August 15, 2012

McDowell and the Challenge of Skepticism – II

This aim of this paper is to elucidate some points of contention between the skeptical view and that of John McDowell regarding knowledge and justification of our claims about the external world. What justifies the move from our perceptual experiences to infer knowledge of the external world based on those experiences in light of the fact that, for example, perception of an apple can present us with the same visual appearance as an illusory or a hallucinatory experience of one, that is with and without the object or fact obtaining externally?

McDowell’s approach to skepticism, in so far as perceptual knowledge is concerned, by his own account, is diagnostic. And “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.”[1] What leads to this skepticism, he argues is the Argument from Illusion, which posits that since in deceptive cases of illusion and hallucination, we are not directly aware of the object or fact, i.e., the object is not there or its appearance does not match its reality, there is no direct access to the facts in the veridical cases either. That is because what is available to the subject phenomenally appears the same in both veridical and deceptive cases; the object of experience is what is common to both, i.e. their ‘highest common factor.’ The corollary of this argument is that we only experience appearances, and can never go from how things appear to us to how they actually are in the world which makes our knowledge of the external world problematic.[2]

McDowell does not attempt a direct answer to skepticism, rather he sees his task as dislodging the prop on which it stands; the prop being that because experience cannot reveal reality to us, i.e., how things are, it cannot provide the grounding for justification of our perceptual claims.[3] So one of the pillars on which the skeptical claim rests, in McDowell’s view, is the untenability of external facts being directly available to the subject, a view which he attempts to disabuse the skeptics of in presentation of his Disjunctive Conception.

Disjunctive Conception

So in order to resolve the skeptical predicament regarding the knowledge of the external world, he proposes a transcendental argument, central to which is his disjunctive conception of perception. McDowell states:

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.[4]

He offers the Disjunctive Conception (DC) to replace the Highest Common Factor (HCF) conception, which he sees at the root of the problem. The Highest Common Factor conception suggests that both deceptive and non–deceptive scenarios share the same mental states or consciousness and therefore content, the consequence of which is that in experience we’re only aware of mere appearance, which is always less than the fact, thus making knowledge of the external world difficult if not impossible.[5]

According to McDowell’s Disjunctive Conception, perceptual experience either reveals an objective state of affairs, i.e., the fact being manifest or a mere appearance where it merely seems that way. In the former, the ‘good’ side of the disjunct, what we have in experience is more than an appearance, it is the fact being disclosed to the subject as the world is open in experience and not “blankly external”[6] to one’s subjectivity[7]. There is an “unmediated openness”[8] between the subject and object, which is supposed to eliminate the gulf between the subject and the world that the HCF model seems to suggest. One is directly in contact with the world in which the content of experience is the content of the world.

He also introduces the notion of objective purport, which suggests that the nature of perceptual experience is to present objective reality so it can only make sense in relation or accordance to an objective external world.[9] “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,” he states.[10] So to make the notion of objective purport intelligible, we have to conceive of genuine perceptual experiences, which he calls the “epistemically distinguished class of experiences,”[11] that reveal to us things as they are. The significance of objective purport is that it purports to be of an objective reality, so there has to be some objective reality that it purports to be about. And without the existence and possibility of the veridical experiences, the very notion would fail to make sense. In the “epistemically distinguished class of experiences” the way we perceive things is the way they are, and the deceptive episodes or ‘bad” disjuncts are supposed to be the misleading instances of that class.

There is a commonsensical force behind his argument here. If our experiences have objective purport, it means that they are supposed to be, or purport to be of objective reality. And so does it make sense that they never reveal objective reality to us and we never have access to it? I take that as suggesting that it would not make much sense to consistently deny having direct access to the objective state of affairs while holding onto the notion of objective purport; that is to never experience things as they are. If we accept and acknowledge objective purport, it’s only rational to accept Disjunctive Conception and the “epistemically distinguished class of experiences” which put us in touch with how the world really is. So the justification of our perceptual beliefs lies in the rationality and intelligibility of veridical cases and in our direct access to the world, which entails the truth, and the fact made manifest.

