supported by the consideration (explicit or not) that my faculties are working properly? But if it is so, then it is clear that the judgement is not grounded only on the experience that p; there must be other aspects in play. If we analyze McDoweH's case in these terms, then an experience that p would never be by itselfa sufficient reason to accept that p. McDowell could still reject this conclusion reading the case another way: 1'. I have a visual experience that p; and to have an experience that p provides a prima facie entitlement to accept that p. 2'. I have reasons to suspect that my faculties are not working properly and I accordingly withhold my previous acceptance. 3'. Then I am entitled to conclude that it merely appears to me that p. 4'. If I cast doubt on my previous doubts, then what I am doing is restoring my previous prima facie entitlement to p by experiencing that p. This reading needs to explain how these entitlements can be restored
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once we have assumed that rational considerations are not constitutive of the epistemic credentials involved. Is it 110t a little odd to claim that, in this case, considering whether my faculties are working properly is not rationally constitutive of my believing that p by having the experience that p? Moreover, even if we believe in restoration, we have discovered that the previous entitlement was in fact correct. And the discovery involves other beliefs and rational considerations. My contention is that all cases of epistemic entitlements in perceptual beliefs involve the same reference to the proper functioning of our faculties. How this involvement has to be conceived in order to explain empirical authority may still be a matter of controversy. Some authors would regard the question as the involvement of a concealed argument; others would claim that my entitlement to p in veridical cases presupposes that our faculties are working properly; and others would appeal to the vocabulary of virtues, All of them would consider that we have no clear reason to defend a strong asymmetry between veridical and deceptive cases. Moreover, we sometimes use appearings to justify our claims about obj ective reality and take into account other rational considerations without concluding that we are in the presence of mere appearances. [f I have an experience of something elliptical, this can serve as a reason to hold the belief that that thing is round. 16 Evidently, the appearing is. a reason to hold this belief only when one knows other things. But to enta a satisfactory epistemic position into the Sellarsian space of reasons, one needs to argue as follows: first, I have to endorse the claim that this object appears elliptical; second, I endorse the claim that certain appearances are the way in which round things appear elliptical; then I endorse the claim that that thing is round. In which sense are we confronted with mere appearances? It is true that the appearings are relevant in the justificatory task, but they are relevant in every case and in the same way. It is clear to me that the way things appear to me as being elliptical in certain circumstances resists my effort to think that it is round, because the appearing itself cannot be revised; it is not "up to me". In Sellars' account, what is rationally accountable, and thus a starting-point in the space of reasons, is my accepting or withholding the content of the appearance given other beliefs that I consider in order to establish my decision. Finally, we can reconsider the cases of illusory perceptions. If one accepts that appearings can intervene as reasons to ground perceptual beliefs, there is nothing that prevents us from concluding that in the case of the Mtiller-Lyer illusion the lines are unequaL Other evidence would put this conclusion in doubt. In this case the subject will be cautious, that is, she will consider the possibility of being misled. She will need some evidence to decide whether she takes the content of the way things look to her at face value. So, to take how things appear to the subject at face value would not be sufficient to ground her acceptance that they are how they appear. The disjunctive view tries to insist 011 the fact that we do not really see that the lines are un-
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equal, because we cannot see what is not there. Nevertheless, the point is not about our use and understanding of the word "see", but about how the subject is entitled to take the way things appear to her as reasons for accepting or withholding the propositional claim. If "seeing that p" is a genuine standing in the space of reasons, it is because we take it to be a "knowing", that is, a move in the game of "justifying and being able to justify", and in performing this function the subject uses something other than the way things appear to her.
x But there is yet another way to understand the disjunction. We have a structure of acceptance by default. Confronted with the way things look to ue, we are entitled by default to conclude that they are thus and so, Only in the case where we have reasonable doubts in supposing that the "other things equal" clause is violated, is the right hand side of the disjunction activated. McDowell is very close to adopting such a view in texts like the following: 17 Unless there are grounds for suspicion, such as odd lighting conditions, having it look to one as if things are a certain way - ostensibly seeing things to be that way - becomes accepting that things are that way by a sort of default, involving no exercise of the freedom that figures in a Kantian conception ofjudgment [McDowell (l998e), p. 439].
But, again, this way of understanding the disjunction introduces a clear asymmetry in the way we conceive the empirical entitlements within the space of reasons. An initial point: claiming that we are confronted with a justificatory structure by default is clearly different from affirming the undefeasible nature of the entitlement when someone is seeing that p. In any case, the point is that when someone takes herself as seeing that p, she is already accepting or endorsing the claim that p. That is Sellars' idea of standings in the space of reasons. Our seeing that p has to be rationally sensitive to how things look to us in the same way that the mere seeming that p is also rationally sensitive to the way things look. In both kinds of cases, the reliability of our faculties in providing us with access to the objective facts is in question. The structure by default only points to the fact that we do not make our assessment on the epistemic position in which we stand explicit, but the possibility of failure in the proper working of our faculties depends on how we see ourselves as knowers: we do not have to ascertain that we are not confronted with delusive perceptions in every case, but it is by the appropriate working of our cognitive faculties that we are entitled to accept that things are thus and so by looking thus and so to us. The asymmetric treatment hides the very nature of our being in a good epistemic position, and this is particularly relevant in those cases in which we are trying to understand the empirical authority of
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the starting-points in the space of reasons. Moreover, the asymmetry could lead us to some unadvisable consequences. If we want to explain what the source of the empirical authority of our entitlements is, we can appeal to the fact that 1 see that things are thus and so. Then, by default, I would be entitled to accept that things are thus and so. But what is my entitlement to accept that I am seeing that things are thus and so? McDowell is tempted to claim that it is the fact itself that one is perceiving so. My entitlement then is guaranteed by the truth of the claim. In a certain sense, the epistemic acceptability is "directly reflected" in the seeing itself. At the same time, this is the condition for the subject to immediately recognize the authority of her claim. In the very fact of seeing that p, the subject is entitled to the claim that p and recognizes her own empirical authority to accept it. This immediate recognition, reflected in the very fact that we are really seeing, excludes any temptation to demand any evidence from which we need to reconstruct an argument for the authority of our empirical claims. The asymmetry with the right hand side of the disjunction is evident and it is also evident that we are out of the Sellarsian space of reasons) in which we cannot acquire empirical authority for our observational claims without knowing "general facts of the form X is a reliable symptom of Y" [Sellars (1997), §26) p. 75]. This is his way of eliminating any temptation to the knowings in presence. IS
XI The SeIlarsian account of the space of reasons conceives the kind of rational assessments every standing within the space is subject to symmetrically. Every satisfactory epistemic position in the space of reasons is subject to the same rational constraints; an epistemic standing needs to be justified (supported by reasons) and be able to function as a possible reason. I think that the disjunctive strategy has a different line of inspiration) whose aim is to preserve the common sense intuition of our direct access to the world. Hence, the privilege of veridical cases in explaining experience. Veridical cases represent special standings in the space of reasons. Experiences, McDowell claims, do not have epistemic credentials, but they can rationally ground the acceptance of a belief with the same conceptual content. But, in the Sellarsian conception, that would mean that it is the acceptance itself which constitutes a truly epistemic standing in the space of reasons. The asymmetric account that McDowell offers requires that, in order to explain the rational assessment involving experiences, we distinguish between the kind of empirical entitlement we have for the belief that we are in the presence of a fact making itself manifest, and that we have for the belief that we are in the presence of a mere appearance. In the latter case, we need an argument involving a set of previous acceptings and withholdings, I have argued that this seems at odds with
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the way in which how things appear to us works in grounding our beliefs. There are two direct ways to restore the symmetry within the space of reasons. The first would be to assume that we are entitled to endorse the appearance that p even in cases in which there is no p. This would be a retreat to conceive appearances as intermediaries and the sceptic will have a place in the picture. The second is to conceive, as Sellars did, every entitlement within the space of reasons as inferential; surely sceptical doubts will also be in place. And then we need to argue against the sceptic and not simply show that sceptical questions lack any urgency. At least, we need to consider whether we are in a good epistemic position in order to claim that what is directly manirested to us is a fact. But we could also abandon symmetry in understanding empirical entitlements; the basic idea is that, in genuine perceptual entitlements, truth and justification do not come apart. I suspect that this was the main thesis in the epistemological theories of the "given". Givenness is a thesis about how to ground our empirical beliefs: our taking the truth that p is sufficient to justify endorsing p. It is the presence of the fact itself that secures my being entitled to my empirical belief. A less direct way of restoring the symmetry could consist in naturalizing the space of reasons and translating the structure of empirical entitlements by default into the language of the proper functioning of reliable processes. The epistemic excellence within the space of reasons is derived from the virtuous working of our faculties. Departamento de Lingiiistica, Logica y Filosofia de la Cieneia Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Campus de Cantoblanco, E-28049 Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain E-mail:
[email protected]
NOTES l This paper would not have been written without the discussions held with Fernando Broncano who put pressure on some dubious points of my arguments and defended the disjunctive view. This text grew out of the doubts raised by C. Thiebaut against my account of the disjunctive conception. Ever fruitful conversations with Diego Lawler about Mclrowell's philosophy have helped me to articulate my argument. Javier Gil and David Teira had read previous versions of this paper. I am very grateful to all of them for their observations and comments. 2 In any case, we are confronted with a "peculiar" kind of inference in trying to spell out the conditions of the epistemic satisfactoriness of basic empirical entitlements, in which no other inferential states are constitutive of the empirical entitlement. 3 "It goes with being restrictive about conceptually structured content that we
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cannot employ the very same notion of factiveness in connection with the states that result from such non-rational or pre-rational capacities" [McDowell (1998c), p. 433]. 4 "That things are thus and so is the conceptual content of an experience, but if the subject of the experience is not misled) that very same thing) that things are thus and so, is also a perceptible fact, an aspect of the perceptible world" [McDowell (1996), p, 26]. 5 More controversial is the idea that the phenomenological features of experience would contribute to give empirical credentials to the subject's beliefs. 6 The main motivation in McDowell's arguments is not only epistemological: he is worried by the semantic consequences of the highest common factor. The disjunctive view seems to be the only alternative to losing the world. Experience itself would be deprived of objective content if it were not viewed as answering to the world itself. Then, the disjunctivist tries to restore the possibility of experience being directed to the world. So McDowell is less worded by the sceptical scenarios than by the intelligibility of the idea that the experience is open to the world This is the main target in McDowell's Mind & World. See pages ] 11-3. 7 This is Sellars' expression in Empiricism and the Philosophy ofMind: "For to say that a certain experience is a seeing that something is the case, is to do more that describe the experience. It is to characterize it as, 80 to speak, making an assertion or claim, and... to endorse that claim" [Sellars (1997), §16, p, 39]. "Seeing that..." is a standing in the space of reasons in so far as we conceive the experience as making an assertion and endorsing a claim. I think we have enough textual basis in Sellars' writing to attribute to him a version ofthe epistemic conception of experience. This does not mean that Sellars wasn't worried about the phenomenological character of perceptual experiences; but it is clear that phenomenology does not affect the explanation he gives about how seeings acquire the epistemic credentials that place them in the space of reasons. E The response [McDowell (2002b)] and Stroud's (2002) can be found in the book edited by N. H. Smith) Reading McDowell. On ind and World (London & New York, Routledge, 2002). McDowell's response is in pages 277-9. 9 Some points in my argument are very close to the dialectics in Stroud's paper. 10 See E. Sosa in chapter 7 of his book with L. Bonjour (2003), pp. 119-20. II I take this option as a version of a theory of perceptual acquaintance with facts. 12 McDowell expresses such a conviction in McDowell (this volume), where he answers some objections by C. Wright about the significance of the disjunctive view to answer the sceptic [Wright (2002)]. 13 It is not, as Wright argues, that we need an a priori entitlement to the belief that delusions are rare in warranting the left hand side of the disjunction and that we discover in deceptive cases that it would be wrong to accept the propositional content of the experience. McDowell contends that we are before two different ways of talking about "being entitled to". 14 It is clear that, if one is defending the disjunctive view, in having the experience that p and doubting that p, one is at the same time withholding that p and endorsing the claim that it merely appears that p, IS The problem lies in answering the question about what "fact", if any, would lead me to consider this kind of thought. What would the content of the thought be? Or would it also be better to talk about the mere appearance that I was thinking that r was not seeing that p? 16 In other cases we conclude that we see things just how they look to us. These
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are the cases that suggest the special entitlement of our empirical beliefs. 17 In fact, McDowell is not talking in this text about defeasibility as a justificatory question but as a genetic one. He is trying to explain how the acquisition of a perceptual belief does not necessarily involve a judgement. It is acquired by default in certain circumstances, Nonetheless, we can draw a certain version of disjunctivism from these terms and apply it to the epistemological question. 18 I do not see this question as merely exegetical, The Myth of the Given cannot be stated only in terms of sensuous contents or appearing-facts; it Is above all a question about the immediacy and status of our epistemic entitlements. Sellars rejects the idea that we can have an empirical standing in the space of reasons without "presupposing" other knowledge. Obviously, the exegetical question would be how to understand this kind of "presupposition". It is the understanding of this question that I think is contentious in McDowell's response.
REFERENCES
L. AND SOSA, E. (2003), EpistemicJustification. Internalism vs. Externalism. Foundations vs. Virtues, Oxford, Blackwell.
BONJOUR,
CHILD, W. (1992), "Vision and Experience: The Causal Theory and the Disjunctive Conception", The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, pp. 297-316. McDoWELL, 1. (1996), Mind and World, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. (1998a), "Knowledge and the Internal", in Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, pp. 395-413. (199gb), "Singular Thought and the Extent of Inner Space", in McDowell, J., Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, pp. 228-59. (l998c), "Knowledge by Hearsay", in Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass" Harvard University Press, pp. 414-43. (1998d), "Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge", in Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, pp. 369-94. - (1998e), "Having the World in View: Sellars, Kant, and Intentionality", Journal of Philosophy, vol. XCV, pp. 431-91. - (2002a), "Knowledge and the Internal Revisited", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LXIV, pp. 97-105. - (2002b), "Responses", in Smith, N. H. (ed.), Reading McDowell. On Mind and World, London & New York, Routledge, pp. 269-305. - (this volume), "The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument". SELLARS, W. (1956/1997), Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. STROUD, B. (2002), "Sense Experience and the Grounding of Thought>" in Smith, N. H. (ed.), Reading McDowell. On Mind and World, London & New York, Routledge, pp, 79-91. WRIGHT, C, (2002), "(Anti-)Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G. E. Moore and John McDowell", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LCV, pp. 330- 48.
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Response to Jesus Vega Encabo
1. Suppose we know that it looks to someone as if things are thus and so. We know she is undergoing a visual experience whose phenomenological character is as it would be if she were seeing that things are thus and so. That does not exclude the possibility that she is actually seeing that things are thus and so, though it is of course consistent with the possibility that it merely seems that she is seeing that things are thus and so. ln knowing that much about our subject, we know that she has a reason of a familiar kind for believing that things are thus and so. If she believes that things are thus and so and we ask what her reason is for believing that, she can respond, perfectly intelligibly, "1 believe it because that is the way things look to be". In appreciating how this kind of reason for belief fulfils its explanatory function, we do not yet need to concern ourselves with the difference between seeing that things are thus and so and merely seeming to see that things are thus and so. Appearances as such - and we are here focusing on visual appearances in particular - afford reasons, good as far as they go, tor believing that things are as they appear. Here we havr~ rational force that is to be found, symmetrically, on both sides of the disjui~10n that figures in the disjunctive conception of experience. 2. Now suppose our subject is seeing that things are thus and so. That puts her believing that things are thus and so, if she does believe it, in a new rational light - extra to the rational intetligibility we could already find in her belief when we knew 110 more than that it looks to her as if things are thus and so. That one sees that things are thus and so is a reason of a distinctive kind for one to believe that things are thus and so. It gives one an entitlement to believe that things are thus and so, additional to the entitlement one has just by virtue of having it look to one as if things are thus and so. If one's reason for believing that things are thus and so is that one sees that things are thus and so, that displays the belief not just as a belief it is reasonable to hold in the circumstances - which is all we get from the fact that it looks to one as if things are thus and so but as a case of the kind of entitlement that knowledge is. If one seems to see that things are thus and so but does not see that things are thus and so, one seems to have, but does not have, a reason of that distinctive kind for believing that things are thus and so.
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So the rational force of having it look to one as if things are thus and so, which is symmetrical as between cases in which one is seeing that things are thus and so and cases in which it merely seems that one is seeing that things are thus and so, coexists with a rational force whose application across the disjunction is asymmetric. Seeing that things are thus and so has a rational significance, a capacity to display beliefs as entitled, that merely seeming to see that things are thus and so merely seems to have but does not have. 3. Vega Encabo describes this asymmetry as odd. But I have set it out it so as to show that it is routine. If some conception of the space of reasons cannot accommodate it, that shows only that the conception is wrong. The image of the space of reasons comes, of course, from Sellars. And Vega Encabo thinks Sellars ~ s conception of the space of reasons excludes the asymmetry. But this is a misreading of Sellars. Vega Encabo says Sellars conceives every entitlement within the space of reasons as inferential. But this is contradicted by a central thesis from the pivotal part VIII of Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". There Sellars insists that one piece of lrnowledge can depend rationally on another - which is surely a connection within the space of reasons - otherwise than inferentially. He argues that the authority of observational claims depends on knowledge of certain general matters of fact, hut with a dependence that is not inferentiaL For instance, one cannot count as seeing that something is green, which gives one's claim that the thing is green the authority of a report of observation, without knowing a sufficiency of facts about the effects of different kinds of illumination on colour appearances. And that is a rational dependency. But Sellars insists that those general facts are not premises in an inference to the conclusion that the thing is green. One's entitlement to the observational report is not inferential. So far as inferential mediation goes, one's knowledge that the thing is green is immediate. Vega Encabo is wrong in claiming that this inferential immediacy takes us outside the Sel1arsian space of reasons. 4. Vega Encabo thinks positions in Sellars's space of reasons are restricted to positions that are up to the subject, positions for which the subject is responsible. On that basis, he thinks that if we focus on positions in the space of reasons that are characterized in terms of a certain proposition, they are restricted to attitudes voluntarily adopted with that proposition as their content: acceptance, rejection, perhaps suspension ofjudgement. But this would preclude the space of reasons from accommodating, not only the rational force that attaches asymmetrically to seeing that things are thus and so, but even the rational force that attaches symmetrically to having it look to one as if things are thus and so, whether or not the experience in which it looks to one as if things are thus and so is a case of seeing that things are thus and so. One can change the direction of one's gaze and perhaps the lighting
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conditions. One can intervene to change the arrangement of objects in one's field of vision. But apart from those irrelevancies, it is not up to one how things look to one. Apart f1'0111 those irrelevancies, that it looks to one as if things are thus and so is outside one's control. And how could that deprive its looking to one as if things are thus and so of its capacity to entitle one - so far as it goes - to believe that things are thus and so? A conception of the space of reasons that had that effect would fail to accommodate a quite obvious kind of rational connection. This cannot be Sellars's conception of the space of rea SOlIS. 5. Finally, a couple of points of detail. First, Vega Encabo says, apparently purporting to be expressing something I think, that "we don't want to postulate appearing-facts". But by my lights the idea of appearing-facts, facts to the effect that things appear a certain way, is harmless, Those facts, properly understood, are not to be equated with the supposedly self-standing "inner" facts we are restricted to by the interiorization that I resist. Another way to put this is to say the difference between an appearing-fact in which how things are is making itself manifest to the subject and one in which that merely seems to be so is precisely not "external to the very appearing itself, to the experiential state", Second, Vega Encabo implies that I think reliance on favours from the world, in a conception of our possibilities for acquiring knowledge, is, just as SUCh, problematic. That is not right. It depends on the point in the picture at which favours from the world are invoked. What is problematic is the idea that standings in the space of reasons can take one only some of the distance towards count' . as knowing how things are that over and above an optimal standing in' e space of reasons, one also needs kindness from the world if one's position is to be a case of knowledge. Knowledge is thus conceived as a composite state: a standing in the space of reasons, not amounting to a cognitive purchase on a fact, together with an extraneous favour from the world. I claim that sucha composite state is not recognizable as a case of knowledge at all. But when we are trying to understand the idea of knowledge acquired in, for instance, perceiving how things are, I think it is the beginning of wisdom to find a favour from the world in the fact that the present case is not one in which the general possibility of being misled, which we acknowledge when we acknowledge the fallibility of our capacity to acquire knowledge in this way, is actual. That is a kindness from the world that is part of what it is for one to have the relevant standing in the space of reasons, the standing constituted by perceiving that things are thus and so. JOHN McDOWELL
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Locating the Space of Reasons Jennifer Church
RESUMEN
Mclzowell da una explicacion singular del llamado "espacio de las razones": defiende que al menos algunos hechos acerca del mundo externo se hall an en el "interior" de ese "espacio". Sin embargo. este enfoque se cnfrenta a una dificultad, al trazar una linea entre 10 que se halla dentro del espacio de las raZOl1CS y 10 que se encuentra fuera del espacio de las razones. La dificultad podria mitigarse si los objetos de la percepcion pudieran pertenecer tanto al espacio de las razones como a 10 que McDowell denomina el "ambito de la ley". ABSTRACT
McDowell offers a distinctive understanding of the so-called "space of reasons"; he maintains that at least some facts about the external world belong "within" this "space". His approach encounters a certain difficulty, however, in drawing a line between what belongs within the space of reasons and what lies outside of the space of reasons. The difficulty might be alleviated if the objects of perception could belong to both the space of reasons and to what McDowell calls the "realm of law".
Sellars' evocative notion of a "space of reasons" has been regularly invoked over the last decade or so - most centrally, perhaps, in the work of John McDowelL The basic metaphor is clear enough: the space of reasons is a "space" which "contains)' things that can enter into rational or justificatory relations (things that are capable or providing reasons or justifications and/or things for which reasons or justifications can be provided), and it is a "space" whose "contours" are determined by the many intersecting "paths" that justification may take (with different justifications emerging from or converging on the same point, with more or less direct ways to justify one thing by appeal to another, and so on). What is less clear) and more in dispute, is just what entities can stand in justificatory relations and just how justificatory relations are related to other sorts of relations between things in the world. These are questions about what belongs "inside" versus "outside" the space of reasons, and questions about how the space of reasons is related to various other "spaces'), I begin by noting McDowell's distinctive understanding of the space of reasons, and his arguments in favor of this understanding. I then highlight some tensions that arise in his work - in particular, tensions that
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result from the contrast he draws between the space of reasons and the realm of law. And 1 end with a suggestion about how we might alleviate the apparent tensions in McDowell's account by allowing the contents of perception to exist in both the space of reasons and the realm of law.
Sellars introduces the notion of a space of reasons in the context of his discussion of observational reports such as "This is green." Such a report can only express a state of knowledge, he argues, if the speaker is able to justify the report by appeal to some further, and more general, knowledge about the reliability of such reports. The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode 01' state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says [Sellars (1956), §36].
Sellars here makes a distinction between two different ways of characa way that indicates its empirical properties, terizing an episode or a state and a way that indicates its availability for justification. An utterance of the sentence "This is green", for example, may be described as a sequence of sounds resulting from a series of bodily changes or it may be described as an expression of knowledge. The first characterization places it within the empirical world while the second "places" it within the "wo . of justification - i.e. the space of reasons. . Brandom's explication of Sellars's notion of a space of reasons extends the relevant characterizations beyond the laudatory category of "knowing". [Sellars] could as well have said that in characterizing an episode 01' state as one of believing, or applying concepts, or grasping propositional contents we are not giving an empirical description ... but placing it in the logical space of reasons ... [Brandom (1997), p. 160].
Brandom's point is that in the very act of employing concepts, we open ourselves to questions of justification and thereby enter into the normative space of reasons. Observational reports such as "This is green" belong to the space of reasons not merely because we regard them as expressions of knowledge but, more fundamentally, because using concepts to make claims (versus merely uttering words) depends on having the ability to make appropriate inferences to and from those claims.
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[W]hat distinguishes concept-using creatures from others is that we know our way around the space of reasons. Grasping or understanding a concept just is being able practically to place it in a network of inferential relations: to know what is evidence for or against its being properly applied to a particular case, and what its proper applicability to a particular case counts as evidence for or against [Brandom (2001), p. 82].
The suggestion - quite accurate, I think - is that our capacity to recognize how one claim may be appropriately used to justify another is phenomenologically like our capacity to recognize appropriate pathways between objects in space. McDowell extends the notion of a space of reasons still further, to encompass not only intentional states of all sorts but the very contents of those states - the facts that we perceive and come to believe. Perception, according to McDowell, is not an active process of conceptualizing input from a world that stands outside of the space of reasons; rather, it is a receptivity to a world that is already conceptual and already within the space of reasons. That things are thus and so is the content of the experience, and it can also be the content of a judgment ... So it is conceptual content. But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of the layout of the world: it is how things are. Thus the idea of conceptually structured operations of receptivity puts us in a position to speak of experience as openness to the layout of reality. Experience enables the layout of reality itself to exert a rational influence on what a subject thinks [McDowell (1994), p. 26].
Note that, as McDowell understands it, it is not our recognition that we are presented with a fact that gives us a reason to believe. The relation is more direct: in being presented with a fact, we are presented with a reason to believe - whether or not we acknowledge it as such. 1 There are reasons that are not registered as such precisely because there are facts that are not registered as such. Thus McDowell adheres to something of a pre-modern sensibility in which reasons do not inhabit our minds so much as our minds inhabit a world of reasons. We do not construct reasons for belief or action, we discover them (and we do not discover them within ourselves, we discover them in the world around us). Consider how McDowell arrives at this expanded understanding of the space of reasons. He begins Mind and World by endorsing Kant's famous statement that "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" [Kant (1787), A511B75]. But he argues for this double-sided claim in a rather unKantian way, and his targets are not eighteenth century philosophers Hume and Leibniz so much as twentieth century philosophers Quine and Davidson. Quine is accused of relying on unconceptualized intuitions (his "tribunal of experience") to legitimate our web of belief, overlooking the
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fact that unconccptualized input cannot serve as a reason for anything. If experience were the reception of unconceptualized inputs, it would be "blind" and could not function as a rational constraint on our beliefs ("a bare presence cannot be a ground for anything" [McDowell (1994), p, 19]),2 Davidson, according to Mclrowell, corrects for Quine's mistake by retreating to an equally unsatisfactory position whereby beliefs can only be justified by other beliefs, never by the world itself. But if experience were already a state of belief, it could not provide us with independent grounds for belief; our beliefs would be answerable to the demands of coherence but not to an independent world. ("[I] f spontaneity is not subject to rational constraint from the outside, ... then we cannot make it intelligible to ourselves how exercises of spontaneity can represent the world at all" [McDowell (1994), p. 17].) The challenge, then, both for Kant and for McDowell, is to show how the contents of perceptual experience can be both conceptual content (which is the only sort of content that can serve as the content of a belief) but also objective content, existing independently of our beliefs. McDowell responds to this challenge by showing how the contents of am most basic perceptions are able to secure a toehold in the network of inferential relations while also ensuring contact with a world outside of belief. Perceptual content is conceptual as long as one is able to retain a memory of what is perceived and able to recognize other things as being of the same type; and that is all that is required in order for the content of my experience to be capable of entering into inferences of various sorts (and, hence) to belong to the space of reasons). [W]hat ensures that it is a concept - what ensures that th~s that exploit it have the necessary distance from what would determine them to be true - is that the associated capacity can persist into the future, if only for a short time, and that, having persisted, it can be used also in thoughts about what is by then the past, if only the recent past [McDowell (1994), p. 57].
And perceptual content ensures contact with a world that is independent of perception insofar as it contains a demonstrative this, whose content is precisely that object to which perception is receptive. Without such receptivity, there would be no demonstrative content, and without demonstrative content, there would be no perception. The objectivity of its content is, as it were, built into the very nature of perception. To say that an experience is not blind is to say that it is intelligible to its subject as purporting to be awareness of a feature of objective reality: a seeming glimpse of the world. [, ..] that can be so only against the background of an understanding of how perception and reality are related, something sufficient to sustain the idea that the world reveals itself to a perceiving subject in different
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regions and aspects, in a way that depends on the subject's movement through the world [McDowell (1994), p, 56].
Various objections have been raised against McDowell's account of perceptual content. Many commentators have argued that demonstrative contents are simply too thin to count as conceptual in any interesting sense, and many have worried that Mcfjowell's account fails to make room for a content 'that is shared by perception and misperception alike. (It is, of course, incumbent on such critics to demonstrate that these drawbacks are more serious than the drawbacks of the two alternatives McDowell is maneuvering between, or to show that there is still another alternative to be had.) If we follow McDowell's lead, however, we are returned to a world of reasons that are already "out there" to be discovered. We simply open our "eyes" to :findconceptualized contents in the world around us, and those conceptualized contents give us reason to believe what we do. In seeing a flame, for example, we see something outside of ourselves that justifies our bellef in the presence of a flame; the flame appears as something independent of us and its appearing - which is equally our perceiving provides a reason (not just a cause) for our belief. 3 By embracing this picture of things, we regain something of the "innocence" of the ancients, freed from the need to engage in the sort of "constructive" philosophy that (fruitlessly) aims to refute the skeptic. (The project of restoring such "innocence" by dissolving the need to respond to the skeptic is a project in which McDowell is more closely aligned with Wittgenstein than with Kant though he differs from both in seeking to restore an ancient innocence about values as well.)
II
If the contents of perception are independent facts in the world, and if these facts already have a conceptual structure such that they are able to place rational constraints on belief, then nothing that is perceivable will fall "outside" the space of reasons. But, at least on the face of it, the facts that we perceive also belong to the realm of natural law, and McDowell, like Sellars, wants to draw a sharp distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law. [W]e can say that the way our lives are shaped by reason is natural, even while
we deny that the structure of the space of reasons can be integrated into the out ofthe realm oflaw [McDowell (1994), pp. 88-9].
Sellars, it will be recalled, distinguished between empirical characterizations of episodes or states and normative characterizations of those same episodes or states; the very same state can be characterized in two different
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ways one way indicating its physical or law-like relations to various other states, the other indicating its rational or justificatory relations to other states. (Sellars' position is like Davidson's anomalous monism in this respect.) McDowell, though, rejects the claim that the conceptual network of reasons and the conceptual network of laws share the same subject matter. (He agrees with Davidson about the anomalousness of the mental, but he disagrees with Davidson's monism.) His objection seems to be the following: since the conceptual network of reasons cannot be reduced to the conceptual network of laws (oughts cannot be reduced to is's), and since the contents of perception cannot provide reasons for belief unless they are already conceptualized in such a way as to belong within the space of reasons (McDoweWs point against Davidson, as described above), the contents of perception cannot be the same facts as those described by causal laws," The former are (at least partially) constituted by their rational relations to our actual or potential beliefs, while the latter arc not. But how, then, are we to think of the relation between facts in the space of reasons and facts in the realm of law? McDowell insists that they are both parts of nature, broadly construed. He insists that we need not fall into "the supernaturalism of rampant Platonism" (or the unintelligibility of Kant's things-in-themselves) as long as we are willing to at least partially "reenchant" nature, recognizing the irreducible reality of facts that are constituted by their normative relations alongside facts that are not so constituted. A "link" between the two sorts of fact is to be found, says McDowell, in the process through which certain modes of teaching or upbringing (ways described by Aristotle, for example) will produce a "second na~.i that is, a rational nature. In this way, normativity is said to have a causal "foothold" in the realm of law, but the resulting normative facts cannot be derived from, or reconstructed from, the practices that create them. Many have objected to a lack of explanation at this point, unhappy with the minimal accounting that McDowell provides [Blackburn (2001), Brandom (1995), Larmore (2002)]. And I share the desire for a fuller explanation ofjust how the space of reasons emerges from the space of natural law - a topic that has puzzled Mcl'iowell's sympathizers and critics alike. The worry I want to pursue here, however, concerns the "location" of the contents of our perceptions. For the content of many of our perceptions seems to require a place within both the space of reasons and within the realm of law. When I perceive that a flame is growing, the fact that a flame is growing is a constitutive patt of my perception such that it must also belong within the space of reasons. But the fact that a :flame is growing is also a part of the realm of law, standing in lawful relations to facts concerning heat, oxygen, and so on. Indeed, it is hard to see how our perceptions of flames could justify our belief in various laws concerning flames, heat, oxygen, and so on unless the subject matter of our perceptions were also the subject matter of those laws.
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At times, it seems that the phrase "space of reasons" is being used in two different ways - one way (more prominent in early sections of Mind and World) according to which everything that is perceivable belongs, necessarily, within the space of reasons; another way (more prominent later on) according to which only the activities of rational and ethical beings being which are capable of spontaneity as well as receptivity belong within the space of reasons.' Noting the two different uses, Michael Friedman [Friedman (1996)] accuses McDowell of conflating Kant's account of the operations of the understanding (which infuse OUI' perceptions, and our world, with conceptual content) with Kant's account of the operations of autonomous reason (which determine how things ought to be, and free us from the constraints of causal law). On the one hand, the understanding (which synthesizes intuitions in accordance with rules) gives causal laws a necessary place within the space of reasons, for it is the causal laws that ensure objectivity. On the other hand, the spontaneity of moral action creates a realm of reason that cannot be reconciled with the necessity of causal laws. In trying to keep these two "worlds" apart while placing them both within nature, Friedman thinks that McDowell eventually falls into just the sort of post-Kantian idealism that he seeks to avoid an idealism whereby the realm of law and the realm of morality are both created through the operations of the understanding. And this, of course, is an outcome that McDowell cannot accept. Whatever else he is, he is a realist; we are not responsible for creating an objective world but are, instead, responsive to it. There arc deep reasons for McDowell's (and Kant's) alignment of conceptual capacities and ethical capacities, however reasons that McDowell articulates most clearly, perhaps, in his paper entitled "Two Sorts of Naturalism." [McDowell (l998b)J There he maintains that the ability to apply concepts presupposes au ability to evaluate those applications, recognizing the possibility of error and standing willing to revise judgments as necessary; this, indeed, is what makes the making of judgments a normative enterprise. Furthermore, in acquiring the ability to the evaluate judgments, one simultaneously acquires the abil ity to evaluate actions. We cannot make sense of a creature's acquiring reason unless it has genuinely alternative possibilities of action, over which its thought can play. We cannot intelligibly restrict the exercise of conceptual powers to merely theoretical thinking [... ] we need to make room not only for conceptual states that aim to represent how the world anyway is) but also for conceptual states that issue ill interventions directed towards making the world conform to their content. [... ] This is to represent freedom of action as inextricably connected with a freedom that is essential to conceptual thought. [...] We cannot allow ourselves to suppose that God, say, might confer reason on wolves, but stop short of his giving them the materials to step back and frame the question "Why should I do this?" [McDowell (1998b), pp. 170-1].
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I quote this passage at length in order to show how the possibility of reflection on one's beliefs and actions underwrites a kind of freedom for both understanding and morality. McDowell is not conflating Kant's account of the understanding and his account of morality so much as highlighting their common reliance on the free-play of reflection. If this is right, then it is our capacity for reflection that enables us to move beyond informed responses to the world (the sort of responses that other animals make as well) to the making of judgments about the world and judgments about ourselves. "Second nature" is not just ethical nature, it is reflective nature, and reflective nature is what enables us to recognize both the independence of the world we perceive and its capacity to provide us with reasons for our beliefs and actions. [W]e arrive at the notion of having one's eyes opened to reasons at large by acquiring a second nature [McDowell (1994), p. 84].
By McDow ell's own lights, this independent reason-giving world includes both the fact that a flame is growing and the fact that hurting someone is wrong - both of which are normative in the sense that both warrant the acquisition of some beliefs rather than others, and the performance of some actions rather than others. The ethical is a domain of rational requirements, which are there in any case, whether or not we are responsive to them. We are alerted to these demands by acquiring appropriate conceptual capacities. When a decent upbringing initiates us into the relevant way of thinking, our eyes are opened to the very existence of this tract q[the space of reasons [McDowell (1994), p. 82 (~talics)].
Ethical facts, then, are just one part of the space of reasons; physical facts are another. My worry, then, is not that of Friedman, who fears that too much is being assimilated within the space of reasons. I worry, rather, that the sharp divide between the realm of law and the space of reasons begins to break down once we realize that certain facts the facts that form the contents of many ordinary perceptions - must belong in both domains.
HI I have been urging that, on McDowell's view, everything that we can perceive must exists within the space of reasons because everything that we can perceive can serve as a reason for our beliefs and actions. But that does not mean that everything that we perceive must stand in rational relations to
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each other. We can see that a flame is growing and we can see that water is flowing (and both of these facts place rational constraints on what we believe), but there need not be any rational relation between the two. To maintain that every relation between things is (even potentially) a reason-giving relation would amount to the total (versus partial) enchantment of nature - a view of the world that pervades medieval thought, following in the wake of Aristotle's identification of reasons and causes. Although McDowell is sympathetic to Aristotle on a number of counts, he affirms that: [i]t is a good teaching of modernity that the realm of law is as such devoid of meaning; its constituent elements are not linked to one another by 111e relations that constitute the space of reasons [McDowell (1994), p, 97J.
