At Level 2, the naive realist holds that things appear a certain way to you because you are directly presented with aspects of the world, and — in the case we are focusing on — things appear white to you, because you are directly presented with some white snow. Naive realists thus assign an important explanatory role to the world itself in explaining the character of veridical experiences.
Naive realists admit that even holding fixed presented aspects of the world there can be variation in the character of experience. This is worked out in different but compatible ways by different theorists. One approach is to note how variations in the perceiver can make for variations in the character of experience Logue a.
Finally, some suggest that there can be variation in the way or manner in which one is related to perceived objects which makes a difference to phenomenal character Soteriou , Campbell , French and Phillips For further discussion see French For the naive realist, insofar as experience and experiential character is constituted by a direct perceptual relation to aspects of the world, it is not constituted by the representation of such aspects of the world.
This is why many naive realists describe the relation at the heart of their view as a non-representational relation. For further discussion of naive realism as a non-representational view, see the articles in Part Three of Brogaard The other theories we have considered all endorse the Common Kind Claim.
Though naive realists may extend their approach to illusions, they typically deny that it applies to hallucinations and so reject the Common Kind Claim.
Naive realists who deny the Common Kind Claim are disjunctivists. We call such a position naive realist disjunctivism. There are various different naive realist approaches to illusion see e.
When it comes to the argument from illusion, the naive realist like the intentionalist rejects the Phenomenal Principle. So how does naive realism differ from intentionalism about illusions?
In two respects: first, naive realists can maintain that illusory experiences are fundamentally direct presentations of the world. Second, the naive realist can explain the character of such illusory experiences without appeal to intentional content, but instead by appealing to the direct presentation of ordinary objects.
Consider, for example, the approach developed by Brewer:. That is to say, visually relevant similarities are similarities by the lights of visual processing of various kinds So though o may not itself be F, it can exist in certain conditions, C, such that it has visually relevant similarities to paradigm F things and in that sense it will objectively look F, or look like an F thing—that is, it will itself have a property, a look or an appearance, independently of anyone actually seeing it see also Martin , Kalderon , Antony , and Genone on objective looks.
If o is then seen in C, o itself will look F to you in perception. Brewer spells this all out in more detail, and with various examples. One is seeing a white piece of chalk as red. Given that it is seen in those conditions, it looks red to you, even though it is not in fact red. Here, then, we have an account of illusions in which we appeal to objects and the ways those objects are, not the ways they are represented to be, in explaining character.
What about the argument from hallucination? The naive realist thinks that at least veridical experiences are direct presentations of ordinary objects. They thus reject the conclusion C of the argument. But typically, naive realists accept A. They therefore block the argument by rejecting the spreading step B , understood in terms of the Common Kind Claim applied to veridical and hallucinatory experiences. Such a naive realist reasons as follows: suppose that when you see a snow-covered churchyard for what it is, you have an experience which is in its nature a relation between you and ordinary objects.
But a subjectively indistinguishable hallucinatory experience does not have such a nature. For such a hallucination could occur in the absence of any relevant worldly items e. Instead of taking B and these facts about hallucination to ground the rejection of naive realism, the naive realist instead rejects B : even though the hallucination as of a snow-covered churchyard is subjectively indistinguishable from a veridical experience of such a scene, it is not of the same fundamental kind.
For a more nuanced formulation of the naive realist reasoning here, see Martin , See also Masrour who argues that it is an open question whether hallucinations are possible. In blocking the argument from hallucination in this way the naive realist endorses disjunctivism. This theory was first proposed by Hinton and was later developed by P. Snowdon , , John McDowell , and M. Martin , , For both the veridical perception of an F and a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination of an F are experiences which are subjectively indistinguishable from a veridical perception of an F.
What disjunctivists deny is that what makes it true that these two experiences are describable in this way is the presence of the same fundamental kind of mental state. Disjunctivists reject what J. The most fundamental common description of both states, then, is a merely disjunctive one: the experience is either a genuine perception of an F or a mere hallucination as of an F.
The disjunctivist rejects the Common Kind Claim. The disjunctivist can note how the fact that a hallucination is subjectively indistinguishable from a veridical experience does not entail that they are of the same fundamental kind, even if it does suggest this. However, some argue that even if such an appeal to subjective indistinguishability is not enough to establish CKA , it is nonetheless well supported by a causal argument Robinson We can suppose that when you see the snow-covered churchyard for what it is, there is some proximal cause of this experience: the experience is preceded by a certain sort of brain state B.
