The Given Regained. Reflections on the Sensuous Content of Experience

Richard Schantz

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Jan., 2001), pp. 167-180.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28200101%2962%3A1%3C167%3ATGRROT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/ips.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.orgSat Oct 6 18:50:31 2007

Philosophy and Phenor~zenological Research Vol. LXII , No. 1, January 2001

The Given Regained. Reflections on the Sensuous Content of Experience RICHARD SCHANTZ

Freie Urziversitaet Berlin

The major part of our beliefs and our knowledge of the world is based on, or grounded in, sensory experience. But, how is it that we can have percept~~al beliefs that things are thus and so, and, moreover, be justified in having them? What conditions must experi- ence satisfy to rationally warrant, and not merely to cause, our beliefs? Against the cur- rently very popular contention that experience itself already has to be propositionally and conceptually structured, I will rehabilitate the claim that there is given element in experience which is independent of thought and which is possessed of a distinctive nonpropositional and nonconceptual content. Further, I will argue that this given element is indeed fit to play a significant evidential role in the justification of our beliefs about the world.

The major part of our beliefs and our knowledge of the world is based on, or grounded in, sensory experience. I may justifiably believe that there is a sofa here because I see it, and that there is smoke in the air because I smell it. And similarly for our other sensory modalities. No wonder, then, that empiri- cism-the view that most, or even all, our knowledge comes to us from the evidence of the senses-once clearly dominated the epistemological scene. Empiricism must answer two basic questions: firstly, what is directly revealed to us in experience? And secondly, what can be inferred from that, and how, by what fosms of inference. It is the first question, the question about what the content of perceptual experience is, with which I will primar- ily be concerned here. On the view I will defend sensory experience carries a distinctive kind of nonconceptual representational content. Further, I will show that experiences, qua bearers of nonconceptual content, are able to provide rational grounding for our beliefs about the world. I will mainly develop my own position by contrasting it with John McDowell's views on the relation between sensory consciousness and world.

But let us begin by casting a glance at the background of the current debate. Traditional empiricism held rather restrictive views on what the direct

THE GIVEN REGALNED 167

or immediate objects of awareness arc when we perceive.' According to it, what we are immediately aware of, or directly presented with in conscious- ness, is never a physical entity which exists independently of our perception of it. Rather, traditional empiricists maintain that the immediate objects of perception arc a special kind of mental entities-often called "sensc-data" or "appearances"-wl~osc existence is dependent on our awareness of them. A sense-datum is supposed to be something that is givcn in experience, some- thing that is simply received through the operation of sensibility, and whose apprehension does not involve the exercise of conceptual capacities. Further- more, it is claimed that confrontations with sense-data, so conceived, provide the foundations of all empirical knowledge. Since beliefs about them, or judgements expressing thcm, are allegedly justificd independently of all other beliefs, they are especially suitable to stop a well-known regress that is created by pointing out that beliefs justified only in relation to others arc justificd only if thosc others arc also. It is important to note that if apprehen- sions of the givcn are to serve as the ultimate epistcmic grounds for all our beliefs about the world they must play a justificatory role, and not merely a causal role.

In this way, we are led to the classical foundationalist picture, according to which the system of all our beliefs can be divided into two parts: thosc which need support from others and those which can support others, but need no support from others. The latter are the foundations, the former the super- structure built on thosc foundations. The central thesis of foundationalism can be put by saying that all derived or mcdiatcly justificd beliefs owe their justification ultimately to basic or immediately justificd beliefs. Basic beliefs, in turn, arc justificd by being based on experiences of the given.

Traditional foundationalist empiricism has come under fire from many sides. A milestone is Willard Van Quine's attack on two dogmas by which he thinks empiricism was characterized: first, that there is a "fundamental cleav- age" between analytic statements, statcmcnts true by virtue of meaning alone, and synthetic statements, statements whose truth is also dependent on the way the world is; and, second, the dogma of reductionism, according to w11ic11 every meaningful statement can be reduced to statements that refer to immedi- ate e~per ience .~

What Quinc puts in place of the second, more basic dogma is his holistic thesis that the sentences of our theory of the world arc not separably vulnera- ble to adverse observations because it is only jointly as one theory that such sentences imply their observable consequences. As he puts it: "My counter-

Scc Schantz 1990

Quinc 1953,20

168 RICHAKD SCHANTZ

suggestion [ . . . I is that our statcmcnts about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body."i On Quinc's view, the truth of our statcmcnts docs depend on both, language and extralinguistic fact; it is just that this duality of factors cannot be traced back to the statcmcnts of our theory taken one by one. Despite his criticism of traditional empiricism, Quine still thinks of his own epistemology as a version of empiricism, but as an enlightened, naturalized empiricism, one without dogmas. He aspires to retain the empiricist idea that our statements about the world have to face the "tribunal of experience" though they can only face it as whole system.

