Sunday, August 13, 2006
McDowell on experience
This started life as a paper, but since I don't seem to have much inclination to work on it anymore, and since it's about the same length as most of my long posts, I've decided that it should at least have the fate of being a post here. Thanks to Briggs Wright and Mark Sainsbury for making some helpful suggestions, none of which I ever got around to implementing, to Duncan Pritchard, and to an audience at the Arche reading party a couple of years ago.
We must conceive of sensory experience as carrying conceptual content if we are to halt, at a stable point, a fruitless oscillation between conceiving of experience as a nonconceptual Given that cannot play the justificatory role for which it was intended, and a Davidsonian coherentism that simply and unacceptably abandons recognition that sensory experience plays any real role in rationally justifying our beliefs and judgements about the world; such is the central thesis of John McDowell’s widely discussed John Locke lectures Mind and World. Much of the second lecture is devoted to preempting and responding to the charge that this central thesis commits McDowell to an unacceptable form of idealism, that is, to holding that seemingly objective features of the world are, in some suitably worrying sense, dependent on our thought and talk about it.
How does McDowell’s central contention, that sensory experience cannot be considered nonconceptual, threaten to collapse into idealism so characterised? The key thought is that for sensory experience to carry conceptual content, as it must if we are to learn from the failure of experience conceived as a nonconceptual Given to supply justification for our beliefs and judgements about the world, we must recognise that such experiences have the same kind of content as the judgements we can make based on those experiences:
'In a particular experience in which one is not misled, what one takes in is that things are thus and so. That things are thus and so is the content of the experience, and it can also be the content of a judgement: it becomes the content of a judgement if the subject decided to take the experience at face value. So it is conceptual content.' (26)
But if we to avoid raising the spectre of a nonconceptual Given, we cannot conceive of the point at which the world impinges on the perceiving subject as a boundary between the conceptual and the nonconceptual; that is, the reality which one experiences when one is not misled must also have the same kind of content as the judgements we can make about it, if we are to avoid conceiving of experience too as nonconceptual. Perceptible reality itself possesses conceptual structure. Thus the passage above immediately continues:
'But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of the layout of the world: it is how things are.' (26)
‘Conceptual content, in McDowell’s metaphysics’, as Wright (1996:147) has memorably put the point, ‘belongs to the very fabric of the world’. It is this aspect of McDowell’s position that he thinks will seem to commit him to idealism; the perceptible world is not located on the far side of a boundary between the conceptual and the nonconceptual, and it possesses the same sort of content and structure as the judgements a thinking subject can make about it. What is there left of the thesis that the world is independent of such subjects? To paraphrase Peter Sullivan (2005: 44), McDowell’s world may not be made by the mind of any subject, but it does seem to have been made for a subject to experience—and to think and judge about.
McDowell responds by stressing that there is a metaphysically innocuous sense in which we can understand the thought that the world possess the same sort of content and structure as possible judgements and thoughts about it. He quotes the following passage from the Investigations:
'When we say, and mean, that such-and-such is the case, we—and our meaning—do not stop anywhere short of the fact; but we mean: this—is—so. But this paradox (which has also the form of a truism) can be expressed in this way: Thought can be of what is not the case.' (§95)
In what sense is there a paradox here, and in what sense a truism? The paradox arises from two influential but conflicting ideas. Firstly, that if I am to mean that things are thus and so, nothing short of the fact that things are thus and so will do as the content of my thought or utterance. Put another way that might make things more plausible (or at least intelligible), if that things are thus and so is not the content of my thought, then I am not thinking that things are thus and so. This idea is familiar not from debates about empirical content so much as from attempts, taking inspiration from Frege’s Der Gedanke, to motivate identity theories of truth,. On the other hand, there is a well-known argument going back to Plato’s Theateaetus that, suitably modified for the current context, runs as follows. If true judgements are identified with facts, then it seems that each false judgement should be identified with an absence of fact. But that’s just for our judgements to lack content, and hence to not really be judgements at all. The argument in its original form has become familiar, again not in debates about content, but in the debate about the identity theory of truth, this time as an objection.