But now we can imagine a situation in which we bring about B thus producing an experience in you, yet where B is not brought about through any interaction between you and a snow-covered churchyard—e. In this scenario you have an hallucinatory experience as of a snow-covered churchyard. It is plausible to suppose that these experiences are of the very same kind given that they have the same proximal cause.
The point here is that CKA looks like a plausible principle for causally matching veridical and hallucinatory experiences — veridical and hallucinatory experiences with the same proximal cause. This way of motivating CKA appeals to a same-cause, same-effect principle:.
Is this the end of the road for the naive realist disjunctivist, then? Not quite, since as Martin argues, the naive realist should reject this principle:. On [the naive realist] conception of experience, when one is veridically perceiving the objects of perception are constituents of the experiential episode.
The given event could not have occurred without these entities existing and being constituents of it; in turn, one could not have had such a kind of event without there being relevant candidate objects of perception to be apprehended. So, even if those objects are implicated in the causes of the experience, they also figure non-causally as essential constituents of it Mere presence of a candidate object will not be sufficient for the perceiving of it, that is true, but its absence is sufficient for the non-occurrence of such an event.
The connection here is [one] of a constitutive or essential condition of a kind of event. This is because there are non-causal constitutive condition s for the occurrence of the veridical experience which are not satisfied in the hallucinatory case.
However, Martin suggests that the arguer from hallucination can develop their case against naive realism further. This development involves an argument with two stages. First, a modified causal argument: the reverse causal argument , and second the screening-off problem.
We gloss over this important complication here. Take N to be the fundamental kind which characterizes a veridical experience of a snow-covered churchyard, according to the naive realist. Does Causal Principle 2 allow us to say that N is present in the causally matching hallucinatory case, as CKA predicts? For the hallucination is produced in circumstances that differ in non-causal conditions necessary for the occurrence of N given how the naive realist understands N : in the circumstances in which the hallucination occurs there is no appropriate object of perception, but the presence of such an object is necessary for the occurrence of N.
So how does Causal Principle 2 help the arguer from hallucination? That is, take a hallucination as of a snow-covered churchyard h, and suppose that h is of some fundamental kind H.
Now we can apply Causal Principle 2 to show that H is present in a causally matching veridical experience of a snow-covered churchyard, v. For now v is produced by the same kind of proximal cause in circumstances where there is no difference in the non-causal conditions necessary for the occurrence of an event of kind H. This is because all that is necessary for an occurrence of H is some brain condition, which is present in the circumstances in which v is brought about.
This reverse causal argument does not show that v is not of fundamental kind N. What it does show, however, is that whatever fundamental kind is present in a hallucinatory case will also be present in a causally matching veridical case.
So even if v is fundamentally N it is also H. That is, we have the Reverse Common Kind Assumption:. But now we run into the screening-off problem. There is something it is like for you to have an hallucinatory experience as of a snow-covered churchyard, and the experience seems to relate you to a snow-covered churchyard.
This fact about the hallucinatory experience is grounded in its being of kind H. But now if an experience of that kind is present in the veridical case, it is difficult to see how what the naive realist says is fundamental to that case, N, is doing anything by way of explaining what it is like for a subject to have the experience.
For more detailed expositions of this two-stage argument see Martin , Byrne and Logue, , Hellie and Soteriou Chapter 6. The most widely discussed naive realist response to this argument is that of Martin , Martin argues that the screening-off stage of the argument is only problematic if we accept a positive, non-derivative account of causally matching hallucinations.
For instance, hallucinations are direct presentations of sense-data, or representations of ordinary objects. Instead, Martin suggests, the disjunctivist should conceive of causally matching hallucinations in a purely negative epistemic way: such a hallucination as of an F is a state of mind which is not introspectively knowably not a veridical perception of an F.
What makes it the case that your hallucinatory experience is as of a snow-covered churchyard, with a certain sort of phenomenal character, is just that it is an occurrence which cannot be discriminated, by introspection alone, from a veridical perception of a snow-covered churchyard. The particular subjective perspective that a hallucinator has in a causally matching hallucination as of a snow-covered churchyard is explained just by the obtaining of this negative epistemic condition, not by anything more positive such as a relation to a white sense-datum or the representation of white snow c.