However, not everyone agrees with the idea that having objective purport can contribute to our justificatory status or making sense of having direct perceptual access to facts. Crispin Wright has argued that even deceptive cases have objective purport which is why we confuse them with veridical cases.[12] But McDowell here seems to be pointing to something deeper, which is that the very notion of objective purport would not make sense without any experience that is of objective reality and perhaps the fact that all experiences seem to have objective purport is the very reason that makes the veridical cases more significant.

He also states that although skepticism in question acknowledges objective purport, it still regards experiences in terms of the HCF model and nothing more than appearances, which could always deviate from the way things are. The HCF model treats all appearances the same as potentially lacking and insufficient to confer knowledge. But, McDowell argues, objective purport is a reason to favor the ‘good’ disjunct, which has a different epistemic significance in that it can give us knowledge.

The HCF conception is based on a seemingly unquestionable claim, as McDowell puts it, which is the first-person, subjective viewpoint regarding the indistinguishable appearance of a veridical and non-veridical experience. But that has to be construed as no more than an “undeniable fact that our capacity to get to know things through perception is fallible,”[13] he insists. However, this “undeniable fact” is used to claim that the content of the experience in both veridical and non-veridical are the same (HCF), a claim which he rejects. But what he suggests is that even with the inability to distinguish between the deceptive and non-deceptive types of experiences, the epistemic status and position of the subject differ in the two scenarios. He further argues that phenomenal sameness should not be equated with epistemic sameness and introduces his Disjunctive Conception to break the connection from subjective indistinguishability to the Highest Common Factor conception. [14]

What is foundational to McDowell’s argument is this idea of “openness to the world”[15] in experience, which is supposed to replace the notion of a veil that intervenes between the subject and the external world. In perception, “the layout of reality”[16] is supposed to be open to us and what we encounter in experience is what is the case in the world, so there is no longer a dilemma about how it is possible to cross the gap between appearances and reality. He thinks direct access is sufficient for justification and to remove the skeptical predicament of experience never revealing reality. Whereas Wright contends “whether our perceptual faculties engage the material world directly is one issue and whether the canonical justification for perceptual claims proceeds through a defeasible inferential base is another.”[17] Wright argues merely having direct perceptual access does not confer justification about our claims to knowledge because “there are other necessary conditions that need to be met before apprehension can underwrite warranted belief.”[18] “For to lay claim to the latter knowledge, I have to lay claim to the relevant episode of awareness as one of genuine sensory experience. The mere fact of perceptual apprehension, if that is what it is, cannot per se make it rational to claim that that is what it is,” he remarks [19] This points to the very meaning and context of openness as well as what constitutes the fact of openness, which becomes critical on closer inspection.[20]  He further talks of McDowell “treating sheer apprehension as the “canonical warrant”[21] for perceptual claims. I would say it is not just a case of assertion of “mere fact of perceptual apprehension,” on McDowell’s part, but what is behind it or gives it legitimacy, i.e., a reason (whether adequate or not) to take our “mere fact of perceptual apprehension” as true.

But whether openness is enough for justification is a worthwhile notion to investigate, for one can construe this openness as a metaphysical relation to things that lie outside one’s control since the epistemic relation seems the same. For without the epistemic relation being the same there would be no question of deception and fallibility. But for McDowell, epistemic relations entail more than phenomenal accessibility as the epistemic terrain extends farther than what the subject can perceptually recognize.  (More on this point later.)

Subjective Indistinguishability (SI)

While McDowell finds the Highest Common Factor conception and the Argument From Illusion to be the culprits that lead to skeptical scenarios, many skeptics build their arguments on the fact of phenomenal indistinguishability. The skeptics could argue that we can reject the Highest Common Factor conception and concede Disjunctive Conception, but the issue remains that we are unable to discern a veridical from a non-veridical experience, which forms the basis of their arguments. For even if we grant this openness, that does not eliminate the fact of perceptual indiscernibility between deceptive and veridical cases. The problem remains that when we are caught in a ‘bad’ disjunct, we will not be able to ascertain that, regardless of how rational it is to take our experiences as veridical. So is the sheer intelligibility of our phenomenal experiences enough to overcome this predicament where the sheer perception stands as an obstacle?