But recognizing the existence of non-rational, lawful relations between the facts we perceive does not require us to exclude any particular fact from the space of reasons if facts that stand in lawful relations to one another can also stand in rational relations to our beliefs and actions. Put another way, instead of supposing that there is a realm of law, containing one kind of thing, that exists alongside a space of reasons, containing another kind of thing, we should recognize that the very same facts can exist both within the space of reasons (on account of their rational relations to our beliefs and actions) and within the realm of law (on account of their lawful relations to each other). On the face of it, this might seem like an endorsement of Davidson's anomalous monism - a view that allows a physical state to stand in lawful relations to other physical states and to stand in irreducibly rational relations to other physical states. McDowell rightly points out, though, that rational relations are constitutive of the very identity of their relata, so a state that is constituted by rational relations cannot be fully determined by its lawful relations (as Davidson assumes) - since the two sorts of relations are incommensurable. What I am recommending is something different, however. Without denying that the identity of a fact or event is constituted by its relations to other things, and without denying that rational, or normative, relations are incommensurable with physical, or lawful relations, I do want to deny that the identity of a thing can be constituted by only one sort of relation. Consider a more or less obvious case: the case of blushing. Blushing does not count as blushing unless it is lawfully related to the flow of blood through the skin and rationally related to relevant judgments about others' perceptions of oneself. Similarly, wincing will not count as wincing unless it stands in lawful relations to the movements of facial muscles and in normative relations to judgments about an error, an insult, or a pain, for example. Any attempt to separate a blush or a wince into the lawful part and the rational part seems misguided. There are not two separate states, in two separate realms here;
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there is) rather, a type of entity that must secure its identity through ties of two different sorts. I suggest that we take this same approach to the contents of perception to accommodate much of what seems right about McDowell's position. The perception of a growing 'flame, for example, will only count as the perception of a growing flame if there are both lawful relations connecting the contents of this perception to the contents of certain other perceptions concerning heat, oxygen, and so on and rational relations connecting the contents of this perception to the contents of a belief about a growing flame. I do not need to know that there is a lawful relation between the growing flame and the increasing heat ill order to perceive that there is a growing flame; nor do I need to know that there is a rational relation between the growing flame and my belief that there is a growing flame in order to perceive the growing flame. But both sorts of relation must indeed hold in order for the content of my perception to be that there is a growing flame. By insisting that the contents of perception - the fact that the flame is growing - are conceptual contents! McDowell has placed objective facts within the space of reasons. [T]he deliverances of out' receptivity ... can innocently be taken to belong together with our world-views in the space of reasons, since they are already in the space of concepts [McDowell (1994), p. 141].
But growing 'flames and increasing heat are the sorts of things that exist in the realm of law as well ~ with the result that the identity of perceivable facts must be constituted by both normative relations and law J1 relations. Nothing will count as the fact that a flame is growing unless it stify various beliefs and actions and unless it can enter into lawful relations with facts about heat, light, oxygen, and so on. Future beliefs and theories or future developments in science may transform the relevant rational relations or the relevant lawful relations, respectively, but that doesn't mean that rational relations and lawful relations are not both constitutive of the growing flame as such. The possibility of an ontology that is doubly-constituted in this way is, in any case, an inviting alternative for those of us who have welcomed Mcfrowell 's extended understanding of the space of reasons, and who agree about the irreducible character of justification, yet find ourselves unable to find rest in the absence of a fuller account of just how the realm of law and the space of reasons fit together. Department ofPHilosophy Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, USA Esmail:
[email protected]
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NOTES I In replying to Barry Stroud (2002), for example, McDowell writes "I think we need an attitude of perception as something in which there is no attitude of acceptance or endorsement at all, but only, as I put it, an invitation to adopt such an attitude, which, in the best of cases, consists in a fact's making itself manifest to one" [McDowell (2002a), p. 278]. 2 Not everyone agree with this argument, of course. It was criticized by Jerry Fodor (1995) ill his early review of Mind and World and it has been criticized more recently, at greater length, by Richard Heck (2000). 3 There is no need to first ascertain the reliability of such appcarings. McDowell (2002a) defends this position against what he sees as Brandom's misleading appropriation (or, perhaps, Sellarsation) of his ideas, McDowell's rejection of Davidson's ontological claim i.e. his monism is discussed most explicitly in McDowell (1998a), esp, pp. 339-40; more briefly in McDowell (1994), pp. 74-6. 5 Animals are said to exist in an environment, not in a world (which is also a space of reasons), while we, as rational animals, exist in both. But this suggests that what we come to know through perception - e.g, that this flame is growing is something different than what animals come to know through perception. McDowell elaborates on his view of animal knowledge in McDowell (2002b).
REPERENCES BLACKBURN, S. (2001), "Normativity a la Mode", The Journal of Ethics, vol. 5, pp. 139-153. BRANDOM, R. (1995), "Knowledge and the Social Articulation of the Space of Reasons", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LV, pp. 895-906. (1997), "Study Guide", in Sellars, W., Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp, 119-81. (2001), "Reason, Expression, and the Philosophical Enterprise", in Ragland, C.P. (ed.), What is Philosophyr, New Haven, Yale University Press, pp. 74-95. FODOR, J. (1995), "Encounters with Trees", London Review ofBooks, 20, pp. 10-1. FRIEDMAN, M. (1996), "Exorcising the Philosophical Tradition: Comments on John McDowell's Mind and World", The Philosophical Review, vol. 105, pp. 427-67. HECK, R. (2002), "Nonconceptual Content and the 'Space of Reasons?', The Philosophical Review, vol. 109, pp, 483-523. KANT, 1. (1787), Critique ofPure Reason, trans, N.K, Smith (1929), London, Macmillan Press Ltd. LARMORE, C. (2002)~ "Attending to Reasons", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading Mcisowell, London, Routledge, pp. L93-208. McDoWELL, 1. (1994), Mind and World, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. - (1998a), "Functionalism and Anomalous Monism", in Mind, Value, and Reality, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 325-40. (1998b), "Two Sorts of Naturalism". in Mind, Value. and Reality, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 167-97.
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(2002a), "Responses", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell, London, Routledge, pp, 269-305. (2002b), "Knowledge and the Internal Revisited", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol, LXIV, pp. 97-105. SELLARS, W. (1956), "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", in Feigl, H. and Scriven, M. (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy ofScience, vol. I, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 253-329. STROUD, B. (2002) "Sense Experience and the Grounding of Thought", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading Mcbowell, London, Routledge, pp. 79-91.
teorema
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Response to Jennifer Church
1. Church thinks 1 expand the space of reasons beyond its original role in Sellars, when I apply the image to rational relations not only between intentional items but also between their contents. This is at best an exaggeration. lt should be obvious that there are rational relations between potential contents of intentional items - between propositions, as we can put it. And the image of the space of reasons fits wherever there are rational relations. Some people think the idea of propositional content is to be understood in terms of independently intelligible rational relations between intentional items. That is the shape taken by, for instance, Brandom's inferentialism. Brandom thinks the idea of the kind of content a claim can have is to be understood in terms of the idea of proprieties that govern inferential moves from one claim to another. He recommends his direction of explanation on the ground that it is preferable to the converse direction, with proprieties governing inference explained in terms of supposedly independently intelligible rational relations between propositions. A third option, which J prefer, is that both those positions are wrong; neither of their candidates has a priority in the order of understanding. But whatever view one takes on such questions, it should not seem a substantial move to suggest that propositions can be pictured as places in a space of reasons, individuated by rational relations between them, such as entailment, exclusion, or probabilification, in a way that is analogous to the way in which places literally so called are individuated by spatial relations between them. 2. Church writes of a pair of supposed drawbacks in my account of perceptual content, one concerning the conceptuality of demonstrative contents and one concerning content shared between perception and misperception. She says my critics need to demonstrate that these drawbacks are more serious than the philosophical problems I aim to circumvent. I appreciate that in that remark she means to be defending me against those critics. However, the remark presupposes that the supposed drawbacks are indeed drawbacks. The only defence it leaves room for is that they are a price we need to pay. But I do not think the supposed drawbacks should be acknowledged even to that extent. Church gives a highly compressed presentation of my appeal to demonstrative content in Mind and World. One would not gather from her presenta-
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tion that my point, in the passage she quotes, is simply to neutralize an objection based on the claim that the content of, for instance, colour experience is too fine-grained to be captured by concepts. My point is not to ensure in a general way that I can represent perception as making contact with a world that is independent of perception. That general project is 110t one for which demonstrative content is especially to the point at any rate not as I exploit demonstrative content in the passage she considers. In any case, it is not true that demonstrative content cannot be seen as conceptual in any interesting sense. That idea cannot survive proper attention to Frega's resources for accommodating senses expressible, in suitable contexts, by uttering sentences containing demonstratives. Frege himself has a different use for the term most naturally translated "concept", but my idea of the conceptual is close to Frege's idea of sense. As for content shared between perception and rnisperception, that is exactly 'what is captured by specifications of how things appear to be in perceptual experience. How things appear to one to be may be how one is perceiving things to be, or it may be how things merely appear to one to be. It is simply not true that my account fails to make room for content shared between perception and misperception. 3. Indistinguishing placing things in the space of reasons from placing things in the realm of law, I meant to emphasize how special is the kind of intelligibility we find in phenomena when we see them in the light of an idea of rationality in operation. My aim was to make the special character of that kind of intelligibility vivid, by distinguishing it from the kind of intelligibility that we find in phenomena when we understand them in the way that is character. istic of the natural sciences. I now think talk of placing in the realm of law was not a gOo'~ay to capture the shape of natural-scientific intelligibility in general. It fits sciences like physics and chemistry, but not biology. But for the purposes of 'a comment 011 Church's paper~ it will do no harm to stay with the way 1 set things out in Mind and World. The point was anyway not to say something that might be positively helpful about natural-scientific intelligibility, but to isolate space-of-reasons intelligibility by contrasting it with natural-scientific intelligibility. If one thinks) truly, that things are thus and so, that things are thus and so, which is what one thinks, is a fact. Facts are thoughts in the sense of thinkables: the thinkables that are true. That is how the idea ofa fact figures in Frege. Thoughts in the sense of thinkables, potential contents of thinkings, are as such in the space of reasons. One thought entails another, for instance, and that is the kind of relation we exploit when we find a belief, say, rationally intelligible by realizing that the believer believes what she does on the ground of something else she believes, or when we recognize a belief as a case of knowl-
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edge by realizing that what is believed is believed on the ground of something else that the subject already counts as knowing. So facts, as some of the thinkables there are, are things of the kind that stand in the sorts of relations that are constitutive of the space of reasons. Church thinks my distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law implies that there are two kinds of fact, 80 that a question arises about how the two kinds of fact are related. And she thinks she is modifying my account when she proposes that at least some facts can be in both logical spaces. But it is already part of the Fregean way in which I use the idea of a fact that facts, as such, are relata of rational relations, as I have just explained. And it would be crazy to deny that some facts can be made intelligible by subsuming them, along with other facts, under natural laws. The distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law was never a distinction between two different kinds of thing. As I said, it was a distinction between two ways in which phenomena can be found intelligible. The point is to claim that the kind of relation in terms of which we find phenomena intelligible when we place them in the space of reasons - a kind of relation that holds between facts, among other things - cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, the kind of relation that constitutes the explanatory context in which we place phenomena when we give them a natural-scientific explanation which is also a kind of relation that holds between facts, among other things. The fact that a flame is growing (Church's example) is like any thinkable in being a thing of the kind that stands in rational relations to other things of that kind. If I perceive that a flame is growing and believe on that ground that a flame is growing, then what I perceive to be the case, the fact that a flame is growing, stands in a justificatory relation to my belief. That remark registers a position the fact has in the space of reasons. Its having a position in the space of reasons should not have seemed to stand in the way of supposing that the same fact might be rendered intelligible by being placed, along with facts about oxygen or whatever, in the framework of the realm of law. 4. Davidson's anomalous monism is a different matter. Its topic is not facts but particulars, specifically events. Davidson's thesis is that events describable in intentional terms terms of the sort that distinctively figure in space-of-reasons explanations are also describable in terms of the sort that function in realm-of-law explanations. Davidson sharply separates a pair of modes of conceptualization (a move closely parallel to what figures in Sellars as a separation of logical spaces). But he claims that what we refer to when we use space-of-reasons concepts to single out events are events that can also be described using concepts that belong in the contrasting conceptual space. My resistance to this has nothing to do with my insistence on the distinction of logical spaces. My thought is not that the distinction of logical spaces
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implies a separation of subject matter. And my objection to Davidson's monism is not that it violates the distinction oflogical spaces. Davidson's version of the distinction of logical spaces is central to his thinking. And there is no inconsistency between that and his monism. The idea of things we can talk about using both sorts of concept is innocuous. For example. it is true of me both that I believe Church gets my relation to Davidson wrong and that I weigh about 150 pounds. My objection to Davidson's monism is different. Anomalous monism reflects the idea that any happening that is causally connected to any other happening (a specification that perhaps applies to any happening at all) must be describable in a way that brings it within the scope of nomothetic science. And l think that is a mere prejudice, ultimately a prejudice about the very idea of causal connectedness. JOHNMcDoWELL
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McDowell's Transcendental Empiricism and the Theory-Ladenness of Experlence« Costas Pagondiotis
RESUMEN
Segun el empirismo transcendental de McDowell, nuestra concepcion del mundo depende de la experiencia, que a su vez depende de nuestra concepcion del mundo. Esto parece estar en concordancia con la tesis segun la cualla experiencia esta cargada de teoria, pero tambien parece introducir un problema de circularidad viciosa, Argumcnto que la tesis de McDowell tiene recursos para evitar eJ problema de circularidad viciosa, gracias a la idea de un circulo mas amplio que incluye mas relata y mas tipos de dependencia racional. Pero la aceptaci6n de esta idea implica que si bien la experiencia esra cargada de conceptos, no esta de teorla. AnSTRACT
According to Mcltowell's transcendental empiricism, the world view depends on experience, which in turn depends on the world view. This seems to be in accord with the thesis that experience is theory-laden, but it also seems to introduce a problem of vicious circularity. I argue that McDowell's account has the resources to avoid the problem of vicious circularity by exploiting the idea of a wider circle that involves more relata and more kinds of rational dependence. But the acceptance of this idea entails that experience, though concept-laden, is not theory-laden.
I. INTRODUCTION Traditional empiricism conceives experience as providing the sort of knowledge that serves as the foundation for our world view. This foundation is, moreover, taken as presupposing no other knowledge. Thus, traditional empiricism accepts only one logical dimension of dependence: the dependence of our beliefs and, generally, of our world view 011 experience. In this picture, experience is understood atomistically, namely as not depending on anything else. And since, as Sellars and McDowell have argued, concepts could not be atomic, t experience within traditional empiricism cannot be but a pure, nonconceptual given. But if experience were a nonconceptual given, it could not in fact discharge its role as a foundation that justifies our knowledge, For this reason, Mcfrowell, following Sellars, amends traditional empiricism by suggesting that there must be another logical dimension of dependence, the dependence 101
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of experience on the world view. In other words) the suggestion is that experience should not be understood atomistically but holistically: experience is conceptual. This conceptual character of experience guarantees that it can serve as a reason for our perceptual beliefs. It is this dependence of experience on the world view that prompts McDowell to call his empiricism "transcendental empiricism"? If "world view" is understood as the body of beliefs that constitute our theories about the world, then McDowell's suggestion that there is a second logical dimension in which experience depends on world view, amounts to the suggestion that experience is theory-laden, Thus, it seems that McDowell's acceptance of the conceptuality of experience entails the acceptance of the theory-Iadenness of experience. Let us start with McDowell's own general characterization of the two dimensions oflogicaI dependence: Sellars says: "the metaphor of 'foundation' is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical dimension in which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former" (Sellars 1956, 300). This is not to object to the idea of a "logical dimension" in which reports of observation are the support for everything else, but only to warn that a natural image for expressing that idea, the image of foundations, tends to make us forget the other dimension of dependence, in which reports of observation depend on the world view that rests on them as a building rests on its foundations. When I say experiences are ultimate in the order of justification, all I mean is that they are ultimate in the "logical dimension" in which Sellars allows that reports of observation are ultimate. 1 simply put experiences in the epistemological position in which Sellars puts reports of observation. Experiences, in my picture, have conceptual cona holism about the tent, and that means J have just the machinery Sellars does conceptual to ensure that the other dimension of dependence is not lo~~£l I am not a foundationalist in Williams's sense [McDowell (2000a), p. 14].3 \ .
Yet at this level of a general characterization of transcendental empiricism, there seems to be a problem of a vicious circularity: the world view depends on experience, which in turn depends on the world view. This is a familiar line of argumentation against the theory-ladenness of perception thesis to the effect that it leads to perceptual relativism. In this paper I will suggest that McDowell's account has the resources to avoid the problem of vicious circularity by exploiting the idea of a wider circle that involves more relata and more kinds of rational dependence. But the acceptance of this idea leads to the rejection of the thesis that experience is theory-laden. In this paper, I will focus on two of these kinds of rational dependence in order to explore their differences, and, will make a suggestion about how to differentiate
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experience from observational belief in order to account for the foundational role that the former plays in the justification of the latter.
II. THE RELATA OF A WIDER CIRCLE AND AN INITIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THElRRATIONAL RELATIONS
McDowell's initial characterization of his empiricism involves two relata: experience and the world view. Thus far, we have regarded the world view as the body of beliefs that constitute our theories about the world. But this cannot be right, given that McDowell accepts some kind of beliefindependence for experience [cf McDowell (1996), pp. 60-3; and McDowell (2001), p. 181]: we cannot but experience the two lines in the Mueller-Lyer illusion as being unequal, even though we believe that they are, in fact, equal. Thus experience does not necessarily depend 011 the totality of our occurrent beliefs. But McDowell can certainly accommodate this point by recourse to his thesis that experience, unlike thought, involves the passive actualization of conceptual capacities. So, it is more accurate to hold that depends only on that part of our world view that can be passively actualized in experience. Let us call this "the embodied world view". The crucial issue, then, is to characterize the nature of the dependence of experience on the embodied world view. This is a rational connection which cannot plausibly be considered as inferential because that would deprive experience from the evidential role it plays in the first logical dimension of dependence. Experience is not the conor its parts on which clusion of an argument. The embodied world view experience depends is not connected to experience as premises are connected to the conclusion of an argument. The connection between world view and experience must be of a different sort but still rational." Before turning to this, however, I would like to identify the other relata of the wider circle and to give a preliminary characterization of the rational dependencies between them. Along with the dependence of experience on the (embodied) world view, McDowell speaks about the dependence of beliefs on experience. Here) there are at least two distinct lands of rational dependence: a) the dependence of observational beliefs on experience and b) the dependence of theoretical beliefs on experience. Only the latter can be usefully described as inferential because theoretical beliefs have a mediated responsiveness to the facts experience makes manifest [cf McDowell (1995), p. 292]. On the other hand, observational beliefs have an immediate responsiveness to experience that is not inferential. As McDowell notes in relation to the first logical dimension of dependence, experience does not play the role of premises from which one infers how things are: "Wright and Bernstein are wrong to say I assimilate per-
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ceptual and inferential belief-acquisition. Appearances do not standardly play the role of premises from which one infers how things are. On the contrary ~ appearances can simply be facts making themselves manifest" [McDowell (2000c), p. 337].5 Finally, there must also be a kind of rational dependence between the non-embodied theoretical beliefs and the embodied world view for the circle between experience and world view to be complete. This last kind of dependence could perhaps be metaphorically described as a "sedimentation" that takes place through a process of"slow teaming". The examination of all the relata and the rational dependencies identified above is certainly not a task that can be undertaken in a single paper. Here, I shall examine, in a preliminary way, only two of the dependencies, those that directly involve experience: a) the dependence of observational beliefs on experience and b) the dependence of experience on the embodied world view. McDowell needs the former dependence in order to account for the intentionality or objective purport of our empirical beliefs, since, as he holds, the very intelligibility of beliefs as contentful states rests on their answerability to the empirical world. In Kantian terms, this "transcendental thought" is that "we need to be able to see how the spontaneity of the understanding can be constrained by the receptivity of sensibility, if we are to be entitled to the very idea of subjective postures with objective purport" [McDowell (1998a), pp. 365-6]. It is for this reason that the coherentist idea, that beliefs have only a causal but not also a rational dependence on the world,does not only lead to the loss of the world but also to the loss of beliefs: "[w]e can have empirical content in our picture only if we can acknowledge that thoughts and intuitions [i.e, perceptual experiences] are rationally connected. By rejecting that, Davidson undermines his right to the idea ... of a body of beliefs" [McDowell (1996), pp. 17-8]. Thus, for McDowell the rational dependence of observational beliefs on experience accounts for the objective purport of obs(f~ tional beliefs by recourse to the objective purport of experiences. the other hand, the dependence of experience on the embodied world view accounts for the objective purport of experience by recourse to the conceptuality of experience: "[e]xperiences have their content by virtue of the fact that conceptual capacities are operative in them" [McDowell (1996), p. 66]. More particularly, McDowell's claim is that "we can intelligibly credit perceptual experiences with objective purport only in virtue of how the conceptual apparatus that constitutes their objective purport fits into the world view that is, in the other logical dimension, grounded on the deliverances of experience' [McDowell (l998c), PP' 463-4].6
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III. TUE DEPENDENCE OF OBSERVATIONAL BELIEFS ON EXPERIENCE
I will begin with the examination of the dependence of observational beliefs on experience because this issue in McDowell's work has received comparatively more attention. In relation to this, I will consider the following two questions: a) how does McDowell differentiate experiences from observational beliefs and b) what kind of rational dependence holds between them? McDowell clearly differentiates experiences from beliefs and this differentiation is crucial for avoiding Davidson's coherentism, For McDowell, not only a belief but also an experience can justify another belief. But what exactly is the difference between experiences and beliefs? We have already mentioned one characterization which addresses the different ways in which conceptual capacities are involved in beliefs and experiences respectively. According to that characterization, beliefs involve the free responsible exercise of conceptual capacities whereas experiences involve a passive actualization of conceptual capacities.' This difference does not concern the content of beliefs and experiences but merely the attitude taken towards them: "[a] judgement of experience does not introduce a new kind of content, but simply endorses the conceptual content, or some of it, that is already possessed by the experience on which it is grounded" [McDowell (1996), pp, 48-9 (emphasis added)]. In other words, McDowell's suggestion is that experience, unlike belief, involves no attitude of acceptance or endorsement at all: "we need an idea of perception as something in which there is no attitude of acceptance or endorsement at all, but only, as I put it, an invitation to adopt such an attitude, which, in the best cases, consists in a fact's making itself manifest to one" [McDowell (2002), p. 279]. If one grants the idea that experience and observational belief do not differ with respect to their content, then the rational dependence between them cannot be usefully described as inferential. As McDowell notes: "[t]he only inferences corresponding to the rational connection in question would be of the 'stuttering' form, 'P; so P'. No doubt that inference-form (if we allow it the title) cannot lead one astray, but its freedom from risk seems a quite unhelpful model for the rationality of observational judgment" [Mcl.rowell (1998b), p. 405-6]. Thus the intentionality of observational beliefs depends on a normative context that cannot be reduced to a set of inferential relations. The basic norm that the content of observational beliefs exhibits is "the norm embodied in the so-called identity theory of truth. It is correct or incorrect to judge that something is a chair according to whether or not it is indeed a chair" [McDowell (2000b), p. 105]. In section II, I noted that McDowell's main argument against coherentism is the "transcendental thought" that the very intelligibility of beliefs as contentful states presupposes a rational dependence of beliefs on the world.
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For this reason, McDowell introduces experiences as contentful states that consist in a fact's making itself manifest to one, a move that relocates the problem of accounting for the intelligibility of beliefs at the level of accounting for the intelligibility of experiences thus conceived. in other words, the "transcendental thought" presupposes the intelligibility of experiences as having objective purport. In order to deal with this new problem we have to examine the dependence of experience on the embodied world view. But before turning to this issue, we shall examine an independent argument in the form of counterexample that McDowell proposes against Davidson's claim that "nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief' [Davidson (2001), p. 141]. Mcl'rowell's aim is to describe a case that violates this claim, in that it shows that seeing that P is not visually acquiring the belief that P. This he describes in the following way: "I thought I was looking at your sweater under a kind of illumination that makes it impossible to tell what colours things are, so I thought it merely looked brown to me, but I now realize I was actually seeing that it was brown." [McDowell (2003), p. 681]. In this situation, according to McDowell, the perceiver had an entitlement (he was actually seeing that the sweater is brown), but erroneous beliefs prevented him from acquiring the corresponding observational belief 1 would like to discuss two objections to McDowell's argument. The first objection is that this past experience can provide only an inferential tification for the perceiver's present belief about the colour of the sweater. This is so because the perceiver acquires the belief that the sweater was really brown on the basis of a belief about the veridicality of his past experience, i.e., on the basis of his realization that he was actually seeing that the sweater was brown. In other words, the past entitlement is already embedded in a belief and it is in that form that it is involved in the justification of his current belief that the sweater was really brown. Therefore, this past entitlement i8,:~t involved in the justification of beliefs in the non-inferential way that acf'Ual experiences are supposed to be involved in the justification of observational beliefs. But I think that this objection does not actually affect McDowell's argument, because his point is not that we can retrospectively use a past entitlement in order to acquire observational beliefs. Rather, his point is to show that a fact P can be available to a subject in a state of sensory consciousness without that availability to involve the belief that P. This brings us to the second objection, which concerns the very notion of availability: how can a fact be available to a perceiver without the perceiver being aware' of the fact? Does not the availability of a fact to one (Of, equivalently l the experience of a fact) involve awareness of the fact? And if it does involve awareness, does not this entail that it involves some kind of attitude on the part of the perceiver towards the experienced fact?/!
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McDowell's response to this objection is to the idea that the availability of a fact to one involves actual awareness of the fact: "I think that receiving an impression, having things appear to one a certain way) does 110t itself imply accepting anything, not even that things appear to one that way. The awareness that experience involves is a matter of its being possible for the' J think' to accompany representations, to echo Kant not of its actually accompanying them" [McDowell (2002), p. 278]. Thus, for Mclsowell, experience is not available in the sense of involving actual awareness, but only in that it affords the subject the possibility of becoming aware of its content. On the other hand becoming aware of this availability involves taking an attitude towards it, even though this could be an attitude of minimal commitment, namely that things merely look a certain way. This is perhaps the reason that McDowell suggests that experience - conceived as a proposition that involves no endorsement at a11- does not presuppose the subject's attention [cf McDowell (2002), pp. 283, 293-4, 299]. Yet, clearly, this is not what we understand when we speak ordinarily about experience, or even when we read that "[experience] consists in a fact's making itself manifest to one" [McDowell (2002), p. 279]. Moreover, if experiencing a fact simply translates into the possibility of its being available to the subject's attention, then there seems to be no principled way of differentiating between the experiencing of a fact and the sheer obtaining of a fact. McDowell responds to a related objection by Wright [Wright (2002)] as follows: "[ojf course the sheer obtaining of a fact, say some state of affairs on the far side of the moon, cannot justify someone in believing it obtains. But why does Wright think that makes it 'inept' to sayan observed fact can justify?" [McDowell (2002), p. 289]. If "observed", in this context, means "attended", then McDowell's response does not resolve the problem because it starts too late: an attended fact already involves endorsement, so it does not amount merely to what he takes as experiencing the fact. If, on the other hand, "observed" means "experienced", then the response merely puts forward the distinction by flat without supporting arguments. The need for an account in which the experiencing of a fact is differentiated from the sheer obtaining of a fact is imperative for McDowell given his position that "[experiencing a fact, hlaving things appear to one a certain way is already itself a mode of actual operation of conceptual capacities" [McDowell (1996), p. 62 (emphasis added)]: only an idealist could be happy with the idea that the sheer obtaining of a 'fact involves a mode of actual operation of conceptual capacities. But one could respond to this objection by claiming that the difference between the experiencing of a fact and the sheer obtaining of a fact is exactly that only the former involves the activation of conceptual capacities. So the real dissatisfaction with this answer stems from the adherence to the idea that the actual operation of conceptual capacities in experience necessarily involves actual awareness. This idea seems plausible at least in the case of the
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activation of conceptual capacities of proper sensibles [cf McDowell (1996), pp. 29-30]. How could there be an impression that x is red without x looking red to the perceiver? Perhaps one response to this could be that the actualization of conceptual capacities does not necessarily bring things into focus [cf McDowell (2002), p. 299], that conceptuality does not necessarily entail determinacy [cf McDowell (2002), p. 283]. However, this response transfers the discussion from the attitude to the content, because we can certainly attend to something indeterminate (for example, we can attend to the periphery of our visual field, namely without moving our eyes). In other words, the position that conceptuality does not necessarily entail determinacy cannot support the position that conceptuality does not necessarily involve attention. But I would like to suggest that this very move from the discussion about the attitude (or lack of attitude) towards experience to the discussion about the content of experience opens up a new way to differentiate the experience of a fact both from the corresponding observational belief and the sheer obtaining of a fact. Thus far we did not explore this option because we took for granted the. assumption that the difference between observational beliefs and experiences does not conceru their content but rather the lack of attitude towards experiences. Due to this assumption we adopted a very abstract approach to experiential content, as simply a proposition P that is endorsed by an observational belief. So in what follows, I would like to shift the focus from the attitude to the content of experience and explore the idea that the very content of experience differs from the content of observational beliefs. This is a point I need to clarify, What I am claiming is not that experience involves some kind of nonconceptual content, but that it involves "more" conceptual content than the corresponding observational belief endorses. In fact, this does not depart from McDowell's own position: "[a] typical judgement of experience selects from the content of the experience on which it is based; the experience that grounds the judgement that things are thus and so need not be exhausted by its affording the appearance that things are thus and so" [McDowell (1996), p. 49, note 6]. Thus, to summarize my suggestion, experience differs from the observational belief that P in that it involves more conceptual content than P. Moreover, experience differs from the sheer obtaining of a fact in that it involves awareness of the fact through the activation of conceptual capacities. There is an independent motivation for adopting this suggestion: it can account, as we are going to see, for the foundational role that experience plays in the justification of beliefs. In other words, it can account for the fact that experience is not just an ordinary reason, like beliefs, but it serves as an ultimate reason in the chain of justification. On the other hand, McDowell's image for experience as "an invitation - a petition ... to accept a proposition about the objective world" [Mclfowell (2002), p. 278 (emphasis added)] does
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not capture the force with which experience is imposed on us, a force that puts an end to the need for further justification. In keeping with the change of focus set out above, in the final section of my paper I will examine the character of the conceptuality of experience. This should be sought in the dependence of experience on the embodied world view.
IV. THE DEPENDENCE OP EXPERIENCE ON THE EMBODIED WORLD Vrnw
'~Jtere is much discussion in the literature on the dependence of our observational beliefs on experience. However, the very conceptuality of experience, which allows it to serve as a reason for observational beliefs and to account for the intelligibility of their objective purport, is constituted by the second dependence, namely the dependence of experience on the embodied world view. In virtue of this dependence, experience transcends the here and now and presents us with entities ofthe world -namely, with entities that are related to a nexus of not immediately experienced facts: the conceptual equipment that is operative in perceptual experience generally ... is dependent on a world view, in the logical dimension that the metaphor of "foundation" risks leading us to forget. We can capture this part of the picture by saying that the intentional ity, the objective purport, of perceptual experience in general ... depends in that logical dimension, on having the world in view, in a sense that goes beyond glimpses of the here and now. It would not be intelligible that the relevant episodes present themselves as glimpses of the here and now apart from their being related to a wider world view in the logical dimension Sellars adds [McDowell (1998c), pp. 435-6].9
In section II, I argued that experience, because of its belief independence, must depend only on what I called "the embodied world view" and not on the totality of our beliefs. Moreover, I noted that the dependence of experience on the embodied world view cannot be plausibly construed as inferential because that would deprive experience of its evidential role in the first logical dimension of dependence. Experience is not the conclusion of an argument and the beliefs of the embodied world view on which experience depends do not function as premises. The rational connection between the embodied world view and experience must be constitutive rather than inferential. That is why experiences serve as a very particular kind of reason: they serve es foundations, as ultimate in the order ofjustification. In what follows I shall attempt to give an account of the foundational role that experience plays in the justification of beliefs by focusing on the structure of experiential content. In this account, I shall take for granted the conceptuality of experiential content and I shall argue only for its founda-
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tional character. My suggestion will be that it is the very constitution of this content that allows it to serve not as a mere reason, but as a foundation for observational beliefs. One place to begin is McDowell's discussion of what he finds missing in the chicken-sexers as compared to ordinary perceivers: "[chicken-sexers] cannot find in their perceptual experience impressions whose content is that a chick is male, or that it is female" [McDowell (2002), p. 279]. lt is for this reason that their report that a chick is male is not a report of an observational belief. On the other hand, their report that the chick is white is a report of an observational belief because it looks white to them. Thus, impressions are a necessary constituent of the content of experience. 10 Yet, clearly, I can imagine a chick looking white. Thus, if this is all we mean by the expression "looks white", then having impressions is not a sufficient condition for having experiences - at least of a minimal kind (for instance, the experience that this is white). What more is needed? I would like to suggest two further conditions. The first is particularity. The impressions that constitute our experience are impressions which concern particulars. But this is not sufficient either be~ cause we can also recall the white-looking particular we saw yesterday. For this reason we need to add, I think, a further condition that captures the object-dependence of perception, namely that experience involves impressions of bodily present particulars. 1 would like to make a few remarks on the notion of bodily presence. The first is to notice that there is no sensory quality of bodily presence. Strictly speaking, to take the example of vision, there is no visual quality manifesting the bodily presence of what is experienced. Yet we still have the capacity to experience the bodily presence of something because the content of experience is not exhausted by the way things look. The content of experience also presents things as affording exploration. It is exactly this characteristic that allows us to distinguish, from the first person perspective, veridical perception from hallucination. In veridical perception I experience the availability of an inexhaustible wealth that 1 can gradually explore through my capacity to move my eyes and, more generally, my body. Hallucination, on the other hand, involves no such possibility of exploration and discovery regarding what appears in my experience [cf Gibson (1970)]. To take an elementary example, the reason why we cannot learn anything about an after-image from the way it appears is because it does not afford us any way of exploring it. 11 Viewed from this perspective, the difference between veridical and hallucinatory content does not lie in the way things look or in how the way they look changes. Rather, the difference lies in how the way things look changes relative to my exploratory movements. Thus, even when the changes in how things look during the hallucinatory experience are indistinguishable from
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such changes in a veridical experience, the subject experiences a difference which has to do with a sense of passivity 12 that characterizes the former case. 13 Reference to proprioception is perhaps one way of making this difference clearer. In veridical perception, every movement of out' eyes or head is accompanied by proprioceptive sense. This proprioceptive sense plays a crucial role in the way we perceive the world. One way that proprioceptive sense contributes to the constitution of perceptual experience concerns the motion or rest of the perceived objects. For example, when we look at a static object and move our eyes, the projected object on the retina also moves. However, we do not experience any such movement. The experience we have is of an object that remains still this is one kind of perceptual constancy among many others that characterize our perception of the world. In this case, proprioception allows the visual system to distinguish between the movement on the retinal linage that is caused by the movement of the eye (or, more generally, the body) and the movement that is caused by the world. In hallucination, there is a mismatch between proprioceptive sense and the way appearances change relative to our exploratory movements. It is perhaps this mismatch which creates the sense of passivity that accompanies hallucinatory experiences. Thus, to summarize my suggestion, experience involve'S more conceptual content than the observational belief that it grounds on each occasion. The content of experience is not exhausted by the way things look but it also involves their availability for exploration. It is because of this availability for exploration that experience presents things as bodily present and manages to playa foundational role in the justification of beliefs. The fact that the content of experience presents things as affording exploration accounts, moreover, for what is called "the fineness of grain" of perceptual content. Traditionally, the idea that perceptual content is finegrained has led philosophers to suggest that, at any given moment, our visual field is like a high-resolution photo that simultaneously presents a seamless scene with all its features in focus. But recently it has been argued persuasively that this constitutes a grand illusion [cf Noe (2002)]. However, that does not mean that we do not experience the fineness of grain in a different way: our visual experience involves more than is visually seen. This surplus is perceptually present but not visually present. Noe [(2004), ch. 2] explains its perceptual presence in tenus of its availability to the perceiver's exploration: the perceiver's implicit understanding of the relation between his sensory and motor system, and ultimately the world, allows him to expect that movements of his body or of the object will bring further parts of the object into view. This is, perhaps, one of the ways that "what appears to be the case is understood as fraught with implications for the subject's cognitive situation in the world" [McDowell (1996), p. 32]. More generally, the fact that visual experience, at any given moment, transcends what is visually present, in the sense that it also presents things as
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available for exploration, can account for other kinds of perceptual constancy. For instance, a coin seen at an angle looks elliptical but we also experience it as round - in the sense that it affords that availability. 14 In this last section, I explored different ways that the content of experience transcends the here and now and is integrated into our world view. This is how"! think the passive activation of conceptual capacities should be understood. But if we accept this, does it mean that the dependence of experience on the embodied world view entails that experience is theory-laden? I think that, to the degree that theories constitute an inferentially articulated body of knowledge, experience is not theory-laden though it is concept-laden. Department ofPhilosophy University ofPatras 26500) Rio, Patras, Greece E-mail:
[email protected]
NOTES
.. I should like to thank Spyros Petrounakos, Lara Skourla and Stelios Virvidakis for discussing several points in this paper with me. I McDowell summarizes Sellars's point as follows: «Even in the case of those concepts that might seem most congenial to the atomism in traditional empiricism (concepts we might be tempted to see as figuring in directly experiential acquisition of knowledge that presupposes no other knowledge of matters of fact), the very possession of the concepts requires knowledge of a lot more than is stated when one gives expression to applications of them. For instance, to have color concepts one must know what conditions are appropriate for telling what color something is by looking at it" [McDowell (unpublished), p. 2]. See, also, McDowell (2002), p. 288. 2 "For it to be intelligible that experiences have objective content ... , the very capacity for experience must be recognized to depend on antecedent know ledge of the sort that depends on experience in the first dimension. It must be possible to see how what experiences purport to disclose fits into an already possessed world view. This formulation shows how this non-traditional empiricism has a transcendental aspect, in an at least roughly Kantian sense" [McDowell (unpublished), p. 17]. J "There is indeed a relation of rational dependence, of what (if this were the whole story) we might be tempted to call 'superstructure' on what we might be tempted to call 'foundations'. But just because concepts are involved in experience, and the conceptual realm is a seamless web of rational interconnections, there is also a rational dependence (of a different sort) in the opposite direction. We would have to say that, in respect of this other dimension of rational dependence, the 'foundations' are partly held in place by the 'superstructure', and that makes the image of foundations unhappy" [McDowell (1995), p. 284 (emphasis added)]. See also McDowell (1998c), pp. 463-4; McDowell (l998b), pp. 427-8; McDowell (2000b), p. 96. 4 See note 3. 5 See, also, McDowell (1998b), pp. 405-6.
