John Mcdowell has argued that we can understand much of what has occurred in modern philosophy as responses to a certain sort of philosophical anxiety that is expressed by the question: “How is empirical content so much as possible?” According to Mcdowell, the anxiety results from our temptation to accept two opposing thoughts: “first, that empirical content depends on answerability to impressions, and, second, that impressions could not be the kind of thing to which something could be answerable…” He claims that we are tempted to accept the latter thought because we view impressions as “a natural phenomenon.” If empirical content cannot be answerable to a natural phenomenon, then we cannot make sense of how empirical content is answerable to impressions so long as we assume that impressions are a sort of natural phenomenon.
In Mcdowell’s work, he attempts to overcome this philosophical anxiety but providing an account of impressions that empirical content can be answerable to. He attempts to do this showing how our temptation to accept the second thought, that impressions could not be answerable to a natural phenomenon, rests on an unwarranted conception of nature. Specifically, it depends on our modern assumption that nature is a realm that lies beyond the “space of reasons”. When we recognize that nature exists within that space, he argues, we can recognize how it is possible for empirical content to be answerable to impressions, understood as a natural phenomenon.
In my view, Mcdowell is right to identify a modern temptation to think that empirical content cannot be answerable to impressions. However, I think it is wrong to suppose that this temptation rests on an assumption that such content cannot be answerable to a natural phenomenon. Instead, I will argue that our resistance towards the notion of answerability to impressions is the result of a mistaken assimilation of indefeasibility and infallibility. In particular, the reason why we are tempted to think that empirical content cannot be answerable to impressions is because we assume that one cannot have indefeasible warrant without having infallible warrant. Because sensory impressions are not an infallible source of warrant, this assumption requires us to deny that they are sources of indefeasible warrant. In the absence of a recognized source of indefeasible warrant, we are led to the philosophical anxiety that Mcdowell describes. I will begin by describing how the assimilation of indefeasible and infallible warrant gives rise to what Mcdowell characterizes as an intellectual “oscillation” between coherentism and the myth of the given. I will then argue that this oscillation can only be overcome through an understanding of how it is possible to have indefeasible warrant without infallible warrant.
1. Infallibility And The Sensory Given
The appeal of modern philosophical empiricism stems from our conviction that knowledge about the natural world must be answerable to experience. When we reflect on our judgements about reality, the possibility of being satisfied with our beliefs, rather than abandoning them as unwarranted, depends on the possibility of arriving at a satisfying understanding of why we hold the beliefs that we do, in fact, hold. Throughout the history of modern philosophy, it has often been supposed that such an understanding could not be achieved as long as our beliefs were understood to rest upon a fallible basis. If our beliefs about the natural world are fallible, it is tempting to conclude that they might, for all we know, be wrong. After all, we could easily be led to an indistinguishable epistemic situation by an evil demon who is deceiving our senses. In such a case, although it would seem like we were experiencing genuine reality, we would be mistaken. But if this is possible, how can we be confident that we are not being deceived by our senses right now? Surely, many have supposed, we might be wrong when we take things to really be as they seem.
If sensory deception is possible, then taking one’s beliefs about the world to be based on how the world actually is does not ensure that they aren’t mistaken. In other words, our empirical judgements rest on a fallible basis. But if this is the case, how can we satisfy ourselves that what we believe is true? This question has led many philosophers to conclude that our empirical judgements must not be ultimately based on worldly facts that we can be deceived about. Instead, they have suggested, our empirical judgements have a different, infallible basis: Sense-Data.
Sense-data, according to empiricists, are an infallible basis for our empirical judgements because we cannot be mistaken when we take ourselves to be aware of them. Because they are an infallible source of knowledge, we cannot be deceived about them in the ways we might be deceived about the worldly facts of common sense. For this reason, we can satisfy ourselves that our beliefs based upon them are ensured to be true. In other words, they are an indefeasible basis for empirical knowledge.
The plausibility of this response to philosophical doubt was called into question by Wilfred Sellars, who described sense-data as a manifestation of the “myth of the given”. According to Sellars, the myth of the given is a pervasive form of philosophical error. In its sensory form, this myth is characterized in terms of an inconsistent triad:
A. x senses red sense content s entails x non-inferentially knows that s
is red.
B. The ability to sense sense contents is unacquired.
C. The ability to know facts of the form x is ø is acquired.
Empiricists who posit sense-data as an infallible basis of empirical knowledge are committed to endorsing this inconsistent triad because, if they abandon any of its claims, they are denying the features that enabled sense-data to serve as an infallible basis of knowledge in the first place.
If they abandon A, then they must ultimately deny that sensing sense-data is a basis for our empirical knowledge. However, if they abandon B, then they must ultimately deny that our knowledge of sense-data is infallible (Abandoning C has generally been viewed as a non-option). This is because, insofar as judgments about sense-data depend on acquiring the conceptual capacities associated with our general body of knowledge, they will not be entirely determined by the way things actually are with respect to those sense-data. Rather, what we think about our sense-data will depend, at least in part, on the concepts that we have learned to apply and the ways we have learned to apply them. But if that were the case, how could we satisfy ourselves that we had learned to apply the appropriate concepts in an accurate way? If we believe that the ability to know facts of the form x is ø is acquired, we have introduced the very sort of fallibility into our judgements about sense-data that they were supposed to avoid.