McDowell suggests that the truism is apparent once one recognizes that there is a trivial sense in which the world can have the same sort of content as thought and judgement about it. He writes:
'…there is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case. […]
But to say that there is no gap between thought, as such, and the world is just to dress up a truism in high-flown language. All the point comes to is that one can think, for instance, that spring has begun, and that very same thing, that spring has begun, can be the case.' (27)
But there is room for a worry that McDowell is so keen to explain the truistic reading of Wittgenstein’s remark that he fails to address the paradoxical reading, and such a reading raises a problem for his position, a problem closely related to that posed to identity theories of truth by negative existentials. I can think and judge truly that there are no full-sized pyramids in St Andrews, and that thought certainly seems world-directed and thus up for a verdict from the ‘tribunal of experience’, to borrow Quine’s well-worn phrase. But it strains credibility that that there are no pyramids in St Andrews is an aspect of perceptible reality—that there is a conceptually structured item with that very content out there in the world which I glimpse when I am not misled—because it is not clear what it means for the world itself to be so structured as to possess the content that there are no pyramids in St Andrews rather than that there are no 1000 foot tall statues of McDowell in St Andrews. The world would seem to be identical in the relevant respects in both cases; it is just that what we take to be the salient absence will depend on our interests, purposes, etc.
Now, this objection rests on taking McDowell to be committed to a very strong thesis regarding how fine-grained the conceptual structure of the world must be on his picture, but I do not think I have overcommitted McDowell on the basis of the argument I have offered here. For example, that there are no pyramids in St Andrews and that there are no 1000 foot tall statues of McDowell in St Andrews could presumably both readily be known non-inferentially, and so the objection does not rest on dubiously saddling McDowell with a commitment to a conceptually structured item in the world corresponding to each true thought we could reach inferentially. My suggestion, then, is that the very strong thesis I have objected to is recognizably McDowell’s own. If, as McDowell has argued in lecture two of Mind and World, this thesis is consequence of any version of his conception of sensory experience that avoids an unacceptable form of idealism, I think we should regard that conception of experience with deep suspicion.
References:
McDowell, J. 1994. Mind and World. Harvard: Harvard.
Smith, N., ed. 2002. Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. London: Routledge.
Sullivan, P. 2005. ‘Identity Theories of Truth and the Tractatus’, Philosophical Investigations 28: 43-62.
Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wright, C. 1996. ‘Human Nature?’, European Journal of Philosophy 4: 235-54. Reprinted in Smith (2002): 140-159. References are to reprint.
We must conceive of sensory experience as carrying conceptual content if we are to halt, at a stable point, a fruitless oscillation between conceiving of experience as a nonconceptual Given that cannot play the justificatory role for which it was intended, and a Davidsonian coherentism that simply and unacceptably abandons recognition that sensory experience plays any real role in rationally justifying our beliefs and judgements about the world; such is the central thesis of John McDowell’s widely discussed John Locke lectures Mind and World. Much of the second lecture is devoted to preempting and responding to the charge that this central thesis commits McDowell to an unacceptable form of idealism, that is, to holding that seemingly objective features of the world are, in some suitably worrying sense, dependent on our thought and talk about it.