On such a view, causally matching hallucinations are derivative: specifying their nature requires essential reference to the basic case of veridical perception. But what about screening off? Does H have a nature which means that the presence of H in the veridical case threatens the explanatory power of N? As Martin notes with his own example:. But if that is so [if H screens off the explanatory role of N], then the property of being a veridical perception of a tree [i.
N] never has an explanatory role, since it is never instantiated without the property of being indiscriminable from such a perception being instantiated as well. But if the property of being a veridical perception lacks any explanatory role, then we can no longer show that being indiscriminable from a veridical perception has the explanatory properties which would screen off the property of being a veridical perception Here, then, is a summary of this complex dialectic: the argument from hallucination seems to disprove naive realism, but the naive realist appeals to disjunctivism in response.
However, the causal argument puts pressure on disjunctivism, by supporting the common kind assumption. In response, the naive realist rejects the key principle of this argument Causal Principle 1. But then a two-stage argument consisting of the reverse causal argument and the screening-off problem attempts to show that: 1 the fundamental kind of experience present in hallucination is also present in causally matching veridical experience, and 2 this undermines the naive realist idea that the character of veridical experience is shaped by the directly presented world.
In response, Martin accepts a form of naive realism which embraces disjunctivism in the form of the claim that causally matching veridical and hallucinatory experiences are fundamentally different.
But which also accepts as per the reverse causal argument that there is a common element across the cases, for the hallucinatory kind is present in veridical cases too. But since he conceives of this common element in a derivative, and purely negative epistemic way, he blocks the argument at the second stage, rejecting screening off. See Burge for a general and polemical attack on disjunctivism. For more on disjunctivism, see Haddock and Macpherson eds.
According to naive realist disjunctivists, at least veridical experiences are directly of ordinary objects Ordinary Objects , and are direct presentations of their objects Presentation. Naive realist disjunctivists thus maintain Direct Realist Presentation , and hence Direct Realism for at least veridical experiences — indeed they maintain Direct Realism without the need for any appeal to a causal theory of direct perception.
Further, naive realist disjunctivists hold that the phenomenal character of such experiences is determined, at least in part, by the direct presentation of ordinary objects Direct Realist Character. The only aspect of our ordinary conception of perceptual experience which naive realist disjunctivists reject outright is the Common Kind Claim.
Sense-datum theorists and adverbialists depart substantially from our ordinary conception of perceptual experience. Advocates of each view will argue, in their different ways, that this is a consequence of responding adequately to the Problem of Perception.
Intentionalists and naive realist disjunctivists disagree, and argue, in different ways, that we can respond to the Problem of Perception without departing substantially from our ordinary conception of perceptual experience: by maintaining Direct Realism in some form, and maintaining or at least being sensitive to many of the specific phenomenological components of our ordinary conception of perceptual experience.
The question, now, is not so much whether to be a direct realist, but how to be one. Any serious attempt to master the literature on the problem of perception should include a reading of Anscombe , Armstrong Chapter 10 , Dretske , Jackson , Martin , Moore , Peacocke Chapter 1 , Robinson , Russell , Smith , Snowdon , Strawson , Tye , and Valberg a.
Matilal explores how issues around the Problem of Perception and theories of experience play out in Classical Indian philosophy. For discussion of how the problem of perception, somewhat differently construed, arises in the senses other than vision, see Perkins Brentano, Franz color consciousness consciousness: and intentionality consciousness: representational theories of intensional transitive verbs intentionality mental representation perception: epistemological problems of perception: the contents of perception: the disjunctive theory of phenomenology qualia qualia: inverted sense data.
French nottingham. Our Ordinary Conception of Perceptual Experience 1. The Problem of Perception 2. Theories of Experience 3. This starting point gives rise to the following questions cf. Martin : The Objects Question: what is the nature of the direct objects of experience? The Structure Question: in what sense are experiences directly of their objects?
So, we can highlight the following answer to the Objects Question: Ordinary Objects : perceptual experiences are directly of ordinary mind-independent objects. We can thus highlight the following answer to the structure question: Presentation : perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of their objects. If direct perceptual presentation of an ordinary object is a way of directly perceiving it, then this gives us: Direct Realism : we can directly perceive ordinary objects.