And although McDowell concedes the issue of SI, he seems to downplay its significance as nothing more than the case of fallibility. Yet merely construing it as perceptual fallibility does not allay skeptical concern because it is the very nature of that fallibility that can keep us in the dark regarding the state of the external world as it is that fallibility that makes us unaware of what disjunct obtains in each particular case, which preoccupies the skeptic. So the move from subjective indistinguishability to Disjunctive Conception seems to fall short of its aim since the latter is only supposed to replace the Highest Common Factor conception. And even if we accept the Disjunctive Conception over the Highest Common Factor conception, the problem of subjective indistinguishability still seems to loom over our conception of what it means to be in direct contact with the fact without a conscious cognitive access to it from the epistemic and traditionally subjective vantage point. The skeptic insists that objective purport and having veridical experiences are not the issue, since regardless of the fact, we cannot determine which disjunct obtains at any given point.[22] And without addressing subjective indistinguishability properly, the notion of having direct access to the state of affairs cannot seem to gain its proper weight as the skeptic believes that it precludes any warrant regarding our perceptual experiences. So how does direct access help here if it leaves SI intact short of complete re-conceptualization of the subjective and the sphere of reason?

As we see Wright argues:

But for what it is worth, if diagnosis is the objective, then it needs to be recognized that the basic, troubling thought in the vicinity is not that dreaming, hallucination, and veridical experience are all states of the same kind, distinguished only by their causes. It is, rather, exactly what Descartes said: that there are no “conclusive indications” by which to tell these states apart, and that this imperils our right to claim what we take to be our normal, commonplace cognitive achievements which depend on it being the ‘good’, rather than the alternative, ‘bad’ kinds of state that we normally occupy. It is the supposedly possible phenomenology of subjective indistinguishability, rather than a supposed Highest Common Factor conception, that is at the base of the problem. Once the root concern is thus properly identified, it should be obvious that the Disjunctive Conception has no materials to address it.[23]

Others such as Simon Glendinning and Max De Gaynesford form their concern in this way:

We are to suppose that this subject’s best theory of his or her current perceptual standing (the appearance that such and such is the case) is that it 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.” They continue: “For, on the basis of any given subject’s perceptual standing (that is, on the basis of ‘what is given’ to its experience) there is no way for it to provide any adequate grounds for ‘insisting’ that either option is in fact true.[24]

They also add:

McDowell concedes to the tradition that he ‘can allow what is given to experience in the two sorts of case [non-deceptive and deceptive] to be the same in so far as it is an appearance that things are thus and so’ (1982, 475). Our view is that the italics do not prevent his account from conceding too much. For, from this point of departure, it seems impossible to avoid the threat of skepticism.[25]

And so the skeptical worry stands. Although McDowell would object to this, the above comments show a rather widespread stance regarding the importance of subjective indistinguishability for skeptical position and any adequate counter argument should attempt a resolution to this dilemma. It is obvious here that the concern is that we can never get passed the appearances, not whether we have veridical or non-veridical cases that Disjunctive Conception is proposing, but the previous step, on which it is based. Even when the Highest Common Factor conception is removed, it is a step too late for the question is not whether we have genuine experiences at all but knowing when we do and when we don’t. However, although McDowell uses Disjunctive Conception and objective purport to argue that direct access to facts is enough to give us rational justification to take them as true and veridical, his argument needs to be further clarified and refined in light of these objections as some of McDowell’s responses do not seem to throw much light on the issue as when he states:

A more deep-seated temptation towards the ‘highest common factor’ conception might find expression like this: ‘Ex hypothesi a mere appearance can be indistinguishable from what you describe as a fact made manifest.  So in a given case one cannot tell for certain whether what confronts one is one or the other of those.  How, then, can there be a difference in what is given to experience, in any sense that could matter to epistemology?’…”  Then he goes on to say: “When someone has a fact made manifest to him the obtaining of the fact contributes to his epistemic standing on the question.  But the obtaining of the fact is precisely not blankly external to his subjectivity.[26]