How does McDowell’s central contention, that sensory experience cannot be considered nonconceptual, threaten to collapse into idealism so characterised? The key thought is that for sensory experience to carry conceptual content, as it must if we are to learn from the failure of experience conceived as a nonconceptual Given to supply justification for our beliefs and judgements about the world, we must recognise that such experiences have the same kind of content as the judgements we can make based on those experiences:
'In a particular experience in which one is not misled, what one takes in is that things are thus and so. That things are thus and so is the content of the experience, and it can also be the content of a judgement: it becomes the content of a judgement if the subject decided to take the experience at face value. So it is conceptual content.' (26)
But if we to avoid raising the spectre of a nonconceptual Given, we cannot conceive of the point at which the world impinges on the perceiving subject as a boundary between the conceptual and the nonconceptual; that is, the reality which one experiences when one is not misled must also have the same kind of content as the judgements we can make about it, if we are to avoid conceiving of experience too as nonconceptual. Perceptible reality itself possesses conceptual structure. Thus the passage above immediately continues:
'But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of the layout of the world: it is how things are.' (26)
‘Conceptual content, in McDowell’s metaphysics’, as Wright (1996:147) has memorably put the point, ‘belongs to the very fabric of the world’. It is this aspect of McDowell’s position that he thinks will seem to commit him to idealism; the perceptible world is not located on the far side of a boundary between the conceptual and the nonconceptual, and it possesses the same sort of content and structure as the judgements a thinking subject can make about it. What is there left of the thesis that the world is independent of such subjects? To paraphrase Peter Sullivan (2005: 44), McDowell’s world may not be made by the mind of any subject, but it does seem to have been made for a subject to experience—and to think and judge about.
McDowell responds by stressing that there is a metaphysically innocuous sense in which we can understand the thought that the world possess the same sort of content and structure as possible judgements and thoughts about it. He quotes the following passage from the Investigations:
'When we say, and mean, that such-and-such is the case, we—and our meaning—do not stop anywhere short of the fact; but we mean: this—is—so. But this paradox (which has also the form of a truism) can be expressed in this way: Thought can be of what is not the case.' (§95)
In what sense is there a paradox here, and in what sense a truism? The paradox arises from two influential but conflicting ideas. Firstly, that if I am to mean that things are thus and so, nothing short of the fact that things are thus and so will do as the content of my thought or utterance. Put another way that might make things more plausible (or at least intelligible), if that things are thus and so is not the content of my thought, then I am not thinking that things are thus and so. This idea is familiar not from debates about empirical content so much as from attempts, taking inspiration from Frege’s Der Gedanke, to motivate identity theories of truth,. On the other hand, there is a well-known argument going back to Plato’s Theateaetus that, suitably modified for the current context, runs as follows. If true judgements are identified with facts, then it seems that each false judgement should be identified with an absence of fact. But that’s just for our judgements to lack content, and hence to not really be judgements at all. The argument in its original form has become familiar, again not in debates about content, but in the debate about the identity theory of truth, this time as an objection.
McDowell suggests that the truism is apparent once one recognizes that there is a trivial sense in which the world can have the same sort of content as thought and judgement about it. He writes:
'…there is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case. […]
But to say that there is no gap between thought, as such, and the world is just to dress up a truism in high-flown language. All the point comes to is that one can think, for instance, that spring has begun, and that very same thing, that spring has begun, can be the case.' (27)
But there is room for a worry that McDowell is so keen to explain the truistic reading of Wittgenstein’s remark that he fails to address the paradoxical reading, and such a reading raises a problem for his position, a problem closely related to that posed to identity theories of truth by negative existentials. I can think and judge truly that there are no full-sized pyramids in St Andrews, and that thought certainly seems world-directed and thus up for a verdict from the ‘tribunal of experience’, to borrow Quine’s well-worn phrase. But it strains credibility that that there are no pyramids in St Andrews is an aspect of perceptible reality—that there is a conceptually structured item with that very content out there in the world which I glimpse when I am not misled—because it is not clear what it means for the world itself to be so structured as to possess the content that there are no pyramids in St Andrews rather than that there are no 1000 foot tall statues of McDowell in St Andrews. The world would seem to be identical in the relevant respects in both cases; it is just that what we take to be the salient absence will depend on our interests, purposes, etc.