Consider, then, the following question: The Character Question: what determines the phenomenal character of experience? So, we can highlight the following answer to the Character Question: Direct Realist Character: the phenomenal character of experience is determined, at least partly, by the direct presentation of ordinary objects. More specifically: The Common Kind Question: are veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences fundamentally the same, do they form of a common kind?
This suggests the following answer to the Common Kind Question: Common Kind Claim: veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences as of an F are fundamentally the same; they form a common kind. The Problem of Perception The Problem of Perception is that if illusions and hallucinations are possible, then perceptual experience, as we ordinarily understand it, is impossible.
Therefore, Subjects are never directly presented with ordinary objects. The same account of experience must apply to veridical experiences as applies to illusory experiences. Therefore, We are never directly presented with ordinary objects. Moving beyond the simple formulation, the argument is typically presented as involving these steps, for an arbitrary subject S: In an illusion, it seems to S that something has a sensible quality, F, which the ordinary object supposedly being perceived does not have.
When it seems to S that something has a sensible quality, F, then there is something directly presented to S which does have this quality. Since the ordinary object in question is, by hypothesis, not-F, then it follows that in an illusion, S is not directly presented with the ordinary object supposedly being perceived.
The same account of experience must apply to both veridical and illusory experiences. Therefore, In veridical experience, S is not directly presented with the ordinary object supposedly being perceived.
If S is not directly presented with the ordinary object supposedly being perceived in veridical experience, S is never directly presented with an ordinary object. Premise ii is a version of what Robinson calls the Phenomenal Principle: If there sensibly appears to a subject to be something which possesses a particular sensible quality then there is something of which the subject is aware which does possess that sensible quality The argument from hallucination runs as follows: In hallucinatory experiences, we are not directly presented with ordinary objects The same account of experience must apply to veridical experiences as applies to hallucinatory experiences.
Theories of Experience A number of philosophical theories of experience have emerged as responses to the Problem of Perception, or in relation to such responses. However, the intended contrast with Direct Realist Presentation usually involves a stronger claim: We are only ever directly presented with sense-data , which are non-ordinary objects.
Consider, then: Direct Realist Presentation : perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects. This is what direct perception amounts to for the intentionalist 3. Consider, for example, the approach developed by Brewer: visually relevant similarities are those that ground and explain the ways that the particular physical objects that we are acquainted with in perception look.
This way of motivating CKA appeals to a same-cause, same-effect principle: Causal Principle 1: an event e1 is of the same kind as an event e2 if event e1 is produced by the same kind of proximate causal condition as e2 Nudds Not quite, since as Martin argues, the naive realist should reject this principle: On [the naive realist] conception of experience, when one is veridically perceiving the objects of perception are constituents of the experiential episode.
The modified causal argument involves a modified causal principle: Causal Principle 2: an event e1 is of the same kind K as an event e2 if event e1 is produced by the same kind of proximate causal condition as e2 in circumstances that do not differ in any non-causal conditions necessary for the occurrence of an event of kind K Nudds That is, we have the Reverse Common Kind Assumption: RCKA Whatever fundamental kind of event occurs when you hallucinate, the very same kind of event also occurs in a causally matching veridical experience.
As Martin notes with his own example: But if that is so [if H screens off the explanatory role of N], then the property of being a veridical perception of a tree [i. Conclusion Sense-datum theorists and adverbialists depart substantially from our ordinary conception of perceptual experience. Anscombe, G. Butler ed. Armstrong, D. Austin, J. Barnes, W. Broad, C. Brogaard, Berit ed. LePore and R. Van Gulick eds. John Searle and his Critics , —, Oxford: Blackwell.
Craig, E. Craig ed. Crane, Tim and Sarah Patterson eds. Crane, Tim and Katalin Farkas eds. Boden ed. Dancy, Jonathan ed. Davies, M. Ducasse, C. Schilpp ed. The Philosophy of G. Moore , —52, Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Grice, H. Selection reprinted in Dancy Gunther, York ed. Guttenplan, Samuel ed. Haddock, Adrian and Macpherson, Fiona, eds.