While in his classic "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" the periphery of the fabric of sentences expressing our theory of the world was described as "experience", in later writings Quine went over to replace talk about experi- ence by talk about neural intakc at the sensory receptors. The point of contact between theory and empirical world was now characterized as "surface irrita- tions". Thus, the tribunal of experience turns out to be the activations of our nerve cndings."uinc literally identifies the sensory evidence, which our beliefs about the world are based upon, with these ncurophysiological processes, when he says: "The stimulations of his sensory receptors is all the evidence anybody has had to go on, ultimately, in arriving at his picture of the world."' In marked contrast to his empiricist predecessors, Quine drops any awareness requirement concerning the evidential relation. Neural input is neither present to consciousness nor, normally, othcrwise cognitive available to us. Few people, statistically speaking, know anything about the physio- logical processes at their sensory receptors."hus, in order to answer the good old empiricist question of how evidence relates to the theory it supports, Quine directs the focus of his new, naturalized empiricism on the relation between a person's neural intakc and her verbal output, consisting, at the most basic level, of the utterance of obsei-vation sentences.

Donald Davidson has argued that Quine himself has fallen victim to a dogma of empiricism, the third dogma, namely, the dualism of conceptual scheme, or language, and empirical content-'empirical content', as Davidson uses the term, including experiences, sensations, sense-data, and, of course, patterns of stir nu la ti on^.^ The idea underlying the scheme-content dichotomy is that there is an unconceptualized given element in experience which might be variously interpreted, or variously organized, by different conceptual schemes. Davidson

Ibid., 41 Quinine 1981,40

Quine 1969,75 "uinc 1981,40

Davidson 1984, 189

attacks this dualism from both sides, from the side of thc very idea of a conceptual schcmc and, what chiefly intcrcsts mc hcre, from the side of the idea of a givcn element untouched by our interpretative activities. Hc urgcs that empiricism-in its enlightened no less than in its traditional form- must bc abandoned bccausc thc attempts to find an cpistcmic basis for knowl- edge and justification outside the scopc of our bclicfs, the attempts, in other words, to ground justification ultimately on thc evidence of the senses are all in vain. Davidson likes to characterize such attempts as requiring a "confrontation" bctwccn our beliefs and objcctivc reality, and he dismisses this idea as absurd. Instcad, he recomrncnds a sort of cohercntism, proclaim- ing that "[ ...] nothing can count as a reason for holding a bclicf cxccpt another belief'.R Sincc thcrc is nothing other than our bclicfs to which wc can appeal in thc justification of a belief, he rcjccts Quine's putative assumption that there is an cpistcmic relation betwccn the holding true of observation scntcnces and neural intake as simply incoherent. Sensory stimulations are not suited to servc as cvidcnce on which we might base our bclicfs bccausc, typically, wc have no perceptual or cognitive access to them.'

According to Davidson, the idea that justification might be something othcr than exclusively a relation between bclicfs is bascd on a confusion of justification with causality. In his own words: The relation between a sensation and a belief cannot be logical, since sensations are not beliefs or other propositional attitudes. What then is the relation? The answer is, I think, obvious: the relation is causal. Sensations cause some beliefs and in thir sense are the basis or ground of those beliefs. But a causal explanation of a belief does not show how or why a belief is justified."'