Now, this objection rests on taking McDowell to be committed to a very strong thesis regarding how fine-grained the conceptual structure of the world must be on his picture, but I do not think I have overcommitted McDowell on the basis of the argument I have offered here. For example, that there are no pyramids in St Andrews and that there are no 1000 foot tall statues of McDowell in St Andrews could presumably both readily be known non-inferentially, and so the objection does not rest on dubiously saddling McDowell with a commitment to a conceptually structured item in the world corresponding to each true thought we could reach inferentially. My suggestion, then, is that the very strong thesis I have objected to is recognizably McDowell’s own. If, as McDowell has argued in lecture two of Mind and World, this thesis is consequence of any version of his conception of sensory experience that avoids an unacceptable form of idealism, I think we should regard that conception of experience with deep suspicion.
References:
McDowell, J. 1994. Mind and World. Harvard: Harvard.
Smith, N., ed. 2002. Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. London: Routledge.
Sullivan, P. 2005. ‘Identity Theories of Truth and the Tractatus’, Philosophical Investigations 28: 43-62.
Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wright, C. 1996. ‘Human Nature?’, European Journal of Philosophy 4: 235-54. Reprinted in Smith (2002): 140-159. References are to reprint.
Labels: Epistemology
# posted by Aidan @ 6:48 AM 
Comments:
<< Home
Hey Aidan,
Great post, especially for someone completely unfamiliar to McDowell (such as myself). Here's a thought: Does McDowell have the metaphysical resources to differentiate between the two negative existentials based upon what sorts of experiences would typically count as confirming one of the two judgments rather than the other? (I have a feeling that McDowell would need to say something like this in response to worries one might have with true empirical generalizations which are not negative existentials.) I'm not sure how to articulate this in McDowell's language, but the thought is that maybe the very strong theses which you're saddling him with here is that that there is exactly one conceptually structured item out in the world which uniquely corresponds to each true judgment, rather than some broad class of (perhaps ordered) sets of such items. (This is, I think, different from the complaint you mention in the final paragraph, but then again it might not be. Maybe you could help me clean this up a little bit, if there's any there there.)
Great post, especially for someone completely unfamiliar to McDowell (such as myself). Here's a thought: Does McDowell have the metaphysical resources to differentiate between the two negative existentials based upon what sorts of experiences would typically count as confirming one of the two judgments rather than the other? (I have a feeling that McDowell would need to say something like this in response to worries one might have with true empirical generalizations which are not negative existentials.) I'm not sure how to articulate this in McDowell's language, but the thought is that maybe the very strong theses which you're saddling him with here is that that there is exactly one conceptually structured item out in the world which uniquely corresponds to each true judgment, rather than some broad class of (perhaps ordered) sets of such items. (This is, I think, different from the complaint you mention in the final paragraph, but then again it might not be. Maybe you could help me clean this up a little bit, if there's any there there.)
# posted by 
: 8/13/2006 11:45 AM
: 8/13/2006 11:45 AM
Hey Alex,
Briggs had a similar idea, based on work in truth-maker theory done by Armstrong. But I'm afraid I need to pack and travel back to Austin over the next couple of days, so I'll to come back to your point then.
Briggs had a similar idea, based on work in truth-maker theory done by Armstrong. But I'm afraid I need to pack and travel back to Austin over the next couple of days, so I'll to come back to your point then.
Hey Aidan,
No problem! Have a safe journey. Also, two other quick questions to answer once you've returned to Austin: First, are you planning on visiting Notre Dame again for the Phil. of Maths workshop? Second, have you heard of another UT-Austin graduate conference in the works? I know that the two Notre Dame presenters had a great time. Hope all is well.
No problem! Have a safe journey. Also, two other quick questions to answer once you've returned to Austin: First, are you planning on visiting Notre Dame again for the Phil. of Maths workshop? Second, have you heard of another UT-Austin graduate conference in the works? I know that the two Notre Dame presenters had a great time. Hope all is well.
# posted by : 8/13/2006 1:06 PM
: 8/13/2006 1:06 PM
Hi Alex,
I'll field the short questions now, since I haven't really had a chance to properly think through the McDowell issues. I'm not sure about the workshop - I really enjoyed myself last year, and if I can afford it again this year I'll be there.