I take it that the suggestion is that in the “good” disjunct, the fact is present in experience and not external to the subject’s view point. But one is still left wanting for a more direct and engaged answer to the dilemma that subjective indistinguishability poses. What does it mean for the fact to be made manifest, when one does not recognize it perceptually, the way it appears to one phenomenally?  We could accept that truth is not exhausted by Highest Common Factor conception, but whether there is a correspondence with the fact, is not something that we would know while having an experience. So how does he go from the fact of subjective indiscernibility to “not blankly external” to subjectivity, which is favoring the “good”?  For as far as the perceptual phenomenon is concerned for the subject, one is still not in a position to answer whether the appearance is a mere appearance or the fact being manifest through the sensory aspect of the experience and its phenomenal features.

McDowell could respond by insisting that that is only true on the basis of “what is given” to us perceptually, but not rationally. His position here seems to be that we can only make sense of the phenomenology of our perceptual experiences, in general, if we take them to be true. The combination of direct access to the facts and objective purport give more weight to the intelligibility and rationality of giving primacy to veridical aspects of our experiences. He believes that notwithstanding subjective indistinguishability, it’s rational to believe that our perceptions put us in touch with the state of actual affairs because our experiences as a whole would not make sense otherwise. It is an emphasis on the underlying logic of phenomenal perception itself rather than how it is presented to us, as the nature of phenomenology itself points us toward the logic of taking our experiences to be veridical. In short, intelligibility gives us the entitlement to favor the “good. So one could say that my experience is such that the only way to make sense of it is to take it as veridical and I have no positive evidence that it is not veridical, which may be enough to give me justification for my beliefs about the environment in that if I see a jaguar in front of me, I have reason to believe that there is a jaguar in from of me.

So the only way to make sense of McDowell’s position is to consider that there are other subjective and epistemic components, besides the sensory aspect of the experience, that contribute to one’s subjectivity involving perhaps the phenomenal character in a different way and from a different perspective, such as its intelligibility or objective purport. What he seeks to do is to interject a rational element into the trajectory of the argument here before it has a chance to end up on the path to the skeptical scenario. McDowell would do well to focus no clarifying his view here. Rather than focusing on the Highest Common Factor conception, the point that should be brought out and elucidated more is the role of SI, which does not exhaust one’s epistemic access and standing; that subjective distinguishability emphasizes one’s perceptual capabilities, but there are other epistemic modalities that is open to one’s subjectivity, which is critical to his argument. It is not only sensory impressions and information that constitute our epistemic status, but other rational components that put those impressions in a wider context.

In response to objections involving SI, he states:

But that misses the point.  An objection on these lines would be appropriate if I were aiming to answer traditional skeptical questions, to address the predicament of traditional philosophy.  That is the predicament in which we are supposed to start from some anyway available data of consciousness, and work up to certifying that they actually yield knowledge of the objective world.  Of course if that is our predicament, we need to answer the traditional skeptical questions before we can talk of openness to the world.  But my talk of openness is a rejection of the traditional predicament, not an attempt to respond to it.[27]

It is true that we could not establish that we are open to facts in any given case; at any rate not to the satisfaction of a determined sceptic, who can always insist on exploiting fallibility to give bite to the question how we can know the present case is one of the non-misleading ones.  But that is beside the point.  It would matter if it showed that the very idea of openness to fact is unintelligible, and it does not show that.  For any present purposes, the sheer intelligibility of the idea is enough.[28]