Davidson emphatically dcnics that what happens at our sense-organs has anything to do with justification or evidcncc. Experiences and sensory stimu- lations play a causal rolc; they arc causal intermediaries bctwccn cxtcrnal objects and events and our bclicfs about them. But an cxpcricncc cannot count as a reason for holding a belief, and hencc has no influence on the question whcthcr a belief is justified or not. Experiences can stand in causal relations to belief-states, but not in logical relations to the content of bclicfs. Thc dimension of sensory and perceptual cxpcricnce is epistemically irrelevant. To credit experiences with an cpistcmic role is, according to Davidson, to conceive them as cpistcmic intermediaries bctwccn our beliefs and the objec- tive world. And he is convinced that such a conception lcads to skepticism because wc cannot be sure that such intermediaries supply us with rcliablc information about the world. In giving up cpistemic intermediaries hc hopes,

Davidson 1986,310

Davidson 1990,7 1

"' Davidson 1986, 307

170 RICHARD SCHANTZ

as he puts it clscwherc, to "re-cstablish unmediatcd touch with thc familiar objccts whose antics make our sentcnccs and opinions true or false."'l

In a recent study John McDowell has argucd, however, that Davidson's coher- cntism, though incorporating the important insight that Quine's naturalized cmpiricism has no internal resources to do Qusticc to its own juridical rhctoric of facing thc tribunal of cxpcricnce, still cannot bc the last word. McDowell's views on the intentionality of perceptual cxperience serve as a suitable foil to acccntuate my own point of view. McDowell objccts that cohcrcntism, by acknowlcdging only causal rclations bctwcen our bclicfs and expcricnccs, threatens to disconiicct c~npirical thinking from independcnt reality.'? Intcrnal cohercncc alonc will not do. Davidson's picture rcnounccs, as McDowcll likcs to put it, "rational constraint" from thc cxtcrnal world on the dynamic web of our beliefs." Morcover, he argues that thc vcrsions of cohcrentism advocatcd by Richard Rorty and Wilfrid Scllars go wrong Sor essentially the same rcason. Thc activity of justifying cmpirical beliefs is not a self-contained gamc but must be rationally responsive to the world itself which is disclosed to us through thc dcliveranccs of the senses. McDowell insists that if we are to undcrstand how exercises of conccpts can constitutc justified cmpirical judgements about external reality, how our thinking can bc gcnuinely empirical, wc must recognize rational relations between expcri- cnccs and beliefs; we must, in other words, make room for the idca that our expericnccs can bc relatcd to our bcliefs as grounds or as reasons for thcm.

McDowcll urges that wc should not abandon "minimal cmpiricism", which hc dcscribes in the following way:

[.. .] in the sorts of case that must coInc first for rcHection on the very idca of dircctedness at thc world, the world's verdict, to which thinking Inus1 be answerable if it is to be thinking at all, is dchvered by way of a pronouncement from (in Quine's phrase) "thc tribunal of experi- C I I C C " . ~ ~

Only if we can scc how empirical thinking is rcsponsiblc to the tribunal of cxpcrience, will we be ablc to answer in a satisfactory way thc qucstion how cmpirical content-world-dircctcdncss-is as much as possiblc. This "transcendental" question how empirical contcnt is possiblc McDowell thinks of as the real sourcc of thc typical cpistcmological problems that pcrvadc modcrn philosopl~y-cspecially, of coursc, of thc problem, how empirical knowledge is possible.

" Ihvidson 1984, 198

l 2 McDowell 1994

'"bid., 25

l4 McDowell 1995,23 1-32

W E GIVEN KCGAINCD 171

McDowell maintains that Davidson's denial of thc epistcmic significance of cxperience will lead philosophers to recoil back into thc Myth of the given. This is, as McDowell, following Wilfrid Scllars, dcscribcs it, the view that thc spacc of reasons cxtcnds more widely than the space of concepts, in thc scnsc that cpistcmic justifications have an ultimate foundation in barc, nonconceptual presences-something which is simply rcccivcd in experience indcpcndently of acquired conceptual capacities, and to which we can only point. The idea is that by appealing to a given clcmcnt in cxperience the rcquircd rational constraint from outside the sphere of thought and judgcmcnt can bc ensured. McDowcll shares with Davidson thc conviction that thc relations in virtue of which a belief is justified-relations such as implication and probabilitication-can only be conceived as relations which hold bctwccn conceptually organized items. For thcm, thc attempt to extend the spacc of rcasons so that it can includc nonconccptual impingcmcnts from thc world is hopeless. If experiences are conceived as nonconccptual, thcy cannot bc a rational basis, a sourcc of justification, for our bclicfs or world-view. So far McDowcll agrees with Davidson. Ncvcrthclcss, hc cannot accept Davidson's unconstraincd cohcrcntism.

