Comments On “Knowledge And The Internal”

 

In his essay, “Knowledge And The Internal”, John Mcdowell provides a series of theses and optional views that one might affirm about the nature of perceptual knowledge:

Thesis 1 (The Internalist Thesis): We can only reason on the basis of appearances and our rational principles.

Option 1 (The Skeptical View): Reasoning on the basis of appearances and our rational principles cannot result in knowledge of the external world.

Option 2 (The Rationalist View ): Reasoning on the basis of appearances and our rational principles can result in knowledge of the external world all on its own. 

Option 3 (The Hybrid View): Reasoning on the basis of appearances and our rational principles cannot result in knowledge of the external world all on its own, but can result in knowledge of the external world if it produces beliefs that correspond with reality. 

Thesis 2 (The Idealist Thesis): We can reason on the basis of what is the case and rational principles:

Option 1 (The Idealist View): Reasoning on the basis of what is the case and rational principles can result in knowledge of the external world.

According to Mcdowell’s idealist view, appropriate reasons for forming perceptual judgements are located in the external world, rather than in our heads, and perceptual judgements formed on the basis of these reasons can be instances of genuine knowledge. This conclusion does not immediately force us to draw any further conclusions about the nature of perception. In particular, it does not force us to conclude that perceptual states are essentially characterized in terms of representational contents. For all that this paper establishes, there may be a way to understand how perception provides us with reasons of the right sort without involving representational content in any important sense.

In order to move from Mcdowell’s idealist view to a view about perceptual content, we need to identify what sorts of conditions must be satisfied in order for a perceptual judgment to be formed for appropriate reasons. We can begin by providing some remarks about rational belief in general. 

When we form a belief on the basis of certain reasons, this often involves a transition from beliefs that represent those reasons to a belief that represents some conclusion. For example, before John concluded that Socrates is mortal, he first held the beliefs that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man. These latter beliefs represented his reasons for drawing the conclusion that Socrates is mortal. In this case and many others, it appears that a precondition for believing something on the basis of reasons is the existence of conceptual states that represent the reasons that we are responding to. 

What explains this apparent precondition? One plausible proposal is that, in order to form appropriate beliefs in response to the evidence provided by certain facts, we must have conceptual representations of those facts available for our rational faculties to operate upon. Properly functioning rational faculties are what govern truth-preserving transitions between our cognitive states. They do this by operating upon those states in light of the distinctive conceptual contents that those states possess. Without conceptual representations of our reasons for belief, there would not be any way for the evidence provided by those reasons to make a relevant impact on our belief-forming mechanisms. 

If we accept that conceptual representations of our reasons for belief are a genuine precondition for making judgements on the basis of those reasons, we can then apply this insight to issues involving perception. 

Because of this precondition, perception can only put me in a position to believe on the basis of good reasons if it involves an appropriate conceptual state. The most natural conclusion to draw from this is that perception itself is a conceptual state that represents the reasons it supplies for our beliefs. When I perceive that the car is red, my reason for believing that the car is red is the fact that the car is red. This fact is included in what my perceptual state represents by virtue of its conceptual content. This is why, in accordance with Mcdowell’s idealist view, perception can supply reasons for belief that are nothing other than the worldly facts we are perceiving. 

One might object to the sort of view sketched above by denying that our reasons for belief are ever worldly facts. One might hold, with Donald Davidson, that “nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief”. If reasons for belief cannot be anything besides other beliefs, perception cannot open us up to reasons that lie beyond our own minds even in principle. 

I think that Davidson’s claim is mistaken. Although other beliefs are required in order for us to *have* reasons for belief, they are not *the same* as those reasons. In an ideal case of reasoning, our beliefs are what enable us to be rationally responsive to worldly facts. It is those facts that serve as our genuine reasons, not the beliefs that represent them. This reflects our common self-understanding of why we believe things. John believes that Socrates is mortal because all men are mortal and Socrates is a man. He does *not* believe that Socrates is mortal because he *believes* that all men are mortal and Socrates is a man. John’s actual reasons are worldly facts that establish the truth of his belief. This is why he presents them to justify his conclusion about Socrates. 

Another possible objection is presented by reasoning based on false beliefs. In cases of perceptual illusion, we seem capable of making justified inferences on the basis of false beliefs about what is in our environment. If we appeal to worldly facts that do not actually exist as our reasons for perceptual judgement, how can there be any justifiable inferences at all in such situations? What distinguishes a rational response to undetectable illusion from an irrational response? 

I think the appropriate thing to say here is that, in these cases, people are mistaken about their reasons for belief. Although someone suffering an illusion might claim that their perceptual beliefs are based on how things are in their environment, this isn’t actually true. Those beliefs are actually explained by an inaccurate perceptual state that represents their environment as being a certain way. Similarly, if Paul falsely believes that John is a scoundrel because all lawyers are scoundrels and John is a lawyer, then, since John is not a lawyer, it is Paul’s *belief* that John is lawyer, rather than the fact, that partially explains his conclusion. When we form judgements based on false beliefs, we are mistaken about what actually explains our judgments. Although we think that our judgements are explained by worldly facts, they are actually explained by our false beliefs. In these sorts of cases, we sometimes say that a person is justified, despite lacking knowledge, because they formed appropriate beliefs on the basis of the evidence as it appeared to them. Justification applies to beliefs that would have been knowledge if the subject had not been undetectably deceived. 

In conclusion, this version of Mcdowell’s idealist view claims that perceptual states represent the external world and supply us with reasons for belief by virtue of their conceptual content. In good cases, perception puts us in touch with what is actually the case and allows us to be rationally influenced by reality. In bad cases, it causally explains our perceptual judgments without producing knowledge.