Laurence BonJour, Knowledge, Justification, and Truth |
CHAPTER ONE
KNOWLEDGE AND THE GIVEN
Variants of these basic positions are to be found throughout the epistemological literature.
I consider skepticism something worse than unsatisfactory; I consider it nonsense to hold or to imply that just any empirical judgment is as good as any other -- because none is warranted. A theory which implies or allows that consequence is not an explanation of anything but merely an intellectual disaster.{4}
This amounts to a sort of paradigm case argument. Clearly some of our beliefs are justified in a way in which others are not. One who wishes to deny this has either overlooked some possible mode of justification, or has set his standards of justification too high -- though, as we shall see, Lewis himself may be guilty of overlooking the latter alternative.
It is not, of course, intended to deny here that one objective statement can be confirmed by others; or to maintain that all corroborations of belief are by direct reference to immediate experience. Some objective beliefs are deductively derivable from others; and many -- or even most -- objective beliefs are inductively supported by other, and perhaps better substantiated objective beliefs. It is only contended that in such cases where one objective belief is corroborated or supported by another, (1) such confirmation is only provisional or hypothetical, and (2) it must have reference eventually to confirmations by direct experience, which alone is capable of being decisive and providing any sure foundation. . . . objective statements none of which could acquire probability by direct confirmations in experience, would gain no support by leaning up against one another in the fashion of the 'coherence theory of truth'. . . . [AKV 187]
Lewis' whole discussion of the Given is intended to give an account of immediate, direct, or Given experience (which terms are more or less synonymous for him), and of just how objective beliefs are eventually confirmed by that experience, which avoids the regress which would, in his view, leave them all without confirmation.
Subtract, in what we say that we see, or hear, or otherwise learn from direct experience, all that conceivably could be mistaken; the remainder is the given content of the experience inducing this belief. [AKV l82f.]
There are two claims made in this passage, which is important to distinguish clearly. There is (i) the claim that the apprehension of the Given is immune to error or mistake. This could be taken as simply a matter of definition; i.e. immunity from error could be taken as one of the defining criteria of the Given. That such an interpretation of (i) would be wrong, or at least misleading, is shown by the second claim implicit in the quoted passage. This is (ii) roughly the claim that any "direct experience" (where 'direct' must be glossed as 'perceptual', rather than as 'given', since "direct experiences" are held to include elements which are subject to error) involves an element which is Given and thus immune from even the possibility of error. If (i) is merely a matter of definition, what reason could be given for thinking (ii) to be true?
. . . such apprehension neither has nor calls for any verification. The specific character of the presentation content, and the givenness of it is, so to say, its own verification. Any formulation of it will be independent, for its truth, of anything further and not contained in just this given experience itself. [AKV 26]
Such independence is a clear consequence of (i) and thus of alpha1. The point is just that if a particular instance of Givenness was subject to verification or falsification, or even to confirmation or disconfirmation, by further apprehensions, it could not be certain or immune from error. It would always remain possible that further experience would compel us to reject the original apprehension, and this very possibility would suffice to disqualify the apprehension in question as an instance of Givenness.
. . . The distinctive character of expressive language . . . is that such language signifies appearances. And in thus referring to appearances or affirming what appears, such expressive language neither asserts any objective reality of what appears nor denies any. It is confined to description of the content of presentation itself. [AKV 179]
Such expressive language employs the phrase "looks like," "feels like," etc., to qualify an otherwise objective report so as to restrict it to the Given; an example would be: "I see what looks like granite steps before me" [AKV 173f.].
Knowledge itself might well get along without the formulation of the immediately given: what is thus directly presented does not require verbalization. [AKV 183] . . . That which we should thus attempt to formulate plays the same role whether it is expressed, or could be expressed, or not. [AKV 182]
In short, the Given and our apprehension thereof are fundamentally independent of language and linguistic expression. The influence of the mental eye approach seems clearly visible here, especially in the first of the two quoted passages.
. . . The intensional is that aspect of apprehension in which it is significant of a classification made and of a criterion in mind which is the cue to this classification and the determinant of cognitively guided reaction . . . [AKV 72]
Very roughly, intensional meaning has to do with the criteria according to which a classification, as represented by a word which may be either applied or refused application, is made; while extensional meaning, in contrast, has to do with the entities which are thus classified or to which the word is applied. (It is worth noting that Lewis holds meaning to be prior to and independent of language, which is needed only for communication [AKV 72].)
. . . Whoever approaches an empirical situation with intent to apply or refuse to apply an expression, or assert something as evidenced or its falsity as evidenced, must . . . be somehow prepared to accept or reject what he finds as falling under or confirming what he thus intends. Otherwise applicability could never be determined at all, and there would be no such thing as apprehensible empirical fact or empirical truth or falsity. [AKV 135]
And mere linguistic meaning obviously cannot serve this indispensable function. "Meaning as language-pattern abstracts altogether from that function of language by which it empirically applies" [AKV 140].