In order to escape the intolerable oscillation bctwccn thc cohcrcntist threat that empirical thinking is, as McDowcll puts it, "frictionless spinning in a void"15 on thc onc side and the Myth of the sensuous given on the othcr, McDowell endeavours to develop a more suitable conception of cxpericncc. Hc aims to rehabilitate the Kantian thought that empirical knowlcdgc rcsults from thc interplay bctwecn sensibility and understanding, bctwecn rcccptivity and spontaneity-sensibility bcing thc sourcc of intuitions, thc experiences of outer and inner sense, while from the understanding arise concepts. Against this Kantian background, McDowcll cxprcsscs thc central idea of his concep- tion of cxpcriencc in the following way: "rcccptivity docs not makc an cven notionally scparablc contribution to thc co-operation."'"

In othcr words, thc operations of sensibility must engage thosc very capacities which Kant attributes to thc understanding. On McDowell's vicw, expericnces are states which arc passive, products of rcccptivity, and yet they arc already possesscd of conccptual content. Conceptual capacities are not cxcrciscd on a nonconccptual given but are already drawn on b~receptivity.I7 It is not that concepts tirst come into play in beliefs or judgements which are based on experiences; they are already at work in the expcricnccs thcmselves. Our expericnces represent things to bc thus and so. And when wc are not misled, we take in how things arc. Tl~at tlzings are tlzus and so is the conccp- tual content of an experience. A perceptual judgcmcnt simply endorses thc

l 5 McDowell 1994, 1 1

'"bid., 9

l 7 Ibid., 9-13

172 KICHARD SCHANTZ

conceptual contcnt already possessed by thc cxpcrience. Experiencc, bcing charactcrizcd as "openncss to thc layout o f ~cal i ty" , '~ is supposed to enable indcpendent reality itsclf to exert a rational inlluencc on the cvolving web o f our bclicfs. The posturcs we adopt, our empirical judgcments that things arc thus and so, arc answerable to thc world through being answerable to expcri- cnce. In this way McDowcll hopes to makc intclligiblc how expericnccs, impressions made by the external world on our scnsory cquipmcnt, can stand in rational, not mercly in causal, relations to bclicfs, how an expericncc can be someone's rcason for a belicf.

Although he holds that cxperiences arc conccptually articulated McDowcll rejects thc vicw, developed in thc first instancc by David Armstrong and George Pitcher,'"hat thcy are beliefs or inclinations to b c l i c f ~ . ~ ~ How things appear to us is not under our control, but McDowell urgcs that it is up to us to decide whethcr or not to believe that things are as the appearances represent them to be. Not that he assumes that bclicf is always a mattcr o f choice, that all bclicfs are undcr dircct voluntary control. It can hardly be denicd that somc belicfs wc simply find ourselves with. Nevertheless, he wants to rescrvc the title o f belief and judgement for a kind o f cognitive statc which essentially belongs within thc scopc o f a subject's actively making up hcr mind about something, and with respect to which the question ol justification can always be raiscd. Thus, cxperiences, according to McDowcll, arc through and through conccptually inlormed, and cvcn always propositionally contcntlul, and yct prcjudgcmcntal and nondoxastic.

By acknowledging the epistemic significance o f expericnce McDowcll's picturc gains an advantagc ovcr Davidson's cohcrcntism. In contrast to what he hopes, though, I think his position is not thc right place for our thinking to comc to rcst. I want to dcfcnd, rathcr, a vcrsion o f the vicw McDowcll brands as a myth, namcly, that thc spacc o f justificatory relations cxtends further than the space o f concepts. Firstly, I will defend thc claim that therc is a givcn clcmcnt in cxpcricncc which is indepcndcnt o f thought and which is posscsscd o f a distinctive nonconccptual contcnt. In this regard, I sympathizc with C.I. Lcwis who remarkcd: "Thcrc is in all cxpcricnce that elemcnt which we are aware we do not create by thinking and cannot, in gcncral, displace or alter."" And sccondly, I will arguc that this given clcment, properly natural- ized, is indeed fit to play an important cvidential role in thc justification o f bcliefs about physical objects-though not, o f coursc, thc gigantic role classical foundationalism credited it with.