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See, also, note 2. See, for example, McDowell (2000a), p. 16: "But once we have thus identified ... [conceptual capacities], we can countenance cases in which capacities of that very kind are not exercised, but are nevertheless actualized, outside the control of their possessor, by the world's impacts on her sensibility. That is just how I recommend conceiving experience. 1 hope it is clear that it matters to keep the terms "actualization' and 'exercise' apart. Conceptual capacities are capacities of spontaneity, but in one obvious sense there is no spontaneity in perceiving. It is not up to one how things, for instance, look to one. How things look to one does not come within the scope of one's responsibility to make up one's own mind. But this is consistent with understanding experience as actualizing capacities that belong to spontaneity, in the sense that to understand what capacities they are we have to focus on their being exercisable in judgement. It is just that that is not the kind of actualization that is involved in experience." a For an elaboration ofthis objection, see Stroud (2002). 9 See, also, McDowell (1996), pp. 3] -2; and McDowell (2002), p. 288: "In experience at its best one directly takes in observable facts, but that is intelligible only in the context of a whole world-view, transcending the here and now, that enters into determining the content of the conceptual capacities operative in experience. That was my point of my appeal to Sellars." 10 One constituent of impressions are proper sensibles, In relation to these, McDowell finds plausible the idea that "the different senses have their proper sensibles, and that there is no visual experience, say, without experience of the proper sensibles of vision" [McDowell (2002), p. 11 Since hallucinatory content does not afford exploration, what appears, at any given moment, is nothing more than what it looks to be. It is perhaps for this reason that it does not make sense to say that one could have an illusion during a hallucinatory experience. In other words, hallucinatory experience leaves no room for error. 12 This passivity refers, of course, to a different kind of involuntariness than the modality-specific involuntariness that characterizes perceptual experience [cf McDowell (1998c), p. 441]. 13 For a defense, along these lines, of direct realism against the argument from hallucination, see Pagondiotis (forthcoming). 14 Perhaps one could extend that account for the seeing of aspects. 6
7
REFERENCES
DAVIDSON, D. (2001), "'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge", in Davidson, D., Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford, Oxford U. P., pp. 137-53. GIBSON~ 1. (1970), "On the Relation between Hallucination and Perception", Leonardo,
vol, 3, pp. 425-7. McDoWELL,1. (1995), "Reply to Gibson, Byrne, and Brandom", in Villanueva, E. (ed.), Philosophical Issues, vol. 7, pp, 283-300. - (1996), Mind and World, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, (1998a), "Precis of Mind and World" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 58, pp. 365-8.
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(1998b), "Replies to Commentators", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol, 58, pp. 403~31. - (1998c), "Having the World in View: Sellars, Kant and Intentionality", The Journal ofPhilosophy, vol, XCV, pp. 431-91. - (2000a), "Experiencing the World", in Willaschek, M. (ed.), John McDowell: Reason and Nature, Munster, Lit Verlag, pp, 3-18. (2000b), "Responses", in Willaschek, M. (ed.), John McDowell: Reason andNature, MUnster, Lit Verlag, pp, 91-114. - (2000e), "Comments", Journal of the British Societyfor Phenomenology, vol. 31, pp.330-43. - (2001), "Comments on Richard Schanz, 'The Given Regained">, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol, LXn, pp.181-4. - (2002), "Responses", ill Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp. 269-305. (2003), "Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LXVII, pp. 675-8l. - (unpublished), "Transcendental Empiricism". (Paper presented at the third AthensPittsburgh Symposium, Rethymnon, October 2000; Greek translation in Deukalion, vol. 21,2003). NOE, A. (ed.) (2002), Is the Visual World a Grand Illusioni, Charlottesville, Imprint Academic. (2004), Action in Perception, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press. PAGONDlOTIS, C. (forthcoming), "A Defence of Direct Perception" (in Greek), Toplka, STROUD, B. (2002), "Sense-Experience and the Grounding of Thought", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp. 79-91. WRIGHT, C. (2002)~ "Human Nature?", in Smith, N. (ed.), Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp, 140-73.
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Response to Costas Pagondiotis
1. As Pagondiotis notes, I follow Sellars in urging that there is a dependence of experience on world view, in the opposite direction to the dependence of world view on experience that traditional empiricism focuses on. Sellars's point is that in order so much as to possess the concepts that are exploited in reports of immediate observation, one must have knowledge of general matters of fact. He exemplifies this with colour concepts. Having colour concepts, at least the usual ones (as opposed, for instance, to those that can be possessed by blind people), includes the ability to tell by looking, in 'suitable circumstances, what colours things have. And that ability depends on, for instance, sufficient knowledge about the effects of different kinds of illumination on colour appearances. Suppose someone has a propensity to predicate "red" of just any object that looks the way red things look in what we recognize as a good light for telling the colours of things. Suppose, that is, that something's presenting that look tends to elicit "red" from her no matter what the lighting conditions are. Such a person cannot count as knowing what it is for something to be red. That is, she does not have the concept of being red as a property of visible things. Unlike the dependence that traditional empiricism focuses on, this dependence in the opposite direction is not inferential. Suppose one mows by looking that some object is green. That the lighting conditions are appropriate for telling what colours things have is not a premise in an inferential justification one could appropriately give for one's claim that the thing is green. On the contrary, one's justification for the claim is simply that one sees that the thing is green. But it is a way of putting what Sellars urges in introducing the second dimension of dependence, as exemplified in the case of colour experience, to say that the very possibility of one's having that justification - a justification consisting in the fact that one sees that the thing is green - depends on one's having suitable knowledge about the effects of lighting conditions on colour appearances. And though it is not inferential, this dependence is rational. Facts about the lighting conditions are connected to claims about the colours of things, made on the basis of looking and seeing, by relations that belong in Sellars's "logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says". If one claims that something is green, on the ground that one sees that it is green, and someone challenges one's credentials for making the
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claim, it can be an appropriate response to say "This is a good light for telling what colours things have". It is only part of a world view, the part that concerns the effects of lighting conditions on colour appearances, on which this argument aims to display the possession of colour concepts, and hence the possibility of experience in which things are seen to instantiate those concepts, as depending. Clearly the argument does not recommend supposing that every experience, no matter what its content is, depends in that way on the whole of a world view. Here we are in the area of Pagondiotis's thought about what he calls "embodied world view", But which bit of a world view is embodied, rationally alive, in a particular experience, in the way exemplified by those reflections about colour experience, obviously depends on the specific content of the experience. And it is not plausible that we could say in advance, .about some bit of our world view, that there is no possible experience to which it could be rationally relevant, in the way in which our knowledge of the effects of different lighting conditions on colour appearances is rationally relevant to experiences in which we see that things have certain colours. Different parts of our world view are embodied in different experiences, and of any part of our world view we cannot rule out that it might be embodied in some experiences. Pagondiotis implies that his label "embodied world view" singles out a part of our world view that stands in that kind of rational relation to experience in general, in contrast with another part of our world view that does not stand in that kind of rational relation to any experience at all. But this implication is unwarranted. 2. When Pagondiotis discusses my attempt to distinguish experience from perceptually acquired belief, his purpose is, at least in part, to begin on motivating his proposal that the content of experience includes the bodily presence of things and their availability for exploration. I applaud the proposal. But I want to take issue with this part of the way he motivates it. I offered a counterexample, which Pagondiotis discusses, to the equation of experience with perceptually acquired belief. The counterexample is a case in which one realizes that on some past occasion one was seeing that a sweater was brown, though at the time one thought it merely looked to one as if it was brown, because one thought, falsely as one now realizes, that the lighting conditions were unsuitable for telling colours by looking. The point is that the seeing was an entitlement that one had at the time to believe that the sweater was brown, although, because one did not realize one had the entitlement, one did not form the belief it would have entitled one to. The bearing on one's present belief of the entitlement that one subsequently recognizes one had is irrelevant, as Pagondiotis acknowledges. He gives more credence to the second of the two objections he considers, which turns on the idea that the availability of a fact to a subject in ex-
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perienoe must involve some kind of awareness. He says I respond by denying that the availability of a fact in experience is a case of actual awareness, But that is a misreading. In a passage he quotes, I write of "the awareness that eXM perience involves". There is no ground for reading this as meaning anything but actual awareness. The thought that the experiential availability of a fact involves (actual) awareness of it is not a problem for my separation of experience from perceptually acquired belief. It seems a problem only if one supposes that the awareness that is admittedly implied by the availability of a fact in experience would have to imply an attitude of acceptance. But that is just what I deny. The counterexample shows that there is no such implication. It is 110t the awareness implicit in the idea of experience that I claim need not be actual. It is at another point in the picture that I exploit the contrast between potential and actual: I deny that being perceptually aware of a fact can be identified with actual acceptance of a proposition. Again, consider the counterexample. This means that r do not have a problem where Pagondiotis thinks I do, in marking off facts available to a subject in experience from facts that merely obtain, perhaps outside the subject' s field of view. I can make the distinction in a common-sense way, by invoking the idea that facts available to a subject in experience are facts of which she has experiential awareness. Of course Pagondiotis is right that there cannot be an impression that x is red without x looking red to the perceiver. But that would be a problem for me only if x' s looking red to a perceiver bad to be identified with acceptance of some proposition - if not that x is red, then at least that x looks red. And that is exactly the equation r reject. 3. Another way Pagondiotis seeks to motivate his proposal about the content of experience is by arguing that having impressions is not a sufficient condition for having experiences. He undertakes to fill the gap that this supposedly opens by adding more conditions, one of which is that bodily presence enters into the content of experience. Here again, I do not want to dissent from that idea. But there is something peculiar about the motivating argument. Pagondiotis seems to assume that impressions can be defined as states or episodes in whose content concepts like that of looking white figure. On that basis imagining something looking white would count as an impression. But so much the worse , surely I for that conception of impressions. In fact Pagondiotis's proposal about the content of experience might be equally put as a proposal about the content of impressions. Taking it that way, we can say he shows how having impressions can be a sufficient condition for having experiences. Pagondiotis connects the idea that experience presents things as bodily present to the experiencer with the idea that experience presents things as affording possibilities of exploration. I think this is a very helpful way of ap-
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preaching what is special about perceptual experience. But I doubt that the thought is well put by saying) as Pagondiotis does) that the content of experience is not exhausted by the way things look but also involves their availability for exploration. That implies that appearances of availability for exploration cannot be part of how things look And this seems needlessly restrictive about ways things can look. Surely it can look as if there are suchand-such possibilities for exploration. 4. Once we see that the dependence of experience on world view is a dependence not on world view in general but on embodied world view, Pagondiotis suggests) we shall not be inclined to think the dependence of experience on world view implies that experience is theory-laden. It seems right that there is no such implication. But Pagondiotis suggests we should conclude that experience is 110t theory-laden at all, and I am doubtful about that. It would be infelicitous to describe the bit of our world view that is embodied in colour experience, according to the Sellarsian argument I considered in § I above, as a theory. The generallrnowledge (so called) that Sellars invokes need not be acceptance of a body of propositions at all, inferentially articulated or not. It might be simply a responsiveness in practice to differences in lighting conditions, a practical rather than theoretical grasp of their significance for the possibility of telling what colours things have by looking. So the dependence of colour experience on background know ledge need not be a case of experience being theory-laden. But why should we suppose we can draw general conclusions from this in the sense Pacase? In a different kind of case, command of a theory can gondiotis stipulates: an inferentially articulated body of knowledge make it possible for concepts that belong in the theory to figure in the content of someone's perceptual experience. A favourite example of Brandom's is the physicist who can observe mu-mesons. Experience of mu-mesons is surely theory-laden. Whether the embodiment of a bit of world view in experience of a particular kind reveals the experience as theory-laden depends on the character of the bit of world view that is embodied in the experience. There is no evident reason to expect that one answer will fit all cases. What does seem plausible is that experience that is, though knowledgedependent, 110t theory-laden, like colour experience, is in a certain sense more basic than theory-laden experience) as in the case of the physicist's experience of fin-mesons. If the physicist is challenged, she call retreat to a less committal account of what is available in her experience, exploiting the theory in which mu-mesons figure to justify the claim that, given that her experience yields that lesser information, she is in the presence of mu-mesons. When background knowledge operates in the way exemplified with colour experience, there is no such scope for retreat. So perhaps we can say, in partial agreement with Pagondiotis, that fundamental experience of the world is
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not in any good sense theory-laden, even if there can be experience of the world that is theory-laden. JOHN McDOWELL
teOl'ClI1a
VoI.XXV/l,2006,pp.121-131
Non-Articulable Content and the Realm of Reasons Stella Gonzalez Arnal RESUMEN
En este articulo, exploro el concepto de experiencia en la obra de John McDowell 110 puede ser articulada) que esta presente en nuestra aprehension del mundo como agentes. Aunque este elemento tacite esta fuera de nuestra atencion focal, esta regulado normativamente. Para McDowell, este no contarla como conceptual y no perteneceria al ambito de la razon, Yo argumento que este elemento esta regulado normativamente y pertenece al ambito de la razon.
y muestro como no puede acomodar la dimension tacita (que
AnSTRACT
In this article, I explore John McDowell's concept of experience and show how it cannot accommodate a tacit dimension, which is present in our apprehension of the world as agents, and which cannot be articulated. Although this tacit dimension remains out of our focal awareness, it is nevertheless normatively constrained. Within Mcfrowell's theory, this would not count as conceptual and would not belong to the realm of reasons. Pace McDowell, I argue that, as it is normatively constrained, it belongs to the realm of reasons.
I John McDowell argues for the conceptual character of experience and considers that in experience, both receptivity and spontaneity are in operation. He preserves a traditional element within the realm of experience: he claims that it is, in a sense, passive, which allows us to have a "glimpse" of the world, and affords us the security that how things are exerts a control on our thinking. At the same time, as our spontaneity is in action, experience is also the product of an active engagement with the world. He says that "in experience, one finds oneself saddled with content" [(1994), p. 10], but we are also allowed enough freedom to decide whether or not to take the deliverances of experience as they appear to us. In the conception that I am recommending, the need for external constraint is met by the fact that experiences are receptivity in operation. But that does not disqualify experiences from playing a role in justification, as the counterpart thought in the Myth of the Given does, because the claim is that experiences
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\ themselves are already equipped with conceptual content. This joint involvement of receptivity and spontaneity allows us to say that in experience one can take in how things are [(1994), p. 25].
An important characteristic of experience is that "[ijn experience one takes in, for instance sees, that things are thus and so. That is the sort of thing one can also, for instance, judge" [(1994), p. 9]. In this view, there is a close link between experiences as conceptual and their linguistic articulation (it has often been said that for McDowell experiences are prepositionally contentful)'. But it can be claimed that ow' conceptual apparatus is not adequate to capture the richness of our experiences and that there are aspects of it that escape conceptualisation. McDowell argues against the idea that there is a content of experience that is unmediated by our conceptual capacities that is able to ground our judgements. According to him, experiences can be fully apprehended by our conceptual abilities and, furthermore, if experiences were nonconceptual they would not be able to enter into justificatory, rational relations. We would not be justified, but only "exculpated to believe". The relationship between our experiences and our judgements is 110t purely causal, but normative. According to McDowell, it is by learning a language that we become aware of the structure of the space of reasons, that we can see the relation between concepts and that we become aware of asking for reasons and of giving reasons. By learning a language we acquire a second nature, we become rational. Human rationality is therefore very closely linked with the fact that we are linguistic beings. Can we think of human subjects as embodied agents acting in the world within this schema? In our "relation" to the world, in our living in the world, we apprehend aspects of it that do not seem to be the sort of things that are conceptual. First, because we are not focally aware of them, and second, because they cannot be linguistically articulated. I will argue that these unarticulable aspects playa central role in our exchanges with the world and yet are normatively constrained. lt is important to notice that they should not be considered to be "building blocks" that are conceptualised at a later cognitive but rather, it is their non-articulable, non-focally perceived character that makes them 80 central in our engagement with the world. The following quotation, which is an example offered by Michael Polanyi, illustrates the type of content to which I am referring: When we use a hammer to drive in a we attend to both nail and hammer, but in a different way. We watch the effect of our strokes on the nail and try to wield the hammer so as to hit the nail most effectively. When we bring down the hammer we do not feel that its handle has struck our palm but that its head has struck the nail, Yet in a sense, we are certainly alert to the feelings in our
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palm and the fingers that hold the hammer. They guide. us in handling it effectively, and the degree of attention that we give to the nail is given to the same extent but in a different way to these feelings. The difference may be stated by saying that the latter are not, like the nail, objects of our attention, but instruments of it. TIlOY are not watched in themselves; we watch something else while keeping intensely aware of them. I have a subsidiary awareness of the feeling in the palm of my hand which is into my focal awareness of my driving the nail [(1998), p. 55].
In the next section I will show why this content cannot be linguistically articulated and cannot appear in our focal awareness. I will also explain why, despite this, it is normatively constrained.
II
The above example shows that there are different types of awareness (subsidiary and focal), which function simultaneously in our engagement with the world, but cannot be attended to at the same time. If we want to hit the nail we have to be focally aware of it, but also, subsidiarily aware of the hammer. Our focal attention allows us to direct our efforts towards the realisation of the task in hand, by giving us a general feeling for the situation, but this entails that the subsidiary awareness, an awareness of the particulars, remains in the background. If we switch our attention from one to the other, if we become self-conscious of particular movements within a performance, then we lose sight of the whole, which frequently means that we have to stop our performance, or that it is disrupted by going wrong. Therefore, in order to be able to act, those elements of which we are subsidiarily aware have to remain in the background. Furthermore, even if it were possible to direct our focal attention to them, by doing so we would not be able to capture why they are relevant to the performance. The particulars are not significant on their own, they lose their meaning when they are not observed within the background of the whole performancc.i There are aspects of our embodied relation with the world, which remain tacitly known, upon which we cannot reflect, that are as important in guiding our actions as these other aspects upon which we can reflect and which can be made linguistically explicit. The action of going from what we are subsidiarily aware, of to what is in our focal attention is an act of integration, which itself remains tacit. It is not a process which can be reflected upon, but it is not passive either? It has been argued that making integrations is a similar process to making inferences, but one that cannot be characterized as such." Integration has been characterized as an inference that is made "within the body", because linking the focal target and the subsidiary clues is 110t simply a mental exercise, but
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rather, a process in which the whole person is involved [Gelwick (1977), p. 64]. In order to understand the difference between making inferences and integrations, it is useful to review Polanyi's concept of knowledge as indwelling. Becoming able to grasp new patterns, to understand new practices, to make new integrations, is a process of acquiring skills. Once we have acquired them, they become second nature. Polanyi describes this process of acquiring a second nature as dwelling in the knowledge, and compares it with the way in which, by using tools, we perceive the world through them as if they were an extension of our body. By using them we indwell in them, we accept them existentially (which does not imply that we have done so mechanically). In the same way in which we assimilate actual tools existentially, we also assimilate intellectual tools, such as languages, scientific theories, or even moral teachings. We do so by participating in social practices, first without really being able to understand them, but later, being able to participate fully. It is then that we see the world as mediated by them, as if they were part of our perceptual apparatus. Once we have mastered a language then we have committed ourselves to mediating our relations with the world and others by it, and we have been intellectually shaped by it. There is a clear parallel with the work of McDowell here. Polanyi stresses the embodied character of our experiential relation with the world. As Jerry Gill points out, in accordance with Polanyi, we can see how "the body is the bridge 01' the axis that makes knowledge possible, even conceptual knowledge such as language" [(2000), p. 46]. There are several reasons why this tacit dimension cannot be articulated. First, Polanyi points out that within perception, we are only subsidiarily aware of our bodies. Perceived objects always include information about their relation to our bodies that remains unnoticed by us [(1966), pp. 13-4], but we do have knowledge of our bodies (mainly) only in relation to other things. Therefore, in all instances of knowledge, there is always an element that remains tacit, which is captured in our focal awareness of what is known, but which remains unarticulated, What remains tacit is the way in which our embodiment influences our relationship with the world, and in which it mediates all our knowledge. Polanyi expresses this relationship in the following way: The way the body participates in the act of perception can be generalized further to include the bodily roots of all knowledge and thought. Our body is the only assembly of things known almost exclusively by relying on our awareness of them for attending to something else. Parts of our body serve as tools for observing objects outside and for manipulating them, Every time we make sense of the world, we rely on our tacit knowledge of impacts made by the world on our body and the complex responses of our body to these impacts. Such is the exceptional position of our body in the universe [(1969), PP, 147-8].
I
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To say that we have tacit knowledge of the impacts made by the world on our body could be taken to mean that we are passive recipients of it, but we should not forget that we are able to ascertain what aspects of our experience (although tacit) are relevant in guiding our interventions with the world. Some aspects of the world become salient to us when we engage with the world, they are significant, even if we cannot either articulate them or be focally aware of them. This type of content is also part of our integrations, so we are able to relate it to explicit aspects of our experience. The way in which we are induced into epistemic practices, their social aspect, adds a further reason as to why there is a non-articulahle content in our experiences. We are induced in practices, we learn, by imitation, by copying the ways of those who have already mastered the practice. We are able to tacitly pick up rules in the behaviour of our masters that are not reducible to a knowing-that form and that more often than not also remain tacit to them. They show the rules in their practices but do not "tell" them. Even when these rules are made explicit, their use in guiding our performance is limited. For instance, a theory of how to ride a bike, is only of limited use to a cyclist who wants to improve his performance, because the elements that act as clues in his subsidiary awareness when he is riding a bicycle and the theory are diverse. These elements are of a different kind. They are partly given by his embodied nature and therefore, they have to be existentially apprehended. The type of content that remains in our subsidiary awareness is useful because it remains there, unarticulated but meaningful in relation to the whole. Furthermore, there is an interpretative element in making integrations that cannot be captured by making an analysis of the different elements that are subsidiarity known. In making a destructive analysis of the elements present in the from-to relationship, we cannot capture either the relationship itself, or the dynamic elements present in our integrations. This is the case not only in examples of "practical" knowledge such as riding a bike, or hammering, but also in the case of "intellectual" types of knowledge such as mathematics. Polanyi insists that we can only learn mathematical theory by practicing, by learning to recognize that a particular puzzle is just an instance of a more general type. Mathematicians have to undergo a certain training allowing them to develop skills that enable them to see things that would not be meaningful to a less trained eye. They are able to make an integration of knowledge that remains tacit and a conclusion that becomes explicit. For instance, they become able to see aspects of a new problem that make it similar to one that they already know how to solve. In summary: what acts as clues in our subsidiary awareness must be existentially apprehended. The clues are different from the "objective" description offered in the form of roles. They are meaningful within a context, relationally, and become unusable if we apply the method of analysis to them. We cannot become aware of the many ways in which our embodied nature
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mediates our engagement with the world, and finally, the way in which we are socially induced into practices, for which explicit lutes cannot be given, supports the idea that we make sense "existentially" of the practices first, before we can even reflect upon them. There is always an element of our knowledge that cannot be told. We experience our embodied engagement with the world in ways that cannot be completely captured in a linguistic form. The element of our experience that is non-articulable allows us to act upon the world; it guides our performances and is not merely passively received. Some aspects of the world are perceived as salient, and are significant and relevant for our acting. I have asserted that we become able to perceive those aspects as salient as a product of our social training. It is within social practices that such content is perceived as relevant and appropriate. This tacit aspect of our experiences is normatively constrained. Therefore, I think it is meaningful to ask whether or not we can consider it as belonging to the realm of reasons. Questions arise regarding its status as it is 110t clear if this sort of content can enter into rational, justificatory relations. Furthermore, in McDowell's view, the conceptual, that which belongs to the realm of reasons, can be reflected upon,s but as we have seen, we can only actively reflect upon that which is in our focal awareness. Charles Taylor agrees that there are aspects of our engagement with the world that become meaningful to us as actors, which are neither conceptual nor are within our focal awareness. He says "[ejven when I'm not thinking of them these things have those relevances for me; J know my way about among them" [(2002), p. 111J. And he also underlines its ambiguous status when he claims: "[tjhis is non-conceptual; or put another way, language isn't playing any direct role. [... ] Ordinary coping isn't conceptual. But at the same time, it can't be understood in inanimate-causal terms' [(2002), p. 111].
III McDowell makes a very close link between reason and language. He says that it is by learning a language that human beings become aware of the rational relations between concepts and become able to give and ask for reasons, and consequently enter the realm of reason. Furthermore, he says, "[i]n the reflective tradition we belong to, there is a time-honoured connection between reason and discourse. We can trace it back at least as far as Plato: if we try to translate 'reason' and 'discourse' into Plato's Greek, we can find only one word, logos, for both" [(1994), p. 165]. He argues against the idea that non-conceptual content can enter rational relations with conceptual content and that it can offer us reasons for actions or beliefs. He thinks that theories that support non-conceptual content (such as Christopher Peacocke's) are unattractive because they have to "sever the tie between reasons for which a
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subject thinks as she does and reasons she can give for thinking that way. Reasons the subject can give, in so far as they are articulable, must be within the space of concepts" [(1994), p. 1.65]. Commenting on the work of Peacocke, McDowell discusses the example of a cyclist who adjusts his bodily movements to keep his balance when taking a curve. We can see the appropriateness of his actions because this is what he has to do to keep his balance, to reach a goal. There is thus a rationality to it; but this does not imply that these are his reasons for his actions. "The connection between a movement and the goal is the sort of thing that could be a reason for making the movement, but a skilled cyclist makes such movements without needing reasons for doing so. Why would it not be similar with experience and judgement, if experiences had the non-conceptual content that Peacocke says they have?" [(1994), p. 163]. If we take the example of the cyclist offered by McDowell, we feel inclined to accept that he does not act for reasons, and so it seems to follow that non-conceptual experiences cannot be reasons for beliefs. Nevertheless, as we have seen, there is a type of content in experience that is neither fully conceptual nor non-conceptual. It is not the type of content that could be articulated, but it is socially acquired and normatively constrained. For instance, an experienced baker is preparing dough in order to bake some bread. He measures the flour and the water, begins to work on the dough and then adds some more water until the consistency of the dough "feels right". He cannot tell you beforehand how much water, if any, he will have to add, and he is not able to explain, either, why the dough is just right now and not earlier. He does it, as the cyclist did, because it felt right. He is able to assess when the dough is ready, although he is not able to give a precise description of why. Can we claim that his apprehension of the situation, how he experiences it, something which he could not articulate, is his reason for his actions, and not merely the reason why he acts in that way? McDowell offers the following example: "suppose one asks an ordinary subject why she holds some observational belief, say that an object within her field of view is square. An unsurprising reply might be 'Because it looks that way.' That is easily recognized as giving a reason for holding a belief. Just because she gives expression to it in discourse, there is no problem about the reason's being a reason for which... , and not just part of the reason why ... " [(1994), p. 165]. In his assessment of what counts as a reason for such a belief McDowell allows that the level of articulation can be minimal; he says that "[rjeasons that the subject can give, in so far as they are articulable, must be within the space of concepts. I do not mean to suggest any special degree of articulateness" [(1994), p. 165]. If the baker, in the previous example, claims that he knows that the dough is ready because "it feels right", could we take this to be sufficiently articulated to count as giving a reason for action or for holding a belief? Even
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if this were the case, we should not forget that, according to Mcljowell, if "the reason is articulable (even if only in the form 'it looks like that') it must be no less conceptual than what it is a reason for" [(1994), p. 166, italics mine]. But there are aspects of the baker's engagement with the world in his bread making, which cannot be considered to be "conceptual" as they are not in his focal awareness and they cannot be articulated linguistically. Even if they allow him to determine when the dough is ready, they cannot appear in judgements. Furthermore, let us imagine that when the baker is questioned, he merely shrugs his shoulders. He is able to assess when enough water has been added to the dough and when he has to stop kneading. But he is unable to articulate, even minimally, his reasons for his actions. The baker has undergone a certain training, which has made him able to perceive certain aspects of his environment as meaningful and relevant for his actions, in a way that an untrained person would not. He can correct his "mistakes". He also knows what would count as an acceptable loaf of bread within a particular context. The baker shows how he has captured the normativity of this practice. Still, even if he has reasons for his actions he cannot articulate them, he cannot give them (perhaps because they cannot be given). McDowell points out that he does not conflate having reasons with actually giving them, rather "the proposed connection is between having reasons and an ability to give them, which of course need not be exercised whenever a subject has reasons" [(2001), p. 183],6 The baker, although unable to articulate linguistically his reasons for acting in the above example, does have the ability to give and ask for reasons in other contexts: he has entered the realm of reasons. In this case, he cannot give reasons for his actions, but he can show in his performance that he has reasons for his actions, even if they cannot be articulated linguistically. I will claim that the way in which he engages with the world gives him reasons for his actions, and also gives him reasons to form beliefs. Let us return to the example of the cyclist. McDowell claims that even if the connection between a movement and the goal is the sort of thing that could be a reason for making a movement, skilled cyclists make those movements without needing reasons for doing so. Cyclists have reasons why they make certain adjustments while riding, but not reasons for doing them. But cycling is an activity that requires being initiated into certain practices, just as making bread is. A cyclist has to apprehend his environment and make the appropriate adjustments in his bodily movements or behaviour if he wants to ride successfully and appropriately. And this cannot be understood as a mere mechanical response to the environment. For instance, he must learn how a bike "responds" when ridden on different surfaces, as one does not keep one's balance in the same way when riding on ice as riding on a mountain track full of loose stones. He has to respond appropriately to the changes on the road. He also has to learn how to behave when cycling in a city, which
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is different from riding on tracks, etc. There is a whole background that has to be apprehended and "negotiated" by the cyclist when riding a bike, even if he is not paying attention to it, and this infuses his whole performance. As in the previous example, there is a normativity that the cyclist has to apprehend in order to engage in this practice, and, again, he might be unable to articulate how he is apprehending the relevant features and negotiating his behaviour accordingly. The status of this content appears to be ambiguous as on the one hand it is normatively constrained as conceptual content is, and therefore should be "located" in the realm of reasons; but on the other hand, it is not linguistically articulated by the agent (in many cases it is not even articulable), which seems to exclude it from being conceptual, and therefore from the realm of reasons. If we take this content to be non-conceptual we are not acknowledging that it is normatively constrained. Thus, I would suggest calling it "quasiconceptual" and accepting it within the realm of reasons. Another alternative could be to accept that there is a conceptual content which can be attributed to agents who have entered the realm of reasons) even when they cannot articulate this content linguistically.
IV
In previous sections I showed how there is a tacit dimension in our apprehension of the world that could not be articulated, and remained out of our focal awareness. I claim that this content entered into relations of integration with content that could be made explicit and of which we were focally aware. We become able to make integrations as the product of social training, through which we acquire a second nature. I believe that this tacit content is normatively constrained and is) in combination with explicit content, the reason why we form beliefs. This tacit content belongs to the realm of reasons, even if it cannot be articulated linguistically. Department ofHumanities University ofHull HU6 7RX, Hun United Kingdom E-mail:
[email protected]
NOTBS 1 According to R. Brandom, "experience for him is always propositionally contentful: experience that things are thus and so" [(1998). p. 369]. R. Schantz also claims that "experiences, according to McDowell, are through and through conceptu-
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any informed, and even always prepositionally contentful, and yet prejudgemental Finally, although Collins asserts that McDowell and nondoxastic' [(2001), p, makes a link between the conceptual and the propositional character of human experience, he also accepts that "McDowell himself does not say that perception involves judgment and perhaps it may go beyond his view to assert that perception, per se, accepts propositional expression, though [it] is hard to separate that idea from the claim that we experience facts. In any case, 1 think there are overwhelming reasons for thinking that perception is not intrinsically propositional" [(1998), p, 379]. 2 This is exomplified, f01" instance. in the recognition of a physiognomy: we are aware of the features of a physiognomy only in terms of the physiognomy we are attending.' Po lanyi agrees with Gestalt psychology in that "the particulars of a pattern 01" a tune must be apprehended jointly, for if you observe the particulars separately they form no pattern or tune" [(1998), pp. 56-7]. 3 W. T. Scott remarks on this active engagement: "The terms 'integration' and 'construction' should not be taken to refer to acts of imposing structure on unformed data, or of a mechanical summation of parts, but rather to mean that the perceiver is active in forming a perception of what it is that he sees or hears, while attending to the object from its particulars" [( 1971), p, 24]. Regarding this point, Polanyi, who agrees with Gestalt psychologists on the general outlook of their theory, distances himself from them because they do not stress enough that perception requires an intentional effort. He also believes that subjects are able to revise that which is presented to them through their senses, underlying the active nature of perception. "Gestalt psychologists have tended to collect preferentially examples of the type in which perception goes on without any deliberate effort on the part of the perceiver and it is not even corrigible by his subsequent reconsideration of the result. Optical illusions are then classed with true perceptions, both being described as the equilibration of simultaneous stimuli to a comprehensive whole. Such an interpretation leaves no place for any intentional effort which prompts our perception to explore and assess in the quest of knowledge the clues offered to our senses. I believe this is a mistake" [(1998), pp. 97-8], 4 See Gill (2000) in particular to understand the scope of the distinction. inferences arc central to explicit knowledge and comprise knowledge that can be identified and articulated, and that is a reversible process; while integration is tacit knowledge that cannot be articulated, and cannot be reversed. 5 McDowell says, for instance: "the faculty of spontaneity carries with it a standing obligation to reflect on the credentials of the putatively rational linkages that, at any time, one takes to govern the active business of adjusting one's world-view in response to experience" [(1994), p. 41]. "It is essential to conceptual capacities, in the demanding sense, that they can be exploited in active thinking, thinking that is open to reflection about its own rational credentials. When I say that the content of experience is conceptual, that is what I mean by 'conceptual'" [(1994), p. 47]. 6 McDowell says that "when the ability is exercised in an explicit appeal to experience, the exercise need not take the form of describing the way something, for instance, looks; so it is besides the point for Schantz to insist, rightly enough, that a subject who has reasons to believe an animal is a crocodile need n01 be able to describe the way the animal appears to her, This is accommodated by the point [... ] that there are conceptual capacities that are expressible only with the aid of demonstratives" [(2001), p. 183].
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REFERENCES
(1998), "Perception and Rational Constraint", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol, LVIII, pp. 369-74. COLLINS, A. (1998), "Beastly Experience", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, voL LVIII, pp, 375-80. GELWICK, R. (1977), The Way ofDiscovery, NY, Oxford University Press. GILL, IH. (2000), The Tacit Mode. Michael Polanyi's Postmodern Philosophy, Albany, State University of New YO1'k Press. McDoWELL, J. (1994), Mind and World, London, Harvard University Press. (2001), "Comment on Richard Schantz, 'The Given Regained'", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LXll, pp. 181-4. SCHANTZ, R. (2001), "The Given Regained. Reflections on the SensuouS Content of Experience" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, voL LXII, pp. 167-80. SCOIT, W. (1971), "Tacit Knowing and the Concept of Mind", Philosophical Quarterly, vol, 21, pp. 22-35. TAYLOR, C. (2002), "Foundationalism and the Inner-Outer Distinction", in Smith, N.H. (ed.) Reading McDowell. On Mind and World, London, Routledge, pp. 106-19. POLANYI, M. (1966), The Tacit Dimension, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. (1969), Knowing and Being, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. (1998), Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, London, Routledge.