. . . The reason I believe this is that I see it: a certain visual presentation is given. But my belief includes the expectation that so long as I continue to look in this same direction, this presentation, with its qualitative character essentially unchanged, will persist; that if I move my eyes right, it will be displaced to the left in the visual field; that if I close them it will disappear; and so on. . . . [AKV 174]
To the extent that these actions are in fact taken, and the anticipated results indeed ensue, the belief is corroborated. But the belief has many further consequences which still leave open the possibility of disconfirmation and falsification; e.g.:
. . . that what I see could be folded without cracking, as a piece of celluloid could not; that it would tear easily, as architect's drawing-cloth would not; that this experience will not be followed by waking in quite different surroundings; and others too numerous to mention. . . . [AKV 175]
And it should once again be understood that all of these actions and anticipated results are to be formulated in expressive language, so that they are susceptible of complete verification. Thus, e.g., the experienced result of what subjectively seems like tearing the paper will be what looks like torn paper, i.e. the Given appearance of torn paper [AKV 175].
[AKV 248f.]
Here '>' represents strict or analytic implication; each of the above statements is for Lewis an analytic truth, knowable a priori solely by understanding the meanings involved. In contrast, '=>' represents what Lewis calls "real connection," and what we would today call "nomological" implication. It is the connection involved in a law of nature and of the sort which supports counterfactual conditionals [AKV 223-27]. If such a list of statements is to completely specify the sense meaning of 'P', it must include all terminating judgments whose truth or falsity could possibly be relevant to the truth of 'P'; i.e. it must be the case that if all the statements on the right-hand side of the '>' symbol were true, then the truth of 'P' would be absolutely and totally verified, and could no longer be rationally challenged [AKV 193]. Thus the list must be infinite in length if one grants only that there could never come a time when an objective belief was theoretically, as opposed to practically, immune from falsification [AKV 176f.].
Cognition generally, or the content of it, must have meaning in the sense that something is signified, believed in, or asserted which lies beyond or outside of the cognitive experience itself. When such cognition is veridical or is knowledge, it must correspond to, accord with, or be true of what is thus meant or affirmed. [AKV 27]
The key to this passage is obviously the phrase "beyond or outside of the cognitive experience itself," which is unfortunately far from clear. One problem is to discover just what is meant by the "cognitive experience." If this simply refers to the apprehension of the Given, then it is most unclear why the quoted criterion is not satisfied. Surely the Given content (consisting of sensuous qualia) is distinct from our apprehension thereof; the latter, but not the former, is true, certain, justified, etc.
. . . there is no concept the denotation of which does not extend beyond the immediately given, and beyond what could be immediately given. And without concepts there is no knowledge. [MWO 121]
According to this paragraph, apprehension of the Given is not knowledge because (i) knowledge requires concepts, and (ii) concepts do not apply to the Given. I think that (i), however opaque, represents an important insight. The immediate problem, however, is to understand (ii).
There are recognizable qualitative characters of the given, which may be repeated in different experiences, and are thus a sort of universals; I call these "qualia." . . . [MWO 121]
And further on:
Qualia are universals, and they are universals such that without the recognition of them by the individual nothing presented in experience could be named or understood or known at all. . . . [MWO 123]
Now the obvious question to be asked is why these "recognizable qualitative characters," these "universals," are not concepts. (Which may be the same question as why, if they can be recognized to apply to the Given, the recognition that they thus apply does not constitute knowledge.)
{2} The article which initiated this discussion is Edmund Gettier's "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis 23 (1963), pp. 121-23, reprinted in A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Knowledge and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). See the bibliography in Griffiths for the numerous discussions of and replies to Gettier's paper. [Back]
{3} It will simplify matters to speak here and throughout of propositions. Anyone whose nominalistic inclinations are offended by this should find it relatively simple to translate what is said into talk of sentences. [Back]
{4} Lewis, "The Given Element in Empirical Knowledge," Philosophical Review 61 (1952), 175. [Back]
{5} Ibid., pp. 168-69. [Back]
{6} The only exception I can think of is Critical Realism in general, and Roy Wood Sellars in particular. See his Philosophy of Physical Realism (New York: Macmillan, 1932; New York: Russell, l966). [Back]
{7} References to those two books will use the indicated abbreviations and will be placed in the text. [Back]
{8} This distinction is, I think, implicit in EPM and RLG. It is also formulated in P. T. Geach, Mental Acts (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). That Sellars' argument can be usefully formulated in terms of such a distinction was first pointed out to me by Richard Rorty. [Back]
{9} Cf., e.g., Norman L. Munn, Psychology, 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), pp. 52f. [Back]
{10} Cf. Sellars, "Is There a Synthetic A Priori?" [Back]
{11} Cf. Sellars, "Is There a Synthetic A Priori?"sn, reprinted in Science, Perception, and Reality. [Back]