I'm completely confident there will be a grad conference again this year, very likely organised by myself and Briggs Wright, though that's not final. We'll be beginning the metaplanning process in the next week or so. It's going to be tough to organise something as fun and as interesting as last years, but we'll do our best.
I'll field the short questions now, since I haven't really had a chance to properly think through the McDowell issues. I'm not sure about the workshop - I really enjoyed myself last year, and if I can afford it again this year I'll be there.
I'm completely confident there will be a grad conference again this year, very likely organised by myself and Briggs Wright, though that's not final. We'll be beginning the metaplanning process in the next week or so. It's going to be tough to organise something as fun and as interesting as last years, but we'll do our best.
Interesting post.
Question: why does it strain credibility to think the fact "there are no full-sized pyramids in St. A" is "an aspect of perceptible reality"? Let's make it easier and replace St. Andrew's with "your bedroom" -- Can't I just look in your room and see that there aren't any full-sized pyramids there? Surely I can, no?
Your remarks seem to suggest that there need be something, some "conceptually structured item", in the world that can be the subject of thought or content of perception about the room in this case. I think this isn't something McD's committed to, and I think that it's what leads to the problem you mention.
Let 'F(x)' be 'it is a fact that x'. If it isn't a fact that x this doesn't leave us without any facts regarding x. We now have F(-x), no? If we understand that the negation goes within the scope of the "fact operator", then Plato's argument is invalid due to a scope fallacy.
Question: why does it strain credibility to think the fact "there are no full-sized pyramids in St. A" is "an aspect of perceptible reality"? Let's make it easier and replace St. Andrew's with "your bedroom" -- Can't I just look in your room and see that there aren't any full-sized pyramids there? Surely I can, no?
Your remarks seem to suggest that there need be something, some "conceptually structured item", in the world that can be the subject of thought or content of perception about the room in this case. I think this isn't something McD's committed to, and I think that it's what leads to the problem you mention.
Let 'F(x)' be 'it is a fact that x'. If it isn't a fact that x this doesn't leave us without any facts regarding x. We now have F(-x), no? If we understand that the negation goes within the scope of the "fact operator", then Plato's argument is invalid due to a scope fallacy.
# posted by : 8/25/2006 4:40 PM
: 8/25/2006 4:40 PM
Thanks for the comment, Matt. I half agree with you, and half don't. So I pretty much agree with everything you say, except your suggestion that McDowell hasn't overcommitted himself in a way that interferes with him accepting the commonsensical things you want to say.
Let me review my grounds for attributing the strong thesis to McDowell, and perhaps this will go someway towards offering something of a response to Alex. McDowell is trying to avoid the mind and the world it thinks and judges about lying on different sides of a boundary between the conceptual realm and the nonconceptual realm.
(I'm not going be able to say this without falling into using McDowell's Sellars-inspired spatial metaphors, sorry).
So as I see things, he starts with the kind of conceptual content possessed by our beliefs, thoughts, judgements, etc, and so to speak, works out the way. So first we are forced to recognise that perceptual experience itself has to possess conceptual content, and then in the passages I quote in the post we see that we are now invited to think of perceptible reality itself as possessing this sort of content.
Now, McDowell's original aim was to preserve a minimal empiricism; to be able to recognise that perceptual experience can play a justificatory role for our beliefs and judgements. And as Wright puts it (142), 'justification is essentially a rational relation. That seems to require that it can obtain only between conceptually structured items - things that carry or are somehow indexed by propositional content'.
McDowell's aim is to hold on to minimal empiricism (which is what he thinks Davidson's coherentism gives up) whilst avoiding appeal to a non-conceptual Given. We've seen that he himself argues that to pull off this balancing trick, we need to conceive of reality itself as possessing the same kind of structure and conceptual content as the beliefs we form and the judgements we make about it. So reality itself is comprised of 'conceptually structured items'.
Maybe I haven't done anything more than repeat myself. But hopefully I made myself a little clearer on my reasons for attributing the strong thesis to McDowell.