The myth of the given, in its sensory form, highlights the error of supposing that we can avoid fallibility in our empirical judgements by positing a basis that is immune to cases of illusion or hallucination. The fallibility of our empirical judgments does not result from the possibility of sensory deception alone. It also results from the fallibility of the conceptual capacities that we employ in forming sensory judgements. The myth of the given is the mythic belief in a basis of empirical knowledge that is simultaneously indefeasible and infallible.
Because sense-data are revealed to be untenable by reflecting upon the myth of the given, some philosophers have become convinced that we must abandon the thought that empirical judgements have a basis in objective reality. This is the “coherentism” that Mcdowell is keen to reject. According to this sort of coherentism, our judgements about the natural world are not answerable to that world at all. In other words, we must abandon our attempts to understand empirical judgments as beliefs based on how things actually stand (even if the coherentist can hold that most of our empirical beliefs will inevitably be true). But this position is just as unacceptable as a commitment to the myth of the given. If we cannot satisfy ourselves that our beliefs about the world are based on how things stand, then we cannot recognize any reason for thinking that things actually are as we believe them to be. We can imagine a person in this sort of predicament as one who might proclaim “Sure, I believe that there is a red car in the parking lot, but for all I know, it might be blue or there may be no car in the parking lot at all!” But a person who lacked commitment to the reality of a red car in this way would not be a person who believed in a red car in any serious sense at all. Their judgement about the red car would simply dissolve in the light of critical reflection upon their reasons for belief. The problem with coherentism is not that it fails to explain why our beliefs count as knowledge. Instead, the problem is that it fails to explain why our beliefs count as beliefs. The person who accepts coherentism is a person who does not take on any reflectively robust commitments about how things actually stand in mind-independent reality. While such a person might be said to have beliefs in a sense that is of interest to cognitive science or psychology, they do not have the sort of beliefs that modern philosophy has sought to preserve and justify since its inception.
2. Infallibility And Indefeasibility
The flight to coherentism is brought about by a conviction that experience cannot provide us with an appropriate basis for our empirical judgment. This conviction, in turn, stems from the thought that an appropriate basis for empirical judgements must be infallible. In this section, I will argue that this thought is the fundamental mistaken assumption that gives rise to the philosophical anxiety identified by John Mcdowell.
The idea that our basis for empirical knowledge must be infallible can seem persuasive at first. If we could be in an indistinguishable epistemic situation and still be wrong in our beliefs, then it is difficult to see how our epistemic situation in cases of veridical perception could ever be sufficient to ensure that our beliefs about the world are true. The key assumption, shared by philosophers who credit this apparent difficulty, is that an epistemic situation is something that we can always recognize as such. If this assumption is granted, then cases of indistinguishable illusions or hallucinations must involve the same sort of epistemic situation that obtains in cases of veridical experience. Consequently, our evidence in veridical cases of experience cannot be different from our evidence in non-veridical cases. Since our evidence in non-veridical cases of experience fails to establish that things actually are as they seem, this assumption entails that our evidence in veridical cases fails in this way as well. In other words, our basis for empirical judgements about mind-independent reality must not be indefeasible.
However, as Mcdowell has famously argued, it is a mistake to assume that we are always in a position to recognize the evidence that is available to us. It is perfectly consistent to suppose that veridical cases of experience provide us with evidence that we do not have when we are subject to illusions or hallucinations. In the latter cases, although we might take ourselves to have indefeasible evidence for our empirical judgements, we are simply mistaken. In contrast, when we form empirical judgements in veridical cases of perception, we have and take ourselves to have indefeasible evidence that conclusively establishes the truth of our beliefs.
This sort of view might be resisted on the grounds that it does not explain how we are able to satisfy ourselves that our empirical judgements are true. One might wonder, “How can I be certain that I believe there is a red car in the parking lot because there is a red car in the parking lot?”
But this worry simply commits the same mistake that was already addressed: Just like empirical judgements can be known, in good cases, on an indefeasible basis, so can beliefs about my reasons for judgment. In good cases, when I reflect upon the basis of my empirical knowledge, I know my reasons for belief on the basis of indefeasible evidence. In bad cases, neither my empirical knowledge nor my judgment about my reasons for belief has an indefeasible basis. Even though they are indistinguishable “from the inside”, the good and bad cases are different in this way.
Modern philosophy has long supposed that our empirical judgements can’t be based on indefeasible evidence because our perceptual judgements are fallible. This supposition, in turn, was the result of a conviction that we must base our beliefs about the world upon an infallible foundation in order to overcome the threat posed by skeptical doubt. But this is a mistake. In the good cases, our fallible cognitive faculties can provide us with indefeasible evidence for our judgements about the world.
In his work, Mcdowell has sought to diagnose a form of anxiety that results from the characteristic assumptions of modern philosophy. In light of the considerations above, we can, instead, recognize that the assumptions of modern philosophy are themselves a product of anxiety. They result from a felt need to rule out, once and for all, the possibility of forming misguided beliefs about the world. Since this desire cannot be satisfied by fallible cognitive faculties, modern philosophers sought for some alternative, but there is no alternative to be found. Rather than calling our knowledge of the world into question, philosophers should reassess the anxious desire for security at the root of our modern assumptions.