BRANDOM, R.
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Response to Stella Gonzalez Arnal
1. One thing one might mean by talking of a tacit dimension to our experiential engagement with the world is that the conceptual capacities that are operative in perceptually taking in features of reality depend 011 background knowledge. . For example, Sellars argues that our ability to experience things as having colours depends on our knowing the difference between lighting conditions that are appropriate for telling what colours things have by looking and lighting conditions that are not. I discuss this dependency in my response to Costas Pagondiotis, As I acknowledge there, this background knowledge may be a purely practical ability to discriminate appropriate from inappropriate conditions. Making the discrimination need not be a matter of applying an explicitly endorsed theory. I formulated this interpretation for talk of a tacit dimension in terms of a condition on the conceptual capacities that are operative in our experience. vVe can accept that a not necessarily articulated background can stand in this kind of relation to our experience, and consistently go on to hold that the content of ow' experience itself what our experience reveals to us, or at least purports to reveal to us, about our environment - is determined by the operation in experience of capacities that arc conceptuaL A background needed for our experience to have the content it has is not, as such, part of the content of the experience for whose possibility it is a condition. 2. We come closer to something that might look like a reason for SUpM posing our experience has content that is not, at any rate not fully, conceptual when we consider something else one might mean by talking of a tacit dimensian to our experiential engagement with the world: namely, that we are not focally aware of everything we are aware of when we engage with the world, as Gonzalez Arnal puts it following Polanyi, On this interpretation for talk of a tacit dimension, what belongs to the tacit dimension is part of experiential content. If this part of experiential content is not fully conceptual, it follows that experiential content is not fully conceptual. Gonzalez Arnal quotes Polanyi writing about the pressure in the palm of one's hand that is part of what one is aware of when one is wielding a hammer. To use a hammer skilfully, one must keep such elements of one's awareness in the background. If one's attention is drawn to them, it is thereby
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drawn away from what it needs to be directed at if one is to exercise the skill, say the position of the nail one is hammering. The result is that the skilled performance is disrupted. But why should we suppose this is a case of experiential content that is not fully conceptual? Gonzalez Arnal gives two reasons: first, that our awareness of these elements is not focal, and, second, that it cannot be linguistically articulated. She does not explain why she thinks the non-focal character of this kind of awareness is a reason for saying it is not fully conceptual. Clearly everything turns here on what we mean by talking of actualizations of conceptual capacities. It is not that what capacities are conceptual is agreed on all hands, but substantive disputes open up about the nature of this supposedly common subject matter. What is needed is to motivate a specific way of using the notion of a conceptual capacity, perhaps on the ground of its utility in clarifying some region of philosophical difficulty. For my part, I find it helpful to make a close connection between the idea of operations of conceptual capacities and the idea of rationality in a strict sense. In having the content it has, our experience makes, or at least purports to make, features of reality available to the rationality that is involved in forming, maintaining, and correcting beliefs. Given the connection between conceptual capacities and rationality, to attribute that role to experience is, near enough, to say what Gonzalez Arnal questions: that conceptual capacities, in the relevant sense, enter into experience's having the content it has. If some feature of reality is only non-focally available to a subject's doxastic rationality in a given experience, why should that seem to make any difference? If the feature is present in experience at all, it is available to serve as rational input to one's doxastic rationality, whether one's attention is directed to it or not. All that would be required for one's awareness of a non-focally experienced feature of one's situation - say, the pressure exerted by the hammer on the palm of one's hand to make an actual impingement on one's doxastic rationality, perhaps to persuade one to an explicit endorsement of a claim about the pressure on one's palm, would be a shift of attention. Why should we suppose a shift of attention would transform content that is not fully conceptual into content that is fully conceptual? It may seem that this question is answered by the second of Gonzalez Arnal's reasons, the claim that our awareness of these elements cannot be linguistically articulated. It is certainly true that I try to capture the connection of the conceptual, as I use that idea, with rationality in a strict sense by invoking language. (Here I follow Sellars's picture of the logical space of reasons, which he describes as the space "of justifying and being able to justify what one says'") If it were true that the non-focal experiential content we are considering here could not be linguistically articulated, that would be a ground for saying it cannot be conceptual in my sense.
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But all that Gonzalez Arnal can genuinely claim to establish in this area is that the content she is discussing cannot both be linguistically articulated and retain its status as present to the subject only non-focally. That is not at ali the same as showing that the content in question cannot be linguistically articulated. And in fact content of this kind can be linguistically articulated..It is linguistically articulated, for instance by Polanyi. Certainly once it is linguistically articulated, it can no longer be fulfilling its function as unattended-to background for focal awareness of something else, say, a nail that one is hammering. But now we can pose a counterpart to the question that arose in connection with the first of Gonzalez Arnal's two reasons, the question that was supposed to be answered by these considerations about linguistic articu lability. Why should it seem that a shift of some experiential content, say the content of one's awareness of pressure in one's palm, from unattended-to background to focused-on foreground would transform content that is not fully conceptual into content that is fully conceptual? 3. I conceded that the ability to discriminate good from bad lighting conditions for telling what colours things have by looking that figures in the background of colour experience, according to Sellars, need not be a matter of explicitly endorsing a theory. But a point like the one I have just been making applies here too. The concession is that one can have the conceptual capacities in question, capacities to recognize colours on sight, without having expressly articulated the facts about good lighting conditions that one needs to know one's way around in order to have those conceptual capacities. It does not follow that that background knowledge is incapable of being linguistically articulated. My point in §1 above did not require me to question the assumption that the required background know ledge, in that kind of case, is not conceptual. Even if the background knowledge were not conceptual, that would not imply that the content of the experience that is conditioned by that background knowledge is not conceptuaL But we are now in a position to see that if knowledge is marked out as conceptual by the possibility of articulating it, the assumption is open to question too. 4. Gonzalez Arnal's baker exemplifies a different kind .of case. His experience of the feel of the dough is of course conditioned by his acquired skill at bread-making. This is a partial counterpart to the way in which colour experience is conditioned by knowledge about lighting conditions, and to that extent the example belongs with the one I considered in §1 above. But it is the content of the baker's apprehension of the situation, rather than the background needed for his apprehension to have the content it does, that Gonzalez Arnal claims is not conceptual, on the ground that the baker cannot articulate it.
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However, she herself envisages the baker saying that the dough feels right, and that is surely an articulation of how it feels to him. The articulation is admittedly not very specific. But why should that matter? I think it is beside the point that the baker may not be in command of terms such as "firm" or "resilient" terms with which someone might try I surely in vain, to construct written instructions for kneading bread dough that would preempt any need for learning by practice, through trial and error or from a master. If he cares, a master baker might try to acquire, or devise, terms that work in the way those terms would. (Consider the conceptual in~ novativeness that is called for in serious connoisseurship of, say, wine.) Certainly a baker need not care about using terms of that sort to describe the feel he goes by in deciding when dough is ready. But if he really is a skilled baker, he had better have knowledge that he could formulate, at the right moment in the midst of a bout of bread-making, by saying something like "The dough is ready when it feels like this". (Perhaps he is mute? Well, it is not hard to imagine gestural communication that would demand an interpretation on those lines. Communication need not be verbal to be linguistic in the relevant sense.) In the right circumstances, saying something on those lines would give as specific an expression as one could ask for to a conceptual capacity that is operative in his experience of the way the dough feels. 5. I have objected to Gonzalez Arnal's claim that the kind of experiential content she considers is beyond the reach of linguistic articulation. But apart from that, I am not objecting to the substance of what she wants to say about experiential content. J think the considerations she adduces should 110t be seen as telling against the idea that the content of our experience is fully conceptual. We can leave that idea in place, and let her considerations serve rather to undermine a certain conception of the conceptual, one according to which actualizations of conceptual capacities are operations of a pure intellect, independent of ordinary capacities for practical engagement with reality. The claim about articulability that I have resisted belongs in the context of that conception of the conceptual. It reflects a corresponding view of what counts as linguistic articulation. When we resist that conception of the conceptual, we should equally resist a view of linguistic articulation according to which uses of language that partly owe their significance to their users' immersion in practical life, such as the baker's use of "feels like this", cannot as if linguistic count as linguistic articulations of the content they express articulation would require words to do all the work of expression by themselves, without help from the lived-in situations in which we speak. JOHN McDOWELL
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Varieties of Internal Relations: Intention, Expression and Norms* Josep Lluis Prades RESUMEN
En sus ataques a los analisis neo-kripkeanos, McDowell ha aceptado el supuesto de que las atribuciones de intencion son normativas en el rnismo sentido en que 10 son las atribuciones de significado. Propondre que tal asimilacion no es correcta, Mencionare algunas ideas de Wittgenstein sobre la intencionalidad (alrededor de 1930) que hablan de preservarse en las Investigaciones filosoflcas. Tratare de rastrear lUl argumente del que puede concluirse la conducta expresiva como el proto-Ienomeno de la intencionalidad, Las caracteristicas de tal nocion permiten justificar las ideas de McDowell sobre la imposibilidad de fundamentar el "lecho rocoso" de las convenciones gramaticales. Sin embargo, las razones tiltimas para tal imposibilidad son Iigeramente diferentes de las que ha defendido McDowelL AnSTRACT
In his attack on neo-Kripkean accounts, McDowell has accepted that attributions of intention are normative, in the same sense in which attributions of meaning are normative. I will argue that this is a wrong assimilation. By referring to certain of Wittgensteiu's ideas on intentionality (circa 1930) that were preserved in Philosophical Investigations, I will try to track an argument from which it follows that expressive behaviour is the proto-phenomenon of intentionality. The features of this notion justify McDowell's ideas about the impossibility of grounding the "bedrock" of grammatical conventions. Nevertheless, the underlying reasons for such impossibility are slightly different f . om those that McDowell has defended.
Wittgenstein was always obsessed by the question of the logical must. In Philosophical Investigations, the hardness of the logical must is linked to certain internal connections that are constitutive of intentional states: the connection between a desire, a belief or an intention and their intentional objects. Professor McDowell has consistently attacked those interpretations of Wittgenstein's thinking that devaluate these internal connections and the role they play in his reflections on following a rule. My overall agreement with McDowell is compatible with the main purpose of this paper: I will try to show certain differences between the kind of internal relations that are proper of intentionality, in general, and the more specific normativity that must he
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involved in following rules. By adopting a slightly different perspective from Mclzowell's, my hope is to defend his main conclusions but to show, nevertheless, that certain conditions for the possibility of language are not given proper consideration in his aCCOLmt. If I am right, some of the foundations that McDowell requires for his main conclusions must be located in different, albeit very close, places.
I To begin, let us revisit Kripke's well known challenge to the idea that a particular intention of a person might fix her meaning a determinate mathematical function [Kripke (1982)]. His main point is against the dialectical import of such a strategy. Intention is no less normative than meaning: no fact of the matter seems to determine what the content of the putative intention is. Certain steps in Kripke's argument may be naturally interpreted as grounding a deflationary, "no-fact-of-the-matter" account, not only of meaning but of intention itself. McDowell would disagree with this consequence of Kripke's argument, and so would 1. Kripke was searching in the wrong direction. A mental process of forming an intention can determine certain content simply because it has some links with some processes that Kripke did not consider: processes in virtue of which certain mental happenings, with a determinate content, are possible. I am not interested, now, in the particular way in which this rejection of a Kripkean conclusion can be justified, or even in discussing the particular role that it must play in Kripkc's overall sceptical argument. I am interested in McDowell: he obviously thinks that there is a way of blocking a Kripkean version of the "no-fact-of-the-matter" argument in the case of intentional content. I agree with him. However, the question in which I am interested is the following; how is this particular way of blocking the standard "no-fact-of-the-matter" argument for intentional content connected to McDowell's own description of the conditions of possibility of following a linguistic rule? For instance, when arguing for the conclusion that following a rule requires a communal practice, McDowell insists that this requirement has to be derived from the rejection of the idea that grasping meaning is always a case of interpretation. So, we have two options: (a) in the general case of intention, we can derive a symmetrical requirement from the rejection of the idea that intentional content requires interpretation; or (b) we must justify why, in the case of following a linguistic rule, the community plays a crucial role, and a crucial role simply because meaning and understanding cannot be assimilated to interpretation. I do not see that we can argue for (a): an implicit reference to a communal practice is not in any relevant sense needed to ground the attribution of a basic intentional content to a baby or to an isolated animal. When an adult human being, who is a competent speaker, has an in-
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tontlon, he does not always in any relevant sense ipso facto have the intention to adjust his behaviour to a communal practice, We need then to defend (b). Nevertheless, if such a defence is possible and I will attempt this later it will have to use, as a crucial premise, not only the general rejection of a mythological notion of interpretation, but something much more specific: the specific content of the propositional attitudes that should be involved in anything worthy of the label "following a linguistic rule".
II
Before proceeding to the argument, let us make a diagnosis about the philosophers' difficulties regarding the determination of intentional content, once they have seen that this content cannot be fixed by a process of interpretation of detached, internal objects. I agree with McDowell that the crucial fact is that this content is determined in virtue of certain links with phenomena outside those putative detached internal objects. Particular thoughts are not detached particulars deprived of intentionality to which an interpretation has to be added. Intention is not a kind of flag in the mind that both points on its own in a determinate direction and is fully independent of, for instance, certain dispositions of the living animal that I am. The crucial point is this: there is no way of describing these connections if this description has to be made in non-intentional language. This is the reason why there can be no satisfactory answer to any question of the form: "in virtue of what fact does a certain event E have the intentional content K'?" The only possible reaction is to show that the question itself depends on a crucial misunderstanding. If the fact of the matter is stated by using intentional language} the philosopher who has been attracted by the question will not be happy: he would consider it as a new statement of the fact that is supposed to be analysed. But it cannot be answered in any other language. This is, I would guess, completely symmetrical to certain confusions regarding the fact that a given normative practice of following a rule is internally related to a certain set of actual and possible applications. And the diagnosis regarding the confusions of levels is symmetrical to McDowell's well known insistence that we should not try to dig below the bedrock level: the only intelligible description that can justify the conclusion that a certain application is a correct application of a certain rule is equivalent to a simple restatement of the rule itself. I am not denying this symmetry, but, in my opinion, McDowell has not paid enough attention to certain differences. Let us return to the case of intention. J think there is still a tension within McDowell's views on this topic. On the one hand, he has rejected, rightly in my view, any "no-fact-of-the-matter" account of intention based on Kripkean considerations. In fact, we can say that . he has made this rejection the basis of his consistent attacks on deflationary
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accounts of intention. On the other hand, he accepted, in his influential 1984 paper, certain parts of the Kripkean argument: basically that there is no hope of accounting for intention in terms of dispositions, simply because the notion of intention is normative [McDowell (1984)]. And this idea, the idea that the notion of intention is a normative notion, in the very same sense in which the notion of meaning is a normative notion, has systematically been assumed by McDowell since then [McDowell (1998b) and (1998c)]. Against this parallelism, I will argue that the notion of intention is not normative in the sense in which the notion of meaning is normative. Let us consider only basic third person attributions of intention to make the discussion simpler. If Kripkean scepticism or neo-Kripkean deflationary accounts have to work for first person attributions, they have to work for basic third person attributions too. And McDowell will agree, I would guess, that any self-attribution of intention can only bear a determinate content in virtue of certain connections with the kind of public events that make third person attributions possible. Then, the kind of "no-fact-of-the-matter", Kripkean argument can be expressed in third person language: in virtue of what does someone have the intention IN with the determinate content DC? Obviously, we might point out that we can see in his behaviour that he does have IN with content DC. It would, though, be useless: the philosopher's question is a question about the non-intentional fact to which the intentional fact has to be reduced. There is no such fact. Nevertheless, it is not altogether clear that, in certain basic cases of third person attributions, we can be easily seduced by Kripke's idea that intention, as opposed to dispositions, is a normative notion. Against this, it does seem clear that, ill certain basic cases, someone' s behaviour quite obviously expresses a certain intention IN, simply by the fact that this behaviour makes a certain kind of disposition D obvious. Then, had he not had the disposition D, my attribution of the intention IN would be false, and vice versa. The intention to avoid the approaching car that a pedestrian's behaviour expresses is simply a kind of disposition to avoid the car. The intention to avoid the predator that the prey expresses is simply a certain kind of disposition to avoid the predator. "Not so," a Kripkean would say, "intention is a normative notion whilst a disposition is merely a non-normative fact about someone", But it is difficult to accept that this might be the right answer. There is no obvious sense ill which the fact that someone has an intention has.to be a normative fact about him, while the fact that someone has the relevant disposition is not as normative. In fact, it is a strange use of the term "normative" in both cases. Of course, if the attributed content is DC, then the person who makes must accept that only the attribution - even in the cases of self-attribution when DC obtains, has the intention been satisfied. (But the same may be said of the relevant disposition to DC). Both in the case of a "mere" disposition and in the case of intention, we identify dispositions and intentions independ-
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ent of what is in fact going to happen. The glass has a disposition to break. It will break in certain circumstances C, provided that something does not happen to prevent the exercise of the disposition, or provided that it does not lose the disposition. The truth conditions of a standard attribution of disposition are not fixed by what the object will in fact do in the future. In the same sense, certain basic attributions of intention are such that the agent, given certain circumstances, will act in such and such a way, provided that he does not change his mind. In my opinion, there are many different phenomena that can playa role in some common intuitions about the normativity of intention: a) the fact that a particular intention may be the intention of following or establishing a norm, b) the fact that certain ways of expressing intention are also ways of expressing a commitment - the subject can commit himself to not changing his mind, c) the fact that not every kind of disposition to do X is an intention to do X, d) the fact that an agent can make cognitive mistakes when acting on a determinate intention, e) the fact that it could be said that there is a failure in an action that is not conducive to the satisfaction of the intention with which an agent acts, f) the fact that intentions cannot be analyzed merely in terms of dispositional, non-intentional language. None of this justifies Kripkc's thesis (or McDowell's approval) that "the relation of meaning and intention to future action is normative" [Kripke (1984), p. 37]. It does not justify this conclusion because some of the phenomena I have mentioned are not proper to every possible intention and, in any case, none of them is the kind of phenomenon that Kripke or McDowell had in mind as a reason for Kripkc's thesis. For what they had in mind seems to be only the logical must, in Wittgcnstein's sense, the internal connection between a thought, a belief or a statement and their truth conditions, between a desire or an intention and their conditions of satisfaction, between and order and what the order orders [McDowell (1998a), pp. 235-7,265,270,300-2]. The relation of linguistic meaning to action is normative - in a sense I will describe later. However, the relation of intention per se to future action is not normative in this sense. Obviously, not all kinds of future action would be in accordance with a previous intention, not everything would count as a satisfaction of a particular desire, and not every possible state of affairs would render a proposition about the future true. We can, if we want, call this phenomenon "normativity", But then we cannot defend that it is obvious that "mere" dispositions are not nonnative in this sense. It is not obvious, at all. And to show exactly where the difference is, we need to say something that goes beyond "normativity" in this sense. We might defend, for instance, that propositional attitudes have content in a different sense to which a disposition could be said to have content, that the attribution of content to an intentional agent has a completely different explanatory function from the attribution of a disposition to a physical object. But this is not a difference
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that could be explained in terms of the putative general phenomenon of "normativity", if this is understood as the mere phenomenon of the logical must, as the mere phenomenon of fixing only some possible states of affairs as those satisfying the relevant propositional attitude or counting as the proper exercise of the relevant disposition. I The question of the normativity of intention has to be, then, clearly distinguished from the question of the reducibility of intentional language. On this second issue, I have no quarrel with McOowell: the internal connection between a determinate content DC, the relevant dispositions and its conditions of satisfaction can only be described in intentional terms. 1 will now attempt to say something more about the form ofthese internal connections.
III
To begin, let us notice an epistemic source of philosophical perplexity, when people feel the attraction of "no-fact-of-the-matter" arguments. We have an impressive epistemic ability when we identify intentions and changes of mind before the relevant actions are produced. In virtue of this ability, we are able to anticipate animal actions. This epistemic ability has grounded the idea that we need a reductive account of intentional facts. FOf, it is commonly argued, if there were no non-intentional facts to which intentional facts could be reduced, then our effective ability to anticipate and control the world by relying all our perception of intentional contents in other people actions (linguistic and non-linguistic) would be a kind of miracle. This bad argument is one of the sources of the prevalent reductive naturalism in contemporary philosophy of mind. I think that the premises of this bad argument are also operating in other different directions: on the one hand, it is this episternic ability that creates the illusion of a super-determination of intention or meaning either by platonic entities or by self-interpreted internal objects. Once we notice the futility of those explanations, we are tempted by the "nofact-of-the-matter" conclusion. We consider that the very ideas of content determination and meaning determination are incoherent. The only relevant facts are the contingent facts that are linked to OUl' epistemic success. This success, impressive but contingent as it is, is then interpreted as creating the illusion of meaning-determination, or content-determination. In the practice of attribution of intentions, for instance, we start with the assumption that the attributed content fixes the conditions under which we should recognize that the intention has been satisfied. Once we renounce a certain mythology about how this content might be fixed, it seems that the naked practice of recognizing when an intention is satisfied cannot be described as being determined by the requirements imposed by that content. Simply because this practice fixes content, it is difficult to accept that it might be grounded on content 2 So we are
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trapped with: either an incoherent account of content determination or a deflationary account of intentional content.
IV
The previous dilemma should be resisted. And the key to resisting it is the sophisticated link between the epistemology of content attributions and the metaphysics of (the attributed) content. Our epistemic success in attributing intentional content our ability to anticipate future behaviour, the relevant stability of our attributions - is related, as a condition of possibility, to a speciallcind of non-contingent connection that is constitutive of the hardness of the logical must. Wittgensteiu's first account of it can be dated to the early thirties, and it can be traced in the second half of the first part of Philosophical Investigations. It is a revolutionary account that marks the complete abandomnent of any empiricist account of experience: intentional attributions are possible because we can find non-accidental connections within the field of experience. Of course, no internal connection is different from the logical must no internal connection is more basic than the necessities that are made by logic and grammar. There is, nonetheless an aspect of these necessities that had been typically unnoticed by pre-Wittgensteinian philosophy of language: the internal connection between a picture and its truth conditions} between an intention and its condition of satisfaction, requires the stability of certain connections between different fragments of behaviour. It requires what can be called "expressive behaviour"; the pictorial properties of certain ways of acting that can only depict certain contents by being non-accidentally related to their own future development, In Philosophical Remarks and Philosophical Grammar, in the early thirties, we find certain ideas about intentionality that are at the core of the reflections on rule following in Philosophical Investigations. Basically, the intentional object can only be fixed via expressive behaviour. "Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell what you are searching for" [Wittgenstein (1975), §27. Cf. Wittgenstein (1973), I, §§86, 91, 92]. The intentional link is an internal, not a contingent, relation. It is now fixed that I am looking for a determinate entity to be found in the future. This has to be fixed quite independently of the object's actual existence - I can look for something that does not exist. Nevertheless, the object I am looking for is depicted in my way of acting now. Wittgenstein's bete noire was the idea that the non-representational features of certain detached, mental particulars can account for intentional content. I agree with Mcfsowell, of course, that this is not an attack on the possibility that mental particulars might be endowed with intentional content. This would be plainly self-refuting: thoughts, perceptions and images do have content. By criticising classical conceptions of intentionality, Wittgen-
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stein attacked certain accounts of the way in which particulars acquire pictorial powers. In fact, about the sense of "pictorial powers", the sense in which anything can have pictorial powers at all. If we try to ground those representational powers in non-intentional features we are forced to conclude that representation is not possible. Just as we cannot explain the representational powers of a physical object in terms of its intrinsic, non-representational determinations, in a similar way we cannot ground the representational powers of any particular. The other alternative that Wittgenstein seriously considers is a kind of eliminative account: Russell's behaviourism, the kind of theory that transforms the internal link into a merely contingent connection. According to Wittgenstein, the fact that I want to eat an apple has to be fixed now; it is not something that has to be determined, as Russell's theory requires, by my future behaviour. Traditional theories of intentionality are committed to a plainly incoherent story about how intentional content is fixed by postulating entities that are representationally dead and that still require some additional source of intentional life. On the contrary, behaviourist theories ignore the requirements of the logical must, by transforming internal connections into contingent links: it would be a contingent issue what the object of my propositional attitudes is. For Wittgenstein, the desired object is not the object that gives me psychological satisfaction: whether the apple will satisfy me or not is a contingent question, to be decided in the future. It is necessarily fixed now, though, that I desire an apple: this is the hardness of the logical must [Wittgenstein (1975), §§21-2]. In the light of previous considerations, what is the best reconstruction of Wittgenstein's argument for the necessity of expressive behaviour? It is, I would say, in a move that is parallel, only parallel though, to Mcfrowell's insistence in his 1984 paper about the necessity of not digging below the bedintentionality, not meaning - where rock. If I am right, it is at this point the prohibition gains strength. In section VI of the paper, I will try to show why McDowell's insistence loses some of its grip simply because it arrives a little too late. The perverted dialectical setting that, according to McDowell, is accepted by Kripkean accounts of meaning can also be naturally introduced for the question of intentionality. The apparent necessity of choosing between content indetermination and a magical kind of determination can be an unpalatable option for the classical philosopher, who defends that non-representational features of particulars can be the bearers of representational powers. The behaviourist elimination would correspond to any ueo-Kripkean deflationary account. What is the parallel move regarding intentionality - to Wittgenstein's rejection of the hidden assumption that meaning has to be grounded in interpretation? Simply the rejection of the hidden assumptions behind any reductive account of intentionality. It is not merely the parallel move: it is the move
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that justifies and gives full import to the idea that there must be a way of grasping meaning that is purely reaction, rather than interpretation. If we want to avoid the behaviourist elimination of intentionality (and Wittgenstein always accepted that the elimination of the logical must was not an intelligible option), the diagnosis of the problems related to classical accounts has far reaching consequences regarding the possibility of a reduction of intentionality. Non-intentionally specified determinations of particulars are not the kind of entities that can ground intentional content. There is a double role in Wittgensteiu's constant obsession to compare the putative mythological representational powers of mental particulars with the representational powers of physical objects. One is, of course, the pedagogical strategy of showing that the former are as representation ally dead as the latter? The other is to show certain constitutive aspects of the relation of representation, of the form of any "x represents v" statement. There is an obvious mistake in the idea that non-intentionally specified features can be the bearers, without further specification" of the properties that content requires: the nonrepresentationally specified features of any representation can never determine certain features that must be present in intentional content. There is nothing in them that might fix the degree of generality and intensionality that is proper to content. This entails that the whole idea of providing a reductive account of intentionality is misguided. Not because dead mental particulars are the only dialectical option to straight, behaviouristic elimination, but because the diagnosis of their failures shows something very important about the impossibility of finding grounds for basic attributions of intentionality. Ultimately, there can be no ground for such basic attributions. Just as it is selfrefuting to try to ground basic attributions of similarity in third-man entities. Such a ground would require justifying a basic attribution of similarity on some relation of - similarity! In the case of intentionality, such a ground would require the self-refuting move of justifying a basic attribution of intentionality on some intentionally specified relation: a given interpretation of the dead nonrepresentational features." What follows from this argument has no parallel with McDowell's requirement of a linguistic community and I am not accusing him, at all, of ever having suggested that it should have such a parallel. But this argument does provide justification for the idea of expressive behaviour as the protophenomenon of content, the idea that certain basic intentional phenomena are, to use McDowell's expression, bedrock territory. OUf ability to perceive intentionality in certain basic forms of behaviour cannot have, and does not need, any rational ground. We are able to perceive directly the expressed content in certain basic forms of animal behaviour. The most important thing here is that in no way can we use the previous reconstruction of Wittgenstein's argument to justify the idea that certain forms of behaviour manage to have the same kinds of pictorial powers that mental, detached particulars cannot have.
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This would be self-refuting: in the sense in which certain features of certain mental or physical particulars cannot be the bearers of representational powers, nothing can bear those kinds of pictorial powers - in particular, certain non-representational features of certain particular ways of behaving cannot be the bearers of representational powers either. Simply because we are introducing a confusing picture about what it to represent. Wittgenstein's argument is not (only) about putative candidates for one of the relata of the relation of representation: non-representationally specified determinations of particulars. The argument is about a notion of representation that creates the illusion that such entities might be able to represent. The non-intentionally specified, determinate features of the particular behaviour of an animal do not ground our attributions of intentionality, and they do not represent either. The conclusion is meant to be that, in spite of this, it would be selfrefuting to insist that something is missing, that we do not have all the ground that we need: for we need none. To insist that we need it would be self-refuting. To insist that we need it would be to express a basic confusion about how representation is possible, at all. It is commonplace to distinguish between intrinsic and derivative intentionality. Mind is the locus of intrinsic intentionality. Pictures and words have a kind of derivative intentionality: pictures and words manage to represent in virtue of their connections to the mind. Naturalizing, reductive programmes about intentionality assume that there must be some (non-intentional) facts in virtue of which minds manage to represent. This is the unintelligible assumption that Wittgenstein's criticism of non-intentional features as bearers of representation tries to attack We can intelligibly ask of a conventional representation (a name, a pred icate, a picture, a sentence): in virtue of what does it represent what it represents? If intentionality is possible at all, there must be certain proto-phenomena about which this question cannot be asked. This is a question that cannot be asked of expressive behaviour. We could say that our perception of intentionality in this case is not based on interpretation; it is just a matter of our reaction. This would simply be an epistemological point: it is because we react in certain ways that we can have epistemic access to the expressed content in certain basic forms of action. Nevertheless, the most important metaphysical consequence concerns the form of the attributed content. The fact that our reaction is a condition for the possibility of our grasping basic contents is the epistemological side of the metaphysical status of content: there is no way of deriving intentionality from non-intentional features. Content cannot be reduced to non-intentional features. The perception of basic expressions of content cannot be grounded in the perception of certain non-intentional features. This means that content can only be perceived from a framework of epistemic reactions and abilities that is not justified by the perceived content. That our system of natural reactions provides the framework of measurement for the attributed content, is
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true. However, this does not mean that the attributed content is a description of such a framework. Nor does it mean that we can make sense of other, alternative and very different, ways of determining contents. These alternatives would not be conceivable as ways of measuring intentional content. What they would measure would be something different. The human system of reactions allows us to measure contents, and determines what it is like to measure contents. It does not determine what it is like "to measure contents for us", but to measure contents. Something completely different would 110t be an alternative way of perceiving contents. Intentionality cannot have a hidden essence. This is the metaphysical import of the idea that representational powers cannot be grounded on non-representational features of their bearers. 1t is true that, if some kinds of beings were not able to see that the behaviour of an animal depicts a certain object as object of his desire, we could only accuse them of reacting in a different way to us. We could not accuse them of making any rational or inferential mistake. A Laplacean demon, for instance, without some of our natural reactions vis-a-vis the world, would not be able to see any similarity in different instances of the same intentional type. (For the moment let us ignore the question whether or not this counts against the intelligibility of such a kind of mind). This does not justify the thesis that our attributions of intentionality are about our own point of view, about the set of natural, unjustified reactions that make them possible. The rejection of this thesis is simply an aspect of the rejection of the reductionist assumptions about what kind of entities representational powers are, and the kind of relation that "x represents s" specifies. It is wrong to argue, for instance, that our being unable to justify in non-intentional terms the fact that x represents y, makes "x represents y" a dubious statement: a statement that cannot be about x, or that can only get a determinate content if made relative to our own perspective onto the world. This would be simply to assume the self-refuting point of view of a reductive account of intentionality. For if we insist that the true form of our basic attributions of intentionality is "x represents y, for us" then we are still left without any possible account of the expression "x represents v" itself. This would be, ultimately, to destroy the very requirements of the logical must. The crucial proto-phenomenon of intentionality is then the everyday fact that we are able to see the intentional object in certain courses of action. This ability cannot have any external foundation. But this requires a complete transformation ofthe old idea that the logical must places no restriction on how the world should, infact, be. Facts do not justify grammar: there is no external point of view from which the similarities that our grammar determines can be justified. Nevertheless, traditional views about the logical must, which deny the autonomy of grammar, are committed to the assumption that grammar is compatible with any possible systematic combination of contingent facts. Against this, Wittgenstein's new ideas entail that grammatical
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conventions depend on the systematic stability between certain contingent facts: they are still contingent, in the sense that they are not made necessary by grammar. Nevertheless, the stability of their connections cannot be SYSM tematically violated without the collapse of grammar. The fact that someone's way of behaving expresses his intention of searching for some particular object entails that certain future fragments of behaviour are not accidentally linked to the pictorial properties of his actual expression. To identify something as searching behaviour requires us to see that different fragments of behaviour are parts of the same intentional pattern. The normal subject's recognition that his intention has been satisfied is also another part of the intentional pattern, so it can be non-accidentally linked to the previous expression of the intention. The kind of dilemma that is the basis of deflationary, "no-fact-of-the-matter", accounts of intention can then be avoided: it is possible for the recognition that an intention has been satisfied to be both (i) constitutive of the (previously) expressed intention, another part of which is expressed by the expression of the intention, and (ii) a de facto habitual consequence of the satisfaction of the intention. There is a non-accidental link between a previous expression of the intention and the actual recognition that it has been satisfied. In the same sense as a piece of searching behaviour can depict its own future development, it is usually successful in the depicting when the agent will stop searching, once he has found the object of his desirea' This is, of course, the clue to the possibility of a coherent account of both first person and third person attributions: for it is the non-accidental link between different fragments of expressive behaviour that makes it possible for a self-attribution to be non-accidentally connected to certain dispositions."
v All internal connections are made by grammar. No internal connection is justified by facts. It is not an accident that, when describing an intentional content, we use the very same words that we use in the description of its conditions of satisfaction. The internal connection between an intention and its conditions of satisfaction is no less dependent on grammar than the internal connection between a mere disposition and its conditions of satisfaction: that was my point when I previously argued that you cannot oppose the normativity of intentions and the putative lack of normativity in dispositions, simply in virtue of the internal connection between an intention and its conditions of satisfaction. By the same argument, the internal connection between different fragments of expressive behaviour is not justified by facts. In this sense, if we define expressive behaviour in terms of internal connections between different fragments ofbehaviour, it is still grammar-made: it is not an accident that our descriptions of the different fragments of internally related behaviour are
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themselves internally related.' They are not internally related because, necessarily, they follow one another. Nevertheless, their particular internal connection requires that the fact that they follow one another cannot be the uncommon, exceptional case, So, the basic role that expressive behaviour plays in the genealogy of content helps us to identify certain natural facts as a condition for the possibility of grammar. The fact that certain internal relations (the internal relation between different fragments of behaviour) are connected to others (the internal link between intentional content and its conditions of satisfaction), can be used to identify certain natural facts that are conditions of possibility of both: we are animals endowed by nature with certain epistemic abilities regarding the future behaviour of our fellow animals [Wittgenstein (1958), I, §647]. This is not the place to attempt a more perspicuous description of the phenomenon of expressive behaviour. lt would be very important, for instance, to distinguish it from the more general phenomenon of dispositionality and/or causal modality. There is a sense of "representation" or "depiction" in which it can be said that certain animal movements depict the intention to escape, and in which a stone that is falling towards my head does not depict its own future way of falling down - in spite of the fact that I naturally an8 ticipate it. This language of content or representation, which can be used in the case of action but cannot be used to say that a stone represents its own future falling down, is linked to the perception of agents as subjects of a host of many other contents, subjects for which the non-satisfaction of their purposes or the falsity of their beliefs is a kind of failure: beliefs for instance aim at truth, in a sense in which dispositions do not aim at anything. The differential normativity, so to speak, would not be produced by the mere fact that the content of a belief is fixed by certain truth conditions, but because of the fact that there is a special failure in a belief that is not true. 1 will not attempt to reflect on 111is issue: it is, nevertheless, the relevant issue to articulate the difference between the dispositions that are proper to intentional attributions and the mere dispositions that are instantiated by falling stones. Let us now consider the expressive character alone as a basic representational feature of certain forms of action: these forms of action manage to represent certain basic intentional content by representing their own future development. Even with this minimal analysis, we can articulate certain ingredients in this notion that are crucial to understanding Wittgensteins conception of linguistic practice.
VI If I am right in the previous paragraphs, we now have a base for understanding Wittgenstein's reflections on following a rule from a perspective that could seem slightly different to the one that has been articulated by McDowell.