Tomberlin ed. The Nature of Consciousness , —76, Cambridge, Mass. Hilbert, David R. Davis ed. Hinton, J. Husserl, Edmund, —01, Logical Investigations translated by J. Findlay, 2 volumes, revised edition by D. On the other hand, if the objects of perception are not external after all, we are in a better position to infer causal relations between them and individual experiences. The main difference between idealism and an indirect realism concerns not so much the metaphysics of perception as a larger metaphysical view about what else exists outside of the mind.
Berkeley and Descartes agree about the direct objects of perception, but Descartes posits an additional stratum of mind-independent external objects in addition. The idealist denies that there is a veil of perception not because Descartes was wrong about the nature of perception, but because he was wrong about the natures of cats and rocks.
Idealism has a few contemporary defenders e. Most responses to PEW in the last century have endorsed some kind of realism instead, insisting that ordinary objects are indeed mind-independent. A red thing is simply something that has the form of RED, which it can transmit, making the receptive, perceiving mind also—though presumably in a different sense—red. Both theories suffer from an apparent inability to handle error. Science frequently teaches us that things are not in reality the way they appear to the senses.
The sun, for example, perceptually appears as a small disk rather than the large sphere that it is Descartes Nor could we simply be picking up relational properties, like looking small from here , Descartes argues, because I could have the very same perceptual experience in a vivid dream where even the relational properties are not instantiated as I do in waking life.
Therefore, perceptual appearances must be entirely mental and internal, rather than relational. Insofar as external objects are at all present to the mind, it is only because of these appearances, which thus serve as inner stand-ins, or proxies, for them. As John Locke puts it,. The representative realist may, but need not, hold that these proxies are also representations in the sense of having semantic contents, i. In fact, the most recognizable form of representative realism denies that experiences are in this sense representational.
Any version of representative realism denies direct world-involvement. The sense-datum theory is further incompatible with perceptual directness, as it has us perceive objects by way of perceiving our sense-data; and it is typically fleshed out in such a way as to be incompatible with referential directness as well, holding that we can think about mind-independent objects only as the external causes of these sense-data.
It is compatible, however, with phenomenal and epistemological directness. Intentionalism holds that to have a perceptual experience as of something blue is to be in a state with a distinctively semantic property of meaning blue, of referring to the property of blueness see the entry on consciousness and intentionality. On this view, the inner states are not just representatives but represen tations ; they have semantic values.
Such representations typically lack the properties they depict external objects as having. They might, of course, become objects of something like perception if we reflectively attend to them, but this is something more than merely having the experience.
Sense-datum and intentionalist views both see perceptual experience as a two-place relation between perceiver and inner representative. Adverbialism , on the other hand, holds that perceptual experience itself is monadic; it doesn't involve the perceiver standing in a relation to something see the entry on the problem of perception.
Adverbialism is sometimes offered as an ontologically neutral way of talking about experiences Chisholm , sometimes as the more contentious claim that perceptual experience is primitive and unanalyzable. Intentionalism and adverbialism deny direct world-involvement but are compatible with the other varieties of directness. They are also compatible with any of the corresponding varieties of indirectness.
Proponents of intentionalist and adverbialist theories have often thought of themselves as defending a kind of direct realism; Reid , for example, clearly thinks his proto-adverbialist view is a direct realist view. And perceptual experience is surely less indirect on an intentionalist or adverbialist theory than on the typical sense-datum theory, at least in the sense of perceptual directness. Nevertheless, intentionalist and adverbialist theories render the perception of worldly objects indirect in at least two important ways: a it is mediated by an inner state, in that one is in perceptual contact with an outer object of perception only though not entirely in virtue of being in that inner state; and b that inner state is one that we could be in even in cases of radical perceptual error e.
A fully direct realism would offer an unequivocal rejection of the Indirectness Principle by denying that we are in the same mental states in the good and the bad cases.
Thus, the brain in the vat could not have the same experiences as a normal veridical perceiver, because experience is itself already world-involving. A type of direct realism that has received much recent attention is disjunctivism e. There are many different versions of disjunctivism, but a common thread is the claim that the experiences involved in the veridical case are ipso facto of a different type than those involved in the hallucinatory cases.