Ibid., 26 Scc Arrnstrong 1961; P~tchcr 197 1

'" McDowell 1994, 60-63, 140 " Lewis 1956,48

TIiE GIVEN REGAINED 173

I agree with McDowell that perceptual experience is not itself a form of belief. No beliefs are essential to perceptual awareness. All that is necessary for my perceiving something is that it phenomenally appears a certain way to me. Where I differ from him, is in holding that these appearings do not necessarily involve the possession and application of concepts. Perceptual experience is not itself a form of recognizing, identifying, or classifying the things around us. No doubt, to recognize something as a crocodile, or to see that it is a crocodile, is to form the belief that it is a crocodile, and, like all beliefs, this requires applying concepts.

But not all perceiving is perceiving as or perceiving that.22It seems obvious that we can see a crocodile, even though we do not recognize it as such, and even though we do not possess the concept of a crocodile. Seeing a crocodile, for example, is constituted by certain visual experiences, certain ways the crocodile looks to us, and these expcriences require no conccptual- ization, no undcrstanding of what sort of thing a crocodile is. Lack of concepts does not blind us to the entities we phenomenally cxperiencc; it only prcvents us from idcntifying them as the cntities they in fact are.

To forestall possible objcctions-my claim is that sensory experiences arc concq?tually independent of beliefs or thoughts. I do not want to go so far as to claim that experiences are always causally completely indepcndcnt of doxastic states or conceptual capacitics. Rather, I admit that our beliefs, hopcs, and cxpcctations do causally influence-in certain cascs, and to a certain degree-the qualitative features of our expericnce.

Thc crucial point, howevcr, is that there are limits to the extcnt to which the content of propositional attitudes can affect perccptual structure. Thc Muller-Lyer illusion niccly illustrates that experiential content is not wholly penetrated by what wc know and bclicve. Our knowledge that thc two lines arc the same length does not make it phenomenally appear to us as if they are the same length. As Jcrry Fodor, in an important contribution to perceptual psychology, has persuasively argued, perceptual content is modular, informa- tionally encapsulated from our knowlcdgc and b e l i c f~ .~ ' In an important sense, how we believe things to be does not affect how thcy appear to us. Expcricntial content is, to a significant dcgrec, immunc to high-levcl cogni- tive influences. Perception is not as plastic, as mallcablc by background assumptions, as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Fcyerabend, Paul Churchland and company try to make us believe.24

I havc argued that therc is such a phenomenon as immediate, nonconcep- tual awareness of a given clcmcnt in cxpcrience. This given elemcnt, as I understand it, is different from merc scnsory stimulation. The purely physical

22 SCC Urctskc 1969, 1981; Schantz 1990 See Fodor 1983, 1984

24 SCC Kuhn 1962; Churchland 1979; Fcycrabend 198 1

174 RICHARD SCHANTZ

2'

stimulation of one's sensory reccptors by an objcct is clcarly not sufficient for one's bcing scnsorily presented with, and thus awarc of, that object. And the sensuous given also need not be regardcd as a peculiar nonwordly item-a sense-datum as it was traditionally conccived. My motto is to save appear- ances without returning to classical foundationalism.

Lct us look in this light at McDowell's dismissal of the thesis of Gareth Evans, that the content of perceptual cxperiencc is complctely nonconceptual, as well as of the thesis of Christopher Peacocke, that it is partly nonconcep- t ~ a l . ~ ~Thc casc for nonconceptual representational content rests in part on thc supposition that cxpcricnce can havc a fincr-grained content than can be formulated by using concepts at thc disposal of an ordinary subject. Thc nonconceptualists claim that we do not possess, say, as many colour concepts as thcre are shadcs of colour we can scnsorily discriminate. Our repertoire of colour conccpts, expressible by words like 'blue' or 'red' or 'scarlet' is too coarsc-graincd to capturc thc fincst dctail, thc specific charac- tcr, of our colour experiences.