Intelligibility Factor

Here he clearly emphasizes the notion of intelligibility that is foundational to his justification account. But is the rationality factor of our phenomenology enough to justify openness to facts and the intelligibility of openness to facts enough to undermine SI? While the skeptic focuses on the perceptual aspect of phenomenology that appears the same in both disjuncts, and seems to give no reason for favoring one side as oppose to another, McDowell tries to highlight the rational aspect of our phenomenology itself, which makes sense of giving primacy to the “good” side of the disjunct. The objective purport points to the rationality of taking our experiences to be associated with an external reality, to purport to be of some external world. In that regard, it favors the veridical over the non-veridical. Even if all experiences on both sides have objective purport as Wright proposes, that itself emphasizes the side that actually involves the objective reality. So while the skeptic argues that our perceptual experiences cannot provide sufficient evidence for our beliefs regarding the external world because they are perceptually and subjectively indiscernible from their deceptive counterparts, i.e., illusory or hallucinatory experiences, McDowell claims that experience does in fact give us reason for our beliefs because of the intelligibility of objective purport and phenomenology itself, notwithstanding SI.

We can hardly refrain from conceding the importance of this rational factor that McDowell proposes. Intelligibility can give us a rational basis for justification, a basis to judge our experiences as veridical in the absence of contradictory evidence.  But is it enough for knowledge?

Knowledge and infallibility

When we talk of knowledge being justified true belief, the degree of justification is never ascertained. Although typically, infallibility is not required for knowledge, how much justification is sufficient to constitute knowledge? This is a rather difficult question to answer.  But when we reject infallibility that is the questions that we would be left with.

The classical tripartite conditions of knowledge being “true justified belief” have shown to be deficient as exemplified by the Gettier cases[29]. So there is an additional condition that needs to be met for one to claim knowledge of the external world. The fourth condition of justification could be an entitlement to certainty which precludes luck from an account of knowledge. And it is proposed here that the only sure way to eliminate luck from one’s possession of knowledge is a complete justification or infallibility factor that amounts to a knowing condition.[30]

As stated, the justification that McDowell offers is entailed in the external fact being present in our experience when the world is open to us. And the truth condition for knowledge is met as long as our perceptual belief corresponds to reality, but whether that is the case or not is a matter of happenstance and luck. Because of the intelligible underpinning of the phenomenal experiences, it makes sense to take them as veridical, and the fact itself entitles us to claim justification for our beliefs. But that is not a state of affairs that is open to the subject perceptually at the moment that one may be undergoing an illusory or a hallucinatory experience.  In the case of “good” disjunct, the fact is included in the experience and experience entails the truth of our beliefs, and we have infallibility. But only in veridical cases, do we have infallible or sufficient justification, which is a matter of luck. So it is left to luck whether our beliefs (though justified in either case) do in fact have a basis in reality to give us knowledge. This seems to come at a high price. Perhaps in everyday matters, when not much is at stake whether I’m having a genuine perception of a tree or a star or a mere illusion of one that may be tolerable, but when that fallibility pertains to the basis and veracity of all my experiences, all my waking moments, then perhaps it is not as easy a task for me to casually lay claim to knowledge.

And although infallibility is not a typical requirement for knowledge, luck is widely considered to undermine knowledge and on the account that McDowell proposes, we see luck playing a major role in our acquisition of knowledge. To exclude luck it seems we would need complete justification. A positive claim to knowledge entitles one to be sure, and that is what is fundamentally lacking in McDowell’s account, which stands as a barrier to the reconciliation of his view with skepticism. The phenomenal intelligibility argument gives us some reason and justification, but not enough for knowledge where we need to be sure of the veracity of our belief. And short of complete justification (100%), there is room for luck to enter, which can undermine epistemic responsibility. To the degree that our justification falls short of 100% is the degree that there is room for luck to enter.

McDowell states his position on infallibility as follows in response to Wright:

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. t 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.[31]

This suggests that we do not know if or when one is going through “an experience that belongs to the ‘good’ side of the disjunction” so the acquired knowledge is only through luck. McDowell is claiming infallible knowledge on account of a “good” disjunct being present. But when the “good” disjunct is present to give us infallible knowledge, it involves luck, which he calls a favor from the world. He further continues: “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.”[32] Here his claim seems to refer to the whole disjunction giving us indefeasible basis for the justification of our perceptual claims, which is, in fact, favoring the “good” disjunct. The difficulty with subjective indistinguishability is that it does not allow us to go from the whole disjunction to favoring the “good.”