The theory of appearing Alston is a type of disjunctivism but one that emphasizes the direct world-involvement in the veridical case rather than the radical difference between the cases. Some forms of behaviorism, functionalism, and embodied mind are also direct realist views. If, for example, having a certain perceptual experience constitutively involves being disposed to act on worldly objects and properties in certain ways—that is, if behavioral dispositions are themselves individuated as world-involving—then this would render the experience relational in the way required by direct realism; disembodied brains in vats could not have the same experiences as we have in normal, veridical cases.
Such a view need not be a form of disjunctivism, however; depending on the details of the theory, a hallucinating subject who is nevertheless embedded in and disposed to act on the world in the right ways might have the same experience as a veridically perceiving subject.
Direct realism is compatible with all the metaphysical species of direct presence listed above. As such, it allows for an unequivocal denial of premise 1 of PEW, while quasi-realist views only reject that premise under certain understandings of direct presence. If representative realism is the cause of the central epistemological problem for perception, then perhaps direct realism or idealism will be the solution. Some philosophers have thought that these metaphysical views resolved the epistemological problem by closing the gap between appearance and reality, by making ordinary objects e.
On further reflection, however, it is clear that the metaphysical account will be, at best, a part of the solution.
Most metaphysical solutions attack the Indirectness Principle as a way of undercutting the Metaevidential Principle. But they only attack metaphysical readings of the Indirectness Principle, and while the various metaphysical theories of perception from sections 2. Epistemological directness does straightforwardly entail the rejection of 2 , but epistemological directness is compatible with any of the metaphysical theories of perception glossed above and is entailed by none of them.
At best, a metaphysical theory of perception will block one avenue of intuitive support for 2 , but it will not imply that 2 is false. An idealist, for example, will allow that we sometimes dream and that there is a real difference between hallucination and veridical perception, even though in both cases the direct object of awareness is a collection of ideas.
The standard view Berkeley is that a hallucinatory table is a different sort of collection of ideas than a real table; certain counterfactuals are true of the latter that are not true of the former e. But this reopens the gap between perceptual experiences and ordinary objects. Tables are not just experiences; they are larger entities of which experiences are parts, and those parts are shared by hallucinations.
So what is directly present to the mind is something common to hallucination and veridical perception. So my perceptual experience would seem to be neutral with respect to whether I am seeing or hallucinating a table. So to be justified in believing there is a table in front of me, I will need some reason to think this particular experience is veridical, and PEW is back in business Alston , Greco Direct realism precludes this particular relapse into skepticism by denying that the experience is the same in the good and the bad cases.
If our perceptual evidence includes the experience, then our evidence in the good case is different from our evidence in the bad case—they are different mental states. Additionally, the direct realist is free to impose a metaevidential demand on justified perceptual belief, a demand that we know which kind of experience we are having before that experience can serve as evidence. Unsurprisingly, direct realists tend to endorse some kind or other of epistemological directness section 3.
Even with the metaphysical premise 1 removed, a purely epistemological version of PEW, consisting of 2 through 4 , still challenges the justification of our perceptual beliefs. A satisfying solution to the problem of the external world requires the articulation of some plausible epistemic principles, one that explains which of the two crucial premises 2 and 3 of PEW are being rejected, and provides an epistemological context which renders that rejection plausible.
An entirely metaphysical solution to the problem of the external world will not suffice. An epistemological solution to this epistemological problem will be needed in addition or instead. Epistemological solutions to PEW deny one or more of its explicitly epistemological premises.
They try to make that denial plausible and to situate it within a larger epistemology of perception and a larger epistemology more generally. Foundationalism is the view that some beliefs are epistemologically basic—i. Classical foundationalism is the view that i it is appearance beliefs —i. Basing is a relation of epistemic dependence and does not imply explicit inference, although particular theories might hold that the relation is satisfied only when inference occurs.
Here are brief versions of some of the more common, often implicit, arguments:. We have looked at representative realism as one motivation for that principle, but there are others. Classical foundationalists have traditionally endorsed it because it follows from two other claims they find plausible. The first is i above, that our perceptual beliefs are based on appearance beliefs. The second is the claim that in order to be justified in believing hypothesis h on the basis of evidence e , one must be justified in believing that e makes h probable or that e entails h , or e is good evidence for h , etc.