McDowcll responds that though the phenomenological differences that Evans and Pcacocke rightly find in scnsory experience cannot be captured by gencral concepts, they either, like Evans, overlook, or, like Peacocke, do not givc due weight to thc fact that thesc diffcrcnccs can bc cxpresscd by special demonstrative concepts which are made available by the colour's being given in a particular way in cxpcricnce. As McDowell puts it:

In the throes o f an experience o f the kind that putatively transcends one's conceptual powers [ . . . I one can give linguistic expression to a concept that is exactly as fine-grained as the experience, by uttering a phrase like "that shade", in which the demonstrative exploits the presence o f the

McDowell argues that we possess conceptual capacities, whose content is expressible with the help of dcmonstrative phrascs like 'that shadc'. Thcse conceptual capacities enable the fine-grained sensuous detail with which we arc presented in experience, and which is supposcd to cscape the discrimina- tive powers of our conceptual repertoire, to be embraccd within that rcpcr- toirc. He is at pains to convincc us that what is in play here is indeed a gcnuine conccptual capacity, one which is not restricted in its exercise to a single occasion in which cxpericncc presents one with the respective sample. Rather, he maintains, the capacity is a "recognitional capacity",27 onc which can persist into the futurc, if only for a short time, and which can, in the absence of the original sample, bc exploited in thoughts based on memory.

Now, I agrcc with McDowell that wc do indeed possess such demonstra- tive conceptual skills which are made available to the subject by his percep- " See Evans 1982,229; Peacocke 1992, 61--98; 1998

2"c~owell 1994, 56-57

27 Ibid., 57

THE GIVEN REGAINED 175

tual state. Such skills pcrmit us to exprcss, or, as I prefer to say, to refer to, thc contcnt of experience. But that fact alone docs not show what hc promiscd to show, namely that the contcnt of experience is conccptual through and through, that the very existence of cxpericnce dcpcnds on thc deployment of concepts. The dependency is, rather obviously, the othcr way around. This becomes evident when he himsclf has to admit that the contcnt of such a rccognitional capacity can only be "made explicit", or "fully detcrmincd", with the help of a sample, something that figures in the actual course of visual experience. Furthcr, hc characterizes these recognitional capacities as "hybrids" because, as hc conccdes: "There is an admixture of intuition in their vcry c o n ~ t i t u t i o n " . ~ ~ So, wc must conclude that McDowcll's rcply to the phenomenological case for nonconccptual content is significantly flawed.

Nevertheless, McDowcll is deeply convinced that states with nonconcep- tual content cannot intelligibly constitute a subject's reason for believing something. Against Peacocke's assertion that nonconceptual experiences can be justifiers for our beliefs, McDowell objects that he "has to sever the tic between reasons for which a subject thinks as she does and reasons she can give for thinking that way. Reasons that the subject can give, in so far as they are articulable, must be within the space of concept^."^' He points out that an unsurprising answcr by an ordinary subjcct to the question why shc holds somc observational belief about a perceived object might be: "Bccausc it looks that way".70 This reason too, he claims, is articulate, at least "minimally", and then he continucs "so it must be no less conccptual than what it is a reason for".31

Let us, for a moment, grant the requircment of minimal articulability. Whcn a subject says "Because it looks that way", she exprcsses a demonstra- tivc thought, and of course this thought is a conceptually contentful intentional state. But that only shows that the articulation of the rcason involvcs the use of the demonstrative concept 'that way9. It does not show, what McDowell nccds to show, that the reason itsclf, the cxpericncc the dcmonstrative rcfcrs to, has conccptual content. From the conceptual charactcr of the demonstrative 'that way' it simply does not follow that thc way dcmonstratively referred to itself has a conceptual charactcr. As far as McDowell's argument from articulability is concerned, the way might wcll have a nonconccptual charactcr.

Actually, I think, howcver, that wc need not and should not acknowlcdgc that there is any requirement of articulability. Such a requirement-which embodies McDowell's internalism about justification-scems to me, ultimately, to rest on a confusion bctwecn having reasons and giving reasons

2X lbid., 59

2"bid., I65

"' lbid.

'' Ibid., 166

176 RICHARD SCHANTZ

or, in other words, bctween the state of being justified in belicving, and the activity of justifying the belief, of showing it to bc justified. If one ncglects this important distinction, onc will be inclined to supposc that being justified cntails the ability of showing that onc is justified, that is to say, of produc- ing a justifying argument. Now, of course, to successfully carry out the activity of justifying a belief one must appeal to othcr beliefs or othcr conceptually contentful states. But from the fact that we can justiJj, a belief only by showing that it sustains appropriatc relations to other conceptually contcntful statcs, it docs not follow that a bclief can he just i j ied only by its relations to othcr conceptually contentful states. We would have only fcw justified beliefs, if their justification depcnded on having engagcd in thc practice of establishing thcir credential^.'^

For a belicf to bc justified it does not even sccm to be neccssary to be capable of engaging in such activitics. Many subjects lack the intellectual or linguistic capacities requisite to articulate their reasons. A subject may havc, in the particular way an animal appcars to her, an adequate reason to believe that it is a crocodile, without being able to describe the way the animal appears to hcr, and hencc without being ablc to providc a justifying argu- mcnt. Our incapacity to specify the significant features of our expericnce of an objcct docs not prcvcnt us from having, in the way it appears to us, a reason to believe that it is thus and so.