He also remarks:

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.[33]

The entitlement to the “good” disjunct is what a skeptic would contend being focused on the perceptual features rather than what the logic of it. But whether we are actually in a “good” disjunct is a matter of luck, which makes knowledge problematic. The infallibility that McDowell offers is not the kind that supports epistemic accountability precisely because of its involvement with luck. When our justification entails the truth of our beliefs in a sense that our beliefs matches reality, we have infallibility, but our justification to take our perceptual experiences as veridical based on McDowell’s account does not always entail the truth of our belief, as in the case of “bad” disjunct, to claim knowledge at any given point. McDowell might dispute this based on the notion of objective purport and phenomenal intelligibility, but mere intelligibility cannot provide us with the certainty to claim knowledge. So I argue that to claim knowledge, we need complete justification, i.e., knowing when our beliefs actually do correspond to reality that is not left to some favor from the world.

McDowell speaks of the role of luck in his account of knowledge, in contrasts to the “hybrid conception,” [34] which is a combination of an interiorized “space of reasons”[35] with an externally added truth-condition. One of the objections of McDowell to the hybrid approach is that it reduces the responsibility that the space of reasons can afford the subject by making the truth-condition external to the space of reasons. It seems that a similar lack of epistemic responsibility enters the picture when the status of knowledge relies on matters of luck and favors from the world.

According to the hybrid conception, someone who enjoys a veridical experience shares a similar standing in the space of reasons with someone who does not. The reason and justification is based merely on what appears to one in perception which is phenomenally the same in both veridical and non-veridical cases, but the one in the veridical experience enjoys a favor from the world (not being misled) which makes her a knower. So two people, who fall on the opposite sides of the disjunct, both share the same standing in the space of reasons, and what makes one a knower is a favor from the world – a truth condition that is added externally. In the hybrid view knowledge cannot be met by standing in the space of reasons alone.  For MC, The false choice between skepticism and the hybrid view for those who want to preserve the relevancy of the space of reasons to knowledge is based on a mistaken notion about the role and place of epistemic luck. He criticizes the hybrid conception, which requires truth to be added externally to a self-sufficient space of reasons. If the “truth condition” is external to the space of reasons, how can it add reliability to the formation of one’s beliefs, he objects?[36] How can an external element that falls outside one’s cognitive access have any bearing on one’s possession of knowledge or a “satisfactory standing in the space of reasons?”[37] [38]  For the interiorization of reason strips it of its “critical function” which can only come into play through interaction and engagement with the world that helps us revise and re-evaluate our beliefs in relation to appearances. (I can see his point).  And to attribute reason with full control over its domain without a contribution from luck or a favor from the world is a fantasy, he states.[39]

So the interiorization of reason in the hybrid conception means that the knowledge of the external world cannot be achieved merely from a good standing in the space of reasons, but requires luck from the world.[40] But we are left with an inevitable element of luck on both accounts; whereas in the hybrid view luck is added externally to a good standing in the space of reasons, in McDowell’s account luck is already instrumental in the space of reasons.[41] This seems to bring up the same objection that McDowell raises about the hybrid view regarding the reliability and responsibility of one’s cognitive state as far as knowledge is concerned.

McDowell wants the truth to be accessible to the subject in the space of reasons, but that would only give us fallible knowledge and infallible knowledge when we’re lucky. What he offers might give us some degree of justification, but not enough to claim knowledge as at any given point it is a matter of luck whether our beliefs correspond to reality. And merely to take our experiences as “good” and veridical generally does not preclude the plausibility of the fact that we might be caught in a “bad” disjunct. So that although the intelligibility factor gives us some justification, it is not adequate or sufficient to claim knowledge.  For McDowell, having the “good” disjunct is a justification of our perceptual claim. But it’s a matter of luck whether the truth actually obtains externally for one to acquire knowledge. And the strength of sheer intelligibility does not take away the possibility of being misled. So knowledge requires a higher degree of justification that cannot be provided by based on the intelligibility factor alone.