Whether such examples generalize to all inferences is an open question. Some fairly strong though controversial forms of internalism see the entry on internalist vs. The classical foundationalist avoids skepticism by rejecting the Reasons Claim, insisting that we do often have good, non-viciously-circular, reasons for thinking that our experiences are veridical.
Two questions thus arise for classical foundationalism, one about the nature and justification of appearance beliefs and one about the allegedly non-circular inference from appearance beliefs to perceptual beliefs. Appearance beliefs are said not to be based on other beliefs. This raises the question of how they are themselves justified. As we saw in section 2. If they are making some metaphysical claim, then the consequences for epistemology are indirect and unclear.
Epistemologists are sometimes less than fully explicit about how they are understanding acquaintance. And however acquaintance is understood, the classical foundationalist must make acquaintance broad enough that we are plausibly acquainted with appearances but narrow enough that we are not acquainted with physical objects as well.
In a somewhat similar vein, Fumerton , claims that the acquaintance relation is not an epistemic relation but insists that it is sui generis and unanalyzable; he holds that we nevertheless understand the acquaintance relation, as we are acquainted with it. Attempts to explicate acquaintance in non-epistemic terms fall into one of two categories. The traditional way to understand acquaintance is in terms of a containment relation between appearance beliefs and appearances, with the result that appearance beliefs entail their own truth.
Though some still endorse this view McGrew , most epistemologists deny that we are infallible in our self-attributions. A more modest claim is that only some appearance beliefs are infallible. This does not yet account for the distinctive epistemic status of appearance beliefs, as the epistemic implications of infallibility remain unclear, especially in the context of an internalist epistemology. One might believe some necessary truth as the result of a lucky guess; the belief is infallible, but not justified.
The second type of approach views appearance beliefs as justified by something extrinsic to them, so that an appearance belief is justified when it is accompanied by acquaintance with the experiential fact that the appearance belief describes. Laurence BonJour , for example, understands acquaintance in terms of constitutivity, though in a very different way from Chalmers. BonJour claims that awareness of the sensory content of an experience is partly constitutive of what it is to have a conscious experience.
That awareness is thus infallible, but appearance beliefs —which purport to describe the experience and constituent awareness—are fallible. All the authors just mentioned, except for Chisholm, see acquaintance as a metaphysical i. They lay down as a separate, further thesis one that is not entailed by but is rendered highly plausible, they think, by the nature of the acquaintance relation: that when one is thus acquainted with an experience, one has a strong prima facie justification to believe that one has that experience, and furthermore, that justification does not depend on any other beliefs.
On either non-epistemic understanding of acquaintance, it puts us in a very good position to make correct judgments about our current experiences. Most classical foundationalists allow that all appearance beliefs are defeasible i. To say that a belief is prima facie [aka pro tanto ] justified is to say that it is has some positive epistemic status, in the sense that it is justified if it is not defeated by overriding or undermining considerations.
Chisholm and Timothy McGrew endorse the stronger claim that acquaintance provides indefeasible, ultima facie justification.
It is possible that the experience or acquaintance with it is intended to serve not only as a truth-maker and justifier for the appearance belief, but as evidence for that belief as well.
For example, Descartes held that all clear and distinct judgments were justified, though certain judgments—e. Thus, one can claim that perceptual experiences are nondoxastic i. The justification of appearance beliefs would then depend on evidential connections to other mental states but not to other beliefs, and because experiences need not be justified in order to serve as evidence, the threatened regress is halted in a way that is consistent with foundationalism.
The idea of such nondoxastic evidence raises several problems, as we will see shortly. Classical foundationalism is sometimes objected to on the grounds that we typically do not have beliefs about our experiences e.
This raises interesting and difficult issues about the natures of evidence and the basing relation. For the belief that p to serve as justifying evidence for the belief that q , must I consciously form the belief that p , or is it enough that, e. Surely the classical foundationalist never denied phenomenal directness or thought our perceptual beliefs were reasoned out explicitly. If one could show that only consciously formed beliefs could ground other beliefs, this would be bad news indeed for classical foundationalism, but this is a controversial claim.
Alternatively, the objection might be that we are typically not even yet in a position to form justified appearance beliefs, in some situations where we are already quite justified in our perceptual beliefs. This investigation is not always easy Pollock , and it is possible that such investigation would alter the nature of the experience.