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In fact, to elaborate the difference, I will need to characterise another kind of connection that is proper of a normative practice. The normative link between a rule and its correct applications can only be understood by taking into account the complicated set of propositional attitudes that are required to follow a rule. McDowell introduced the requirement of a community for linguistic meaning as a consequence of the requirement that there must be a way of grasping meaning that should not be an interpretation. Even if I think that, ultimately, he was right, something more must be said about how we can obtain this consequence in the case of linguistic meaning. Obviously the rejection of a universal requirement of interpretation cannot result in this consequence in every case of intentional content. The fact that intentional content is not grounded in a process of self-interpretation does not mean that an animal in complete solitude cannot have (express) many intentions. Even in the case of an adult human being who possesses normal linguistic competence: not all of my intentions-in-action are equivalent to a commitment towards a communal norm. What is the crucial difference here? In my opinion, we must look for it in the kind of sophisticated intentions that are required to follow a linguistic rule. To follow a linguistic rule is a normative practice, in the sense that it constantly requires the intention to accommodate one's own behaviour to an established norm. Why is it not possible to establish a linguistic norm and to try to adjust the behaviour to it, in complete detachment of a social context? The only intentions that we can attribute to an animal in solitude, the only intentions he can express, are much more limited: the intention to shelter, the intention to escape from a fire, and so on. These intentions are such that id no way could they count as intentions to submit his behaviour to a pre-existing norm. By acting with these intentions, the animal is not in any relevant sense following a norm: there is nothing mistaken in the mere fact that he does not satisfy his intentions, or that he changes his mind. Certainly, an animal can make mistakes: he can act in ways that are not efficient for the satisfaction of his independently expressed intention. We might describe some behaviour of an animal in solitude as involving a relevant kind of mistake: perhaps we can imagine the situation in which he hides a bone under a tree, and later tries to recover the hidden bone by digging under the wrong tree. The idea of a mistake here is connected to the idea, defended in the previous section, that there is a kind of failure in the agent who has false beliefs or unsatisfied purposes. I doubt that these cases might be considered as cases of trying to adjust the behaviour to a previous commitment. Be that as it may, it is clear that the generality and conventionality of the norms involved in linguistic meaning is such that nobody can express his intention to submit his behaviour to this lund of rule except by the act of submitting himself to other people's correction. Nothing that a new born baby could do would count as an expression of the belief that adults are mistaken when giving names to colours. To have
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this belief, the baby has to point first to the relevant norm. And he cannot do this without previously pointing to it by expressing his submission to it. So, in what sense do 1 believe that McDowell was right when he defended that the requirement of a community for linguistic meaning should be derived in the sense that from the idea that meaning is not a case of interpretation he gave to "interpretation"? The answer is, in my opinion, a little more complex than McDowell suggested. First, it is true that the rejection of the mythological sense of interpretation plays a crucial role in Wittgenstein's devastating criticisms of traditional theories of the logical must, of the internal connection between a propositional attitude and its intentional object. This is enough to reject all the philosophical mythology about understanding (itself a propositional attitude) that accompanies traditional conceptions of linguistic meaning. By itself, this kind of argument does not seem to provide enough ground to show that non-communal linguistic meaning is not possible. [t can only provide it if we insist on another corollary of Wittgenstein's criticism to traditional theories of intentionality: because intentional content is not fixed by interpretation of non-representational features, it can only be fixed by expressive behaviour. And the content that can be so expressed is seriously limited by the features of the actual environment. Only a preexisting norm can provide the proper environment in which an animal can express his first intentions to conform his behaviour to a norm. In my opinion, then, the special normativity of any linguistic practices has to be accounted for in terms of the very complicated propositional attitudes that are involved in the process of following them. And a community is the only context in which the attribution of this set of propositional attitudes is possible. Actual submission to other people is a condition of possibility of language. This submission requires the ability to perceive certain contents in other people's expressions. It requires the ability to perceive the non-contingent links between different fragments of human behaviour. Once we grant this ability, there is nothing mysterious in our certainty that tomorrow we will continue to agree when naming colours. And this cannot be used to argue that the only relevant fact is epistemic. I hope I have shown why we should not consider that this epistemic ability is guilty of creating the illusion of meaning determination. It is, on the contrary, a condition of possibility of determinate meaning.
VII We must bear in mind that the constitutive features of the notion of expressive behaviour are crucial to understanding some very aspects of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. They are crucial to understanding, for instance, its radical opposition to certain forms of metaphysical realism. They are also
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crucial to understanding what is going on in the debate between McDowell and C. Wright on the issue of an anti-realist interpretation of Wittgenstein. First, metaphysical realism. One could say, in current jargon, that the notion of expressive behaviour does not pick out an objective feature of the world. After all, if some behaviour is expressive, it is expressive in relation to certain reactions to it. Is it not true that the behaviour of the prey is expressive merely because there are other animals (predators) that react in a certain way? What is the reason for saying that certain forms of behaviour depict their own future development instead of simply saying that we anticipate the future of certain forms of behaviour? Such a reason does exist: if it is true that intentionality requires expressive behaviour, it cannot be true at the same time that expressive behaviour is not a real feature of the world. Without expressive behaviour, there is no intentionality. Without intentionality, there is no meaning. Without meaning, no possible description would be entitled to pick out the real features of the world. So, if intentionality is not a part of the real furniture of the world, one cannot have access to a description of the world in which certain features - as opposed to intentional content - are described as being a pad of this real furniture. Furthermore, we can see why McDowell has been right in his criticism of certain anti-realist interpretations of Wittgenstein. Without expressive be~ haviour, there is no intentionality. Without intentionality, the notion of following a rule by acting in accordance with other people becomes quite unintelligible. The accord, for an anti-realist like Wright, has to be described in terms that do not presuppose the meaning, or the rule. It does require, nevertheless, the ability to perceive the content of other people's cognitive reactions. But the notion of expressive behaviour cannot be treated with the medicine of anti-realism. Such a treatment would require either that the relevant manifestation of understanding expressive behaviour should be accessible to someone who is unable to grasp the content of expressive behaviour itself; or that this content could be derived from some of its features (physical, behavioural) that could be grasped by someone who cannot grasp the content as we do (by seeing the intention in the behaviour). These are precisely the possibilities that are excluded by Wittgenstein's introduction of the idea of expressive behaviour as a condition of intentionality. Departamento de Filologia y Filosojia Universidad de Girona
Plaza Ferrater Mora, 1 17071 Girona, Spain E-mail:
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Notes
* Research that has allowed this paper has been partially funded by the DGrCYT ofthe Spanish Government, research project HUM2004-05609-C02-02. 1 A curious aspect of Kripke's discussion is an important difference between the general principles about the putative normativity of intention, meaning and understanding he mentions and the particular case he has in mind. I do not dispute) of course, that the dispositions of the agent are not sufficient for the project of fixing the meaning of "plus" - in Kripke's dialectical setting. Simply) the relevant kind of intentions that do the trick would have to include quite a complex norm in their intentional content. However) the general principle that meaning, understanding and intention are normative notions does not play any relevant role for this conclusion: had Kripke discussed, for instance) the issue whether the way in which someone understands "plus" might be reduced to a certain subset of his actual dispositions, then his conclusion would have looked much more unsatisfactory, For there is a sense of "understanding" in which understanding is not a factive attitude towards an independent norm, a sense in which something can he understood in different and incompatible ways by different people or by the very same person at different and the way in which someone understands something is fixed by his actual dispositions to act in a certain way in certain conditions. 2 This is the line of argument behind, for instance, C. Wright's deflationary account. 3 "For the purposes of our studies it can never he essential that a symbolic phenomenon occurs in the mind and not on paper" [Wittgenstein (1973), I, §59]. 4 "That's him) (this picture represents him) that contains the whole problem of rep resentatiOIl. [ ...] Well, the image, qua picture, can't do more than resemble him. [...] In the case of the image, too, I have to write a name under the picture to make it the image of him" [Wittgenstein (1973), I, §62]. 5 "But the essential difference between the picture conception and the conception of Russell, Ogden and Richards is that it regards recognition as seeing an internal connection, whereas in their view this is an external connection" [Wittgenstein (1975), §21]. Compare Wittgenstein (1975), §§ 11, 16. Here, the effective ability to recognize is explained by the mere existence of the logical must. The difference between §2I, on the one hand, and §§ 11, 16, on the other, is subtle, but important: once you reject that recognition of the satisfaction is grasping a third entity something that cannot be internally connected to the mere content - the effective ability to recognize is explained by the mere fact that what is recognized is an internal connection. Recognizing itself, in the case of propositional attitudes, becomes a fragment of the intentional pattern that fixes the content of the attitude. 6 This does not entail that self-attributions of intention or desire are "mere" expressions, that they cannot be true or false. 7 "What characterizes all these cases is, that the definition can be used to read off the object of the expectation from the expectant behaviour. It isn't a later experience that decides what we are expecting. And I may say: it is ill language that expectation and its fulfilment make contact" [Wittgenstein (1973), I, §92]. See also Wittgenstein (1973), I, §§95, 103. 8 An excellent discussion can be found in Taylor (1979).
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REFERENCES
A. ([982), Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. McDoWELL,1. (1984), "Wittgenstoin on Following a Rllle",Synthese, vol. 58, pp. 325-63. (l998a), Mind Value and Reality, Harvard, Harvard University Press. - (1998b), "Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy", in McDowell (l998a), pp. 263-78. - (19980), "Intentionality and Interiority in Wittgenstein", in McDowell (l998a), pp.297-321. TAYLOR, C. (1979), "Action and Expression", in Diamond, C. and Teichman, 1. (cds.), Intention and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G.E.M Anscombe, New York, Cornell University Press, pp. 73-89. WITTGENSTElN, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. (1973), Philosophical Grammar, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. - (1975), Philosophical Remarks, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. l(RIPKE, S.
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Response to Josep Llufs Prades
1. In some central parts of his later work, Wittgenstein considers a line of thought that threatens to deprive us of the idea of following a rule. In §206 he says "Following a rule is analogous to obeying an order". In §431 and its sequel, he in effect elaborates that remark, bringing out how, in reflection about orders and obedience to them, we risk philosophical confusions corresponding to those that threaten us when we reflect about rulefollowing. And his discussion of the relation between orders and obedience is intertwined with discussing the relation between, say, expectation and things turning out as expected, or between thought and things being as they are thought to be. (See, e.g., §437.) This seems to indicate that he thinks his treatment for the threatened paradox about rule-following is, at least at some level, potentially illuminating also in connection with a difficulty we risk falling into in reflection about intentional states. 2. Prades is clearly right that the details of Wittgenstein's treatment of the rule-following paradox cannot be carried over into a treatment for the difficulty, whatever it is, about intentional states. In §201 Wittgenstein encapsulates his treatment of the rule-following paradox by saying that "there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call 'obeying the rule' and 'going against it' in actual cases". In §202 he draws a conclusion from that: "And hence also 'obeying a rule' is a practice." It would surely not be sensible to try to imitate that further conclusion in dealing with the case of, say, intention and its execution. As Prades in let effect insists, there is no sense in which it would be so much as correct alone potentially helpful in protecting us against misconceptions of intentions and their execution - to say that executing an intention is a practice. I If there is a match between the things it is useful to say about the two cases, it must be at a different level. Where should we look for a match, then? Prades invokes a hostility on Wittgenstein's part to the idea that supposedly detached mental particulars, items conceived as in themselves without content, could somehow take on the intentional character of thoughts or expectations by being placed in some suitable context. The role of the suppposedly intentionality-inducing context
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would be analogous to the supposedly always necessary role for interpretation> in turning something that is a mere dead object (say a sign-post, conceived as in itself nothing but a material object with certain physical properties) into an expression of a rule (in the same example, something that points the way to go), That is just what, in §201, Wittgenstein identifies as the root of the trouble we get into about rule-following. But] do not believe this fully captures Wittgenstein's target in such passages as §437. Prades notes that Wittgenstein connects the internal relations that are constitutive of intentional states with the hardness of the logical "must". (The connection is explicit in §437.) But I do not believe Prades gives this connection its full significance. The conception Wittgenstein deals with in §437 and its sequel is not, anyway not exclusively, a conception of intentional states as mental configurations that are intrinsically content-free. A line of thought that is at least part of his target could be expressed by saying that intentional states> so far from being items that are in themselves content-free but acquire content as an addwith content on by an analogue to interpretation, arc nothing but content conceived as what, in minds, is capable of meshing with the crystalline superhard material (as it were; this language carries its pictorial character on its face) that supposedly constitutes the essence of the thinkable (see §97). Intentional states are configurations in the mental material (as it were) composing the wheels that engage with the super-rigid rails marked out in conceptual space by meanings (see §218). 3. We can appreciate the pull of such imagery in connection, first> with the regress of interpretations that Wittgenstein identifies as the basis of the paradox about rule-following. If there is to be application for the concept of acting in accord with a rule, it can seem that the mere dead object that we want to see as an expression of the rule - say a sign-post - needs to be interpreted as prescribing some actions and forbidding others. But to give an interpretation would be to make another attempt at an expression of the rule (see the last paragraph of §201). As such, the new attempt would be just as much in need of interpretathe sign-post, tion as the first candidate for being an expression of the rule to stay with the same example. It is only for a moment that some attempt to give an interpretation can seem to bridge the gulf between the dead object and its being correct, for instance, to go to the left if one is aiming to reach the destination to which the sign-post points the way. Offering to interpret the interpretation only postpones the issue. The gulf remains; the object stays dead. That could be put by saying that the regress of interpretations threatens the hardness of the logical "must", as it applies ill connection with rulefollowing: the hardness of the "must" that figures in saying something of the form "To conform to the rule expressed here, you must do such-and-such'>.
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And now it can be tempting to think we can avert this threat even if we let the regress start. We purport to bring the regress to a stop by appealing to something that is an interpretation, but unlike an ordinary interpretation, in not being vulnerable to being interpreted otherwise than so as to yield the right sorting of action into what accords with the rule and what does not. Arriving at an interpretation of this supposedly hardness-preserving kind would be getting one's mental wheels locked 011 to the right rails, engaged with the right structure in the crystalline order. In §431, Wittgenstein considers a counterpart to this pseudo-solution of the problem about rule-following posed by the regress of interpretations. The counterpart is this: "There is a gulf between an order and its execution. It has to be filled by the act of understanding." Here, as in the case of the supposed gulf between an expression of a rule and an action in which one follows the rule, the right move is to deny that there is always a gulf. Of course orders, like attempts at expressing rules, can be unclear, needing to be interpreted. But, to echo §20] , there is a way of obeying an order that is not an interpretation, If we do not question the claim that there is always that gulf, we are subject to a version of the regress of interpretations. And now it can seem that an act of understanding might be able to the supposed gulf - to preserve the hardness of the "must" that in saying something of the form "To obey this order, you must do such-and-such", But this can seem to work only if we conceive the act of understanding on the model of the supposedly regress-terminating interpretation that figures in that pseudo-solution of the rule-following problem: that is, in a way that is captured by the image of something that engages with the crystalline essence ofthe thinkable. This opens naturally into §437. By this point in the text, we have seen two cases, rule-following and obedience to orders, in which there is a lively temptation to suppose the hardness of the logical "muse' can be protected only by resorting to the mythology of a crystalline structure. I think the primary target, in the discussion of intentional states that begins at §437, is a generalization of that. The idea under attack is that we can preserve the hardness of the "must" that figures in saying, for instance, "If this expectation is to be fulfilled, such-and-such is what must happen" only by conceiving expectations in terms of that mythology of engagement with a super-rigid order. 4. Kripke uses the idea of normativity to bring under a single head the relation of the meaning of a rule to action in accord with it and the relation of intention to execution. I endorse that, and Prades objects. He thinks the assimilation sets up a tension in my views. The only interpretation Prades considers, for the thesis that the relation between meaning and action is normative, is one we could explicate by elaborating Wittgenstein's remark that obeying a rule is a practice. The norms that
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are brought into view by this interpretation of the thesis are the norms of a communal practice. So Prades thinks the assimilation puts at risk my entitlement to deny, as I did above (§1), that we might exploit a conception of executing an intention as a practice, in undermining the difficulty Wittgenstein considers about the idea of intentions and their execution. But as I understand Kripke's remark, the sense in which, for these purposes, it is correct to say the relation of the meaning of a rule to action is normative pertains to what is needed for generating the apparent problem about role-following, not to what Wittgenstein says in dissolving it, which can be, as Prades urges, special to that case. What generates the apparent problem about rule-following is that the idea of a rule needs a conceptual context in which we can use the idea of accord. (See §§198 and 201.) And the notion of accord is already a normative notion, in the sense that matters for Kripke's assimilation. We need to be able to distinguish action that is correct in the light of the rule from action that is not. It can be tempting to think we can make this distinction only by attaching an interpretation to a dead object. If we succumb to that temptation, we have embarked on the regress, which threatens to undermine the applicability ofthe notion of accord. The Kripkean assimilation I mean to endorse is this: the notion of accord which is itself, as I said, a normative notion in the relevant sense is needed, in a parallel way, for the viability of the idea of intention. (And similarly with intentional states in general.) Just as my understanding of the instruction "Add 2 is such that when I have reached 1000, only my writing "1002" will accord with it, so my intention to climb a certain tree is such that only my climbing that tree will accord with it. As Prades says, a primitive intention is not an intention to submit one's behaviour to a pre-existing norm. But this does not tell against the assimilation, rightly understood. It is the intention itself that is, in the relevant sense, a norm for the behaviour of its possessor. Kripke argues that meaning cannot be reductively explained in terms of dispositions..He means to be speaking of dispositions in a sense that does not allow for a parallel application of the notion of accord. In the relevant sense, a disposition is something that, in certain circumstances, results in a certain outcome. There is no sense in which the outcome is correct in the light of the disposition. Prades is right that we can understand the word "disposition" in a different sense, one that makes it appropriate to identify a certain disposition to act in some way with an intention to act in that way. With dispositions so understood, the notion of accord fits, and with it the hardness of the logical "must". But in the sense that matters for Kripke's rejection of a reduction, the relation of a disposition to its actualizations involves no logical "must", but only a cause-effect connection. And there is nothing problematic about generalizing Kripke's claim to intentional states. \Ve can reject a reduction of inH
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tention to dispositions in the relevant sense, on the ground that the relation of intention to action is normative, in the sense I have tried to explain. 5. I do not think any of this conflicts with Prades's tine treatment of expressive behaviour as the proto-phenomenon of intentionality. But the priority he attaches to that topic is questionable) if we see things in the way I have been urging. On the reading I have indicated, to get straight about intentionality we would need to free ourselves from the temptation to resort to the mythology of the crystalline order wherever we find tile hardness of the logical "must", It is not clear how insisting that expressive behaviour is the protophenomenon of intentionality could help with freeing ourselves from that temptation. As far as that goes, we might accept a central role for expressive behaviour even if we were still bewitched by the mythology. We might suppose that expressive behaviour reveals cases of engagement with the crystalline order. Insisting on expressive behaviour as proto-phenomenon might help to undermine a conception of intentional states as in themselves contentfree. But on the reading 1 have sketched, that is not the primary target of Wittgenstein's re-flections about intentional states. To dislodge the mythology, nothing would serve but uncovering and discrediting the fundamental source of its attractiveness to us. And the best candidate for that is the illusion that it affords a way to protect the hardness of the logical "must" in the rule-following case. So dissolving the rulefollowing paradox has a priority that we do not put in doubt when we agree with Prades, as we must, that acting intentionally is not as such subjecting oneself to communal norms. JOHN McDOWELL
NOTE 1 Executing an intention is at least doing something. But if someone is inclined to think that is enough ground for it to be correct to say executing an intention is a practice, she should consider another case. Is expecting things, and having the expectations either satisfied or disappointed, a practice? Surely not.
teorema Vol. XXVIl, 2006, pp, 161-175
On Having a Meaning Before One's Mind Willianl Child
RESUMEN
l,En que sentido puede, segun Wittgenstein, presentarse ante una mente el significado de una palabra? Esta cuestion es abordada a la 1uz de algunos ejemplos poco discutidos. Wittgenstcinrechaza una explicacion del fenorneno de que un significado se presente ante una mente en terminos de un doble componente de (a) habilidades mas (b) experiencias conscientes que carcccn de contenido intencional intrfnseco. Pero no dice sin mas que se trata de un fen6meno basico de Ia conciencia que 110 requiere explicacion, Mas bien, hace varias observaciones positivas acerca de 10 que sucede cuando el significado se presenta ante una mente, observaciones que buscan iluminar el fenomeno. ABSTRACT
In what sense, according to Wittgenstein, can the meaning of a word come to mind? That question is considered in the light of some little-discussed examples. Wittgenstein rejects the kind of two-component view that explains the phenomenon of a meaning's coming before sorneonc's mind in terms of (a) abilities and (b) conscious experiences that lack intrinsic intentional content. But he does not say simply that a meaning's coming to mind is a basic phenomenon of consciousness that needs 110 explanation. Instead, he makes various positive remarks about what happens when a meaning eome before someone's mind, remarks that aim to illuminate the phenomenon.
I
In what sense, if any, can the meaning of a word come to mind, be present to someone's mind, or be present in consciousness? And what can we learn from Wittgenstein's writings on the topic? Wittgenstein acknowledges the existence of various phenomena that we might think of as ways in which a meaning can come before someone's mind. He insists on the experiential difference between perceiving written or spoken words in a language one does not understand, or in an unfamiliar code, and perceiving sentences in one's ordinary language [see (1974), p. 58; '(1958a), p. 214]. He discusses the phenomena of hearing a word in a particular sense [(1958a), §534] and of grasping the meaning of a word in a flash
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[(1958a), §197]. And he talks about the "game" of experiencing the meaning of a word that is pronounced in isolation [(1958a), pp, 215-6]. But how should we understand what Wittgenstein says about such phenomena? According to John McDowell, the target of many of Wittgenstein's comments about mind, meaning and intentionality is a particular conception of what it is for something to "come to mind" or to be "a content of a mind".' According to this "target conception"} he writes, minds: are populated exclusively with items that, considered in themselves, do not sort things outside the mind ... into 11108e that are correct or incorrect in the light of those items.... [T]he contents of minds are items that, considered in themselves.just "stand there like a sign-post", as Wittgenstein puts it [(1992), p. 264].
So "the introspectible [is pictured] as a domain of self-containedly knowable states of affairs, only externally related to anything outside themselves" [(1991), p. 302]. Now that is exactly the picture of consciousness that is attributed to Wittgenstein by, amongst others, Crispin Wright (who is broadly sympathetic) and Michael Ayers (who is unsympathetic)." Ayers writes: [Wittgenstein assumes] that consciousness consists in nothing but a string of sensations, images, verbal images and "introspectible qualities", together with "feelings" of desire for something, of certainty, of understanding and so forth, the latter conceived of as quasi-sensations... [He assumes] that it must be pessible to describe any aspect of "what is going on in consciousness" in neutral terms, as it is intrinsically and in itself, without reference to its intentional content [(1991), p. 281].3
On this conception, what is going on in consciousness can never be, or involve, a meaning. So the phenomenon of grasping the meaning of a word in a flash, for example, will be analyzed as having two components. On the one hand, there is an experience; all internal picture or image, perhaps, or a feeling of conviction. On the other hand, there is the acquisition of a disposition or ability; an ability to use the word correctly." So the conscious state of someone who grasps the meaning of a word in a flash may be exactly like the conscious state of someone who does not; the difference between them is a matter of their abilities, not a matter of conscious awareness. McDowell argues that this two-component model misunderstands the place of the "target conception" in Wittgenstein's discussion: Wittgenstein's point is to exorcize the "target conception", not to recommend it. On the twocomponent model, what is before the mind of someone who grasps a meaning will be a bare image or feeling; the meaning of the word itself will not be present to her mind. And apart from anything else, McDowell thinks, that conflicts with Wittgenstein's stated view that there is nothing wrong with saying that, when I grasp the meaning of a word, the use of the word is in
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some sense present; the only thing wrong is to think that the use of the word must be present "in a queer way" [(l958a)) §195]. On McDowell's view, Wittgenstein does not object to the idea that it is the meaning of the word itself that comes to mind when one grasps the meaning in a flash. His target is) rather, the "misconception ... of what it is for anything to come to mind" that is embodied in the "target conception". In summary: Once we understand what the target is, we can see that insisting that that conception of the mental cannot make room for meanings to come to mind docs not amount to denying that meanings can come to mind, And now there should be nothing against allowing meanings to come to mind: for instance, when one grasps a meaning in a flash; or differently - when one visualizes something; or - differently again - when it suddenly occurs to one that one has forgotten to mail a letter [McDowell (1991), p. 309].5
The contrast between Mcfrowell's interpretation of Wittgenstein and Wright's comes out starkly in what they say about mental images. Here is Wright: When an image, or picture, comes before my mind, it presumably cannot constitute a more explicit or substantial presence than the coming of a real physical picture before my physical eye. And when the latter happens, it is of course con· sistent with my being in full command of all manifest features of the object that I remain ignorant precisely of its intentionality of what it is a picture of. I want to say that, analogously, in the sense in which an image or mental picture can come before tile mind, its intentionality cannot [Wright (200 1b), p. 342].
McDowell responds: This strikes me as back to front. The truth is more like this: the only thing that comes before the mind, when (as we say), an image does, is its intentionalitythe image's content, what it is that is pictured. It is my wife's face that comes before my mind when I imagine my wife's face. Nothing else does, at least nothing that is relevant to the fact that I am imagining my wife's face; certainly not some inner analogue of, say, a photograph, with properties describable independently of any content it can be seen as carrying [McDowell (1998c), p, 56].
The difference between the two interpretations is clear. Which has a better claim to capture Wittgensteiri's views?
II
I want to discuss two cases where, at least at first sight, Wittgenstein does seem to accept some sort of two-component view.
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(a) First, consider the discussion of understanding the word "cube" that starts at Philosophical Investigations § 139: When S0111eone says· the word "cube" to me, for example, I know what it means. But can the whole use of the word come before my mind, when I understand it in this way? Well, but on the other hand, isn't the meaning of the words also determined by this use? And can these ways of determining meaning conflict? Can what we grasp in a flash accord with a use, fit or fail to fit it? And how can what is Pl'Csent to us in an instant, what comes before our mind in an instant, fit a use? What really comes before our mind when we understand a word? - Isn't it something like a picture? Can't it be a picture? [(1958a), § 139]
Wittgenstein goes on to make his familiar point, that any picture, and anything that is like a picture, can be applied in numerous different ways, So it cannot be sufficient for someone's grasping the meaning of the word "cube", or understanding an instance of the word "cube" in an utterance, that she simply associates it with a picture or image of a cube: .. .the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word and the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we shall say not [(1958a), §140].
The discussion continues: Suppose, however, that not merely the picture of the cube, but also the method of projection comes before our mind? - How am I to imagine this? - Perhaps I see before me a schema showing the method of projection: say a picture of two cubes connected by lines of projection, - But does this really get me any further? Can't I now imagine different applications of this schema too? Well, yes, but then can't an application come before my mind? - It can: only we need to get clearer about our application of this expression [(1958a), §141],
Here we approach the crucial point. An application in the sense that Wittgenstein is talking about - a method of application - is not something that "just stands there like a signpost", susceptible of different interpretations or applications; it is internally related to its instances. Now both sides to the interpretative dispute will agree that there is a sense in which the application of a schema can come before someone's mind, The dispute is about what that sense is. The two-component view says that what it is for a method of application to come before someone's mind is for her to have some image or picture in mind, plus the disposition or ability to go on to apply it in the right way, The opposing, anti-constructivist view says that a method of application's coming before someone's mind is itself a basic kind of conscious, intentional state which is 110t to be explained, or explained away, in any other terms. What does Wittgenstein himself say? He asks:
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Suppose I explain various methods of projection to someone 80 that he may go on to apply them; let us ask ourselves when we should say that the method that J intend comes before his mind [ibid.].
And he answers his question like this: Now clearly we accept two different kinds of criteria for this: on the one hand the picture (of whatever kind) that at some time or other comes before his mind; on the other, the application which - in the course of time - he makes of what he imagines [ibid.].
On Mcfrowell's account, the dialectic ought to go something like this. "Suppose we start with the 'target conception'. Now consider the question: can a method of application come before someone's mind? Ifwhat comes before a person's mind is something like an ordinary picture or sign-post (as the target conception insists it must be), then it is not possible for a method of application to come before anyone's mind; for an ordinary picture or sign-post is consistent with numerous different methods of application. That makes it tempting to appeal to something that is present to the mind in just the same way as an ordinary picture but which really does have a method of application built into it. But that is hopeless; there could be no such thing. Should we conclude that a method of application cannot come before anyone's mind? No. We should, instead, give up the initial assumption that what can come before the mind must be something like a sign-post or picture. Once we do that, we can accept the common-sense thought that, when someone consciously grasps a method of application, it is the method of application itself that comes before her mind." But this interpretation does not seem to capture the line of thought in the passage I have been quoting. In that passage, Wittgenstein seems to offer the two-component view in his own voice as an account of the sort of thing that does actually happen when the method that I intend comes before someone's mind. He does not seem to be saying: "An application's coming before the mind can be an occurrent phenomenon of consciousness - in a way that is sui generis and irreducible". Rather, he seems to be saying: "An application can come before someone's mind. And what happens when an application comes before someone's mind need be no more than this: a real or imagined picture comes before his mind; and he is able to apply what he sees or imagines in the appropriate way.:" (b) Second, consider this passage from Philosophical Grammar: One imagines the meaning as something which comes before OW' minds when we hear a word. What comes before our minds when we hear a word is certainly something characteristic of the meaning. But what comes before my mind is an example,
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an application of the word. And this coming to mind doesn't really consist in a particular image's being present whenever I utter or hear the word, but in [the] fact that when I'm asked the meaning of the word, applications of the word occur to me [(1974), pp. 118-9].
Again, this passage acknowledges that there is something that we call "a meaning's coming before someone's mind". And again, it insists that a meaning's coming before someone's mind does not consist in an image's being present whenever she utters or hears the word. What does it consist in, then? An anti-constructivist will say that a meaning's coming to mind is a basic, unanalyzable phenomenon of consciousness. The two-component view, on the other hand, says that when a meaning comes before someone>s mind, no more need happen than that a particular example or application comes to her mind and that she is able to cite other applications when asked what the word means.' And in this passage, at least, Wittgenstein again seems to side with the two-component view. I have mentioned two passages that, on the face of it, seem to support the two-component interpretation. But there are many others. For example, there is the discussion of suddenly understanding how to continue a series [(l958a), §§ 151-5, §§ 179~83]: here, the conscious component is, for instance, a formula's occurring to me; the practical component is the ability to continue the series. And there is Philosophical Investigations §200, where Wittgenstein seems to envisage that the conscious states of someone who cannot play chess may exactly mimic those of someone who can - so that the difference between them is entirely a matter of differences in context and practical ability.
III In examples like those just considered, Wittgenstein acknowledges that we speak of meanings and methods of application coming before the mind. But, at least at first sight, he really does seem to be offering an account of what it is for a meaning to come to mind in terms of the presence before the mind of something like a picture or image, plus a context of actual or potential applications of that picture. So is the Ayers/Wright interpretation vindicated? Well, the starting point for that interpretation was the idea that conscious mental phenomena have no intrinsic intentional properties. But, as Ayers himself remarks, the examples do not vindicate that point but contradict it. 8 In saying what happens when a method of projection comes before someone's mind, Wittgenstein helps himself to the idea that a picture of two cubes connected by lines of projection comes before his mind. And similarly, ill the other case, he helps himself to the idea that a particular application of a word comes before my mind. But, on the face of it, the fact that I am imagin-
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ing a picture of two cubes, or. the fact that a given application qf a word comes before my mind, is an intrinsic intentional feature of my state of awareness. So Wittgenstein does 110t seem to be working with a conception of consciousness on which what comes before someone's mind can have no intrinsic intentional content. Ayers suggests, at this point, that Wittgensteiri's account is simply muddled or internally incoherent. Wittgenstein's official view is that "what is going 011 in consciousness" can always be characterized "in neutral terms, intrinsically and in itself, without reference to its intentional content" [Ayers (1991), p. 281]. But when he comes to give an account of what goes on in consciousness, he freely appeals to items like sensations and images that are intrinsically intentionaL So his view is incoherent; what conceals the incoherence is that the fact "that sensations and images themselves must have intentional content is either implicitly denied or conveniently overlooked" [Ayers (1991), p. 281]. This interpretation seems too unsympathetic to be plausible. A more sympathetic interpretation would be that the intentionality of mental images is not simply taken for granted by Wittgenstein but is itself given a two-component explanation in terms of the presence before the mind of something non-intentional and purely phenomenal, on the one hand, and the subject's disposition or ability to use or respond to this phenomenal element in a particular way, on the other." But it seems highly implausible that Wittgenstein thought of mental images as internal pictures whose intrinsic properties are non-intentional and which acquire intentional properties only by being intended or treated in a particular way. Such a view seems hard to square, for example, with comments like this: "what makes my image of him into an image of him? Nothing of what holds for a portrait holds for the image. The question makes a mistake" [(1980a), p, 262]. For present purposes, then, I will assume that Wittgenstein takes it for granted that when one has a mental image, or when a picture comes before one's mind, one is in a conscious state with an intrinsic intentional content. If that is right, then in passages like those I have quoted, Wittgenstein is not advancing the kind of two-component view on which what comes before one's mind when, as we say, a meaning or method of application comes before someone.'s mind is, in itself, only ever a contentless quale or raw feel, But in that case, what is he doing? One of Wittgenstein's aims in such passages is evidently to argue against the idea that associating a word with a mental image can achieve something that associating a word with an ordinary picture could not achieve. As part of the argument, he suggests replacing mental images with real drawings or pictures: let us adopt the method ... of replacing [the] mental image by some outward object seen; e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign
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Ayers might object that passages like this commit the very error he complains about: of treating mental images exactly like painted images and thereby denying the intrinsic intentionality that mental images have and painted images lack. But Wittgenstein's point is not that there is an exact analogy between having a mental image and looking at a red patch. The point is that, even though there is a crucial disanalogy between the two cases, an appeal to the mental image can achieve no more than an appeal to the actual sample of red in fixing or explaining the meaning of the word "red". If I associate the word "red" with an actual red patch, J am associating it with something that has no intrinsic intentionality; whereas, if I associate the word with an image of a red patch, I am associating it with something that does have intrinsic intentionality; that is the disanalogy between the two cases. But the reason why such an association cannot by itself fix the meaning of a word is essentially the same in each case; even if the association establishes that the word "red" is applicable to this particular patch, it does not answer the question, what else the word is to apply to. That problem is completely unaffected by the difference between an actual sample of red and a mental image of a red patch. This first point is compatible with the anti-constructivist view. But according to the two-component theorist, the passages we are considering have a further point, which is harder for the anti-constructivist to accommodate. What comes to my mind when I form an image of my wife's face is, as McDowell says, my wife's face. In this case, there is some definite thing a face for me to be conscious of But when I grasp the meaning of a word in a flash, what is there to come before my mind; what is there for me to be conscious of? The anti-constructivist will answer, "the meaning of the word". But, as we have seen, Wittgenstein's own answer to the question is not (or not simply) that I am conscious of the meaning of the word. Rather, he says that what I am conscious of are examples a particular application or applications of the word. The suggestion is not that Wittgenstein is attempting to explain a meaning's coming before the mind in terms of something nonintentional; for imagining, or thinking of, an application of a word is being in an intrinsically intentional state. The point is rather that, when he talks of an application or applications of the word coming before my mind, Wittgenstein is attempting to articulate or illuminate what goes on when a meaning comes before my mind, not simply treating it as something sui generis about which nothing illuminating can be said. This interpretation sits well with Wittgenstein's idea that the way to explain or communicate the meaning of a word is by giving examples [(l958a),
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§208]. In that case, Wittgcustein is clear that there is such a thing as explainor communicating the meaning of a word. But he does not say that the phenomenon of explaining the meaning of a word is simply sui generis, or that there is nothing informative to say about it. On the contrary ~ he tells us what happens when someone explains a meaning to someone else: she gives him examples of how the word is applied; she stands ready to give more examples if necessary; and in doing this, she does not communicate less than she knows herself.
IV The discussion of the previous section suggests a revised version of the two-component view> in which the conscious component is not something that "just stands there like a signpost" but, rather, a state of awareness with an intentional content. When we describe someone as having a meaning before their mind, what is present to their mind is an application, or applications, of the word (real or imagined). In the right context (a context in which the person is able to go on and apply the word in the right way), someone who has an application before their mind counts as having the meaning of the word in mind. But, strictly speaking, there will be no experiential difference between someone who imagines a set of applications of a word and understands the word in one way and someone who imagines the set of applications and understands the word in a different way or not at all. But there are good reasons to think that this still cannot be right as an interpretation of Wittgenstein. After all, he does say that the difference between hearing a word in one sense and hearing it in another is a real difference in how the words sound. And consider again his answer to the question, when we should say that a particular method of applying a schema comes before someone's mind: clearly we accept two different kinds of criteria for this: on the one hand the picture (of whatever kind) that at some time or other comes before his mind; on the other, the application which - in the course oftime - he makes of what he imagines [(1958a)~ §141].
