Externalism, Visual Content, and Burge
In this post, I will argue that Burge's strategy for explaining our knowledge of our own thoughts cannot be extended to our knowledge of our own visual experiences.
Externalism about the contents of our propositional attitudes is often thought to be inconsistent with the claim that we know by introspection -- i.e. without the benefit of knowledge of the environment around us and our embedding in it -- what we're thinking.
The arguments generally go something like this: Suppose it is true that I don't (indeed cannot) know that I am not a brain in a vat. The justification for this claim rests on the idea that I could not distinguish between being a brain in a vat and not being a brain in a vat. Now suppose that whether I am thinking that P depends on me not being a brain in a vat. Now suppose that I am now judging that P. Since I cannot know that I am not a brain in a vat, I cannot know that I am judging that P, rather than something other than P.
Burge provides both an answer to this kind of argument and an independent account of why introspection might provide knowledge. I won't address his diagnosis of the skeptical argument, I would, however, like to comment on his account of self-knowledge.
Burge argues as follows: Suppose that your cognitive faculties are in working order. Suppose you judge that P. It is plausible that as you judge that P you believe that you judge that P. Does this belief -- that you are judging that P -- rise to the happy status of knowledge? Burge argues that it does. The reason, as far as I can tell is this: the judgment that P and the belief that you are judging that P are grounded in the same representational resources. Thus, whatever mechanisms determine the content of your judgement that P also fix the content of your belief that you are judging that P. So, since the content of your judgment that P and the content of your belief that you have judged that P must be the same, there is a non-accidental connection between the truth of your belief that you have judged that P and your believing that you have judged that P. There is, that is, a non-accidental connection between your judgment and your belief of the knowledge constituting sort.
I propose to accept what Burge says here. When you judge that P, you know that you are judging that P. You know this because the belief and the judgment rely on the same representational resources. My worry is this: this strategy will not succeed in justifying the knowledge we have of the content of our own perceptual experiences.
When I look around I am subject to visual experience. This visual experience has a content in virtue of which particular things sensuously seem this way or that (blue-right-there or curved-like-that, for example). The content of my experience, presumably, contributes to the phenomenal character of my experience. Perhaps I cannot put it into words, but it seems that I am intimately acquainted with how things seem to me.
But there is abundant reason to suspect that the contents of visual experiences -- like the contents of the propositional attitudes -- depend on how one is embedded in an environment. Suppose, then, that how things seem to you depends on what kind of environment you're embedded in. Thus, for example, whether the content of your experience is P or Q depends on whether you're a brain in a vat or not.
Now we get an argument that parallels the argument that, given externalism, we don't know the contents of our own thoughts. Since you cannot distinguish between being a brain in a vat from not being a brain in a vat, you do not know that your experience has content P, rather than content Q. Thus, since how things seem to you depends on what the contents of your experience are, you do not know how things seem to you. Aggh!
Probably there are places to object to this argument, but suppose we wished to explain how we have self-knowledge regarding the contents of our own experiences. Could we use Burge's strategy? We'll want to look at two things: (i) experiences that P and (ii) the thoughts that might aspire to be knowledge of the contents of those experiences. Whether Burge's strategy can be extended to this case depends on whether these experiences and thoughts utilize the same representational resources.
There is abundant reason to suspect that belief-forming mechanisms use representational resources that differ from those used by the visual system. Accordingly, if there is to be a justificatory account of our beliefs about our own experiences, it must be one that differs from Burge's.
In a follow-up post, I'll say something about why we should think that the representational resources grounding our belief-forming capacity differ from those grounding our visual experiences. Stay tuned!
Externalism about the contents of our propositional attitudes is often thought to be inconsistent with the claim that we know by introspection -- i.e. without the benefit of knowledge of the environment around us and our embedding in it -- what we're thinking.
The arguments generally go something like this: Suppose it is true that I don't (indeed cannot) know that I am not a brain in a vat. The justification for this claim rests on the idea that I could not distinguish between being a brain in a vat and not being a brain in a vat. Now suppose that whether I am thinking that P depends on me not being a brain in a vat. Now suppose that I am now judging that P. Since I cannot know that I am not a brain in a vat, I cannot know that I am judging that P, rather than something other than P.
Burge provides both an answer to this kind of argument and an independent account of why introspection might provide knowledge. I won't address his diagnosis of the skeptical argument, I would, however, like to comment on his account of self-knowledge.
Burge argues as follows: Suppose that your cognitive faculties are in working order. Suppose you judge that P. It is plausible that as you judge that P you believe that you judge that P. Does this belief -- that you are judging that P -- rise to the happy status of knowledge? Burge argues that it does. The reason, as far as I can tell is this: the judgment that P and the belief that you are judging that P are grounded in the same representational resources. Thus, whatever mechanisms determine the content of your judgement that P also fix the content of your belief that you are judging that P. So, since the content of your judgment that P and the content of your belief that you have judged that P must be the same, there is a non-accidental connection between the truth of your belief that you have judged that P and your believing that you have judged that P. There is, that is, a non-accidental connection between your judgment and your belief of the knowledge constituting sort.
I propose to accept what Burge says here. When you judge that P, you know that you are judging that P. You know this because the belief and the judgment rely on the same representational resources. My worry is this: this strategy will not succeed in justifying the knowledge we have of the content of our own perceptual experiences.
When I look around I am subject to visual experience. This visual experience has a content in virtue of which particular things sensuously seem this way or that (blue-right-there or curved-like-that, for example). The content of my experience, presumably, contributes to the phenomenal character of my experience. Perhaps I cannot put it into words, but it seems that I am intimately acquainted with how things seem to me.
But there is abundant reason to suspect that the contents of visual experiences -- like the contents of the propositional attitudes -- depend on how one is embedded in an environment. Suppose, then, that how things seem to you depends on what kind of environment you're embedded in. Thus, for example, whether the content of your experience is P or Q depends on whether you're a brain in a vat or not.
Now we get an argument that parallels the argument that, given externalism, we don't know the contents of our own thoughts. Since you cannot distinguish between being a brain in a vat from not being a brain in a vat, you do not know that your experience has content P, rather than content Q. Thus, since how things seem to you depends on what the contents of your experience are, you do not know how things seem to you. Aggh!
Probably there are places to object to this argument, but suppose we wished to explain how we have self-knowledge regarding the contents of our own experiences. Could we use Burge's strategy? We'll want to look at two things: (i) experiences that P and (ii) the thoughts that might aspire to be knowledge of the contents of those experiences. Whether Burge's strategy can be extended to this case depends on whether these experiences and thoughts utilize the same representational resources.
There is abundant reason to suspect that belief-forming mechanisms use representational resources that differ from those used by the visual system. Accordingly, if there is to be a justificatory account of our beliefs about our own experiences, it must be one that differs from Burge's.
In a follow-up post, I'll say something about why we should think that the representational resources grounding our belief-forming capacity differ from those grounding our visual experiences. Stay tuned!
posted by Idris at 3:29 PM
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