Let me review my grounds for attributing the strong thesis to McDowell, and perhaps this will go someway towards offering something of a response to Alex. McDowell is trying to avoid the mind and the world it thinks and judges about lying on different sides of a boundary between the conceptual realm and the nonconceptual realm.
(I'm not going be able to say this without falling into using McDowell's Sellars-inspired spatial metaphors, sorry).
So as I see things, he starts with the kind of conceptual content possessed by our beliefs, thoughts, judgements, etc, and so to speak, works out the way. So first we are forced to recognise that perceptual experience itself has to possess conceptual content, and then in the passages I quote in the post we see that we are now invited to think of perceptible reality itself as possessing this sort of content.
Now, McDowell's original aim was to preserve a minimal empiricism; to be able to recognise that perceptual experience can play a justificatory role for our beliefs and judgements. And as Wright puts it (142), 'justification is essentially a rational relation. That seems to require that it can obtain only between conceptually structured items - things that carry or are somehow indexed by propositional content'.
McDowell's aim is to hold on to minimal empiricism (which is what he thinks Davidson's coherentism gives up) whilst avoiding appeal to a non-conceptual Given. We've seen that he himself argues that to pull off this balancing trick, we need to conceive of reality itself as possessing the same kind of structure and conceptual content as the beliefs we form and the judgements we make about it. So reality itself is comprised of 'conceptually structured items'.
Maybe I haven't done anything more than repeat myself. But hopefully I made myself a little clearer on my reasons for attributing the strong thesis to McDowell.
I think my worry is at bottom the same as matt m's.
You write:
"But it strains credibility that that there are no pyramids in St Andrews is an aspect of perceptible reality—that there is a conceptually structured item with that very content out there in the world which I glimpse when I am not misled—because it is not clear what it means for the world itself to be so structured as to possess the content that there are no pyramids in St Andrews rather than that there are no 1000 foot tall statues of McDowell in St Andrews. The world would seem to be identical in the relevant respects in both cases; it is just that what we take to be the salient absence will depend on our interests, purposes, etc."
If I've understood, since you can think there are no pyramids in St. Andrews, it must be possible for it to be the case that there are no pyramids in St. Andrews. As McDowell puts it, "'…there is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case." […]
What strains credulity about negations being the case? You say that in a given possible world, the two negations could be the case. I agree, but I don't see anything credulity-straining. "2+2=4" and "grass is green" are both the case...
Did you mean that the two have the two negations have the same truth conditions? Or that the set of possible worlds in which one is true=the set of possible worlds in which the other is true?
Or is this stuff a red herring? Is your argument more that it just seems immediately preposterous that that world could be such that a negation is the case and that one can perceive that it's the case?
Post a Comment
You write:
"But it strains credibility that that there are no pyramids in St Andrews is an aspect of perceptible reality—that there is a conceptually structured item with that very content out there in the world which I glimpse when I am not misled—because it is not clear what it means for the world itself to be so structured as to possess the content that there are no pyramids in St Andrews rather than that there are no 1000 foot tall statues of McDowell in St Andrews. The world would seem to be identical in the relevant respects in both cases; it is just that what we take to be the salient absence will depend on our interests, purposes, etc."
If I've understood, since you can think there are no pyramids in St. Andrews, it must be possible for it to be the case that there are no pyramids in St. Andrews. As McDowell puts it, "'…there is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case." […]
What strains credulity about negations being the case? You say that in a given possible world, the two negations could be the case. I agree, but I don't see anything credulity-straining. "2+2=4" and "grass is green" are both the case...
Did you mean that the two have the two negations have the same truth conditions? Or that the set of possible worlds in which one is true=the set of possible worlds in which the other is true?
Or is this stuff a red herring? Is your argument more that it just seems immediately preposterous that that world could be such that a negation is the case and that one can perceive that it's the case?
# posted by : 9/21/2006 5:28 PM
: 9/21/2006 5:28 PM << Home