McDowcll, on the othcr hand, seems to think of all empirical knowledge as higher level in character. For him, cpistcmic justification in general consists of thc reflective activity of giving and asking for reasons, or contin- ually scrutinizing and criticizing the rational warrant for our judgments. It is not cnough for our pcrccptual bclicfs to have epistemic authority-for cxample, in virtue of bcing thc result of reliable belief-forming processes, that is, processes that are likely to lead to truc beliefs. In the wake of Sellars' epistemological point of vicw, McDowell insists that thc authority of percep- tual belicfs must be recognized as such by the person whose belief it is, and this requires that its rational credentials are available for critical scrutiny.

But why should we suppose that the acquisition of basic empirical knowl- edge cssentially involves knowlcdge about the epistemic status of our beliefs'? No doubt, to possess such meta-knowledge is, in ccrtain contexts, an extremcly useful thing-for example, when we undertake to answcr the skeptic, or whcn wc endeavour to satisfy what Robert Brandom calls McDowell's "rational constraint constraint" on theories of empirical content3' by rcllcctively taking charge of the shape of our active thinking. But wc should not allow the critical evaluation of our bcliefs which may indeed be necessary in such special contexts to bc built into the vcry idca of expcricncc

'2 Scc Alston 1989, passim

" Brandorn 1995, 245

THE GIVEN 1iEGAINED 177

or of empirical content. It is a consequence of McDowcll's brand of norma- tivc epistemology that experience of the world is rcstricted to users of languagc. In contrast, my position allows us to prescrve thc strong intuition that animals and prelinguistic infants can cnjoy sensory cpisodcs of the very same kinds as users of language.

According to my alternativc picture, experiences are subjective reprcscnta- tional states with objcctive nonconccptual contcnt, and yet they can serve as justificrs for our beliefs. Thc epistemic significance of experience does not depend on its conceptualization. If, under normal circumstanccs, an objcct appears redly to mc, then, it is quitc plausible to say, I am more justified in believing that it is rcd rather than that it is blue or yellow. In such a situation I have, in the way the object appcars to mc, a rcason to belicve that it is red. Thus, the positive epistemic status of a perccptual belief depends upon bcing appearcd to in appropriate ways. By saying that a subject has, in the way an object appears to her, a reason to bclicve that it is thus and so, I do not mean to suggest that the subject must have arrived at her belicf by any process of rcasoning or inferring. So my appearings are, in McDowell's terminology, "transparcnt", not "opaque"74; they themsclves disclose features of thc envi- ronment to us. The subject docs not have to use the way the object appears to her as a reason, as a premise for concluding, that it is thus and so. No conscious discursive process needs to mediate the object's appearing thus and so to thc subject and the subject's consequent belief that it is thus and so.

It is important to note, that for an ordinary perceptual bclicf to be justificd, onc does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, thc ways of bcing appearcd to, not our bcliefs about them, that are required for justification. In the ordinary course of things, wc rarely have bcliefs about appcarances. Our perceptual belicfs arc usually about cxtcrnal objccts and evcnts-not about, as they say, qualia. Thc position I defcnd is, therefore, a type of direct realism. Wc acquirc by the senses, normally, direct knowledge of physical objccts and events. What makes this knowlcdge direct is that it is not based on other knowledge or beliefs.