I propose that an additional factor is needed which qualifies the degree of justification that would constitute knowledge: a fourth condition to meet the knowing condition that guarantees the truth of one’s belief. To claim knowledge we need a guarantee for the truth of our beliefs about the world, which only complete justification can confer. That guarantee can only come with infallibility and certainty, which is the only way to counter SI.  Having knowledge entails being able to self-consciously and justifiably claim it, and knowledge without self-awareness undermines epistemic responsibility. It is proposed that knowledge requires that we know when our belief matches reality which is knowing infallibly, otherwise it is no more than blind knowledge.

Epistemic Standing

It is worth delineating the different conceptions of epistemic status and standing. Phenomenology itself, although it contributes greatly (obviously) to our epistemic standing, constitutes only one modality. I concur with McDowell that the phenomenal aspect of an experience does not constitute the totality of one’s epistemic position. In other words, there is more to knowledge than the mere perceptual intake. For example, in everyday experience, we always include our background knowledge and conceptual reservoir in our perceptions to varying degrees, an arguable point. There is more available to the subject epistemically than merely what appears phenomenally in perception and perceptual experiences, there is the logical component of the perceptual as well. When we add this logical component to our perceptual experience, it changes our epistemic status which is the standing that McDowell espouses so we are not left merely in an epistemic state that only focuses on subjective indistinguishability and perceptual inability to eliminate and fend off skeptical scenarios. What McDowell has contributed to the skeptical argument, is to highlight an important element that can enhance our epistemic standing. Mere indistinguishability of phenomenal experiences based on perceptual factors alone does not have to constitute the totality of one’s subjective epistemology.

McDowell distinguishes between subjective indistinguishability and epistemic indistinguishability. The former is indistinguishability in so far as sensory impressions and phenomenal features of an experience is concerned vs. an overall epistemic status within the reach of a subject. So what McDowell suggests is that it is not mere perceptual sensory evidence, but also rational evidence that is available to our subjectivity. Whereas the skeptic focuses on the perceptual evidence or its lack thereof, McDowell reminds us of rational evidence and factors that should not be so easily dismissed. Skepticism seems to merely base the evidence of external world on the perceptual or the phenomenal character of experience. What McDowell wants us to consider is other epistemological factors at play such as a logical modality that can enhance the overall epistemic state of the subject, in addition to the perceptual ones, and that phenomenal state does not (and should not) wholly constitute an epistemolgoical one.

Conclusion

McDowell presents a cogent argument, but it does not adequately engage the skeptical concern, most specifically regarding the issue of SI, enough to seriously undermine it. He thinks that accepting the openness view can gives us the right to ignore it. Yet he doesn’t give us a sufficient reason as to why we need to give more weight to the rationality factor that he espouses here – the logical rather than perceptual modality. And to determine which one has more weight is by no means an easy task to answer as much depends on the context. But the logical evidence does not replace the perceptual one; it is merely another factor for consideration. As both elements contribute to one’s epistemic standing, it would be a matter of whether the perception should be given more weight or the logical, intelligibility factor.

On McDowell’s account, justification is entailed in the fact because the fact is open to us in experience, and the fact is open to us because it is the only way to makes sense of our phenomenology and its objective purport.  And when truth is entailed in the justification as in the case of a “good” disjunct in veridical cases, it confers knowledge on the subject. But although I think McDowell’s phenomenal intelligibility factor might give us some reason to be justified in our beliefs about our perceptual experiences, it does not give us sufficient reason for claiming knowledge about them. Merely pitting one kind of evidence against another, the rational over perceptual, is not enough to determine the issue. The intelligibility factor does not enforce the “good” disjunct (although it can be argued that it favors it) or preclude the “bad.” It is the positive claim to knowledge that has to bear the burden of proof here and McDowell’s account seems to leave us with fallible knowledge or at best with infallible knowledge that is based on luck, which is not adequate to refute or sufficiently undermine skeptical scenarios.

 References

BonJour, Laurence. 1985. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), chapter 4, pp. 58-84.

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