In addition, some perceivers may lack the conceptual resources to distinguish appearances from external objects, although they seem to be justified in their perceptual beliefs nonetheless. Cartesian foundationalism was the strictest form of classical foundationalism, requiring a deductive metaevidential argument for the reliability of perception. Descartes believed that he could give a non-circular argument for thinking that some perceptual experiences were veridical, by constructing an a priori argument for the reliability of perception.
He also aimed for certainty, so his argument was a deductive one, starting with the existence and perfection of God and concluding that any clear and distinct awareness including elements of perceptual awarenesses must be true; so some perceptual experiences—namely, the clear and distinct ones—are veridical.
This would have licensed a rejection of the Reasons Claim, by showing how we could have a good reason for thinking our experiences to be veridical. NonCartesian forms of classical foundationalism have tried to combine the a priority required by non-circularity with a probabilistic form of inference, the most promising candidate being abduction, or inference to the best explanation Russell , BonJour According to this view, the best explanation of our experiences is the commonsense hypothesis that there is a mind-independent external world that conforms in some measure to these experiences and is the cause of them.
The superiority of this explanation to the alternatives idealism, a Cartesian demon, etc. There is a good deal of intuitive plausibility to the claim that an external world serves as the best explanation for our sense experience, but making that case in any detail, especially enough to satisfy the idealist, would require taking on some large and complex issues, like what makes one explanation better than another see they entry on abduction , and—since the commonsense view is sometimes e.
William Alston offers an influential critique of abductive arguments for the reliability of sense-experience. Premise 2 of PEW, after all, is the claim that the agent must have some good reason for thinking her experiences are veridical. Some e. Most such views have rejected both parts of the standard argument for the Metaevidential Principle 3. Chisholm , agrees with the classical foundationalist that perceptual beliefs are based on appearance beliefs but denies that any argument for the legitimacy of the appearance-reality inference is needed.
Chisholm posits as a fundamental epistemic principle that if one is justified in believing herself to be perceptually appeared to as if p , then one is prima facie justified in believing that p. The significance of insisting that this principle is fundamental is to insist on the legitimacy of the move from p -appearance to p -reality while denying that that legitimacy is derived from deduction or abduction.
To the classical foundationalist, this move seems illicitly ad hoc. The coherentist, like the classical foundationalist, endorses the Metaevidential Principle but holds that we can indeed have good arguments for the reliability of perception. We engage actively with the world delivered to our senses. Looking is not passive gawping: I scrutinize, test, even measure what I see. The retinal image of a tree varies with my distance from it, but I do not conclude from this that the tree itself grows and shrinks.
My walking towards or away from the tree spells out in lived experience the changes in its distance from me. It remains twice the apparent height of the wall next to it as it and the wall shrink in tandem, while objects between me and it will be registered accordingly.
Finally, when I see the tree, I am aware that I am seeing it, and seeing it from a viewpoint — a lived, active, viewpoint that tells me where it is relative to me. Does all this, however, constitute sufficient reason for believing that there is more to objects than what is revealed to us through our senses?
Something more seems to be required to persuade us that our experiences are of something that transcends those appearances. Our intuition of objects as entities that not only exceed what we are experiencing at any given time, but are more than any mere succession of experiences, is rooted in our experience of ourselves as embodied subjects.
It is worth dwelling on this. My experiences of the world out there are had by a subject who is also a body. My body is not presented to me, the subject, as a mere succession of disconnected experiences. Rather, there is an unity of my apprehension of my embodied self as it is spread over the space occupied by my flesh, such that my head, my torso, my arms and legs are one in virtue of being mine.
My relationship to my own body delivers the sense of something that is more than what I sensorially experience of it. The sense of bodily coherence over time as well as space is inseparable from my sense of myself as an agent unified in space and over time. This is highlighted, throughout my waking hours, when I am busy doing things, whether something simple like walking across a room to pick up a book, less simple like laying a table, or even less simple such as building an out-house.
But neither of these senses are actual sense experiences. It is on analogy to them that all further positing of objects takes place. While the spotlight of bodily awareness moves around, the continuing reality of those parts that are not currently in the spotlight is underwritten by their inseparability from those parts that are. This idea of continuity is then generalized to other objects in the outside world with which our bodies interact.
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