REFERENCES Alston, William: 1989, El~istemic Justijication. Essays in the Theory of

Knowledge, Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London Armstrong, David: 1961, Perception and the Physical World, Routledgc &

Kegan Paul, London Brandom, Robert: 1995, "Perception and Rational Constraint: McDowell's

Mind and World", Philosophical Issues, 7 Perception, 241-59

'4 McDowell 1994, 145

178 RICHARD SCHANTZ

Churchland, Paul: 1979, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Cambridge University Press, New York

Davidson, Donald: 1984, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Clarcndon Press, Oxford

Davidson, Donald: 1986, "A Cohercnce Thcory of Truth and Knowledge", in: LePore, Ernest (ed.), Truth and Interpretation. Perspectives on the Phi- losophy qf Donald Davidson, Blackwell, Oxford

Davidson, Donald: 1990, "Meaning, Truth and Evidence", in: Barrett, Robcrt and Gibson, Roger (ed.), Perspectives or1 Quine, Basil Blackwell, Cam- bridgcJMA, 68-79

Dretske, Fred: 1969, Seeing and Knowing, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London Dretske, Frcd: 1981, Knowledge and the Flow qf Information, Basil Black-

well, Oxford Evans, Gareth: 1982, The V~~rieties of Reference, Clarendon Press, Oxford Feycrabend, Paul: 198 1, "Science without Experience", in: Realism, Ratio-

riulisnz and Scientific Method, Philosophical Papers, Vol. I , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Fodor, Jerry: 1983, The Modularity oj'Mind, M.I.T. Press, CambridgeJMA Fodor, Jerry: 1984, "Observation Reconsidered", Philosophy of Science 5 1,

23-43 Kuhn, Thomas: 1962, The Strricture oj'Scieritific Revolutions, University of

Chicago Press, Chicago McDowell, John: 1994, Mind and Worlcl, Harvard University Press, Cam-

bridge/MA McDowell, John: 1995, "PrCcis of Mind and World", Philosophical Issues, 7

Perception, 23 1-39 McDowell, John: 1995, "Reply to Gibson, Byrnc, and Brandom", Plziloso~~lz-

ical Issries, 7 Perception, 283-300 McDowell, John: 1998, "PrCcis of Mind and World", Plziloso~~lzy and Phe-

nonzenological Research 58, 365-68 McDowell, John: 1998, "Rcply to Comrncntators", Philosol~hy and Plze-

nomenological Research 58, 403-3 1 Lewis, C.I.: 1956, Mind and the World Order, Dover Reprint, New York Peacockc, Christophcr: 1992, A Study oj'concepts, CambridgcJMA Pcacocke, Christopher: 1998, "Nonconceptual Content Dcfendcd", Plziloso-

phy and Phenomenological Research 58, 381-88 Pitcher, George: 1971, A Theory of Perception, Princcton Univcrsity Prcss,

Princcton Quine, Willard Van: 1953, Fro171 a Logical Point qf View, Harvard Univcr-

sity Press, CambridgeMA Quine, Willard Van: 1969, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays,

Columbia University Prcss, Ncw York

THE GIVEN REGAINED 179

Quine, Willard Van: 1981, Theories and Things, Harvard University Press, CambridgcNA

Rorty, Richard: 1979,Philosophy arzcl the Mirror of Nature, Princeton Uni- versity Press, Princeton

Schantz, Richard: 1990, Iler sinnliche Gehult der Wukrnehrnung, Philosophia, Munich

Sellars, Wilfrid: 1963,Science, Percq?tion, and Reality, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London

180 RICHARD SCHANTZ

You have printed the following article:The Given Regained. Reflections on the Sensuous Content of ExperienceRichard SchantzPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Jan., 2001), pp. 167-180.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28200101%2962%3A1%3C167%3ATGRROT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from anoff-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Pleasevisit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.

References

Observation ReconsideredJerry FodorPhilosophy of Science, Vol. 51, No. 1. (Mar., 1984), pp. 23-43.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248%28198403%2951%3A1%3C23%3AOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T

Review: Prcis of Mind and WorldReviewed Work(s):

Mind and World by John McDowellJohn McDowellPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 58, No. 2. (Jun., 1998), pp. 365-368.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28199806%2958%3A2%3C365%3APOMAW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

Review: Reply to CommentatorsReviewed Work(s):

Mind and World by John McDowellJohn McDowellPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 58, No. 2. (Jun., 1998), pp. 403-431.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28199806%2958%3A2%3C403%3ARTC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS- Page 1 of 2 -

Review: Nonconceptual Content DefendedReviewed Work(s):

Mind and World by John McDowellChristopher PeacockePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 58, No. 2. (Jun., 1998), pp. 381-388.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28199806%2958%3A2%3C381%3ANCD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS- Page 2 of 2 -