The two-component view reads that as an account of what it is for a method of application to come before someone's mind. But what Wittgenstein says is only that these are the two kinds of criteria for a particular method of application's coming before someone's mind. And to say that is not to say that a method of application's coming before my mind consists in, or amounts to no more than, a picture's coming before my mind plus my having the disposition or ability to apply that picture in a certain way. If these considerations
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suggest that the two-component view is interpretatively inadequate, should we, then, adopt the anti-constructivist view and accept that there is nothing more to say than that the meaning of a word itself can be what comes before someone's mind? But in that case, why does Wittgenstein say that, when the meaning of a word comes before my mind, what comes before my mind is an application or applications of the word? One response to this interpretative dilemma would be to distinguish between different stages in the development of Wittgenstein's views. So, for example, it might be suggested that the two-component view is a fair account of his views in Philosophical Grammar or in Part I of Philosophical Investigations, and that it was only later, in Part Il of Philosophical Investigations and elsewhere, that he came to think that we really can experience a word or sentence as meaning what it does. I I Similarly, it might be observed that we need to distinguish between different kinds of case in which the meaning of a word could be said to come before someone's mind; they do not form a homogenous category. And, it might be argued, different cases will need to be treated in different ways. So the two-component view may be right for some cases; perhaps, for example, in some or all cases where I grasp the meaning of a word in a flash, I do simply acquire the ability to use the word correctly without in any sense experiencing the word as having the meaning I grasp it as having. 12 In other cases, the two-component view will be wrong. And there is more than one kind of case where the meaning of a word in some sense characterizes our experience of that word. For example, Wittgenstein explicitly warns against taking the experiences we enjoy when playing the "game" of experiencing the meaning of an isolated word as a model for our conscious awareness in everyday linguistic interaction: If a sensitive ear shows me, when I am playing this game, that 1 have now this doesn't it also show me that I often do not now that experience of the word have any experience of it in the course of talking? [(1958a), pp. 215-6J
But that is not to say that, when ordinarily hearing words "in the course of talking", I hear mere words - without hearing them as meaning what they do. Wittgenstein's point is just that, when I hear a word uttered as part of a sentence of spoken English, 1 do not normally have experiences of the same kind as those I have when pronouncing it in isolation. Another response to the dilemma is to distinguish between what is immediately before my mind and the various properties that I experience it as having. When I see or imagine my wife's face, there is 110 problem in saying both that all that comes before my mind is my wife's face and that I experience the familiarity of her face. The familiarity cannot come before my mind all by itself; there must always be something else that I am experiencing as familiar. But the familiarity really is experienced; for the face is experienced
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as familiar." Similarly in the current case. The meaning of a word cannot come before someone's mind all by itself; there must be something else that is heard, 01' seen, or imagined. So when the meaning of a word comes before my mind, what is immediately present to my mind is the heard, seen or imagined word itself; but the perceived or imagined word is experienced differently when it is understood from how it is experienced when it is not understood (or is understood differently). If we take this view, we must give up some of the anti-constructivist's slogans: in particular, we cannot say that all that comes before someone's mind when she grasps the meaning of a word in a flash is the meaning of that word; for, on this account, consciousness of the meaning of a word will always involve consciousness of something else - the perceived or imagined word - that bears the meaning. But that does not undermine the basic anti-constructivist idea that, when the meaning of a word comes before my mind, the meaning itself is a feature of my conscious awareness. 14 The point is well taken. But we can still press the question: what is it for the meaning of a word to come before one's mind; what is involved in hearing a word in one sense rather than another? In response to such questions, the anti-constructivist is likely to make two moves. First, he will say that there is nothing more informative to say about what is involved in experiencing a word in a given sense than j ust that it involves experiencing that word in that sense; "the content of the experience just is to be described by the speeffie expression (of the experience)" [(1980a), p. 105]. He may allow that there is plenty to say about the background that is required if someone is to be equipped to hear a word in a given sense: as in many other cases, Hit is only if someone can do, has learnt, is master of, such-and-such, that it makes sense to say he has had this experience" [(1958a), p. 209]. But, he will insist, when it comes to characterizing the content of the experience itself, there is really nothing more to say. Second, he will offer a diagnosis. W11at makes us worry that there is nothing to be the content of an experience of meaning, he thinks, is our tendency to construe having such experiences on the model of having a mental image: for the content of an image is the kind of thing that can be identified by pointing to a picture; and there is nothing of that kind to be the content of an experience of meaning. But the lesson to draw is not that there is no content for such an experience to have but, instead, that we should refrain from modelling experiences of one kind on experiences of some other kind. Applying Wittgenstein's comment about a different though related case, we can say that the experience of meaning "is not queerer than any other; it simply differs in kind from those experiences which we regard as the most fundamental ones, our sense impressions for instance" [(1958a), p. 215)]. Wittgenstein does make exactly these moves. IS But as we have seen, he says something else too: that when the meaning of a word comes before my
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mind, what comes before my mind is all example (or examples) of its application, And in saying that, he seems to be spelling out what is involved in the meaning of a word's coming before one's mind, It might be claimed that this relatively early comment (from Philosophical Grammar) is superseded by Wittgensteiu's later views. But we can in fact see the same idea at work in something he says later, something that expresses a real insight about the phenomenology of meaning. For a word to be understood in a given way, Wittgenstein thinks, is for it to be understood as having a given use - a given pattern of potential applications and potential transitions to other words. So to hear a word as having a particular meaning is to hear it as part of a pattern of potential applications and transitions: "Phrased like this, emphasized like this, heard in this way, this sentence is the first in a series in which a transition is made to these sentences, pictures, actions" [(1958a), §534]. And this is a genuinely experiential phenomenon; the word really is heard as an element in one set of potential applications rather than another. This way of fleshing out what is involved in experiencing a meaning brings out the parallel with other cases where something is experienced as having a particular continuation for example, hearing a chord as a modulation into one key rather than another, or feeling the ending of a church mode as an ending [(l958a), §§536, 535].16 And it fits well with the idea that what comes before my mind when a meaning comes to mind is an application or applications of the word: for hearing a word as part of a pattern of potential applications involves having an application or applications in mind. These comments of Wittgenstein's offer no reduction of the experience of meaning to anything else. And they will not apply to every case that can be classified as one in which the meaning of a word or words comes before someone's mind; as we have seen, the phenomena are very various. But Wittgenstein's comments do tell us something more informative than just that what comes before someone's mind when, e.g., one grasps the meaning of a word in a flash is the meaning ofthe word. And perhaps they go as far as one can to illuminate what such experiences involve whilst respecting their sui generis character, 17
University College Oxford University Oxford, OX14BH, UK E-mail:
[email protected]
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NOTES I For "come to mind" see McDowell (1991), p. 303; for "a content of a mind" see McDowell (1992), p. 264. 2 For Wright's reading, see Wright (L987), (1991), (2001b). (Wright allows that psychological items do have internal relations to the outer. But he presents these internal relations as essentially derivative; a conscious item is not in itself internally related to anything else [see (2001b), p. 343].) For Ayers's reading, see Ayers (1991), chs 22 and 31. (Ayers says explicitly that he is less interested in the views of the historical Wittgenstein than in the impact of those views on contemporary philosophy [see Ayers (1991), p. 9 for a general disclaimer]. Accordingly, he sometimes identifies the views he attacks as Wittgensteinian (or "Wittgensteinian") rather than ascribing them to Wittgenstcin himself') 3 As Ayers himself points out, there is an evident tension in a view that conceives of consciousness in terms of images but denies that conscious experience has intrinsic intentional content. For, on the face of it, mental images are intrinsically contentful; so, if consciousness contains mental images, it does contain things with an intrinsic intentional content. I will return to this point below. 4 The two-component view need not say that we can give a reductive account of this ability, in terms that do 110t presuppose the notions of meaning or understanding. The point is that we can separate the experiential component of grasping the meaning of a word in a flash from the ability or practice aspect; not that the ability or practice can itself be adequately characterized in non-normative terms. 5 Note that when McDowell talks about a meaning's coming to mind he is working with a more inclusive concept of meaning than I am. For him, "having a meaning in mind" is, roughly, being in a conscious state with an intrinsic intentional content. I am focusing on a subset ofthe cases that concern McDowell: those in which the Hn~ujstic meaning of a word or sentence comes to mind. It might be said that, though Wittgenstein does talk in §§138-9 about grasping the meaning ofa word in a flash, the subject matter of those sections is not the sudden acquisition of understanding but, rather, our knowledge of what someone means when they use a word in ordinary conversation. That is true. But what matters for present purposes is that the discussion that starts in § 138 leads on to the question, what happens when a method of application comes before someone's mind. It is Wittgenstein's discussion of that question that seems to suggest a two-component view. '7 Note that, in this passage, "an application" means a particular example. In (1958a), §141, "an application" meant a general method of application. S See the comment from Ayers (1991), p, 281 quoted in the next paragraph. (Here we return to the issue registered in note 3 above.) 9 Such a view is suggested by Wright. See Wright (2001b), p. 342. . 10 He makes the same point immediately after the passage I quoted earlier from Philosophical Investigations §§ 139~41: "can't it be clearly seen here that it is absolutely inessential for the picture to exist in his imagination rather than as a drawing or model in front of him; or again as something that he himself constructs as a model?" II No doubt Wittgenstein's views in this area developed over time. In 1929, he clearly did have a two-component view of conscious phenomena, which he later abandoned - though he did not, as far as I know, apply his 1929 view to the phe-
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nomenology of language-use. (For his 1929 view, see the discussion of the meaning of the word "toothache" in Wittgenstein (1975), pp. 88-9.) But the precise suggestion in the text is implausible; for Wittgenstein discusses the case of hearing a word in a certain sense in Philosophical Investigations §543 and seems to treat it there as a genuinely experiential phenomenon. 12 "If the meaning has occurred to you, you know it now, and its occurring to you was simply the beginning of/mowing." [(1980a), p. 263, second emphasis minej]. That suggests that the meaning's occurring to you may simply consist in the onset of the ability to use it. (This suggestion is removed from the later version of the remark at (1958a), p. 176, where Wittgenstcin says only that knowing how to use the word "began" when it occurred to you.) 13 See e.g. (1974), p. 175 on the impossibility of separating the impression of familiarity from the impression of the face. 14 I should emphasize that McDowell himself never implies that all that comes to mind when the meaning of a word comes to mind is the meaning itself. He does say that all that comes to my mind when an image of my wife's face comes to mind is my wife's face. But he docs not suggest that the case of grasping or experiencing a meaning is exactly parallel to the case of imagining a face. Indeed, when he says elsewhere that our awareness of facts about what people are saying His an exercise of a perceptual capacity" [(1981), p. 332], he makes it clear that the capacity in question is a capacity to hear someone's meaning in his speech. 15 See (1980a), p. 105; (1980a), p. 248; (1980b), p. 573; and (1958a), pp. 175~6. 16 Indeed, Wittgenstein suggests that perceiving an aspect quite generally involves perceiving one thing as related in particular ways to others: "what I perceive in the dawning of an aspect is not a property of the object, but an internal relation between it and other objects" [(l958a), p. 212]. 17 Earlier versions of this material were presented at the 14th Interuniversity Workshop on Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Murcia (March 2004), at a conference in honour of Michael Ayers in Oxford (August 2003), at the Joint Session ofthe Aristotelian Association and the Mind Association in Kent (July 2004), and at seminars and workshops in Oxford and Bertinoro. 1 am grateful to the audiences on those occasions for many helpful comments, and especially to Michael Ayers, Darragh Byrne, John Campbell, Quassim Cassam, Jennifer Church, Anandi Hattiangadi, Robert Hopkins, John Molrowell, Oliver Pooley, Barry Smith, and Galen Strawson.
REFERENCES
AVERS, M. (1991), Locke Volume I: Epistemology, London, Routledge. McDOWELL, J. (1981), "Anti-Realism and the Epistemology of Understanding". Reprinted in McDowell (1998b), pp. 314-43. - (1991), "Intentionality and Interiority in Wittgenstein". Reprinted in McDowell (1998a), pp. 297-321. - (1992), "Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy". Reprinted in McDowell (1998a), pp. 263-78. - (1 998a), Mind, Value, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. - (1998b), Meaning> Knowledge, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
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(1998c), "Response to Crispin Wright", in Wright, C., Smith, B. and Macdonald, C. (cds), Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 47-62. WITTGENSTElN, L. (l958a), Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edition, edited by G. E. M. Anscornbe, R Rhees and G. H. von Wright, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford, Blackwell. (1958b), The Blue and Brown Books, Oxford, Blackwell. (1974), Philosophical Grammar, edited by R. Rhecs, translated by A. Kenny, Oxford, Blackwell. - (1975), Philosophical Remarks, edited by R. Rhees, translated by R. Hargreaves and R. White, Oxford, Blackwell. (1980a), Remarks on the Philosophy ofPsychology, Volume 1, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford, Blackwell. - (l980b), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 2, edited by G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman, translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, Oxford,
Blackwell. C. (1987), "On Making Up One's Mind: Wittgenstein on Intention". Reprinted
WRIGHT,
-
in Wright (2001 a), pp; 116-42. (1991), "Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy of Mind: Sensation, Privacy and Intention". Reprinted in Wright (2001 a), pp. 291-318. (2001a), Rails to Infinity: Essays on Themesfrom Wittgenstein '8 Philosophical Investigations, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. (2001b), "The Problem of Self Knowledge", in Wright, C. (2001 a), pp. 319-73.
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Response to William Child
1. When we consider what Wittgenstein has to say about the issues Child discusses, it is important to distinguish two sorts of question. An example of the first sort is this: "What is it - what does it consist in for a meaning to come to mind, for instance when one arrives at an understanding of the principle of a number series?" Staying with that case, the second sort of question is exemplified by this: "What happens when the principle of a number series comes to mind?" Wittgenstein says plenty in response to that second question, and questions of a similar sort about different topics. A typical passage is Philosophical Investigations §151. He is considering a case in which A begins on a number series, and at a certain moment B says "Now I can go on", or "Now I understand", Assuming B's move is correctly made, what happened at that moment? (It seems harmless to add "in B's mind'") Wittgenstein gives a number of examples of what may have happened. B may have found that a certain algebraic formula yields the initial segment A has given. Or he may have hit on a series of differences between successive elements) a series he already knows how to extend. Or he may have had "the sensation "That's easy!" (compare "a feeling of relief" in §179). And so on. But we can acknowledge that Wittgenstein offers answers (at least answers that give examples) to the second question, white consistently supposing that in his view the first question is misconceived. To hold that the first question is misconceived is to hold that there is no informative answer to the question what it consists in for the principle of a series to come to mind. Of course this is not the same as holding that there is no such thing as having the principle of a series come to mind. One might put the thought by saying that what it is to have the principle of a series come to mind is sui generis and unanalysable. But it is as well to remember that this comes to nothing more than acknowledging that there is such a thing as a principle's coming to mind, while denying that there is an answer to the question what it consists in, apart from the answer that is already expressed in the question: it is the principle's coming to mind. Child gives a rich presentation of material in Wittgenstein on the lines of what I have cited from §151. (He mentions §§151-5 in passing, as something else he could have exploited.) If we firmly distinguish the two questions, this kind of thing is in principle unthreatening to the claim that what it is to have the
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principle of a number series come to one's mind is, in a proper working out of Wittgenstein's thinking, sui generis and unanalysable, In passages of the sort Child invokes, Wittgenstein is not answering the question what it is for the principle of a series to come to mind. From the fact that he is willing to give examples of kinds of things that happen when the principle of a series comes to mind, nothing follows about his attitude to the other question. 2. However, if having the principle of a number series come to mind is something sui generis and unanalysable, it is surely something that happens on the relevant occasions. But what Wittgenstein offers in the remarks I have been considering, in response to the question "What happens when the principle of a series comes to mind?", seems to be restricted to kinds of happening that are in themselves less, as it were, than that putative happening itself: less than having the principle of the series come to mind. One might suppose there is reason here to think he endorses what Child calls "the two-component view". According to that view, nothing that happens in someone's mind at the relevant moment can itselfbe the person's having the principle of the series come to mind. Having the principle come to mind is a composite of something that happens in the mind (which may be a different something on different occasions on which a principle comes to mind) and something else that does not have the character of an occurrence, in the mind or anywhere else, at all. Perhaps Wittgenstein's view is something on those lines. Perhaps he thinks hitting on the principle of the series is not an occurrence in the mind of someone who hits 011 the principle of the series. Of course that contrasts with thinking it is an occurrence in the mind, but one that is sui generis and unanalysable. We can sharpen this doubt by invoking §154. There Wittgenstein says: "Try not to think of understanding as a 'mental process' at all. For that is the expression which confuses you." His topic is understanding as it figures in B's exclamation "Now I understand". We would not be misinterpreting Wittgenstein's advice if we replaced "understanding" with "the onset of understanding". And for "process" (Wittgenstein's word is "Vorgang") we can substitute "occurrence" or "happening". Wittgenstein's advice is to try not to conceive the onset of understanding as something that happens in the mind at alL And that is certainly hard to reconcile with taking him to think the onset of understanding is a sui generis and unanalysable happening in the mind. 3. I think we can neutralize this doubt We should take the advice of §154 to be local to a specific context, shaped by what would be required in an answer to the other question, the question "What is it for the principle of a series to come to mind?" Once we realize that the other question is not a good question, the advice can lapse.
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Tf one thinks there is a good question of the "What is it for...?" or "What does it consist in for. .. T' form about the onset of understanding, one must think there is an informatively different specification of the phenomenon, a specification that could be used to explain what the phenomenon is. It would not be a response to the question, as it is meant, if someone said "It consists in having the principle of the series come to mind". Now suppose one asks what happens when the principle of a series comes to mind, but in asking that question one is asking for an informatively different specification of the phenomenon itself - what one would be asking for if one asked the "What is it for ... T" question. This need not be merely ignoring the difference between the two questions. If one thinks the "What is it for ... '1" question is a good one, running the questions together can be reasonable. It is natural to think what happens when the principle of the series comes to mind is that the principle of the series comes to mind. (If the principle's coming to mind is something that happens, how could that be wrong?) And if there is an explanatory redescription of what that happening is, the redescription should be just as good an answer to the "What happens when ... T" question as the original specification of the happening. So on the assumption that the "What is it for ... T" question is a good one, it should be legitimate to use the "What happens when ... 1" question in order to ask for precisely what the "What is it for ... T" question asks for. On that assumption, then, it seems sensible to ask what happens when the principle comes to mind, but with the expectation of finding an answer that would be informative about what it is for the principle to come to mind. But if we put that requirement on an answer, we exclude answers on the lines of "the onset of understanding of the principle". And now, because our assumption is wrong, we find ourselves in trouble. Nothing we can find in consciousness at the relevant time, with the restriction on what we are allowed to claim to find there that is imposed by the assumption that fixes the point of our asking our question in the first place, amounts to the principle's coming to mind. It is only the beginning of the trouble this lands us in that we are now liable to think what we are looking for the happening itself, the onset of the understanding - must be hidden behind the occurrences in consciousness to which our assumption is restricting us. And that is a palpable confusion. To paraphrase §153: "How can the happening that is the onset of understanding have been hidden, when I said 'Now I understand' because I understood?' And if I say it is hidden then how do I know what I have to look for? I am in a muddle." It is in this context that Wittgenstein issues his advice not to conceive the onset of understanding as a happening in the mind at alL But note that what leads to the trouble is not just trying to find a happening in the mind to be what the onset of understanding is, but conducting the search under the assumption that it will yield a non-trivially different characterization of that
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happening. The warning should be against the assumption. The advice not to conceive the onset of understanding as a happening in the mind is local to a context fixed by the assumption. Once we question the assumption, the advice is no longer necessary. We can innocuously find a happening in the mind to be what the onset of understanding is. It is, simply, the onset of understanding. 4. It may seem a stretch to propose that Wittgcnstein intends a reader of
§154 to arrive at that point. If someone suggested that this is one of those places where Wittgenstein has not quite achieved a way of thinking that his reflections point to, I would not resist very strenuously - though I would stand by the point that this is what is actually recommended by the considerations from which he arrives at that advice. In any case, I think we can find some reason to suppose the advice he formulates at §154 is for a temporary and local purpose. Towards the end of part I of the Investigations, Wittgenstein considers what is involved in recalling occasions like the one described in §151, when one was in a position to say "Now I understand" or "Now I can go on". He connects that topic with remembering what one was going to say on some occasion when one was interrupted. In §660 he says: "The grammar of the expression 'I was then going to say ... I is related to that of the expression 'I could then have gone on. "I ("I could then have gone on" is a past-tense counterpart of "Now I can go on'") The question arises what one can find in one's memory of such occasions. If we address this question under a restriction matching the restriction that is in force in the passages that lead up to § 154, where it governs the inquiry into what one can find in one's consciousness on the relevant occasions , what we are allowed to say one finds in one's memory is less than an onset of understanding or an intention to say something. So it comes to seem that one can answer the question what one intended to say only by interpreting scattered fragments that do not add up to the intention itself (see §635). This would be an epistemological position suitable to a two-component view of past intentions - suitable to the idea that nothing that was in one's mind at the time itself amounted to one's intention to say such-and-such. Wittgenstein firmly rejects this. In §634 he says: "1 did not choose between interpretations. I remembered that I was going to say this." And in §660: "In the one case I remember an intention I in the other I remember having understood." He is saying that the intention itself, or, in the case that concerns us, the onset of understanding itself, figures in the deliverances of memory of the relevant past occasions. That seems clearly right. And it is hard to see how it could be prevented from implying that the onset of understanding itself figured among the contents of one's consciousness at the time. It is the contents
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of one's contemporary consciousness that one calls to mind when one recalls the occasion. In these passages Wittgenstein rejects the assumption that precludes the contents of memory of past occasions from being recognized as including onsets of understanding. A parallel thought is that what is responsible for the trouble of, for instance, § 153 is the assumption that precludes the COI1tents present consciousness from being recognized as including onsets of understanding - not the very idea that onsets of understanding are happenings in the mind.
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The Role of Object-Dependent Content in Psychological Explanation Sarah Sawyer
RESUMEN
Este articulo constituye una novedosa defensa de la nocion de sentido de re de McDowell. Se ha pensado que admitir sentidos de re tiene implicaciones problematicas para la explicacion psicologica de 1a accion; implicaciones sefialadas par el llamado "argumento de las dos listas", Argumentare que reconocer que, en general, los conjuntos de condiciones suficientes han de entenderse como incluyendo ausencias sirve para desannar el argumento de las dos listas, Ademas, esta defensa de los sentidos de re puede generalizarse, y servir asf para defender otras formas de antiindividualismo de ataques similares. ABSTRACf
The paper constitutes a novel defence of McDoweU's notion of a de re sense. Countenancing de re senses has been thought to have problematic implications for the psychological explanation of action implications brought out by the so-called "Two List Argument". I argue that recognising that sets of sufficient conditions must in general be understood as including absences disarms the Two List Argument. Moreover, the defence of de re senses presented generalizes and can be used to defend other forms of anti-individualism against a similar line of attack.
1. INTRODUCTION Anti-individualism about psychological kinds is the thesis that certain of a subject's mental states and events are dependent for their individuation on the subject's environment. The thesis opens up the possibility that a subject's mental state and event kinds might vary with variations in the subject's environment, even while her physical properties, including her functional properties and her physical history, all individualistically and non-intentionally described, remain constant. Hence anti-individualism opens up the possibility that physically indistinguishable subjects could nevertheless be distinguishable psychologically. One such anti-individualist theory is the strong singular thought theory (hereafter "SSTT,,)I articulated by Gareth Evans (1982) and John McDowell (1977), (1984) and (1986). At the heart of SSTT is the thesis that singular
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thoughts, thoughts expressed by sentences containing demonstratives and proper names, have object-dependent contents, To maintain that the content of a thought is object-dependent is to maintain that the content would not be available to be thought in the absence of the object which the thought in fact concerns, Thus the ability to think singular thoughts is taken to presuppose the existence of the particular items concerned?' 3 The account which Evans and McDowell propose is a combination of the following two considerations. First, ... the idea that there are things which we say and believe whose content cannot be faithfully represented without the reporter himself making a reference to an object in the world which those utterances and beliefs concern - so that, where there is no such object, there would be no such content available to be faithfully represented .., [Evans (1982), p. 82].
And second, the idea that there needs to be a way in which to distinguish pairs of thoughts which ascribe the same property to the same object, and that only Fregeau sense will suffice for this purpose. The result is an account of singular thoughts as object-dependent, but as containing senses, and not objects, as constituents, There are, in McDowell's terms, de re senses, SSTT has implications for the psychological explanation of action which have been thought problematic. In this paper I address a prima facie compelling argument - the Two List Argument - which draws out the supposedly problematic implications, and find it wanting."
II. THE ESSENTJALLy DE RE To a large extent Evans and McDowell's concern has been to show that a Fregean framework can accommodate singular thoughts understood as essentially de reo To countenance the essentially de re is to maintain a fundamental distinction between the de dicto and the de re in such a way that the latter is not reducible to the former.' McDowell begins his (1984) as follows. It is commonly believed that a Fregean philosophy of language and thought can represent an utterance, or a propositional attitude, as being about an object only by crediting it with a content that determines the object by specification, or at least in such a way that the content is available to be thought or expressed whether the object exists or not. To resist this restriction would be to hold out for the idea that utterances and thoughts can be essentially de re~ and that idea is supposed to be incapable of being made to fit within the framework provided by the theory of sense and Bedeutung [McDowell (1984), p. 98].
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The reason a Fregean framework is thought unable to accommodate the essentially de re arises, according to McDowell, from a prior conception of the essentially de reo This prior conception informs a number of theories which can be grouped together loosely under the heading "the dual-component theory" (hereafter "DCT"). I take the theory articulated by Tyler Burge as representative." Burge draws two intimately connected distinctions: a semantic distinction between ascriptions of de dicta and de re thoughts, and an underlying epistemic distinction between de dicta and de re thoughts themselves. Suppose that (1) and (2) are ascriptions of a de dicta and a de re belief respectively.
(1) Ortcutt believes that someone is a spy. (2) Someone in particular is believed by Ortcutt to be a spy. On the Burgean conception the logical form of these ascriptions can be given as follows. (1') Bd (Ortcutt, [(x) Spy (x)] ) (2') {x)(Br (Ortcutt, <x>, [Spy (y)] )) "Bd" denotes the de dicta belief relation, "Br" the de re belief relation. The pointed brackets contain a bound variable representing the object presented. The square brackets are intended as corner quotes and are to be regarded as "a convenience for denoting the proposition, or component of proposition, expressed by the symbols they enclose" [Burge (1977), p. 341]. De dicta ascriptions, then, relate the subject to a complete proposition, expressed by a closed sentence; de re ascriptions relate the subject in part to an incomplete proposition, expressed by an open sentence, and in part to a res. The underlying epistemic distinction is between de dicto beliefs that are fully conceptualised, and de re beliefs, "whose correct ascription places the believer in an appropriate nonconceptual, contextual relation to objects the belief is about" [Burge (1977), p. 346]. Perception provides the paradigm example of such a nonconceptual, contextual relation. It is clear how DCT accommodates the essentially de reo But it is equally clear that it does so in a radically unFregean way. According to DCT, de re thoughts contain both a conceptual component and objects. A Fregean theory, in contrast, requires that thoughts contain nothing but senses as constituents. The distinction DCT draws between a de re thought, which is acknowledged to be object-dependent, and the content of that thought, which (at least in the relevant sense)" is not, would be anathema to the view, and Evans and McDowell see it as unmotivated. In contrast, "[ c]ountenancing de re
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Fregeau senses gratifies both the natural motivations that Burge's framework represents as incompatible; it yields thoughts that are both de re and part of the thinker's cognitive world" [McDowell (1984), p. 109].8
III. DELUDED SUBJECTS McDowell may be correct to think that a Fregean framework can accommodate the essentially de re, and hence that we need not choose between DCT~s conception of the essentially de re and a Fregean view that rejects the essentially de re altogether. However, there is a prima facie compelling line of argument that tells against SSTT and favours DCT over it. In particular, SSTT bas been thought problematic because of its apparent conflict with common-sense views about the role of psychological states in the explanation of action. The argument focuses on the implications of SSTT for deluded subjects; subjects who take themselves to be entertaining a de re thought when there is no appropriately related object. In this section I layout the contrast between SSTI and DCT with regard to deluded subjects. In the following section I turn to the argument against SSTT based 011 its implications for psychological explanation. According to DCT the content of an actual thought can remain constant across various counterfactual possibilities in which the actual object is replaced by an object indiscernible from it, and across various counterfactual possibilities in which there is no object at all. The truth-conditions of the thought would differ as the object thought about was replaced or removed altogether, but that would not be in virtue of a difference in the content of the thought but rather due to a difference in context. In this sense similarity and difference in the way things seem to a subject is intimately related to similarity and difference in the content of the thought she is entertaining." In contrast, since SSrT ties the very content of a thought to the object concerned, the content of a thought, and not merely its truth-conditions, would differ across the kinds of counterfactual possibilities described, even while the differences between the possibilities remain indiscernible from the subject's point of view. Importantly, DCT allows for the possibility that a subject could be entertaining a thought even in the 'absence of an object the thought concerns. According to SSTT, in contrast, if a singular term lacks a referent, an utterance containing that singular term fails to express a thought. Consequently, a deluded subject is not only deluded about whether there is such an object, but is in addition deluded about whether she is entertaining a thought. McDowell writes,
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... a subject may be in error about the contents of [her] own mind: [she] may think there is a ... thought at, so to speak, a certain position in [her] internal organization although there is really nothing precisely there [McDowell(1986), p. 145].
Following Evans, I will refer to such a deluded subject as entertaining a "mock thought".'? However, 1 do not intend to discuss the strength and source of the intuition that a deluded subject must have some thought before her mind. Instead I note the difference between SSTT and nCT, and turn directly to the issue of psychological explanation.
lV. THE Two LIST ARGUMENT Harold Noonan has argued that reference to strong singular thoughts is never required for the purposes of psychological explanation, and hence that either the adequate psychological explanation of action does not invoke object-dependent thoughts, or it invokes only those object-dependent thoughts whose contents are not object-dependent.!' Noonan's argument purports to establish that there are no strong singular thoughts, and hence that there are no de re senses. He writes, [w]henever an action is directed towards a concrete, contingently existing object, other than its agent, in the sense that it is intentional under a description in which there occurs a singular term denoting that object, then an adequate psychological explanation of it is available under a (possibly distinct) description ill which occurs a term denoting that object; and in this explanation the only psychological states of the agent referred to are ones which would also be present in a counterfactual situation in which the object did not exist [Noonan (1986), pp. 68-9].
Noonan's claim is supposedly established by the following kind of argument. While walking in his garden, Ralph spies the cat he believes to have killed his beloved canary. Angry Ralph lashes out and kicks the cat. If strong singular thoughts are essential for the purposes of psychological explanation, the explanation of Ralph's action must invoke his strong singular thoughts about the cat. Now imagine a counterfactual situation exactly like the actual situation except for the fact that there is no cat: Counterfactual Ralph is subject to a hallucination. Since things seem the same to Counterfactual Ralph as they do to Ralph, we can assume that Counterfactual Ralph will move in the very same way as Ralph in fact moves. That is, Counterfactual Ralph will lash out at what he takes to be the cat in question. This is where the challenge to SSTT comes into play. The challenge is to explain Counterfactual Ralph's behaviour. Noonan writes,
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[tlhe [proponent of strong singular thoughts] is thus faced with a dilemma: he must either deny that the behaviour of [Ralph] in the hallucinatory situation is rationally explicable by reference to his contentful psychological states, or he must acknowledge that reference to a proper subset, X, of the thought contents available to [Ralph] suffices to explain [Counterfactual Ralph's] actions [Noonan (1993), p. 286],
The first horn is primajacie unattractive, since Counterfactual Ralph's behaviour does appear to make sense. The second horn, however, is unavailable to SSTT. For consider, in order to avoid the first horn of the dilemma, it must be assumed that Counterfactual Ralph has a set X of beliefs and desires that constitutes a sufficient reason for him to lash out, and hence explains his doing so, But Ralph is Counterfactual Ralph's physical duplicate. Consequently, according to Noonan, Ralph also has this set of beliefs and desires. He may in addition have some strong singular thoughts not shared by Counterfactual Ralph, but the set X constitutes a sufficient reason for his acting as he does, Hence, X is sufficient to explain Ralph's behaviour, and any strong singular thoughts we might have supposed Ralph to have drop out of the picture as explanatorily redundant. But if strong singular thoughts are explanatorlly redundant, there is no reason to think there are such thoughts. Consequently, SSIT is undermined. It is easy to see how DCT avoids the dilemma. According to DCT, the content of an actual thought can remain constant across various counterfactual possibilities including the possibility in which the actual object is absent. Deluded subjects are regarded as being in the same psychological state as their non-deluded counterparts precisely because the content of a de re thought is not regarded as object-dependent. Since psychological content is referenceindependent and psychological explanation invokes psychological content, psychological explanation is itself reference-independent, The problem arises for SSTT because of the claim that sentences containing empty singular terms fail to express thoughts.
V. Two ASSUMPTIONS
The Two List Argument depends upon two crucial assumptions: first, that Ralph and Counterfactual Ralph perform the same actions; and second, that because Counterfactual Ralph has a particular set of beliefs and desires X, any physical duplicate of Counterfactual Ralph also has this set ofpsychological states, 12 The assumptions are intimately related. After all, it is plausible to think that psychological theories appeal to causal roles to individuate psychological states. If it were further assumed that the psychological states of Ralph and his counterpart have the same causal role, there would be reason
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to think they share a set of psychological states. If, on the other hand, it were assumed that Ralph and his counterpart did not share a set of psychological states, there would be reason to think their respective psychological states did not have the same causal role. Essentially, psychological states and actions are typically individuated in the same way, whether that be individualistically or anti-individualistically. What this shows is that the first of Noonan's assumptions will have little force against a proponent of SSTT. An argument from the claim that twins in general appear to behave in the same ways, since their bodies move through the same physical trajectories, to the claim that they are correctly subsumed by the same psychological theory, will be unpersuasive to an antiindividualist. The fact that twins follow the same physical trajectories through space and time will be thought irrelevant to whether they are subsumed by the same psychological laws, since the psychological properties that feature in laws do not, according to the anti-individualist, supervene locally on physical laws. Physical laws are one thing; psychological laws another. The first of Noonan's assumptions, then, is question-begging. This point has already been made by Burge who, in addition to showing the assumption to be questionbegging, argues persuasively that it is false. 13 Consequently, I leave the first assumption to one side and focus instead on the second.
VI. SUPERVENIENCE RELATIONS The plausibility of the second assumption can be brought out as follows." The anti-individualist is typically committed to the global nomological supervenience of psychological properties on physical properties. From this it follows that there is some minimal set of physical properties which suffice for a subject's possessing a given set of psychological states. Moreover, the minimal set of physical properties sufficient for Counterfactual Ralph's possession of the specific set X is also present in the veridical situation, and hence would suffice for Ralph's possession of the set X, What, then, is wrong with this line of argument? What the argument overlooks is the fact that the absence of a condition can itself be part of the minimal set of physical properties which suffices for possession of a set of psychological states. In this case it is the absence of the cat that constitutes part of the minimal set of physical properties sufficient for the possession by Counterfactual Ralph of X, and this is not duplicated in the veridical situation. Even if we assume that Counterfactual Ralph possesses a set of psychological states that suffice to explain his lashing out, and that everything in Counterfactual Ralph's situation is present in Ralph's situation, we are not entitled to infer that Ralph possesses the same set of psychological states as
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Counterfactual Ralph. This is because the absence of the cat from Counterfactual Ralph's environment is itself a relevant factor. It might sound strange to think of an absence as being able to contribute to the conditions sufficient for the instantiation of a set of properties. However, it is a general truth that sufficient conditions for the instantiation of a property must involve absences. This is not an ad hoc move on the part of the externalist. 1 will return shortly to the psychological case. For the moment, here is an argument which I take to be obviously unsound, but which is analogous to the one offered above. Corundum is a mineral with chemical constitution Ah03. In its pure form corundum is completely colourless. However, both rubies and sapphires are derived from corundum and consequently share the same chemical constitution: AhO). The difference between pure corundum, rubies, and sapphires is dependent solely on the presence, or absence, of certain kinds of impurities. Thus a ruby may contain less than 1% chromium, resulting in its distinctive red colour. Similarly, a sapphire may contain traces of titanium and iron, resulting in its being blue. Now suppose there is a minimal set of physical properties sufficient for the instantiation of the property being pure corundum. On the assumed construal of minimal sets of physical properties, any situation in which this set is duplicated is a situation in which the property being pure corundum is instantiated. Consequently, if the argument were sound we should have to conclude that rubies are pure corundum, and similarly that sapphires are pure corundum. After all, the minimal set of physical properties sufficient for the instantiation of the property being pure corundum would not be allowed to include the absence of impurities, and would hence be duplicated both when the property being a ruby and when the property being a sapphire is instantiated. By the transitivity of identity we should also, it would seem, have to conclude that rubies were sapphires. One possibility would be to conclude that there is no minimal set of physical conditions sufficient for the instantiation of the property being pure corundum. There are two ways to understand this claim: (i) as the claim that there is no minimal set of positive physical conditions sufficient for the instantiation of the property being pure corundum; (ii) as the claim that there is no minimal set of physical conditions, positive and negative, sufficient for the instantiation of the property being pure corundum. Neither option would be conducive to the proponent of DCT. The former would amount to conceding the point; the latter would entail a denial of even the global supervenience of non-physical properties on physical properties. IS It would seem, then, that we must allow that the absence of certain conditions can, and often will, itself form part of the minimal set of physically sufficient conditions for the instantiation of a given property. The minimal set of physical conditions that forms the subvenient base for the property of being pure corundum includes the condition that certain impurities not be present. Similarly, the minimal set of
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physical conditions that forms the subvenience base for possessing the set of psychological states X includes the condition that 110 cat be present. If this is right, of course, the argument fails: there is a relevant difference between the veridical and the non-veridical situations, and the set of conditions sufficient for Counterfactual Ralph's possessing the set X is not in fact duplicated in the actual situation. Minimal sets of sufficient conditions must generally be taken to include absences. Before closing this section I will briefly address two potential objections to my argument. The first concerns the particular example on which my claim turns, as follows." The kind ruby, and the kind sapphire are both varieties of the kind corundum. Given this fact, it might be reasonable to conclude that sapphires and rubies are indeed simply instances of pure corundum. However, this objection depends upon a particular micro-reductive theory of kinds which I take to be independently implausible." Rubies, sapphires, and instances of pure corundum are indeed best thought of as instances of distinct kinds. While the distinction may not be recognised from within chemistry, it is clearly recognised from within mineralogy. The question of how to mark out natural kinds, and of how to distinguish the natural from the non-natural kinds, is of course a difficult one. But there is every reason to think that two entities correctly thought of as of the same kind from the point of view of one science might nevertheless be correctly thought of as of distinct kinds from the point of view of another science. If I am right on this, then the kinds ruby, sapphire, and pure corundum can happily be thought of as distinct. The second, modified from a claim made by Segal, concerns the extension of the argument to the psychological case. Taking the absence of a suitable object into account in the possession of a set of psychological states, says Segal, is "out of line with psychological practice. Developmental psychologists do not usually care whether the [singular thoughts] they study are empty or not". Consequently; the position entailed by my argument according to Segal, "coherent, but implausible" [Segal (2000), p. 47]. This, however, does not obviously engage with the considerations I have put forward. First, that psychologists do not care whether the thoughts they study are empty may well show that psychologists can study thoughts without first settling all the questions relevant to the individuation conditions of those thoughts. Whether a given thought-content is individuated individualistically or anti-individualistically is plausibly not a question psychologists need settle in advance of their investigations. Second, and more importantly, the example I present concerning rubies and sapphires demonstrates that sufficient conditions for the instantiation of a natural kind must include absences. Consequently, it is illegitimate to argue from the presence of conditions sufficient in the empty case for possession of a given set of thoughts without taking absences into account to sameness of thoughts across physical twins. IS Minimal sets of sufficient conditions involve absences.
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VII. CONCLUSION The Two List Argumentdepends upon two crucial assumptions. The first has already been discredited. Here I have tried to discredit the second. In conelusion, the Two List Argument cannot be used to undermine the existence of de re senses. Department ofPhilosophy University ofN ebraska-Lincoln 1010 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0321, USA E-mail:
[email protected] NOTES 1 The expression "strong singular thought theory" was introduced by Blackburn in his (1984), chapter 9. 2 Existence is here to be construed atemporally. In addition, 1 do 110t mean to imply that the only constraint SSTT imposes on the ability to think singular thoughts is the existence of the objects concerned. Indeed, this constraint by itself would make little sense. See Sawyer (2001). 3 The class of singular thoughts is not identical to the class of thoughts about particulars. The thought that Quine was a great philosopher is a singular thought, presupposing the existence of Quine; the thought that the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy in 1999 was a great philosopher is not a singular thought, and does not presuppose the existence of Quine. 4 There is reason to think other forms of anti-individualism face the same prima facie worry but that they too can be defended along similar lines. 5 I leave to one side those theories which reject the irreducibility thesis. 6 See Burge (1977) and (1982). For variants see Noonan (1986), (1991) and (1993), Peacocke (1981), and Segal (1989). 7 I say "in the relevant sense" since the content of an object-dependent thought construed as the DC theorist would construe it might nevertheless be object-dependent in virtue of containing externally individuated concepts which are not singular. I have in mind here anti-individualist considerations such as those put forward by Burge in his (1979a). 8 But see Burge (1979b) for an account of the tension between Frege's logical principles and his epistemic motivation for introducing the notion of sense. 9 Again, I leave to one side here issues that arise from an anti-individualist understanding of the propositional content of such de re thoughts, JO Mock thoughts are no more thoughts than toy penguins are penguins. 11 Noonan (1986), (1991) and (1993). Essentially the same argument can be found in Segal (1989). 12 Noonan does not beg the question against anti-individualism by assuming that physical duplicates are psychological duplicates. Noonan assumes the weaker thesis that physical duplicates will share a set of psychological states, and allows that non-deluded duplicates may well have other psychological states in addition.
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IJ See for example Burge (t989) in which he responds to Fodor's arguments presented in Fodor (1987) chapter 2. 14 The argument I present here is a variant of an argument presented by Gabriel Segal against natural kind externalism in his (2000). The counter argument 1 present in this section draws in large measure on my (2003). For further elaborationsec my (2004). 15 In this connection, and for an extended discussion of related issues, see Corbl and Prades (2000). 1 am grateful to both authors for clarification on this point. 16 Thames to Claire Horisk for pointing out a potential objectionalong these lines. 17 Arguments against such a view abound in the literature. 18 The mistake is, I suspect, due to all illegitimateand yet commonplace tendency to shift between levels of theory: from sameness of kind at a lower level to sameness of kind at a higher level.
REFERENCES BLACKBURN, S. (1984), Spreading the Word, Oxford, Clarendon Press. BURGE, T, (1977), "Belief De Re", The Journal ofPhilosophy, voL 74, pp. 338-62. - (1979a), "Individualism and the Mental", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 4, pp.73-121 - (1979b), "Sinning Against , The Philosophical Review, vol. 88, pp, 398-432. - (1982), "Other Bodies", in Woodfield, A. (ed.), Thought and Object: Essays on Intentionality, Oxford, Clarendon Press) pp. 97-120. - (1989), "Individuation and Causation in Psychology", Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 70, pp. 303-22, CORDI, J. E. & PRADES, J. L. (2000), Minds} Causes, and Mechanisms, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd. EVANS, G, (1982), The Varieties ofReference, edited by J. McDowell, Oxford, Oxford University Press. FODOR, I.A. (1987), Psychosemantics, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, McDoWELL,1. (1977), "On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name", Mind, vol, 86, pp.159-85. - (1984), "De Re Senses", in Wright, C. (ed.), Frege: Tradition and Influence, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. - (1986), "SingularThought and the Extent ofInner Space", in Pettit,P. and McDowell, 1. (eds.), Subject, Thought and Context, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 137-68. NOONAN, H. W. (1986), "Russellian Thoughts and Methodological Solipsism", in Butterfield. J. (ed.), Language, Mind and Logic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp, 67-90. (1991), "Object-DependentThoughts and PsychologicalRedundancy", Analysis, vol. 51, pp, 1-9. (1993), "Object-Dependent Thoughts: A Case of Superficial Necessity but Deep Contingency", in 1. and Mele, A. (eds.), Mental Causation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 283-308, PEACOCKE, C. (1981), "Demonstrative Thought and Psychological Explanation", Synvol. 49, pp. 187-217.
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S. (2001), "The Epistemic Divide", The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol, 39, pp. 385~40J. - (2003), "Sufficient Absences", Analysis, voL 63~ pp. 202-8. (2004), "Absences, Presences and Sufficient Conditions", Analysis, vol, 64, pp. 354-7. SEGAL, G. (1989), "The Return of the Individual", Mind, vol. 98, pp. 39-57. - (2000), A Slim Book About Narrow Content, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
teorema Vol. XXVII, 2006, pp. 193-196
Response to Sarah Sawyer
1. Obviously Sawyer's project is welcome to me. But I have a couple of quibbles over points of detail, and a more substantial query about her novel contribution.
2. Sawyer aims to defend the Evans-McDowell view about singular thoughts against a certain objection. She formulates the Evans-McDowell view as a combination of two theses: first, that there are object-dependent contents, and second, that if a pair of speech acts, say, with that kind of content ascribe the same property to the same object, it does not follow that the two speech acts have the same content. She represents it as an extra element in the view, over and above the second thesis as I have stated it so far, that only Fregean sense will suffice to enable us to distinguish pairs of contents related in that way. My first quibble is that I do not see this as a further claim. I think the idea ofFregean sense, as applied to the senses expressible by singular terms, just is the idea that pairs of contents related in that way may be distinct; not, as Sawyer's presentation implies, one option, perhaps among others, for enabling ourselves to make such distinctions, 3. Sawyer's target is the "Two List Argument", which purports to show that there are no object-dependent thoughts, on the ground that they are not required for the psychological explanation of behaviour. Making sense of behaviour is the very point of the conceptual apparatus that centres on the notion of thoughts. So if a supposed kind of thought never figures in the explanation of behaviour, it must be mythical. The argument turns on imagining pairs of situations related as follows. In one member of a pair, a proponent of object-dependent thoughts will want to ascribe object-dependent thoughts to a subject. In the other member of the pair, things are, as far as the subject can tell, exactly as they are in the first situation, but the corresponding object-dependent thoughts are not ascribable, because there is no suitable object; the appearance that there is such an object is a hallucination. In the example Sawyer works with, Ralph has a thought he would express by saying "That cat killed my canary", and he kicks at the cat he sees. Twin Ralph would express himself in the same way, and he makes exactly
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matching movements with his legs. But there is 110 cat in his field of view; he thinks there is, but as a result of a hallucination. Any object-dependent thoughts we might want to attribute to Ralph cannot figure in the explanation of Twin Ralph's behaviour, since Twin Ralph does not have them, Twin Ralph's thoughts, which cannot be objectdependent (at least not in the relevant respect: they cannot be dependent on the existence of the cat that is their supposed topic), suffice to account for his lashing out with his legs in the direction of the cat that he thinks he sees. Ralph's action is his lashing out with his legs in exactly that way. So according to the argument, the non-object-dependent thoughts that we are anyway required to attribute to Twin Ralph suffice for the psychological explanation of Ralph's action, and the supposed object-dependent thoughts he is credited with by the Evans-McDowell position do no explanatory work. 4, The most obvious point at which this argument is open to question is this: the argument assumes that what suffices to explain Ralph's action under a description that also applies to Twin Ralph's action say, "trying to kick the cat that he thinks he sees" - exhausts what is needed for explaining what Ralph does. Specifications of what someone does intentionally are themselves specifications of psychological content, the content of intentions that are getting executed. If we see the cat Ralph kicks at, we are in a position to say what he does in object-dependent terms. We can say "He is trying to kick that cat". The perceived presence of the cat makes a contribution to the meaning of this utterance. And we cannot attribute to Twin Ralph the intention we can thus attribute to Ralph, or even an intention that matches it apart from involving a different cat. Reference to a particular cat is an essential element in our specification of the content of that intention of Ralph's. A matching reference to a particular cat is ex hypothesi not possible for specifying any intention of Twin Ralph's. So there is something Ralph intentionally does and Twin Ralph does not do. There is something extra to be explained in Ralph's case. Contrary to what the Two List Argument claims, there is no bar to supposing that psychological states that Ralph does 110t share with Twin Ralph might have explanatory work to do. In Noonan's version, which Sawyer discusses, it is explicit how the argument aims to exploit a certain plausible view of the identity of actions. In our example, this view of action-identity would entail that the action of Ralph's that falls under the object-dependent description we could give if we had the cat in view, "trying to kick that cat", is the very same action that falls under the non-object-dependent description, "trying to kick the cat that he thinks he sees". The second description fits Twin Ralph's action too. As before, Twin Ralph's non-object-dependent psychological states suffice to ex-
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plain his action. So they suffice to explain Ralph's action under the nonobject-dependent description that fits it too. But we can grant all that, and insist that it constitutes no argument for supposing that those non-object-dependent psychological states suffice to explain what Ralph does. What we are granting, if we grant all that, is that those non-abject-dependent psychological states suffice to explain Ralph's action under one of its descriptions. But that is not to grant that they suffice to explain his action the identical event, if you like - under another of its descriptions. It is a familiar point that the same event can call for different explanations depending on how it is specified. What is needed, in order to explain what Ralph does, depends on what we say Ralph does when we ask for an explanation that is, on how we describe Ralph's action when we pose the explanatory task. It does not make any difference to this if all the descriptions we might use in order to pose an explanatory task concerning Ralph's action are descriptions of a single event. The explanatory tasks are still different. 5. The considerations 1 have just rehearsed, at greater length than Sawyer does, undermine what she identifies as 111e first of two assumptions on which the Two List Argument depends, the assumption that Ralph and his twin perform the same actions. She credits showing what is wrong with the assumption to Burge, but the point is already in Evans.' Sawyer puts the point in terms of what would be required for Ralph and his twin to be subsumed ,by the same psychological laws. My second quibble is that it is tendentious to suppose that the psychological explanation that constitutes the very point of psychological concepts works by subsuming explananda under laws. In fact I think proper attention to the real-life use of those concepts leaves this thought looking quite implausible. Rejecting the Two List Argument has no need of it. I made no use of it in my sketch of the considerations that undermine the first assumption. 6. Sawyer's novelty is an attack on the second of the two assumptions she finds in the Two List Argument: the assumption that Ralph shares the psychological states that figure in the explanation of Twin Ralph's action. It is common ground that psychological properties supervene on nonpsychologically specifiable properties. Sawyer undermines an inference to the assumption she attacks, from the premise that Ralph is ex hypothesi a duplicate of Twin Ralph in all non-psychologically describable respects compatible with the difference between their situations that the argument turns on. The conclusion does not follow, because the subvenience base for a supervenient property can include absences. Sawyer that the subvenience base for Twin Ralph's relevant psychological states includes the absence of the cat. If that is right, a supervenience thesis yields no ground for supposing those psychological states are shared by Ralph.
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Sawyer's positive point here, that subvenience bases can include absences, seems unquestionable. I think her example, about the subvenience base for the property of being pure corundum, establishes it beyond doubt But I do not find it clear that the point tells against the Two List Argument. That subvenience bases can include absences is not by itself a reason for supposing that the subvenience base for the psychological states of Twin Ralph that the Two List Argument appeals to includes an absence. And in fact that does not seem plausible. What accounts tor Twin Ralph's behaviour is, for instance, his belief that the cat that killed his canary is at a certain position in his field of view. The subvenience base for a belief with that content should consist in facts that leave it open whether or not there is a cat in the believer's field of view, not facts that include there not being a cat in the believer's point of view. The subvenience base for a belief should not include something such that, if the believer knew it, that would destroy the appearance that it is rational for him to believe what he does. So nothing that entails that a belief is false should figure in its subveniencebase. This principle seems reasonable. And it implies that the subvenience base for that belief of Twin Ralph's does not include the absence of a cat. So there is no problem in supposing that Ralph is like Twin Ralph in believing that the cat that killed his canary is at a certain position in his visual field. Of course this is not a defence of the Two List Argument As Sawyer would acknowledge, the wrongness of the first assumption is enough to display it as unconvincing anyway. But I am not persuaded that she has, as she claims, found a different way to refute the argument JOHN McDOWELL
NOTE 1 See
The Varieties ofReference (Oxford: ClarendonPress; 1982), pp. 203-4.
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teorema Vol. XXV/I, 2006, pp. 197-210
Values vs. Secondary Qualities * Dan L6pez de Sa
RESUMEN
McDowell, respondiendo al argumento a partir de la "rareza" (argumentfrom queerness) de Mackie, defendio el realismo sobre los valores por analogia con las
cualidades secundarias. Se pondra de relieve una tension entre dos interpretaciones posibles de la respuesta de McDowelL De acuerdo con la primera, el realismo sobre los valores se vindicarla, efectivamente, perc a costa de no proporcionar una respuesta apropiada al argumento de Mackie. La segunda interpretacion, sin embargo, properciona una respuesta adecuada a dicho argumento, pero haciendo peligrar e1 realismo
evaluativo.
Assrascr McDowell, responding to Mackie's argument from queerness, defended realism about values by analogy to secondary qualities. A certain tension between two interpretations of McDowell's response is highlighted. According to one, realism about values would indeed be vindicated, but at the cost of failing to provide an appropriate response to Mackie's argument; whereas according to the other, McDowell does provide an adequate response, but evaluative realism is jeopardized.
John Mackie developed a famous argument "from queerness" against there actually being objective values, where an objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it, not because of any contingent fact that this person, or every person, is so constituted that he desires this end, but just because the end has to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it [Mackie (1977), p. 40J.
In his no less famous response to Mackie, John McDowell urged that not primary qualities, as Mackie supposed, but secondary qualities could provide a suitable model for real evaluative properties: [1Jt seems impossible -
at least on reflection - to take seriously the idea of something that is like a primary quality in being simply there, independently of human sensibility, but is nevertheless intrinsically (not conditionally on contingencies about human sensibility) such as to elicit some "attitude" or state of will from someone who becomes aware of it [McDowell (1985), p. 132].
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Sawyer's positive point here, that subvenience bases can include absences, seems unquestionable, I think her example, about the subvenience base for the property of being pure corundum, establishes it beyond doubt. But I do not find it clear that the point tells against the Two List Argument. That subvenience bases can include absences is not by itself a reason for supposing that the subvenience base for the psychological states of Twin Ralph that the Two List Argument appeals to includes an absence. And in fact that does not seem plausible. What accounts for Twin Ralph's behaviour is, for instance, his belief that the cat that killed his canary is at a certain position in his field of view. The subvenience base for a belief with that content should consist in facts that leave it open whether or not there is a cat in the believer's field of view, not facts that include there not being a cat in the believer's point of view. The subvenience base for a belief should not include something such that, if the believer knew it, that would destroy the appearance that it is rational for him to believe what he does. So nothing that entails that a belief is false should figure in its subvenience base. This principle seems reasonable. And it implies that the subvenience base for that belief of Twin Ralph's does not include the absence of a cat. So there is no problem in supposing that Ralph is like Twin Ralph in believing that the cat that killed his canary is at a certain position in his visual field. Of course this is not a defence of the Two List Argument. As Sawyer would acknowledge, the wrongness of the first assumption is enough to display it as unconvincing anyway. But I am not persuaded that she has, as she claims, found a different way to refute the argument. JOHN McDOWELL
NOTE l
See The Varieties ofReference (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1982), pp. 203~4.
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teoreesa VoLXXVIl,2006,pp.197-2JO
Values vs. Secondary Qualities" Dan Lopez de Sa
RESUMEN
McDowell, respondiendo al argumento a partir de la "rareza" (argument from queerness) de Mackie, defendio el realismo sabre los valores por analogia con las cualidades secundarias, Se pondra de relieve una tension entre dos interpretaciones posibles de la respuesta de McDowell. De acuerdo can la primera, eJ realismo sobre los valores se vindicaria, efectivamente, pero a costa de no proporcionar una respuesta apropiada al argumento de Mackie. La segunda interpretacion, sin embargo, proporciona una respuesta adecuada a dicho argumento, pero haciendo peligrar el realismo evaluativo. ABSTRACT
McDowell, responding to Mackie's argument from queerness, defended realism about values by analogy to secondary qualities. A certain tension between two interpretations of McDowell's response is highlighted. According to one, realism about values would indeed be vindicated, but at the cost of failing to provide an appropriate response to Mackie's argument; whereas according to the other, McDowell does provide an adequate response, but evaluative realism is jeopardized.
John Mackie developed a famous argument "from queerness" against there actually being objective values, where an objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it, not because of any contingent fact that this person, or every person, is so constituted that he desires this end, but just because the end has to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it [Mackie (1977), p. 40].
In his no less famous response to Mackie, John McDowell urged that not primary qualities, as Mackie supposed, but secondary qualities could provide a suitable model for real evaluative properties: [I]t seems impossible at least on reflection - to take seriously the idea of something that is like a primary quality ill being simply there, independently of human sensibility, but is nevertheless intrinsically (not conditionally on contingencies about human sensibility) such as to elicit some "attitude" or state of will from someone who becomes aware of it [McDowell (1985), p, 132].
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Shifting to a secondary-quality analogy renders irrelevant any warty about how something that is brutely there could nevertheless stand in an internal relation to some exercise of human sensibilities. Values are not brutely there - not there independently of our sensibility any more than colours are: though, as with colours, this does not prevent us from supposing that they are there independently of any particular apparent experience ofthem (McDowell (l985), p. 146].
My aim in this paper is to highlight a certain tension between two interpretations of Mcfrowell's response. According to one interpretation, realism about values would indeed be vindicated, but at the cost of failing to provide an appropriate response to Mackie's argument from queerness. According to the other, McDowell would provide an adequate response, but evaluative realism would be jeopardized. Mark Johnston (1989) introduced the notion of response-dependence with the aim of articulating an "analogist" defense of realism about values such as McDowell's: to the extent to which secondary qualities can be regarded as perhaps less than fully objective but genuinely real properties, so can evaluative properties. The notion of response-dependence has generated considerable literature during the last decade. Some philosophers have argued that the notion of a response-dependent concept over-generalizes, by also covering concepts for primary qualities, and hence fails with respect to the project for which it was introduced. Others have argued that precisely for this reason, the original characterization should be modified. They propose an account of a response-dependent property as one which essentially involves the disposition to elicit certain mental responses (in certain subjects under certain conditions). Given the notion of a response-dependent property, a distinction may be drawn between, on the one hand, those which essentially involve the disposition to elicit certain mental responses in certain subjects as they actually are under certain conditions as they actually are, and on the other, those which essentially involve the disposition to elicit certain mental responses in certain subjects whatever they are like under certain conditions whatever they are like. I will call them rigid vs. flexible response-dependent properties. This distinction will be crucial for my claim about the two contrasting and conflicting interpretations of McDowell's response. I shall argue that according to one, values and secondary qualities are rigid response-dependent properties, whereas according to the other, they are both flexible response-dependent properties. This paper is in four sections. In section I, I briefly present the notion of a response-dependent property, and the distinction between rigid vs, flexible response-dependent properties. In section II, I present the two interpretations of Mclfowell's response, which exemplify this distinction. In section III, I
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present Mackie's argument from queerness and argue that although the view of values as rigid response-dependent properties does qualify as a realist proposal, it fails to respond to the argument. In section IV, the final section, I argue that the view of values as flexible response-dependent properties does not face the queerness problem, but has relativist consequences that vindicate a non-realist position about the evaluative.
1.RESPONSE-DEPENDENT PROPERTIES: RiGID VS. FLEXIBLE In his "Dispositional Theories of Value" (1989), Johnston attributes to McDowell an "analogist' response against anti-realist arguments, whose "leading idea ... has been to show that by the same standards of genuineness it would follow that colour is 110t a genuine feature of surfaces" [Johnston (1989), p. 139], and introduced the notion of response-dependence as a means of stating the relevant analogy: The most plausible, if highly way of taking the analogy is this: evaluational concepts, like secondary quality concepts as understood by the analogists, are "response-dependent" concepts [Johnston (1989), p. 144].
Since then response-dependence has usually been characterized by means of conditions on certain biconditionals. Let us say a response-dependence biconditional (rd biconditional for short) for a (predicate signifying a certain) property F is a substantial biconditional of the form x is f iff x has the disposition to produce In subjects S the mental response R under conditions C; or the form x is f iff subjects S have the disposition to issue the x-directed mental response R under conditions C, where "is f" signifies F, and "substantial" is there to avoid "whatever-ittakes" specifications of either S, R or C. (One such "whatever-it-takes" specification of, say, subjects S would be "those subjects, whatever they are like, such that something is disposed to produce in them responses R under conditions C iff it is F." Mutatis mutandis for the responses and the conditions.) Johnston's own characterization of a response-dependent concept required only that there was one such biconditional (for a predicate expressing
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it) holding a priori. As I mentioned, some philosophers, including Frank Jackson and Phillip Pettit (2002), have argued that this original characterizaHan over-generalizes, by also covering concepts for primary qualities. Very briefly, the key element in the arguments is this: regardless of the primary VB. secondary nature of the signified property, there will be descriptive material associated with the predicate, playing at least a reference-fixing-role which, in the cases at hand, will easily involve the relevant responses. Statements of them can be cashed in the form of I'd biconditionals, which for familiar Kripkean reasons will hold a priori. Furthermore, given the possibility of rigidifying on the relevant subjects and conditions, the notion would over-generalize in the same way if one further requires that the rd biconditionals hold necessarily as well as a priori. Some philosophers, including Manuel Garcia-Carpintero (2002) and Ralph Wedgwood (1998),1 have argued that precisely for this reason, the original characterization of "response-dependent" should be modified. Dwelling on the ideas of Kit Fine on essence (1994), they have independently proposed an account of a response-dependent property as one which essentially involves the disposition to elicit certain mental responses (in certain subjects under certain conditions). That Socrates belongs to singleton Socrates holds necessarily, but not in virtue of the nature of Socrates (but, presumably, of the set). That Plato is distinct from Aristotle again holds necessarily, but not in virtue of the nature of Plato (but, presumably of both Plato and Aristotle). Similarly, in the case of primary, fully objective, properties, the (perhaps rigidified) rd biconditionals might hold necessarily, but not in virtue of the nature of the properties. And when they do hold in virtue of the nature of the property, the property is response-dependent, as in the case of secondary qualities. In other words: (RD) A property F is response-dependent iff there is an rd biconditional for (a predicate signifying) it which holds a priori and in virtue of the nature of F. rd biconditionals, as characterized so far, may contain rigidifying devices. Let us say that a specification of the subjects in an rd biconditional is rigid iff the relevant predicate involved in the specification is rigid, andflexible otherwise. So take for instance "human who fails no discrimination test passed by other human subjects." This is not, as it stands, a rigid specification. For take the relevant predicate "is a human who fails no discrimination test passed by other human subjects" and suppose that in the actual world, it is true (even if knowable only a posteriori) that being a human who fails no discrimination test passed by other human subjects is being a human with a perceptual apparatus meeting condition A. Now consider a counterfactual situation in which, due to whatever reason you might think of, humans who
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fail no discrimination test passed by other human subjects are those with a perceptual apparatus meeting the different condition B. Now intuitively, it is this other property of being a human with a perceptual apparatus meeting condition B which would be relevant for evaluating sentences containing "is a human who fails no discrimination test passed by other human subjects') with respect to this other world. But then "is a human who fails no discrimination test passed by other human subjects" is not a rigid predicate. Its relevant rigidification, which can be put as something like "is a human who fail no discrimination test passed by other human subjects, as they actually are» leads, nonetheless, to a rigid specification of the subjects, of the sort of "humans who fail no discrimination test passed by other human subjects) as they actually are.,,2 An rd biconditional is rigid iff it involves a rigid specification of the subjects, and it isjlexible otherwise. Now we can draw the distinction that will be crucial in what follows: A response-dependent property is rigid iff the rd biconditionals for it holding in virtue of its nature are rigid. A response-dependent property is flexible iff there is a flexible rd biconditional for it holding in virtue of its nature. Any response-dependent property is rigid or flexible but not both. Rigid response-dependent properties are dispositions to produce in certain (rigidly specified) subjects certain responses under certain (rigidly specified) conditions; flexible response-dependent properties, by contrast, are properties whose extensions, in each possible world w, are those things which have in w the disposition to produce in certain subjects, as specified with respect to w, the relevant response under certain conditions, as specified with respect to w. Suppose that "is f" signifies" a response-dependent property F, with response R, and suppose that Sand C are relevant flexible specifications of subjects and conditions, and S@ and C@ their relevant rigidifications, and that the only relevant rd biconditionals are (R) x is fiffx is disposed to produce in S@ the response R under conditions C@. (F) x is f iff x is disposed to produce in S the response R under conditions C. Both are, we may suppose, true with respect to the actual world and, we may also suppose, knowable a priori. But the following asymmetry arises: (abstracting now from issues about essence vs. necessity) their metaphysical status co-varies with the nature ofF as stated in
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F is a rigid response-dependent property iff (R) is necessary (i.e., iff (F) is contingent);
F is a flexible response-dependent property iff (F) is necessary (i.e., iff (R) is contingent). This provides a way of testing whether "Is f" signifies a rigid or a flexible response-dependent property, and based just on a priori considerations. The recipe, very abstractly put, is this: consider what could be a counterexample of the necessity of the relevant statement on the assumption that the predicate signifies one particular kind of property, neutrally described. 1 will refer to them as target situations. Then check how these should be intuitively described, with respect to the relevant predicate, and conclude accordingly."
II. Two INTERPRETATIONS OF McDoWELL'S RESPONSE As we are about to see, McDowell's views concerning values and secondary qualities in his response to Mackie can be stated as asserting their response-dependence, in the general sense characterized by (RD). Thus there are two interpretations of his response, corresponding to the rigid and the flexible variety of response-dependence. The discussion of the difference between them in the subsequent sections will, I hope, also vindicate the relevance of the distinction. According to McOowell, \
a secondary quality is a property the ascription of which to an object is not adequately understood except as true) if it is true, in virtue of the object's disposition to present acertain sort of perceptual appearance: specifically, an appearance characterizable by using a word for the property itself to say how the object perceptually appears. Thus an object's being red is understood as something that obtains in virtue of the object's being such as (in certain circumstances) to look, precisely) red [McDowell (1985), p. 133].
This is to assert that secondary qualities are response-dependent properties in our general sense of (RD), provided that being a property the ascription of which to an object is not adequately understood except as true, if it is true, in virtue of the objects disposition to respond in a certain way amounts to being a property such that it is in virtue of its nature that objects to which it is (truly) ascribed do have the disposition to respond in a certain way.
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I think that the crucial further claims that McDowell makes in his response confirm this attribution, and stating them also helps to illustrate the general notion of a response-dependent property further. In my own words: if His red" signifies a response-dependent property, being red, then commonsensical predications of it, of the sort "this rock is red," are: (i) evaluable as true or false (for the most part); (ii) some of them indeed true; (iii) some of them indeed lrnowably true. Furthermore: (iv) being red is subjective in the sense that it depends on the responses as entailed by its response-dependence; but (v) being red is not subjective in the sense of making all occurrences of the responses automatically correct. (i)-(v) hold provided that being red is response-dependent, regardless of whether it is a rigid or a flexible response-dependent property. Let us label the view according to which secondary qualities and values are rigid response-dependent properties disposittonalism, and the view according to which they are flexible response-dependent propertiesflexibilism. [ can now reformulate my main aim in this paper as that of highlighting a tension between the dispositionalist and the flexibilist interpretation of Mclzowell's response to Mackie's argument from queerness, to which now I turn;
III. THE RIGID CASE:
THE PROBLEM WITH THE PRACTICALITY OF THE EVALUATIVE
As I understand it, Mackie's argument from queerness aims to establish an incompatibility between values being real properties and what is sometimes called the "practicality of the evaluative," that values, whatever they are, are "internally" connected to motivation, i.e. have "to-be-pursuedncss" somehow built into them: An objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it, not because of any contingent fact that this person, or every person, is so constituted that he desires this end, but just because the end has to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it [Mackie (1977), p. 40].
I propose to state this internalist claim about values thus: (I) It is necessary and a priori that: If something is good, then we would desire it (under appropriate reflective conditions, weakness of will and the like aside). Several remarks are in order. First, this is an internalist claim about values themselves, and not an internalist claim about, say, evaluative judgments,
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judgments to the effect that certain things. are good or not, evaluations for short, to which people sometimes also refer with the same label. The connection between the two internalisms is, at best, complex, partly because the second is indeed a family of quite different claims. In any case, Mackie is clearly concerned with the "action-guiding" character that values themselves should have, which according to him would make them "queer," if they were real. Second, it might be argued that the necessary (and a priori knowable) charactel' of the connection falls short of capturing what was behind the traditional idea of values and motivation being "internally" connected, perhaps the notion of essence should be invoked here instead. This might be right, but it does not affect the present discussion, as the necessity of a statement is at least clearly a consequence of its holding in virtue of the nature of some entity. Third, strong as the connection between values and motivation is held to be, it can not be absolute, as the frequent cases of weakness of will, to name just one of the most famous ones, illustrate. This is what justifies a parenthetical clause like that in (1), obviously being taken with a pinch of salt. I do not mean to suggest that there might not be important difficulties in the vicinity, in so far as a sensible and satisfactory explicit formulation of internalism about values is concerned (see, among others, Johnson (1999) and subsequent discussion). Fortunately, a specification at the level of elaboration already provided will suffice, I think, for the considerations to come. Fourth, last but not least, I am interpreting Mackie's "to-be-pursuedness" as requiring that values would be desired (under certain conditions), and not (merely) that they should be, or that desiring them would be appropriate. r think this is indeed a fair interpretation: The need for an argument of this sort [the argument from queerness - DLdS] can be brought out by reflection on Hume's argument that "reason" ... can never be an "influencing motive of the will" [Mackie (1977), p. 40].
(According to some, in my view plausible but controversial, views on the issue, the "prescriptive" claims would follow, at least in some central cases, from the corresponding "descriptive" ones.) If the reality of values were modeled by fully objective primary qualities, then internalist claims of the (1) sort would clearly be false. What is crucial for me here is to argue that, for essentially the same kind of reason, claims like (1) would still be false even if the reality of values were modeled by the, in some sense subjective, secondary qualities, if they are understood as rigid response-dependent properties. For the sake of vividness, let me focus on one particular, somehow Lewisian,' dispositional proposal about values. According to this view, the following holds a priori and in virtue of the nature of goodness:
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X is good iff we, as we actually are, are disposed to value x under appropriately reflective conditions;
where valuing is the favorable attitude of desiring to desire, "appropriately reflective conditions" are spelled out as those of the fullest possible imaginative acquaintance, and "we" refers to a population consisting of the speaker and those relevantly like him. (We can assume that to be relevantly like a given subject is to be disposed, with respect to valuing the relevant thing in question in the relevant conditions, exactly how the subject is disposed.) Thus understood "we" turns out to be aflexlble characterization of a group of subjects. It "is relevantly like me" actually picks out the property of being relevantly the way I am actually. But I could be otherwise, and in particular my disposition to value particular things could be very different from what it actually is. But then, with respect to those worlds in which I am suitably different, "is relevantly like me" signifies the property of being relevantly the way I would be in those situations. ("We, as we actually are," is the rigidification of "we," as understood here, and hence a rigid specification.) Dispositionalism about values, of the considered Salt, cannot account for the truth of (I). The reason is straightforward: provided that dispositions to value particular things are obviously contingent, the view does entail that the followingflexible biconditional is (if true) merely contingent: (L) x is good iff we are disposed to value x under appropriately reflective conditions. But any counterexample to the necessity of (L) is such that the embedded conditional in (I) is false with respect to it. Hence the embedded conditional (I) is not necessary, and hence (1) is false. The argument easily with respect to any dispositional account of values, as it only depends on the tension between the contingency of the relevant dispositions to elicit the "evaluative" responses VB. the necessity of the practicality requirement. (See Holland (2001) for further discussion.) This consideration, even if sound, quite obviously, fails to refute dispositional accounts (or evaluative realism in general)," Evaluative objectivists, claiming that evaluative properties fully objective and not response-dependent, typically argue explicitly against anything along the lines of (1) and go externalist about values, by holding something like:
(E) It is contingent and a priori that: If something is good, then we would desire it (under appropriate reflective conditions, weakness of wilt and the like aside). Or, equivalently,
),
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(I@) It is necessary and a priori that: If something is good, then we, as we actually are, would desire it (under appropriate reflective conditions, weakness of will and the like aside). Here is what David Brink says: [T]he internalist cannot rest content with the extensional claim that everyone is in fact motivated (by what is morally good]. Any externalist could claim that The internalist about motives claims that it is true in virtue of the concept of morality that [moral goodness] necessarily motivates. According to the internalist, then, it must be conceptually impossible for someone to [know that something is morally good] and remain unmoved [Brink (1986), pp. 29-30].7
That requires, of course, rejecting Mackie's point at the beginning of this section concerning values being practical. It is not part of my aim to argue against externalism here: it suffices to observe that according to the present interpretation of McDowell's response, although values certainly are real though in some sense subjective properties, Mackie's argument is still in force. Shifting to a secondary-quality analogy, as understood now, does not render irrelevant worries about how values stand in an internal relation to some exercise of human sensibilities.
IV. THE FLEXIBLE CASE: EVALUATIVE REALISM VS. EVALUATIVE RELATIVISM
Flexibilism about values, by contrast, straightforwardly accounts for the truth of internalist claims of the (1) sort. With respect to the particular Lewisian proposal, flexibilism would hold that the following holds a priori and in virtue of the nature of goodness: (L) x is good iff we are disposed to value x under appropriately reflective conditions.
As Lewis himself states, something like (1) is indeed a consequence of the proposal: If something is a value, and if someone is of the appropriate "we", and if he is in ideal conditions, then it follows that he will value it. And if he values it, and if he desires as he desires to desire, then he will desire it [Lewis (1989), p. 72].
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The problem now is that flexibilism has relativistic consequences and hence falls short of constituting a realist position about values. The main idea behind relativism, [ take it, is that there are "essentially contestable" claims, in the domain in question. Following Crispin Wright (1992), one might say that relativism has it that it is conceivable that there are (irremovable) faultless divergences, in the domain, not constituted by anyone's being in the error in judging something false. With a little more detail: let us say that two subjects diverge in their judgments with respect to a given sentence-type iff they master it, one of them has a judgment she could express, in an ordinary situation, by uttering a token of that sentence with its conventional meaning, whereas the other has a judgment she could express, in an ordinary situation, by uttering a token of the negation of that sentence with its conventional meaning. So assume that 1'm tired but you're 110t: we both diverge in our judgments concerning "I'm tired" in the intended sense. Let us focus on the particular case of simple sentences: predications of a given predicate, i.e., the completion of the predicate by a singular term (or a singular definite descriptionj.f Let us say that this divergence in judgments with respect to a simple predication of a given predicate is irremovable iff it is not explainable in terms of (0 the contextdependence of the singular term (or description) expression-type; (ii) vagueness or other kinds of indeterminacies; or (iii) facts independent of the subjects in question. To illustrate: our previous divergence in our judgments concerning "I'm tired" is excluded by (i); our possible divergence in our judgments concerning "Fifl is pink'), provided Fill is a borderline case of pinkness, is excluded by (ii); and a divergence in judgments with "water covers more than half the Earth's surface" between me and my counterfactual self in a situation in which the Earth is almost dry is excluded by (iii). Finally, let us say that one such (irremovable) divergence is faultless if no-one is being thereby in error ofjudging something false. I propose to characterize relativism with respect to a domain thus: (R) Relativism concerning a predicate holds iff it is conceivable that two subjects irremovably faultlessly diverge in their judgments concerning a simple predication of the predicate. As suggested, I think that (R) captures well enough the intuition the traditional antirealist tries to exploit, according to which certain claims in a discourse are essentially contestable. (Relativism so characterized consists in there being conceivable irremovable divergences. This does not entail that those divergences actually occur. But it does not preclude it either. Factual relativism concerning a given predicate can be seen as the claim that the sort of irremovable divergences whose conceivability establishes relativism concerning it actually occur.)
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Now flexible response-dependence does entail relativism, so conceived, and hence, in particular, that values are flexible response-dependent properties vindicates evaluative relativism. The argument for the claim that if a predicate signifies a flexible response-dependent property, then relativism concerning it, in the sense of (R), follows, is indeed quite direct: any target situation whose proper intuitive description favors the flexible responsedependence of its signification contains the materials for a suitably irremovable divergence. 9 In SUfi, the second interpretation of McDowell's response can be claimed to satisfactorily respond to Mackie's argument from queerness, but it does entail a form of relativism about values. One might think that this is indeed the right interpretation. After all, in the discussed paper McDowell does say: "I can see no reason why we should not regard the contentiousness [of values] as ineliminable" [McDowell (1985), p, 145, fn. 46]. What about his explicit statements concerning the reality and genuineness of values? They would certainly be jeopardized, provided that realism is understood in a sufficiently exigent sense so as to be incompatible with relativism (and hence flexibility) although not requiring full objectivity (and hence counting dispositions to elicit mental responses as real). This is indeed, I think, a sensible sense, and it is the one I have taken for granted in this paper. But, sensible or not, it is certainly not the only conceivable sense. My guess is that McDowell might require less than this for reality, so that values qualify as genuine features in virtue of the relevant evaluative predications being truth-apt (against non-cognitivism), and some of them being true (against error-theorismj'" - and knowably so (against skepticism). This last remaining question seems to me to be merely about words and, in a way, temperament
LOGOS - Grup de Recerca en Logica, Llenguatge i Cognicio Universitat de Barcelona
Arche -AHRC Research Centrefor the Philosophy ofLogic, Language, Mathematics and Mind University of St Andrews St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland E-mail:
[email protected]
NOTES
~ Related material was presented at the LOGOS GRG (Barcelona 2003) and at the VI Taller d'Investigacio en Filosofia (Tarragona 2004). I would like to thank the
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audiences present at these occasions, as well as participants in the XIV InterUniversity Workshop on Philosophy and Cognitive Science: John McDowell (Murcia 2004), for fruitful discussion. 1 am particularly indebted to Nestor Casado, Josep Corbt, Esa Dfaz-Leon, Manuel Garcla-Carpintero, John McDowell, Kevin Mulligan, and Josep L. Prades for helpful suggestions and objections. The research presented in this article is supported in the framework of the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme "The Origin of Man, Language and Languages", the research project BFF2003-08335-C03-03 (Spanish Government), the research group 2001SGROOOl8 (Catalan Government), and my postdoctoral grant EX2004-1159 (Spanish Government), and I would like to express my gratitude to these institutions. 1 And, more recently, also Mark Johnston (2004). 2 I am assuming, in common with Kripke (1980), and many others in discussions on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science or metaethics, that the notion of rigidity might be extended to be applicable to predicates, roughly along the lines of: a predicate is rigid iff it signifies the same property in all relevant worlds. Proposals like this have recently received criticisms, among which: that it would trivialize, making all predicates trivially rigid, and that in any case it would over-generalize, counting as rigid some predicates that do not signify natural properties/kinds. 1 try to respond to these criticisms, respectively, in my unpublished "Rigidity for Predicates and the Trivialization Problem" and "Predicates Rigidly Signifying the 'Unnatural. '" In the latter I also argue that the relevant simple predicates like those that will concern us here, "is red," "is funny;' "is good" and the like are, nonetheless, rigid. Given this ( will speak of them signifying properties, without rclativizing such talk to worlds. 3 See previous footnote. 4 This section contains numerous (here pertinent) simplifying assumptions, the removal of which requires substantial elaboration. This is done in the first part of Lopez de Sa (2003). S For details, see Lewis (1989) and Lopez de Sa (2003). My view is that Lewis himself, however, would probably favor - as I would also do - the flexibilist position to be considered in the next section. 6 In my own view, it does crucially contribute to the case against realism about values, when placed in an appropriate and broader context. I hope to elaborate on this elsewhere. 7 In the original passage, instead of the inserted claims about moral values Brink makes claims about moral considerations and judgments, but I take it that he would certainly concur with what I say about properties and facts. 8 The reason for so doing is the following: a relativism that could be attacked merely by pointing to (the obviously not "essentially contestable") cases of "if that is good then it is good" is not worth considering. Silly as the observation may be, I think drawing attention to it serves to dissolve most of the usual claims which have it that relativism is, somehow, "self-refuting:" statements of the semantic features of the relevant predicates, which eventually entail that all simple predications are "essentially contestable," need not be themselves "essentially contestable." 9 For further details see again Lopez de Sa (2003). An evaluative relativism ofthis sort, it is often said, contradicts a basic platitude regarding conversations concerning the evaluative: ordinary participants are committed to regard utterances of "that is good" and "that is not good" as (literally) contradicting each other. Here is what Wright says:
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"If [Indexical RelativismJ were right, there would be an analogy between disputes of inclinations and the 'dispute' between one who says
REFERENCES
BRINK, D. (1986), "Externalist Moral Realism", Southern Journal ofPhilosophy, vol. 24,
pp.23-41. K. (1994), "Essence and Modality", Philosophical Perspectives, voL 8, pp. 1-16. GARCfA-CARPINTERO, M. (2002), "A Non-Modal Conception of Secondary Properties", plenary lecture at the ECAP4, Lund (Sweden). HOLLAND, S. (2001), "Dispositional Theories of Value Meet Moral Twin Earth", American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38, pp. 177-96. JACKSON, F. and PETTIT, P. (2002), "Response-Dependence without Tears", Philosophical Issues vol. 12, pp. 97-117. JOHNSON, R. (1999), "Internal Reasons and the Conditional Fallacy", Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 49, pp. 53-71. JOHNSTON, M. (1989), "Dispositional Theories of Value", Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, suppl, vol. 63, pp, 139-74. (2004), "Subjectivism and 'Unmasking'", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,vol. 69,PP. 187-201 LEWIS, D. (1989), "Dispositional Theories of Value", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. voL 63, pp. 113-38. Reprinted in Lewis, D. (2000), Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, from where I quote. LOPEZ DE SA, D. (2003), Response-Dependencies: Colors and Values, Ph.D. dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona. MACKIE, J.L. (1977), Ethics: inventing Right and Wrong, London, Penguin Books. McDoWELL, 1. (l985)l "Values and Secondary Qualities", in Honderich, T. (ed.), Morality and Objectivity, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Reprinted in McDowell, J., (1998), Mind, Value, & Reality, Cambridge, Harvard UniversityPress, pp. 13150, from where I quote. WEDGWOOD, R. (1998), "The Essence of Response-Dependence", European Review ofPhilosophy, vol. 3, pp, 31-54. WRIGHT, C. (1992), Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. - (2001), "On Being in a Quandary", Mind, vol. 110, pp. 45-98. FINE,
teorema Vol. XXV/I, 2006. pp, 211-214
Response to Dan Lopez de Sa
1. What Mackie finds queer about objective values is the idea of objective to-be-pursuedness, That wording of Mackie's, which Lopez de Sa quotes, plainly sounds a gerundive note. That which is to-be-pursued is that which should be pursued. This use of "should" introduces the idea of rationality. The internal connection with motivation that Mackie finds unintelligible, in anything that might be part of the fabric of reality, is an internal connection with rational motivation, motivation rationally grounded on an instance of objective to-be-pursuedness. I agree that the connection Mackie jibs at is not just the thought that objective values should elicit desires, but also the thought that they would elicit desires under certain conditions. But the conditions under which there would be these desires, according to the way of thinking Mackie attacks, would include a capacity, on the part of the subjects in question, to recognize instances of the objective to-be-pursuedness that would provide reasons for the desires. Values would elicit desires in those subjects on the basis of their recognition that desires are rationally called for by the values they recognize. Mackie's target is not the idea that confrontation with what is in fact an instance of a value would generate a suitable motivation in just anyone. That would certainly be a queer thesis, to put it mildly. But the queerness of that thesis is not the supposed queerness Mackie is concerned with. Mackie's target is the idea that confrontation with an instance of a value would generate a suitable motivation (aside from weakness of will and the like) in anyone who recognized that she was confronting an instance of the value in question. Mackie thinks the implied idea of something that is there to be recognized involves an unacceptable ontological inflation. Lopez de Sa gives this formulation of the motivational internalism that is part of the view Mackie attacks (he labels it "(IT): It is necessary and a priori that: If something is good, then we would desire it (under appropriate reflective conditions, weakness of will and the like aside). How is "we" meant here? What I have been urging could be put by saying that one does not give a counterexample to the thesis, in the sense in which something on these lines is part of Mackie's target, if one imagines a
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possible world in which we (you and I, say) lack whatever capacities a defender of objective values thinks are needed for someone to be able to recognize instances of goodness. To defend the claim that values are objectively there in the world against Mackie ~ s argument from queerness, one has no need to defend the crazy idea that even if someone is blind to values, the presence of instances of value in her vicinity will still make a difference to her desires. r think this undermines Lopez de Sa's ingenious argument, in his §HI, that a rigid response-dependence view about values cannot offer a reply to Mackie's argument. The rigidification to us as we are, in the rigid response-dependence thesis about values (L6pez de Sa's "dispositionalism"), needs to be understood with "as we are" including our possession of whatever capacities are needed for us to be capable of rational responsiveness to instances of value. In a possible world that contains us not necessarily as we are, we may not be disposed to value the things that are in fact valuable, since we may lack the capacity to recognize that they are valuable. (It does not make any difference to insist on appropriate reflective conditions. If in some possible world we are incapable of recognizing instances of value, no amount of reflection will bring our motivations in line with the way values are distributed in that world.) So, as L6pez de Sa argues, the rigid response-dependence thesis entails that its flexible counterpart is at best contingently true. But I have no need to dispute that It is no problem for thesis 0\ understood as it needs to be understood if it is to capture the role of motivational internalism in Mackie's argument. Thesis (I) needs to be understood with a-matching rigidification at the point where it mentions us. A possible world in which we are incapable of recognizing instances of value is no more a counterexample to thesis (1), so understood, than it is a counterexample to the rigid response-dependence thesis. 2. A rigid response-dependence thesis about values would be unacceptable if it did not accommodate the fact that our conception of what values there are and how they are distributed in the world is a work in progress. The thesis should not imply that we, as we are, already have everything straight in our value thinking. This is connected with a disanalogy that I insisted on when I proposed the analogy between values and colours. In the case of colours the relevant linkage with responses, which I invoked in order to capture the sense in which concepts of phenomenal colours are subjective, is set up by explaining colours in terms of dispositions to bring about those responses. But with values the linkage is with responses that are not merely elicited but merited. This is another way of coming at the point I urged in §1 above. If we explain values in terms of dispositions to elicit responses, we must not be thinking of responses that are brought about just anyhow by confrontation
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with valuable things. The eliciting of responses must be conceived as mediated by rationality. And once we are clear about that, we can see that the presence in reality of values, conceived as essentially response-dependent in that rationality-mediated way, is not threatened by possible worlds in which we lack the rational responsiveness to values that we in fact have. To suppose the reality of values is threatened by its being only contingent that we are rationally responsive to values would be like supposing that the reality of colours, explained by saying such things as that to be red 1S to be such as to look red to us in certain conditions of illumination, is threatened by its being only contingent that our vision is sensitive to differences in the wavelength of light. 3. I do not want to defend the flexible version of a response-dependence thesis about values, the topic of Lopez de Sa's §IV. The rigid version is immune to his argument, so there is no need to resort to the flexible version. But I do want to question a feature ofthe way he treats the flexible version. He suggests that to acknowledge that there are essentially contestable claims in some area is to accept relativism about judgements in that area. 1 think this could be correct only on a pointlessly thin interpretation of relativism. As I understand it, relativism about a range of judgements abandons the· idea that any of those judgements are susceptible of truth simpliciter (as opposed to "truth for so-and-so"), There are two things one might be saying if one says there are essentially contestable claims in, say, ethics. On neither of them does the acceptance of essential contestability imply abandoning truth-aptness for some claims in the area. One thing one might be saying is that there can be disputes in, say, ethics in which one person denies what another person says and both are blameless. This does not imply that no ethical claims are true. Perhaps there is truth even on the question under dispute in such a case, but it is beyond the reach of the investigative powers of the parties. If one insists, against this, on a construal of "blameless" according to which if there were truth on a question it would be discovered by a blameless inquirer, then a case of irresoluble failure to reach agreement between blameless parties is one in which a sentence that the parties can formulate is not susceptible of truth or falsity. But why should that seem to show that the same goes for ethical sentences in general? Another gloss on the thesis of essential contestability is that being right about something does not carry with it a guarantee that one will be able to persuade just anyone of one's conviction. Sometimes continuing to insist that one has the right answer may require one to suppose that those who resist persuasion are not blameless. But that does not seem right always. Someone may not be to blame, in any good sense, for her inability to recognize the cogency of an argument that is nevertheless genuinely cogent. That yields another con-
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strual of the idea of irresoluble disputes in which both parties are blameless. Truth is not out of one's reach, even though someone else may blamelessly refuse to accept one's judgement. So this version of the second gloss coalesces with a version of the first. In any case, if we take the thesis of essential contestability this way, what we are making of it is an acknowledgement that being in command of the truth does not by itself ensure an end to dispute. That is clearly not a relativistic abandonment of truth-aptness. As Lopez de Sa says, the objectivity 1 defend for evaluative claims consists in their being truth-apt, in some cases true, and in some cases knowably so. He suggests that in putting this construal on objectivity I am settling for a putative realism about the ethical that would be consistent with relativism. But this suggestion depends on that pointlessly thin interpretation of relativism. The truth I defend is truth, not the so-called "truth" expressed by talk of what is true for us, supposedly consistently with its not being true for someone else. I am not sure what more L6pez de Sa thinks one should want, in a defence of the idea that ethical statements stand a chance of capturing how things stand in reality. JOHN McDOWELL
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teOl'ema Vol. XXVJ1, 2006, pp. 215-225
Publicaciones de John McDowell*
a) LIBROS (1994) Mind and World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass; reeditado can una nueva introduccion en 1996. TRADUCCION ALEMANA: Geist und Welt, Paderborn, Munich, Vierra, Zurich: Schoningh, (1998). TRADUCCION ITALIANA: Mente e Mondo, Turin: Einaudi, (1999). TRADUCCION ESPANOLA: Mente y Mundo, Salamanca: Ediciones
Sigueme, (2003). TRADUCCION PORTUGUESA: Mente e Mundo, Aparecida: Ideias & Letras, (2005).
b) COLECCIONES DE ARTICULOS (1998) Mind, Value, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press. (1998a) Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
(2002) Wert und Wirklichkeit: Aufsiitze zur Moralphilosophie, Francfort: Suhrkamp. (Traducci6n realizada por Joachim Schulte, can una Introducci6n de Axel Honneth y Martin Seel, de siete de los articulos recogidos en Mind. Value, and Reality; vease McDowell (1998)) c) ARTicULOS, COMENTARIOS, NOTAS CRlTICAS, INTRODUCCIONES, RESPUESTAS
"Identity Mistakes: Plato and tile Logical Atomists", Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society LXX, pp. 181-195. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a).
(1969
R70)
(1976) "Comment" (sobre un articulo de F.B. Fitch), en Stephan Korner, ed., Philosophy ofLogic, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.196-20 1.
215
Bibliografla de John McDowell
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(Call Garetll Evans) "Introduction", en Gareth Evans y John Mclfowell, eds., Truth and Meaning, Oxford: ClarendonPress, pp., VTT-XXIIl. TRADUCCION ESPANOLA: "lntroducoion a Verdad y Significado", Cuadernos de Critica 37 (1984).
- "Truth Conditions, Bivalence, and Verificationism", en Gareth Evans y John McDowell, eds., Truth and Meaning, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 42-66. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a)~ pp., 3-28. (1977) "On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name", Mind LXXXVI,
pp.159-185. REIMPRESO en Mark Platts, ed., Reference Truth and Reality, Londrcs, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 141-166; en A. W. Moore, ed., Meaning and Reference, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993~ pp. 111-136 Y en McDowell (1998a), pp. 171-198. TRADUCCION ESPANOLA: "Sobre el Sentido y Ia Referencia de un Nombre Propio", Cuadernos de Crltica 20 (1983). (1978) "On 'The Reality of the Past'", en Christopher Hookway y Philip Pettit, eds., Action and Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 127-144. RBIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 295-313. -
"Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?", Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LII, pp. 13-29. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 77-94.
- "Physicalismand PrimitiveDenotation", Erkenntnis XlII, pp. 131-152. RElMPRESO en Platts, ed., Reference Truth and Reality, Londres, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 111-130 yen McDowell (l998a), pp. 132-156. (1979) "Virtue and Reason", The Monist LXII, pp. 331-350.
REIMPRESO en Stanley G. Clarke and Evan Simpson, eds., Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism, Albany: SUNY Press, 1989, pp. 87109yen McDowell (1998),pp. 50-73. (1980) "Quotation and Saying That", en Platts, ed., Reference Truth and Reality, Londres, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 206-37.
REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 51-86. - "Meaning, Communication, and Knowledge", en Zak van Straaten, ed., Philosophical Subjects: Essays on the Work of P. F. Strawson, Oxford: ClarendonPress (1980), pp. 117-139.
Bibliogrcfia de John McDowell
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REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 29-50. "The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics", Proceedings ofthe African Classical Associations xv, pp. 1-14. REIMPRESO en Amelio Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Ethics Berkeley, Los Angeles, Londres: University of California Press, pp. 359-376 yen McDowell (1998), pp. 3-22.
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(1981) "Anti-Realism and the Epistemology of Understanding", en Herman Parret y Jacques Bouveresse, eds., Meaning and Understanding, Berlin y NuevaYork: De Gruyter, pp. 225-248. RElMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 314-343. "Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following", en Steven Holtzman y Christopher Leich, eds., Wiugenstein: To Follow A Rule, Londres: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 141-162. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 221-262 TRADUCCION FRANCESA: "Non-cognitivisme et regles", en Archives de Philosophie 64 (2001), pp. 457-477. TRADuccrONITALTANA: "II non-cognitivismo e la questione del 'seguire una regola'", en Piergiorgio Donatelli y Eugenio Lecaldano, eds., Etica Analitica: Analisi, Teorie, Applicazionl, Milan: LED, (1996), pp. 159-182.
(1982) "Falsehood and Not-Being in Plato's Sophist", en Malcolm Schofield y Martha Craven Nussbaum, eds., Language and Logos: Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. 1. Owen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 115-134 "Truth-Value Gaps", en Logic, Methodology and Philosophy ofScience VI, Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 299-313. RElMPRBSO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 199-213. "Reason and Action, Ill", Philosophical Investigations v, pp. 301-305. "Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge", Proceedings of the British Academy LXVIII, pp. 455-479. REIMPRESO parcialmente en Jonathan Dancy, ed., Perceptual Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1988) y reimpreso en su totalidad en McDowell (1998b), pp. 369-394.
(1983) "Aesthetic Value, Objectivity, and the Fabric of the World", en Eva Schaper, ed., Pleasure, Preference and Value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-16.
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REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 112-130.
(1984) "Wittgenstein on Following a Rule", Synthese 58 (1984), pp. 325-363. A. W. Moore, ed., ed., Meaning and Reference, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 257-293; y en McDowell (1998), pp. 221-262.
REIMPRESO en
"De Re Senses", Philosophical Quarterly XXXIV, pp. 283-294. Tambien en Crispin Wright, ed., Frege: Tradition and Influence, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 98-109. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 214-227. (1985) "Values and Secondary Qualities", en Ted Honderich, ed., Morality and Objectivity, Londres: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 110-129. REIMPRESO ell McDowell (1998), pp. ] 31-150. "Functionalism and Anomalous Monism", en Ernest LePore y Brian Mcl.aughlin, eds., Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy ofDonald Davidson, Oxford; Blackwell, 1985, pp. 387-398. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 325-340.
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(1986) "Critical Notice: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, by Bernard Williams", Mind xcv, pp. 377-386. (con Philip Pettit) "Introduction", en Philip Pettit y John McDowell, eds., Subject, Thought and Context, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 1-15. "Singular Thought and the Extent ofInner Space", en Philip Pettit y John McDowell, eds., Subject, Thought and Context, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 137-168. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 228-259. (1987) "In Defence of Modesty", en Barry Taylor, ed., Michael Dummett: Contributions to Philosophy, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 59 REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998a), pp. 87-107. w80.
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"Projection and Truth in Ethics" (1987 Lindley Lecture), publicada por la Universidad de Kansas. RElMPRESA en McDowell (1998), pp. 151-166. (1988) "Comments on T. H. Irwin's 'Some Rational Aspects of Incontinence'", Southern Journal of Philosophy XXVII, Supplement, pp. 89-102. (1989) "One Strand in the Private Language Argument", Grazer Philosophische Studien 33/34, pp. 285-303.
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REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 279-296. "Mathematical Platonism and Dummettian Anti-Realism", Dialectica 43,pp.173-192. REIMPRESO en McDowell (l998a), pp. 344-365.
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"Wittgenstein and the Inner World" [resumen], Journal ofPhilosophy LXXXVI (1989), pp. 643-644.
(1990) "Peacocke and Evans on Demonstrative Content", Mind XCIX, pp. 311-322. -
"John Leslie Mackie, 1917-1981", en Proceedings of the British Academy LXXVI, pp. 487-498.
(1991) "Intentionality De Re", en Ernest LePore y Robert van Gulick, eds., John Searle and His Critics, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 215-225. REIMPRESO en McDowell (l998a), pp. 260-274. "Intentionality and Interiority in Wittgenstein", en Klaus Puhl, ed., Meaning Scepticism, Berlin y Nueva York: De Gruyter, pp.148-169. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 297-321. (1992) "Putnam on Mind and Meaning", Philosophical Topics xx, pp. 35-48. REIMPRESO en McDowell (l998a), pp. 275-291. -
"Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy", en Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., y Howard K. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy Volume XVTI: The Wittgenstein Legacy, Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, pp. 40-52. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 263-278. (1993) "Knowledge by Hearsay", en B. K. Matilal y A. Chakrabarti, eds, Knowing from Words, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 195-224. REIMPRESO en McDowel1 (l998a), pp. 414-443. "The Content of Perceptual Experience", Philosophical Quarterly XLIV, pp. 190-205. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp, 341-358,
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(1995) "Might there be External Reasons", en J. E. J. Altham y Ross Harrison, eds., World, Mind, and Value: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 68-85. RElMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 95-111.
Bibliografia de John McDowell
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"Eudaimonism and Realism in Aristotle's Ethics", en Robert Heinaman, ed., Aristotle and Moral Realism, Londres: University College London Press, pp. 201-18. "Knowledge and the Internal", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LV, pp. 877-893. REllViPRESO en Mcdowell (1998a), pp. 395-413
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(1996) "Deliberation and Moral Development in Aristotle", en Stephen Engstrom y Jennifer Whiting, eds., Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19-35. -"Two Sorts of Naturalism", en Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, y Warren Quinn, eds., Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 149-179. RETh1PRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 167-197. TRADuccroN ALEMANA: "Zwei Alien von Naturalismus", Deutsche Zeitschriftfiir Philosophiev, (1997), pp, 687-710. "Precis of Mind and World", y "Reply to Gibson, Byrne, and Brandom", en Enrique Villanueva, ed., Perception: Philosophical Issues, 7, Atascadero: Ridgeway, pp. 231-239 Y 283-300. -
"Incontinence and Practical Wisdom in Aristotle", en Sabina Lovibond y Stephen Williams, eds., Identity, Truth and Value: Essays for David Wiggins, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 167-197.
(1997) "Reply to Price", Philosophical Books 38, pp, 177-181. -
"Brandom on Representation and Inference", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LVII, pp, 157-162.
"Another Plea for Modesty", en Richard Heck, Jnr., ed., Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 105-129. REIMPRESO en Mcdowell (l998a), pp. 108-131.
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"Reductionism and the First Person", in Jonathan Dancy, ed., Reading Parfit, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 230-250. REIMPRESO en Mcfrowell (1998), pp. 359-382. (1998) "Some Issues in Aristotle's Moral Psychology", in Stephen Everson, ed., Companions to Ancient Thought: 4: Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107-28. REIMPRESO en McDowell (1998), pp. 23-49.
Bibliograjla de John McDowell
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"Referring to Oneself", ell Lewis E. Hahn, ed., The Philosophy ofP. F. Strawson, Chicago y Lasalle: Open Court, pp. 129-145.
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"Response to Crispin Wright", en Crispin Wright, Barry C. Smith, y Cynthia Macdonald, eds., Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 47-62. "Precis of Mind and World' y "Reply to Commentators", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LVIII, pp. 365-368 y 403-431. "The Constitutive [deal of Rationality: Davidson and Sellars", Critica xxx, pp. 29-48. "Having the World in View: Sellars, Kant, and Intentionality" (The Woodbridge Lectures, 1997), The Journal ofPhilosophy XCV, pp, 431-91. "Comment on Hans-Peter Kruger's paper", Philosophical Explorations I, pp. 120-125 (Comentario sobre el articulo de Hans-Peter Kruger, "The Second Nature of Human Beings: an Invitation for John McDowell to discuss Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology", ibid., pp. 107-119).
(1999) "Sellars's Transcendental Empiricism", en Julian Nida-Rumelin, ed., Rationality} Realism, Revision: Proceedings ofthe 3rd international congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy, Berlin y Nueva York: De Gruyter, pp. 42-51. -
"Scheme-Content Dualism and Empiricism", en Lewis E. Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Chicago y Lasalle: Open Court, pp. 87-104.
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"Comment", European Journal ofPhilosophy vii, pp. 190-193. (Comentario sobre el articulo de Robert B. Brandom, "Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel's Idealism", ibid., pp. 164-198.)
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"Evans, Gareth (1946-80)": entrada en la Encyclopaedia of PhilosoPaul. phy, Routledge and
(2000) "Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity", en Robert B. Brandom, ed., Rorty and His Critics, Malden, Mass. y Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 109-123. "Experiencing the World" y "Responses", en Marcus Willaschek, ed., John McDowell: Reason and Nature: Lecture and Colloquium in Munster 1999, Munster: LIT Verlag, pp. 3-17, 93-117.
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"Comments", en The Journal ofthe British Society for Phenomenology XXI, pp. 330-343 (un numero especial dedicado a la obra de McDowell). (2001) "Comment on Richard Schantz, 'The Given Regained'", en Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXII, pp. 181-]85. "Scheme-Content Dualism and Empiricism", en Petr Kotatko, Peter Pagin, y Gabriel Segal, eds., Interpreting Davidson, Stanford: CSLI Publications, pp. 143-54. (Se trata de una version abreviada del articulo publicado previamente en Hahn, ed., The Philosophy ofDonald Davidson; Chicago y Lasalle: Open Court, pp. 87-104.) TRADuccrON PORTUGUESA: "0 dualismo esquema-conteudo e empirismo", en Plinio J. Smith y Waldimiro 1. Silva Filho, eds., Significado, Verdade, Interpretacdo: Davidson e a Filosofia, Edicoes Loyola, Sao Paulo, (2005), pp. 33-50. "L'idealismo di Hegel come radicalizzazione di Kant", en Iride 34, pp. 527-548. RElMPRESO tambien en Luigi Ruggiu e Halo Testa, eds., Hegel Contemporaneo: la ricezione americana di Hegel a confronto con la traduzione europea, Milan: Guerini, (2003). -
"Moderne Auffassungen von Wissenschaft und die Philosophie des Geistes", en Johannes Fried und Johannes Stlssmann, Herausg., Revolutionen des Wissens: Von der Steinzeit bis zur Modeme, Munich: C. H. Beck, pp. 116-135. (Publicado previamente en la revista Philosophische Rundschau.)
(2002) "Knowledge and the Internal Revisited", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXIV, pp. 97-105. -
"Gadamer and Davidson on Understanding and Relativism", en Jeff Malpas, Ulrich Arnswald, y Jens Kertscher, eds., Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 173-194.
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"Responses" en Nicholas Smith, cd., Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, Londres yNueva York: Routledge, pp. 269-305. "How not to read Philosophical Investigations: Brandom's Wittgenstein", en R. Haller y K. Puhl, eds., Wittgenstein and the Future of Philosophy: A Reassessment after 50 Years, Viena: Holder, Pichler, Tempsky, pp. 245-256.
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(2003) "Hyperbatologikos cmpcirismos", Dejkalion 21/1, pp. 65-90. (Traducci6n al griego de "Transcendental Empiricism", articulo leido en el Pittsburgh/Athens symposium celebrado en 2000 en Rethymnon, Creta.) -
"Subjective, intersubjective, objective", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXVTI~ pp. 675-681. (Contribucion a un simposio sobre Donald Davidson.)
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"The apperceptive I and the empirical self: towards a heterodox reading of 'Lordship and Bondage' en Hegel's Phenomenology", Bulletin of the Hegel Society ojGreat Britain 47/48~ pp. 1-16.
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"Hegel and the Myth of the Given", en Wolfgang Welsch y Klaus Vieweg, eds., Das Interesse des Denkens: Hegel aus heutiger Sicht, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, pp. 75-88.
(2004) "Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind", en Mario de Caro y David Macarthur, eds., Naturalism in Question, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 91-105. (Articulo publicado previamente en traduccion alemana bajo el titulo "Moderne Auffassungen von Wissenschaft und die Philosophie des Geistes", en Johannes Fried y Johannes Sussmann, Herausg., Revolutionen des Wissens: Von der Steinzeit bls zur Moderne, Munich: C. H. Beck, pp. 116-135.) "Reality and Colours: Comment on Stroud", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research r.xvnt, pp. 395-400. -
"Sclbstbcstimmende Subjektivitat und externer Zwang", en Christoph Halbig, Michael Quante, y Ludwig Siep, eds., Hegels Erbe, Francfort: Suhrkamp, pp. 184-208.
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"Replies" a los articulos de un numero especial de la revista Theoria dedicado ala obra de Mcfrowell, Theoria LXX (2004)~ Part 2-3.
(2005) "Self-Determining Subjectivity and External Constraint", en International Yearbook o/German Idealism 3, pp. 21-37. -
"Motivating Inferentialism: Comments on Making it Explicit (Ch. 2)", en Pragmatics and Cognition 13~ pp. 121-140.
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"Replies" en Janos Boros, ed., Mind in World: Essays on John McDowell's Mind and World, Pees: Brambauer.
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"The True Modesty of an Identity Conception of Truth: A Note in Response to Pascal Engel", International Journal of Philosophical
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Studies, vol. 13, pp. 83-88. (Respuesta a Pascal Engel, "The False Modesty of the Identity Theory of Truth", International Journal of Philosophical Studies, voL 9 (2001), pp. 441-458.) "Evans's Frege", en Jose Luis Bermudez, ed., Thought, Reference} and Experience: Themes from the Philosophy ofGareth Evans, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 42-65. (2006) "The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument", Teorema, vol. xxv/I, pp. 19-33. "Responses" a los articulos del mimero especial de la revista Teorema, Aspects ofthe Philosophy ofJohn Mclroweil, Teorema xxv11.
d) TRADuccrONES Y COMENTARlOS DE TEXTOS CLA.SICOS (1973) Plato, Theaetetus, traducci6n y notas, Oxford: Clarendon Press. E) ENTREVISTAS
(2000) "Kant ist del' GroBte: John McDowell irn Gesprach mit Marcus Willaschek" (an interview); Information Philosophie (marzo 2004), pp.24-30. (2005) "Erfahruug und Natur" (entrevista de Jakob Lindgaard), Deutsche Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie 53, pp. 783-805.
e) EDITOR LITERARIO (1976) (can Gareth Evans), Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics) Oxford, Oxford University Press. (1982) Gareth Evans, The Varieties ofReference, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1986) (con Philip Pettit), Subject, Thought and Context, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
* teorema agradece la informacion proporcionada por John McDowell para la elaboraci6n de esta lista de publicaciones,
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LmROS RECIENTES DE PENSAMIENTO
PANORAMAS GENERALESDE LA FILOSOFIA CONTEMPORANEA FRANK JACKSON YMrCHAEL SMITH} The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy} Oxford} Oxford University Press 2006,916 pp.
Jackson y Smith, dos de los mas eminentes pensadores contemporaneos, han reunido en este volumen las contribuciones de mas de treinta especialistas que ofrecen una vision tematica general de las principales areas de investigacion filosofica de nuestros dias. Las secciones de la obra estan dedicadas a la filosofia moral, la filosofla social y politica, la filosofla de la mente y de la accion, la filosofla del lenguaje, la metafisica, la epistemologla y /a filosofia de la ciencia.
M. VALDE.s, Lurs ARENAS (COORDS.), El legado filosofico y cientifico del siglo xx, Madrid, Catedra, 2005, 1030 pp. Este libro relata la odisea del pensamiento filosofico y cientifico del siglo xx; can sus princtpales aventuras y conquistas. El desttno de la filosofla occidental en el siglo XX es el tema principal y mas extensamente considerado. Las dos primeras partes que 10 abordan van precedidas de amplias tntroducciones panoramicas, cuyo proposito es suministrar al lector, corno primera aproximacion, una rapida vision global que le permita profundizar fuego en los temas de su preferencia. Ademas de seguir este criteria de hipertexto, las obras claves de los principales filosofos son tomadas como elementos bdsicos 0 sillares del saber transmitido, de manera que el lector pueda disponer de microensayos 0 informes especiales sobre practicamente todos los libros de filosofia mas importantes del siglo pasado. Las cantribuciones de la tercera parte, dedicada al desarrollo de fa 16gica y la matemdtica y de las cienctas de fa naturaleza y la sociedad; han sido principalmente elaboradas por hombres de ciencia. Todos ellos han hecho el esfuerzo de dirigirse a un lector de cultura media que sepa mas de letras que de ciencias. La cuarta parte presenta, de forma separada, el pensamiento espahol del siglo xx. La quinta y ultima parte dellibro aborda el inexcusable estudio del pensamiento actual de las culturas no occidentales como la india. la china} la japonesa y MANUEL GARRIDO, LUIS
fa islamica.
LOGICA Y FIWSOFIA DE LA CIENCIA JAMES B. FREEMAN, Acceptable Premises. An Epistemic Approach to an Informal Logic Problem. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 416 pp, t! Cudndo se tiene justificacion para aceptar las premisas de un argumento? ~Cual es el criteria apropiado de aceptabilidad de una premisa? ;,puedejustificarse tal criterto epistemica 0 ftlosoftcamente? El libro de Freeman presenta por vez primera una teorfa comprehensiva de aceptabilidad de premisas y responde a las preguntas anteriores desde un enfoque epistemologico que el autor denomina "fundamentalismo
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